Are Science and Religion at War? | Denis Alexander

Dennis, the perennial discussions about God have moved of recent date into the scientific arena with some pretty hot controversies, whether it's intelligent design or certain philosophers and scientists criticizing religion very severely. You've been involved in both sides of those arguments, and I'd like for you to reflect on it a bit. I think it's fascinating the way the debate has sort of revived over the past few years. Of course, some of the debate has been a bit polarized and maybe not as nuanced as it could be. I think there's a need, probably, to bring some academic kind of rigor into this debate and discussion, and that's happening as well, which is very, very healthy. I think both are good. The energy that you see in the press at least focuses people's attention on what is an important subject. Absolutely. But, you know, when you go back in the history of science and you look at the role that religion has played in the emergence of modern science, I think it's a very natural kind of debate to have, because there's been this kind of traffic of ideas going to and fro. Over the centuries, you know, ever since the emergence of modern science and the founding of the Royal Society, establishing the first journals, I mean, these were done by deeply religiously committed people. One only has to think of the founders of some of our modern disciplines to realize this huge impact that religious thought has had upon science, upon the disciplines that we practice today. So I think that the debate we're having today is very kind of appropriate. You know, it's simply something that's been going on for centuries. You know, it's nothing new really. But it seems to have picked up energy in the last few years. That's right, it has. And I'm not quite sure why it has, but it waxes and wanes, you know. But I guess part of the reason it's picked up energy is because we, let's face it, we do have some quite extreme voices on both sides of the debate, and, you know, you've got the kind of ID and creationism on one side, and you've got people like Dennett and Dawkins and others who are kind of pushing an atheistic kind of interpretation of science on the other. And I think that's sort of helped to get the debate going again, which is good, you know, it's good to have a debate. You find yourself in the middle of both of those debates, so let's talk a little bit about each one. Yes. ID, intelligent designism, creationism, political movement focused on evolution, and you've taken them to task pretty toughly. Well I have actually, yeah. I mean, I think intelligent design is deeply flawed, I have to say, you know, from a scientific point of view, from a philosophical point of view, and indeed from a theological point of view, I think, you know, it's deeply flawed as well. But just looking at it from a scientific point of view, it doesn't really have any of the characteristics of a scientific theory that we as biologists would normally treat in the lab. I mean, calling something design doesn't really help us to understand where something came from, how it works, it's not a testable theory, it's not something you can dream up experiments to refute, you know. So it doesn't really have the characteristics of a normal scientific theory, and I think that's part of the scientific weakness. Certainly the history of when science purports to defend religion in an awkward or fallacious manner, what it winds up doing is undermining religion. Absolutely, yeah. I think it's the problem also with the ID kind of arguments, that they are kind of God of the Gaps arguments, you know, you find a hole in your scientific repertoire of explanations that at the moment you can't understand very well. We all know there's lots of things to understand in science, otherwise we'd be out of a business, you know, we wouldn't have anything to do. And so then it plants this label of design on those particular things that we don't understand very well. And when that gets solved, they pick it out and put it in another hole. Put it on another hole, you know, and so you go on. That's a very unsatisfactory kind of argument for a designer. It's a sort of designer of the gaps, I call it. So I think that's a problem. But theologically it's a problem too, you know, because, I mean, I as a Christian, you know, think of everything that is the whole created order, as we'd say, as being sustained and upheld by God. So there are no gaps. I mean, all we as scientists can do is describe in some sense, you know, what God has brought into being. So, you know, there are no gaps. But when you operate as a scientist, you're not thinking necessarily from a theological motivation. You may do that at night sometime, but when you do science, you just do pure science. Absolutely, yeah. And I wouldn't argue for bringing sort of God language in the lab or that kind of thing. I don't think that's very useful. And again, it's sort of theologically flawed in a way when you think about it. Because if you start from a theological angle, in a sense, God is the author of the cosmos, of the created order. And it would be pointless to try and say, well, in chapter nine, the second paragraph, here we find evidence for the author's, you know, kind of activities. Because in a sense, either there's an author or there isn't, you know, it's either one or the other. And I think that's the real upper level kind of metaphysical question. So as far as the lab is concerned, you know, I'm very happy that it's a diverse community of theists and atheists and people, all kinds of religions, and we can operate together and just agree about certain methods and principles and ways of finding out things. And we don't have to think about God language in the lab. And I think that's important, actually. And indeed, science and the scientific method, the language of mathematics, is probably the most effective universal language that unites all peoples, no matter what their belief system, creeds, ethnicity, or whatever. That is a real commonality of mankind. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Around the back of all the biology we do, of course, are all the physical laws, and behind that is the maths at the end of the day, you know. Even though lots of biologists don't like maths very much, they have to admit that, you know, that at the end of the day, all that they're doing is simply reflecting the outworking of those laws and those mathematical principles that underlie this sort of elegant universe in which we live. Let's go to the other side, those who would, from an atheistic point of view or sociological point of view, would reduce religion to the frailties of human beings trying to find something that doesn't exist. Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, we scientists like explanations for things, you know. And it seems to me almost a sort of stopper in thought to say, well, here's a universe, we don't know how it came into being, and, you know, I think scientists should go on asking meta-scientific questions. You know, why is there something rather than nothing? I think the way Stephen Hawking put it was very good. What breathes fire into the equations? You know, why does the universe bother to exist? You know, these are the kind of upper level questions, aren't they? And I think that those who would try and use science in a kind of atheistic interpretation miss out on some of these bigger questions. And I think in a way, it's a form of intellectual laziness. I'll be a bit strong here, actually, because I think one has to ask the bigger questions, you know. In science, we try and ask the questions about what's in the lab and about our immediate discipline. Why not ask the larger questions about why the cosmos is the way it is? Why are the physical laws the way they are? There's a sort of meaning in that. The critical point is for scientists, everyone really, to appreciate boundaries and to see where the boundary of science is, and granted it moves, but at any one point to recognize that boundary and to realize that science can go up until that boundary but no further, and that we should be fully cognizant that over time, as we understand more, we can readdress where that boundary is, but never to use scientific language to try to prove things over the boundary and vice versa. Science should not try to claim negative things beyond their boundary either. That's right, yeah. I mean, I see the relationship between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge as complementarity. They're very complementary narratives about the same reality, and the important thing is not to mix those narratives up, and that's where the ID people, I think, fall down. You know, they're trying to mix the language of the different narratives up, and that ends in confusion. But I think the atheists can do the same thing as well, actually, and they can sort of pretend that evolution in some way is an argument for atheism. I don't think it is, you know, it's simply, it's not an argument for anything in that particular domain. It just is, you know, that's the way things happen. And you can interpret evolution within an atheistic framework, you can interpret it within an atheistic framework, and you can do, I can do both jobs, you know, quite happily, actually. And so it just simply doesn't tell us very much about that particular kind of question. And so I think the kind of complementary relationship is a useful way of thinking of it. Narratives have many different layers, and reality is a complex sort of entity, and we need lots of different layers to do it justice, you know, and if we only think that our biochemical layer is the only story to be told, or the cosmological story is the only one to be told, then I think we're being very restrictive, you know, on the complexity of reality. Have you ever had a conflict in your own understanding of reality between your scientific pursuits and your religious beliefs? I can't say really a serious conflict. No, I do remember as an undergraduate, when I first went into doing neurochemistry and thinking about the brain, I can remember reading a book by, an old book by Sargent called The Rattle of the Mind, you know. And if you're reading these books, you know, as a teenager, a late teenager, I suppose, you kind of think, oh, well, maybe it's all just psychologically induced, or maybe it's a delusion and all that kind of thing, you know. But I guess as I went on and then I did my PhD in neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, I mixed a lot with psychiatrists and people doing very hard-nosed biochemistry on the brain. Those sort of things kind of faded really, because I found that actually, you know, every belief has to be justified. Every belief has to be rationally justified. You need evidence for beliefs and so forth, and the fact that they're getting on your brain really doesn't tell you anything at all about whether they're justifiable beliefs or not, you know, and so on, you know. So I sort of was able to put those things together, I think, fairly well. But I can't say there's been any particular conflict. Religion is a very personal thing as a belief system. You've had a particularly unusual, tragic situation in your life where you write about it quite publicly, I admire you for it, that one of your brothers died on the way to the funeral for another brother, which is really a jolting situation just for a reader to read that, and I can't imagine what it was like for you to experience it. Did that shake your faith in any way? No, I mean, it's a tremendous loss to lose anyone in one's immediate family is a great loss, isn't it? And to lose two so close together is obviously a great loss and a sense of loss, and I think everyone would feel that. As far as shaking faith, I don't think so, not really. Actually, as it happens, they were both Christians, and Christians have a hope of eternity and this life is a beginning for something new and fresh, and that does give a hope that people who don't have that faith don't have. So I think there is a sustaining there, actually, in times of loss and so forth, and that it's a fact of life. I guess there are quite a number of people who lose relatives at the same time, and that can happen to any family at any time, so it's a reality of life. But I think the fact of death is actually something that lots of scientists, funnily enough, don't seem to face up to very much. It's very odd, in a way, that they're willing to talk about anything, sex or whatever it might be, or the latest scientific theory or string theory, but not about death. It's a sort of forbidden subject, and I find that quite intriguing, actually. I must say I don't have any problem in talking about it, because it's something we all have to face and all have to do, so we'd better be ready for it, that's what I say.