I have not been able to ascertain the name of the authour of this
piece.


Breaking the Science-Atheism Bond

As an atheist turned Christian, I know atheism is not the only
conceivable worldview for a thinking person.

Posted August 04, 2005


Science and Spirit
Reprinted with permission from Science & Spirit Magazine.

Spiritually, God is the oxygen of my existence; I would find it very
difficult to thrive without a belief in God. Of course, the word "God"
needs some clarification. It means different things to different
people, even though there are often clear areas of overlap. To
clarify: I believe in the God who is made known and made available
through Jesus-that is, a personal God who I believe knows me as an
individual, cares for me, and enables and inspires me to live my life
with a firm sense of purpose and a deep satisfaction in the service of
others. That situates me within the generous parameters of
Christianity.
I haven't always seen things this way. When I was growing up in
Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1960s, I came to the view that
God was an infantile illusion, suitable for the elderly, the
intellectually feeble, and the fraudulently religious. I admit this
was a rather arrogant view, and one that I now find somewhat
embarrassing. My rather pathetic excuse for this intellectual
haughtiness is that a lot of other people felt the same way back then.
It was the received wisdom of the day that religion was on its way
out, and that a glorious, godless dawn was just around the corner.

Part of the reasoning that led to my conclusion was based on the
natural sciences. I had specialized in mathematics and science during
high school, as preparation for going to Oxford University to study
chemistry. While my primary motivations for studying the sciences were
the insights they allowed into the wonderful world of nature, I also
found them a convenient ally in my critique of religion. Atheism and
the natural sciences seemed to be coupled together by the most
rigorous intellectual bonds. And there things rested, until I arrived
at Oxford in October 1971.

Chemistry proved to be intellectually exhilarating. As more and more
of the complexities of the natural world seemed to fall into place, I
found myself overwhelmed by an incandescent enthusiasm. I chose to
specialize in quantum theory, and found it to be mentally demanding,
almost to the point of pain-yet rewarding. Although the quantum
universe fascinated me, I was increasingly drawn to the biological
world, intrigued by the complex chemical patterns of natural
organisms. In the end, I decided to research advanced physical methods
of investigating biological systems, under the supervision of Sir
George Radda, who later became chief executive of the Medical Research
Council.In the midst of this growing delight in the natural sciences,
which exceeded anything I could have hoped for, I found myself
rethinking my atheism. It is not easy for anyone to subject his core
beliefs to criticism; my reason for doing so was the growing
realization that things were not quite as straightforward as I had
once thought. A number of factors had converged to bring about what I
suppose I can reasonably describe as a crisis of faith-or lack
thereof.

Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory
evidential basis. The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive,
and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and
uncertain. The opportunity to talk with Christians about their faith
revealed to me that I understood relatively little about their
religion, which I had come to know chiefly through not-always-accurate
descriptions by its leading critics, including British logician
Bertrand Russell and German social philosopher Karl Marx. I also began
to realize that my assumption of the automatic and inexorable link
between the natural sciences and atheism was rather naïve and
uninformed. One of the most important things I had to sort out, after
my conversion to Christianity, was the systematic uncoupling of this
bond. Instead, I would see the natural sciences from a Christian
perspective-and I would try to understand why others did not share
this perspective.

In 1977, I read renowned biologist Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene,
which had appeared the previous year. It was a fascinating book,
brimming with ideas and showcasing a superb ability to put difficult
concepts into words. I devoured it, and longed to read more of his
work, but I was puzzled by what I considered to be a rather
superficial atheism, not adequately grounded in the scientific
arguments that undergirded the work. Atheism seemed to be tacked on
with intellectual Velcro rather than demanded by the scientific
evidence Dawkins assembled. A brilliant scientific popularizer,
Dawkins seemed to be propagandizing an aggressive atheism. And there
is no doubt that his lucid and hard-line atheism-especially evident in
his recent book, A Devil's Chaplain-has done much to shape public
perceptions of the credulousness of Christian faith. Belief in God, he
argues, is like believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy: It cannot
be sustained when we grow up and learn the realities of the scientific
method.

