Fundamental to the discussion to which both books are seeking to contribute is the relationship between faith and reason. Too often the two have been pitted against each other, as if they were in necessary contradiction. Religious faith is not a matter of the unquestioning acceptance of unmotivated belief, demanded of us by some overriding authority. Quite the contrary. Faith is a commitment to a form of motivated belief, differing only from scientific reason in the nature of the subject of that belief and the kind of motivations appropriate to it. Science achieves its success by the modesty of its ambition, only considering impersonal experience open to repetition at will. Personal experience, let alone encounter with the transpersonal reality of God, does not fit within this limited protocol. The concept of reality offered by scientism is that of a world of metastable, replicating and information-processing systems, but it has no persons in it. Darwin’s angel criticizes Dawkins for a lack of trust in the power of imagination to explore reality, such as we exercise through poetry. He is said to sound “as though he would substitute a series of case-notes on senile dementia for King Lear”.
No progress will be made in the debate about religious belief unless participants are prepared to recognize that the issue of truth is as important to religion as it is to science. Dawkins invokes Bertrand Russell’s parable of the teapot irrationally claimed to be in unobserved orbit in the solar system. Of course there are no grounds for belief in this piece of celestial crockery, but there are grounds offered for religious belief, though admittedly different people evaluate their persuasiveness differently. Religion does not have access to absolute proof of its beliefs but, on careful analysis, nor does science. In all realms of human inquiry, the interlacing of experience and interpretation introduces a degree of precariousness into the argument. Yet this does not mean that we cannot attain beliefs sufficiently well motivated to be the basis for rational commitment. In his book on the philosophy of science, Personal Knowlege (1964), Michael Polanyi stated that he was writing in order to explain how (scientifically) he could commit himself to what he believed to be true, while knowing it might be false. That is the human epistemic condition. Recognizing this should encourage caution, but not induce intellectual paralysis. It is in this spirit that the dialogue between science and religion needs to be conducted.
Need some help. I really want to print the whole article but can’t figure out how to do it. I clicked on the printer friendly mark but this doesn’t seem to have any effect. What can I do, do you know? LM
Larry, click on Kendall’s read it all link to get to the Times Online. Scroll down to the bottom of the article there (below the comments) and look for the print link.
John Polkinghorne is a favorite of mine. He was physicist that specialized in high energy physics and quantum chromodynamics. He resigned and went to seminary. He has written several books on the interface between science and religion.
Polkinghorne’s website is also interesting: http://www.polkinghorne.net/
Dan, thanks for the link to Polkinghorne’s web site. I recommend anything he has written on religion and science, as he is one of the most articulate spokespersons in the field. The photo on the web site must be about twenty-five years old, as he now has gotten on in years. When I saw him at the international conference on religion and science in Edinburgh this summer, he looked much older, walks with a cane. (We sat together to listen to Alister McGrath’s plenary lecture, and spoke briefly.) But his mind is still as sharp as ever, as was evident from his own plenary address, and this review.
I refer briefly to some of Sir John’s writings in my web essay, “Theologies of an Evolving Creation,” at http://community.berea.edu/scienceandfaith/.