There is little point in extending this analysis. We need instead to construct a better model of understanding of science and religion. Both continue to be significant presences in American culture. The Balkanisation of American culture may well be served by a studied refusal to allow two of its major elements to engage in any meaningful dialogue. Yet there are possibilities of dialogue and mutual enrichment for those willing to take risks, and allowing science and religion have a meaningful conversation.
That’s the approach I adopt in my new book The Big Question: Why we can’t stop talking about Science, Faith and God. It’s a narrative of my own journey over a period of 40 years to find ways of bringing together science and faith in a way that enriches and informs both. As a younger man, beginning my scientific studies at Oxford University, I took the view that religion was uninformed nonsense, which would soon be put out of business by scientific advance. The book tells of my gradual disenchantment with this approach, as I came to see its intellectual implausibility, and realized that human beings need more than just a description of the world if they are to leave meaningful and informed lives.
It was not until later that I read the great Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), who managed to put his finger on the point at issue far better than I could. Scientists are human beings. If we, as human beings, are to lead fulfilled lives, we need more than the partial account of reality that science offers. We need a “big picture”, an “integral idea of the universe”. Ortega put it like this. Any philosophy of life, any way of thinking about the questions that really matter, will end up going beyond science — not because there is anything wrong with science, but precisely because its substantial intellectual virtues are won at a price. Science works so well because it is so focused and specific in its methods.