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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Reconciling Religion and Evolution
Ektopos, a philosophy news portal, has links to two interesting pieces related to religion and science. Both have to do with individuals that believe religion and science needn't be opposed to each other. The notion that natural science, particularly evolutionary biology, necessitates atheism is rejected by both men and it is interesting to read about how they achieve their conclusions. While I stop short of admitting there is a valid debate between Creationism/ID and Evolution, the increasingly visible segment of scientists who are trying their hardest to reconcile faith and science deserve serious philosophical contemplation. Granted, most can be dismissed as nothing more than misguided fundamentalists who are severely ignorant of the facts, but there are an enlightened few who are making sincere attempts to link both sides into one seamless philosophy of life:
Breaking the Science-Atheism Bond (BeliefNet) - Alister McGrath, a professor of historical theology at Oxford, explains what led him to eventually reject atheism as a personal philosophy despite having a firm scientific education. While I disagree with his assumptions about atheism and the leaps of faith he takes in regards to his Christianity, I respect his views because they work for him and aren't completely off base, as many theologies are when speaking of science:
To this day, I have never seen the sciences and religion as being fundamentally opposed to each other. As an historian, I am fully aware of important tensions and battles, usually the result of specific social conditions (such as the professionalization of science in late Victorian England) or the unwise overstatements of both scientists and theologians. Yet I judge that their relationship is generally benign, and always intellectually stimulating. My Christian faith brings me a deepened appreciation of the natural sciences, and although I am no longer active in primary scientific research, I keep up my reading in the fields that interest and excite me most: evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, biochemistry, and biophysics.
Priests in lab coats - Salon.com has this interview with Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, who takes the interesting stance of subscribing to Darwinian evolution on the one hand and defending scientists who find no fundamental oppositions between science and religion. Not an atheist, he rejects Creationism and Intelligent Design as "intellectual dead ends" and avoids religious fundamentalism at all costs. His agnostic philosophy enables him to support both sides of the religion-evolution debate, although this article correctly surmises that the evolution side isn't very happy (they tend to be a little defensive sometimes:
Above and beyond that, Ruse makes a heretical argument in "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" that will not endear him to members of his own team. Creationism and evolutionism, he says, are siblings, born of the same historical crisis, and they provide distorted reflections of each other. "The two sides share a common set of questions and, in important respects, common solutions," he writes. More explosively, he thinks both are essentially theological in character; they are "rival religious responses to a crisis of faith -- rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies -- pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind."
Although you have to register or get a free "site pass," definitely try to read this article/interview in full. It's very enlightening and raises some useful questions.
Posted by Will at August 10, 2005 12:45 PM in Philosophy and Religion