Science and Religion--McGrath vs. Dawkins
I've been reading Alister McGrath's book, Dawkins' God; Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. It's excellent!
McGrath is a Christian professor of Historical Theology at Oxford AND holds a PhD in molecular biophysics--doubtful there's anyone more qualified to write a book on the relationship between Science and Religion.
In the book, McGrath critiques the work of Oxford scientist and ardent atheist, Richard Dawkins.
One of the things that really troubles me (as it does when scholars in other areas do it) is the way a man as intelligent and credentialed as Dawkins is so careless and fatuitous in his assessment of a certain field of study, namely religion, when he is so meticulous and thoughtful in his own field. Like many liberal Christian scholars, Dawkins' example shows with glowing clarity the difference between intelligence and wisdom.
Here are a few great quotes from the book:
"Far from being half-witted obscurantism that placed unnecessary obstacles in the relentless place of scientific advance, the history and philosophy of science asked all the right questions about the reliability and limits of scientific knowledge. And they were questions that I had not faced thus far. I was like a fundamentalist Christian who suddenly discovered that Jesus had not personally written the Apostles' creed, or a flat-earther forced to come to terms with photographs of the planet taken from space. Issues such as the underdetermination of theory by data, radical theory change in the history of science, the difficulties in devising a 'crucial experiment,' and the enormously complex issues associated with determining what was the 'best explanation" of a given set of observations crowded in on me, muddying what I had taken to be the clear, still water of scientific truth." (pg. 4-5)
"One of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is that many of the most deplorable acts of murder, intolerance, and repression were carried out by those who thought that religion was murderous, intolerant, and repressive." (pg. 114)
"The interaction of science and religion has been influenced more by their social circumstances than by their specific ideas." (pg. 142)
"Dawkins' argument [that religious people have little sense of the grandeur of the universe because of their ignorance and aversion to science] at this point is so underdetermined by evidence and so utterly implausible that I fear I must have misunderstood it." (pg. 149)
MM
posted by Mike Mitchell at 8:22 PM
2 Comments:
"and the enormously complex issues associated with determining what was the 'best explanation" of a given set of observations crowded in on me, muddying what I had taken to be the clear, still water of scientific truth." (pg. 4-5)
Mike,
As a science educator, this is one of my central objectives with my students. I want to reveal the messiness, affordances and boundaries of science. I don't think this is a focus in the science classes most people experience. I think what most experience, including myself in my own education, are the distilled products at the end that are drilled in and taught through either complicated formulas or complex theories that aren't open to question and perhaps presented as if they fell out of the sky on a tablet.
I think the way science is perceived is greatly influenced by how we teach it. If it is taught as an engaging experience that allows students to "do" science, they can recognize what it is through their experiences, but if it is taught as lecture with the goal of ensuring that we have all of the content, I think much of what science is and isn't is lost.
My purpose in teaching the nature of science, as I think other science educators would agree, is not to weaken the credibility of science, but to present it for what it is. To value what it can contribute and the limits of what it cannot. I think many of my own experiences mirror those described by McGrath. I was convinced by much of science without ever having questioned it. Either I didn't have time because I was trying to make sure I understood all the pieces of information or formulas for exams or I didn’t recognize the need for questioning as I didn’t see it modeled by those I considered expert scientists.
It wasn’t until I completed a research project in graduate school keying out the species of over 500 bees that I realized the subjectivity of what I previously considered unquestionable science. When we were looking at the direction of a vein on the wing of a bee to determine what species it belonged to, I was able to step back and realize that perhaps someone was faced with a decision and made the best they could with the information they had however limited it was (the direction of a vein). Kingdoms, Phylum, and Species before this had been taught to me as something I had to remember. I didn’t question it then, made excellent scores on exams when tested, and don’t remember much of it today.
I believe science has much to offer, but only if we recognize it for what it is and is not. I think the manner in which Dawkins approaches this topic does not move far beyond having students accept something because it is declared by an expert.
Thanks for sharing and allowing me time and space to put down these thoughts.
Todd
I too teach about science in my psychology class. I begin with Socrates'/Plato's Rationalism and Aristotle's Empiricism and take it right up through the modern era, tracing the history and development of the scientific method.
One of the most misunderstood things about science is this. Although it is a quest for truth, science never arrives at the truth. the best it can offer is successively closer approximations to the truth, but never the final answer.
Science can never prove an idea true with 100% certainty. To do so would require the idea to be empirically tested under every possible condition, in every location of the universe, and at every point in time. Utterly impossible. To prove with 100% certainty that "all swans are white" would require you to observe every swan that has ever lived, does live, or will live in every location of the universe. It is possible, however, to prove an idea wrong with 100% certainty. All it takes is one black swan to prove the "all swans are white" theory wrong.
So scientists are constantly trying to prove theories wrong. It is all they can do. The longer a theory holds up, the more credible it becomes, but it is never "proved" as true. My father, one of the world's leading chemists in the specific field of mass spectrometry, once told me that there is still exists the possibility that the theory of the atom is wrong! I was dumbfounded. I thought it had been "proved" true. No. It is the best theory right now because it matches the observations and has not been proved wrong. But there is always a chance, however small, that some future observation will call into question the existence of the atom. this goes for all theories in science, even gravity.
A good article on the relationship between Faith and "Reason" can be read at:
http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=1600
I enjoyed the post.
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