Dawkins is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University, where I earned a
doctorate in molecular biophysics and first class honors in both
chemistry and Christian theology-an academically enriching experience,
which I look back on with great affection. I began serious research in
Christian theology at Cambridge University, and was eventually drawn
back to Oxford. I now hold a chair in historical theology-the
systematic study of the development of Christian ideas down through
the centuries.

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.
Why does faith bring this intellectual enthusiasm and satisfaction? In
the words of another academic from Belfast who found faith at Oxford
University: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has
risen-not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything
else." C.S. Lewis wrote this in "Is Theology Poetry?" his famous essay
on the explanatory potential of the Christian faith.

Lewis conceives God in a manner that illuminates the great riddles and
enigmas of life, including how and why it is that we can make sense of
the universe at all. His conception offers me an understanding of my
own place in the greater scheme of things, and at the same time
provides an intellectual Archimedean point from which I can make sense
of the world around me. Above all, it sustains my sense of awe at the
wonders of nature, and the greater wonders to which they point. There
is a fundamental intellectual convergence between Christian theology
and the working methods and assumptions of the natural sciences-a
convergence I explored deeply while writing three volumes on
scientific theology: Nature, Reality, and Theory. How, some people
might reasonably ask, can I argue for such a productive and helpful
convergence when some scientists argue that atheism is the only
legitimate outcome of the proper application of the scientific method?
And isn't atheism actually more economic in terms of its concepts?
After all, one God is one more assumption than no God at all-and a
very important assumption at that.

Yet, as physicist Richard Feynman pointed out many years ago,
conceptual economy is no guarantor of theoretical correctness. The
real problem is trying to work out the "best explanation"-to use a
highly potent concept from Princeton University philosopher Gilbert
Harman-to make sense of this astonishingly complex, puzzling, and
exhilarating universe in which we live and think. The scientific
method simply does not allow us to adjudicate the existence of God,
and those who force it to do so (on either side of the debate) have
pressed it beyond its acceptable limits. In one sense, both theism and
atheism must be recognized as positions of faith, belief systems that
go beyond the available scientific evidence.

This conviction naturally brings me into conflict with thinkers like
Dawkins and his circle, who argue that the natural sciences in
general-and evolutionary biology in particular-force us to atheism.
Their highly contentious argument rests on decidedly shaky logical,
philosophical, and evidential grounds; far from being an intellectual
superhighway to atheism, it gets stalled at agnosticism, and is moved
beyond that point by an aggressive use of rhetoric alone. It is quite
clear that the natural sciences can be interpreted as supportive of
faith or hostile to faith, depending on your agenda. Any argument that
they necessitate atheism is not adequately supported by any of the
evidence available.

More importantly, from the scientific perspective, belief in a creator
God-however that complex notion is understood-offers a powerful
incentive to the investigation and appreciation of the natural world.
To study nature is to study God indirectly. As many Christian writers
of the Renaissance pointed out, the wisdom of an invisible and
intangible God can be explored through an engagement with the visible,
tangible realities of the world that appears around us.

My concerns about atheism, however, are by no means limited to my love
for the natural world. As a professor of historical theology, part of
my academic life involves studying the question of how culture impacts
religious (and anti-religious) beliefs. As I studied the intellectual
history of the modern period, it became increasingly clear to me that
atheism is heavily conditioned by the assumptions of the
Enlightenment-assumptions that have left a powerful legacy for our
time, but whose imperatives are perhaps less revolutionary in an age
without an entrenched royalty to overthrow.

As many cultural analysts have argued, atheism is the religion of
modernity. But the rise of postmodernity has unseated this settled
assumption. Atheism now seems a little old-fashioned, the
establishment position of a previous generation. And in its place,
postmodernity has recovered an interest in spirituality. I have no
idea where this trend will take us, but certainly it seems to take us
away from atheism.

Atheism is not the only conceivable worldview for a thinking person.
Belief in God gives us reason to examine the universe more closely,
and generates a matrix that both encourages and facilitates an
engagement with the world. Of course, I know this conclusion will be
contested. The arguments remain open, despite rather crude attempts to
close them down. I remain respectful of atheism, believing that I have
much to learn from it and the concerns that it expresses. But I no
longer share its faith. Or lack thereof.