Science and the Church: Gift, Celebration and Re-Creation

 I spent Friday afternoon sitting next to Bishop Graham of Norwich in his Cathedral’s spacious conference room, fielding questions about science and faith from a determined field of 6^th formers.  Dean Jane Hedges chaired a mixed panel of lay ordained, religious believers (of different kinds) and not, and including two working scientists (I was the physicist – at the other end of the row an Oxford biologist).  What are the top questions young people in Norwich want to explore, when given that opportunity?  Before reading on you might want to see how many you can guess.  Here are five of them…

• Did the laws of physics spring from nothing? How does this relate to the idea of God?
• Many churches still preach creationism as a literal interpretation of Genesis. This message is in direct contradiction to evolution and the evidence provided by physics. Is there too great a gulf between faith and reason to reconcile the two?
• If God is the God of ‘gaps’, what gaps are left for God to fill?
• How would science explain apparent metaphysical features of the world such as free will?
• Science is based on empirical evidence and religion is based on ideas. Should religion have to prove itself in order to be valid in today’s society?

This isn’t the place to record our answers – but to reflect on the diverse concerns and assumptions behind these probing questions. Take the last – there is essentially no public grasp of the history of thought informed by anything deeper that the historically-false ‘conflict’ paradigm of Christianity and Science.  The information that not only were all the early modern pioneers of science Christians (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, and Newton a Unitarian), but that they worked under an explicit theology for why they were doing science [1], comes as rather a surprise.

From that starting point it is not a surprise that faith and science have become tangled in pupils’ minds as competing explanatory frameworks – so God rescues and inhabits the ‘gaps’ in our explanations (until there are no gaps left…). Science itself becomes misunderstood – the notion of ‘scientific proof’ is appealed to (it doesn’t exist) – and a grasp of ‘religion’ also – we found ourselves asserting that Christianity is not just ‘about ideas’ but about practical living that works.  The most troubling questions – troubling because they arose, not because they are hard to answer – were about the conflict of science with young earth creationism (and it came up more than once).  This is a terrible 20^th century heresy that is taught in more churches than most people think, poisons young minds and reduces Bible-reading to thin, selective and disrespectful proof-texting.  The Church needs to speak out on this much more strongly, for here is a real conflict – one has to throw out essentially all that we have learned through science to countenance it.

Faith and Wisdom in Science (OUP 2014)

So it is a wonderful thing that Churches and Cathedrals are increasingly recognising that they are natural places to host science festivals, such as the Norwich science week in which the debate took place.  Lectures, hands on experiments – even a simulated volcano spewing fire – all graced the festival week.  To move from seeing science as a vague secular threat, towards celebrating it as God’s Gift, is an essential journey for the Church today.  This is not only so that the apologetic questions can be re-framed in proper historical and philosophical light, but because science needs the church to support its mission even more now than it always did.  This is the central point of the book Faith and Wisdom in Science, in which I argue that a ‘Theology of Science’ needs urgently to replace the opposition of theology and science.

To take just one strand of evidence for this claim: examine the fractious and conflictual

The north view of the massive norman nave of Durham Cathedral seen from Palace Green.

public and political debates about science-based issues like climate change and genetic medicine. These discussions need the patient, reconciliatory service of our community of faith if they are to progress.  St. John’s College, Durham University is currently running a project Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science (funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation) to bring senior Christian leaders and scientists together.  Earlier this year it hosted a remarkable workshop on earth sciences, theology and the church in which I experienced for the first time a thoughtful (and prayerful) engagement of opposite views on fracking. Another strand of the project, recently launched, is the offer of competitive funding to churches with imaginative ideas on engaging with science.  The Scientists in Congregations initiative awaits your ideas.

 

[1] As historian Peter Harrison has written about in The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science

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Earth Scientists, Bishops and Fracking … a heady mix at Durham

David Wilkinson has a succinct way to say it: ‘Learn to see Science not as a secular threat, but as God’s Gift’. From that notion follows everything we are excited about. David is Principal of St. John’s College, Durham University, where I have just emerged, dazed, from a discussion of fracking that brought together theology, oil and gas engineering, earth science theory, local community politics, national policy frameworks, global environmental science and more in a group of bishops and scientists. How on earth did we get to this?

David and I have been working together since I joined the university in 2008 to find ways of helping the church, and the world beyond, to see and work with science in new ways. For some time we have been thinking through this germ of an idea – science as God’s gift – talking with others about it, writing books, working with congregations, graduate students, leaders of churches – more or less anyone who will listen and argue about it.

It’s a central thesis and consequence of Faith and Wisdom in Science, that the church theologically can, and politically must engage deeply with science, technology and their social setting.

