Science, Theology, and Ethics

Ted Peters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351901727
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Science challenges faith to seek fuller understanding, and faith challenges science to be socially and ethically responsible. This book begins with faith in God the Creator of the world, and then expands our understanding of creation in light of Big Bang cosmology and new discoveries in physics. Examining the expanding frontier of genetic research, Ted Peters draws out implications for theological understandings of human nature and human freedom. Issues discussed include: methodology in science and theology; eschatology in cosmology and theology; freedom and responsibility in evolution and theology; and genetic determinism, genetic engineering, and cloning in relation to freedom, the comodification of human life, and equitable distribution of the fruits of genetic technology. The dialogue model of relationship between science and religion, proposed in this book, provides a common ground for the disparate voices among theologians, scientists, and world religions. This common ground has the potential to breathe new life into current debates about the world in which we live, move, and have our being.

I

FROM CONFLICT TO CONSONANCE

Chapter 1
Theology and Science: Where Are We?

Is the war being fought between evolution and creationism characteristic of the larger relationship between science and theology? Is warfare the best extended metaphor for understanding how scientific knowledge and Christian faith get along? The battle metaphor goes back to the late nineteenth century, most probably to the influence of the notorious book by A.D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology.¹ However, we will ask here: does the image of a declared state of war accurately describe the current interaction between theological thinking and natural science? No, not completely.

We could say that a revolution is underway, but this revolution is turning us toward greater peace, not toward new battles. It is a revolution that adds complexity and nuance so that it is no longer accurate to see science and theology merely as pitched enemies. The revolution is being led by an unpredicted and astounding intellectual trend, namely, the relocation of the God question within the orbit of scientific discussion about the natural world. The raising of theological questions within the scientific camp does not fit neatly into the warfare model.

The warfare model is not the only one. Some of us work with a model of separation. We assume that science and religion are separate, unable to conflict because they are soverign in different spheres. They allegedly speak different languages. So, we erect a high wall of separation between church and laboratory. Yet now, as the peaceful revolution is beginning to take hold, this separation is increasingly recognized as most unfortunate. It is unfortunate because we all are aware that there is but one reality. Sooner or later we will become dissatisfied with consigning our differences to separate ghettos of knowledge.

The pre-revolutionary separatists and the revolutionary scientists represent only part of the picture. There is another group of quiet revolutionaries who since the 1960s have been looking for parallels, points of contact, consonance, crossovers and conflations. Their emerging new discipline, as yet without a name, is studying developments in natural science – especially physics and the life sciences – and is engaging in serious reflection on various loci of Christian doctrine. Scientists and theologians are engaged in a common search for shared understanding. The search is not merely for a shared discipline. They are not looking merely for rapprochement between separate fields of inquiry. Rather, scientists and theologians are aiming for increased knowledge, for an actual advance in the human understanding of reality. Until a name comes along, we will refer to this new enterprise as Theology and Natural Science.

In this chapter, I will briefly outline eight different ways in which science and theology are currently thought to be related.² I will note that the dominant view in academic circles – the truce by separation view – is what I label the ‘two-language theory’, but I will go on to point out that the advancing frontier is taking us in the direction of hypothetical consonance. Then, I will turn to the central methodological issue, namely, the classic concern for the relation between faith and reason. I will conclude with my own observations regarding the merits of hypothetical consonance and the value of making a theological interpretation of nature so that we can see the natural cosmos as divine creation.

Who are the key partners in this emerging conversation between natural science and Christian theology? Rather than sharply contrasting what we can know by faith and what we can know by reason, Nancey Murphy and Wentzel van Huyssteen, along with others, are maximizing the overlap. Those looking for consonance in cosmology, evolutionary theory, genetics and other such subject areas include frontier thinkers such as Ian Barbour, Willem Drees, Philip Hefner, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Robert John Russell and Thomas Torrance. In Australia, we must note that Paul Davies, Mark Worthing and Denis Edwards are emerging as world leaders in this growing field.

Eight Ways of Relating Science and Theology

Not everyone views the relation between science and religion the same. If we extend the metaphor of warfare, we can see that positions vary from pitched battle to an uneasy truce.

1 Scientism

Scientism, sometimes called ‘naturalism’, ‘scientific materialism’ or ‘secular humanism’, seeks war with total victory for one side. Scientism, like other ‘_isms’, is an ideology. This one is built upon the assumption that science provides all the knowledge that we can know. There is only one reality, the natural, and science has a monopoly on the knowledge we have about nature.³ Religion, which claims to purvey knowledge about things supernatural, provides only pseudo-knowledge – that is, false impressions about non-existent fictions.

Some decades ago, British philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell told a BBC audience that ‘what science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know’. At mid-century, astronomer Fred Hoyle argued that the Jewish and Christian religions have become outdated by modern science. He explained religious behavior as escapist, as pursued by people who seek illusory security from the mysteries of the universe.⁴

More recently, physicists Stephen Hawking and the late Carl Sagan have teamed up to assert that the cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be and to assert that there was no absolute beginning at the onset of the Big Bang. Why no beginning? Had there been an absolute beginning, then time would have an edge, and beyond this edge we could dimly glimpse a transcendent reality such as a creator God. But this is intolerable to scientism. So, by describing the cosmos as temporally self-contained, Sagan could write confidently in the introduction to Hawking’s A Brief History of Time about ‘the absence of God’ on the grounds that there is ‘nothing for a Creator to do’.⁵ In the warfare between science and theology, scientism demands elimination of the enemy.

2 Scientific Imperialism

Scientific Imperialism is scientism in a slightly different form. Rather than eliminating the enemy, scientific imperialism seeks to conquer the territory formally possessed by theology and claim it as its own. Whereas scientism is atheistic, scientific imperialism affirms the existence of something divine but claims knowledge of the divine comes from scientific research rather than religious revelation. ‘Science has actually advanced to the point where what were formerly religious questions can be seriously tackled [by] the new physics,’ writes Adelaide physicist Paul Davies.⁶ What Davies does is demonstrate how the field of physics transcends itself, opening us in the direction of the divine reality. ‘I belong to a group of scientists,’ he writes, ‘who do not subscribe to a conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident— There must, it seems to me, be a deeper level of explanation. Whether one wishes to call that deeper level “God” is a matter of taste and definition.’⁷

Physicist Frank Tipler takes imperialism to the academic extreme. Claiming that quantum theory combined with Big Bang and thermodynamics can provide a better explanation than Christianity for the future resurrection of the dead, Tipler declares that theology should become a branch of physics.⁸

3 Ecclesiastical Authoritarianism

Ecclesiastical Authoritarianism is the defensive tactic followed by some in the Roman Catholic tradition who perceive science and scientism as a threat. Presuming a two-step route to truth in which natural reason is followed by divine revelation, theological dogma is here granted authority over science on the grounds that science is founded on God’s revelation. In 1864, Pope Pius IX promulgated The Syllabus of Errors, wherein item 57 stated it to be an error to think that science and philosophy could withdraw from ecclesiastical authority. A century later, the Second Vatican Council dropped the defenses by declaring the natural sciences to be free from ecclesiastical authority and called them ‘autonomous’ disciplines (Gaudium et Spes: 59). Pope John Paul II, who has a serious interest in fostering dialogue between theology and the natural sciences, is negotiating a new peace between faith and reason.⁹

4 Scientific Creationism

Scientific Creationism, sometimes called ‘creation science’, is not a Protestant version of church authoritarianism, even though it is frequently so mistaken. The grandparents of today’s scientific creationists were fundamentalists, to be sure, and fundamentalism appealed to biblical authority in a fashion parallel to the Roman Catholic appeal to church authority. Yet, there is a marked difference between fundamentalist authoritarianism and contemporary creation science. Today’s creation scientists are willing to argue their case in the arena of science, not biblical authority. They assume that biblical truth and scientific truth belong to the same domain. When there is a conflict between a scientific assertion and a religious assertion, we allegedly have a conflict in scientific theories. The creationists argue that the book of Genesis is itself a theory which tells us how the world was physically created: God fixed the distinct kinds (species) of organisms at the point of original creation. They did not evolve. Geological and biological facts attest to biblical truth, they argue.

With regard to theological commitments, scientific creationists typically affirm (1) the creation of the world out of nothing; (2) the insufficiency of mutation and natural selection to explain the process of evolution; (3) the stability of existing species and the impossibility of one species evolving out of another; (4) separate ancestry for apes and humans; (5) catastrophism to explain certain geological formations (for example, the flood explains why sea fossils appear on mountains); and (6) the relatively recent formation of the earth, about six to ten thousand years ago.¹⁰

Establishment scientists typically try to gain quick victory over creationists by dismissing them. Stephen Jay Gould, the colorful Harvard paleontologist, says the very term ‘scientific creationism’ is meaningless and self-contradictory.¹¹ Although the battle between scientific creationists and established scientists appears to be all-out war, this is not the case. The creationists, many of whom are themselves practicing scientists, see themselves as soldiers within the science army.¹²

5 The two-language Theory

The two-language theory might appear to be the way to establish a truce with an enduring peace. This is because it respects the sovereign territory of both science and theology and because it is advocated by highly respected persons in both fields. Albert Einstein, remembered for his remark that ‘science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind’, distinguished between the language of fact and the language of value. ‘Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be,’ he once told an audience at Princeton; ‘religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action.’ Note the use of ‘only’ here. Each language is restricted to its respective domain.

As of this writing, the current president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, advocates the two-language view. Responding to Pope John Paul Il’s elocution on evolution, Gould argues that science and religion need not be in conflict because their teachings occupy different domains. Their respective magisteria (teaching authorities) are ‘nonoverlapping’.¹³

Neo-orthodox theologian Langdon Gilkey argues for the two-language approach. Science, he says, deals only with objective or public knowing of proximate origins, whereas religion and its theological articulation deals with existential or personal knowing of ultimate origins. Science asks ‘how?’ while religion asks ‘why?’¹⁴ What Gilkey wants, of course, is for one person to be a citizen in two lands – that is, to be able to embrace both Christian faith and scientific method without conflict.¹⁵ To speak both languages is to be bilingual, and bilingual intellectuals can work with one another in peace.

The modern two-language theory of the relation between science and theology ought not to be confused with the premodern concept of the two books. In medieval times, revelation regarding God could be read from two books, the book of nature and the book of scripture. Both science and theology could speak of things divine. Both natural revelation and special revelation pointed us in one direction: toward God.¹⁶ The two-language theory, in contrast, points us in two different directions: either toward God or toward the world.

A problem I have with the two-language theory is that it gains peace through separation by establishing a demilitarized zone that prevents communication. In the event that a scientist might desire to speak about divine matters or that a theologian might desire to speak about the actual world created by God, the two would have to speak past one another on the assumption that shared understanding is imp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Previously Published Material
• Introduction
• Part I From Conflict to Consonance
• Part II Physics, Cosmology, and Creation
• Part III Genetics, Ethics, and Our Evolutionary Future
• Part IV Nuclear Waste and Earth Ethics
• Part V The Human Body: A Theological Prognosis
• Name Index
• Index