It dawned upon us that there is a critical group of influential people that much of the ‘science and religion’ discussion either bypasses or forces onto the back foot: senior church leaders at the level of bishop or their equivalent in other denominations. How could we help these crucial opinion-formers, leaders and enablers to navigate what for many of them is unfamiliar territory (only a small minority have a science background) and yet one that is cited over and again as an area in which the church looks ill-equipped and on the defensive? After all, if ‘natural philosophy’ – ‘love of wisdom to do with natural things’, the more theologically-resonant name for ‘science’ – is really God’s gift, then our whole perspective on it changes. For a start, science would now need theological thinking alongside and in support of it, rather than in opposition or defence. It then follows that the repetitive conflict narrative that all too often glues itself to the ‘science and religion’ debate needs complete reframing. Science becomes a human mandate in continuity with the Biblical story of creation and re-creation, and the church a needed voice in the constructive guiding of the new technologies that offer both promise and risk. Scientists in congregations might even be able to feel wanted and valued, rather than hymn-singers on their day off, and scientists with no church connection at all ought to find natural conversation partners in bishops! That last conclusion is a radical prediction of our hypothesis that simply had to be tested.

But how to set about it? The John Templeton Foundation and Templeton World Charitable (TWC) trust came (after considerable negotiation, discussion, and a pilot project – all long stories for another time) to our aid. TWC has just funded a four-year programme, supported by both Anglican archbishops and the Archbishops’ Council’s Mission and Public Affairs Division, and based at St. John’s College, ‘Christian Leaders in an Age of Science’. It simultaneously supports five strands of work that explores the radical vision:

(i) a full-time researcher (Dr. Lydia Reid) working with Christian leaders nationally,

(ii) the development of material in the theology and ministry of science for ordinands (it’s handy that Durham now runs the Church of England’s Common Awards through St. John’s College),

(iii) a project manager (Revd. Dr. Kathryn Prichard) stationed in Church House, Westminster, who also co-ordinates a growing network of theological and scientific advice on science to the church’s Ministry and Public Affairs division.

(iv) a ‘Scientists in Congregations’ project sponsoring awards to churches of up to £10k that explore locally the consequences of a theology of science as gift-to-a-purpose.

And fifthly? A programme of 3-day workshops where the bishops and scientists work together – visiting labs, meeting young researchers, hearing about new research, exploring history and theology, thinking though new messages in the media … THAT’s where the fracking discussion happened. Just the first of six – this one on Earth Sciences but later we will be tackling complexity, the brain and mind, cosmology, the evolution of humans … most seem to be sold out already. I can’t wait.

(a modified version of this article was posted on the Church of England’s Website)

Laudato Si – Reflections from Faith and Wisdom in Science

Last week Pope Francis published his widely anticipated encyclical Laudato Si.   It is a considered yet impassioned plea for new attitude and action towards our planet and environment – ‘Care for our Common Home’.  It is adressed not just to Catholics or the wider Christian communion, but to everyone. Immediate comment was almost universally warmly receptive, though tended to focus on particular statements or to extract highlighted ‘soundbites’ from within the lengthy sweep of its 186 pages. But its great strength is to be found in the very breadth and depth that the Encyclical allows itself. Before suggesting changes of political and personal attitude and behaviour, Laudato Si surveys a Biblically-informed theological discussion of science, technology and our responsibility to nature. Since this is also the essential foundation of Faith and Wisdom in Science, I rather think it the task of this column to look hard at the theology of science that the encyclical builds on, before reacting to its recommendations.

The very title of the document, and of course the author’s assumed pontifical name, are both taken from the founder of the movement to which he belongs – St. Francis of Assisi. The endearing honesty of the message is stamped on the introductory pages, which remind us of Francis’ especial love of nature, of all creatures, and the human care to which God entrusts the world. The very language of ‘Brother Sun’ and ‘Sister Earth’ prepares us for the deeply relational thinking that pervades the document, which later (§65 and §66) identifies the vital ‘relationship of human beings to the world’ as a broken one, as damaged as those with our neighbour and with God. The language used of this relationship with the natural world is

The Lord Answering job out of the Whirlwind by William Blake

covenantal and reciprocal throughout. In Faith and Wisdom I found just this astonishingly profound category of relationship to emerge from the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament – Job, for example, is assured that his anger and suffering, and also his questioning of nature itself, can become a pathway to a time when he is ‘in covenant with the stones’. Biblical affirmation of the goodness of physical reality, and our vital relation to it, really is that strong.

Francis likewise takes a Biblical reading informed by the Wisdom tradition to move away from a naive opposition of science and faith. On the contrary, he draws on science explicitly to inform theology: ‘the best scientific research available today touch[es] us deeply and provide[s] a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.’ (§15). That itinerary passes, as it did symbolically for Job, and as it does for St. Paul’s reflection on our relation with creation in Romans chapter 8, though a necessary pain: ‘Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.’ (§19) If Francis feels pain, and also anger, at the current misshapen framing of that relationship as one of exploitative domination (‘Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures §68), he expresses continual hope that a new and very different approach might follow (‘Instead, our “dominion” over the universe should be understood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship’ – §116). This is authentic Biblical encounter with the natural world – there is only one place in Old or New Testaments where human relationship with nature is not within the context of pain, and that is within the hope of the new creation (Revelation 22).

The Faith and Wisdom story reaches yet more radical conclusions of our responsibility to use scientific knowledge with wisdom, identifying humans ‘in the image of God’ as participative co-creators in a universe which has not finished the work of creation. This is a vital point – we have the care of something growing and developing, not simply of a finished product. We

Self-assembly of molecular structures (Barrett group, McGill University)

are able to harm a future, not just deform a present. Laudato Si draws on a remarkable passage from the celebrated medieval thinker St. Thomas Aquinas to explore and apply this idea. It might even be called a ‘theology of self-assembly! In his Summa Theologica Thomas illustrates the phenomenon of natural emergence: “Nature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God’s art, impressed upon things, whereby those things are moved to a determinate end. It is as if a shipbuilder were able to give timbers the wherewithal to move themselves to take the form of a ship” (§80). The world is pregnant with possibility. I wonder what Thomas would make of today’s theories of self-assembling cell-membranes, an example I used in Faith and Wisdom to illustrate how the apparent chaos of the molecular world is necessary for order and a structure to emerge.

The science and the theology of Laudato Si work powerfully together. Under the surface of its language lie not only the analytic toolkit of science, which informs us of the dominant human causes of global warming, but also the integrative, holistic methods of complexity and the science of systems. The rain-forests are the ‘lungs of the planet’ (§40); A fully interdisciplinary approach is needed to address the ‘deepest problems of the global system’ (§111). Both science and faith create global communities – and an attentive reader will not miss the explicit acknowledgement of reflective contributions from church leaders in Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Bolivia, USA, Paraguay, Germany, Canada and more. Sufi and Jewish thought is welcomed as well as Christian. This is connectivity embodied as well as urged.

There are of course places where I hesitate to affirm everything Francis says. I rather wish he had said explicitly that science is a gift of God, rather than the one-stage removed ’emerged from the gift of creativity’. But disagreement in some p art will be true of most readers. But living with those differences is also part of living and serving together in a connected and responsible way.

Laudato Si is not only a thoughtful document, it is a beautiful one. It is stern – it needs to be. It is painful. But it is not depressing or despairing. The prayers with which if finishes are full of praise and resurrection hope. It is surely right to suggest a song as we take on the urgent task of mending our ways, rediscovering simplicity, caring for the poor, receiving and using science as God’s gift, and stewarding our world for those who come after us.

Is Science Fatally Flawed?

This week’s Faith and Wisdom in Science event took the discussion to the Parish of St. Luke’s Grayshott, where vicar Moray Thomas had managed to fill the village social club (excellent beer) with more than a hundred young, old and in-between.  As usual, a very stimulating question-time, including a well-posed challenge to the question of other faith-traditions in the ‘participative-healing’ theology of science.  As that issue has been partially addressed by an ealier post on Islam and Science here, I thought I ought to comment on another challenge, which was put rather differently to others over the past year.

The accusation was that the positive view of science as a good gift to be used wisely, but one that really does give us growing insight into the natural world, is fundamentally flawed, that science is permanently doomed to be on the wrong track because of its blinkered purview.  By implication, in this gloomy assessment of science, it can have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.  It might have someting to do with the deployment of earthly power structures, of the domination of an intelligensia, of a sort of mind-control.  It is most certainly not the the joyous, unexpected wonder that we can, for example, understand the delicate weave of colours in a rainbow, or conjour up on our minds the molecular bonding structure of water in its various forms of ice-crystal.

A New Force

Now it is important not to confuse a view that science is fatally wrong with the simple, everyday, observation that science is wrong about some things most of the time.  The discovery that we can begin to grasp something of, for example, the structure of atoms, is wonderful because it is so difficult.  We can do it, but it takes centuries, many different minds with their own

π+ decay through the weak interaction

perspectives, many false starts and wrong-headed ideas, flashes of hopes dashed by decisive experiments, before light dawns.  My questioner conjecured. that science is ignorant of an entire force field that it has ignored, yet which affects, among other things, the structure and properties of water.  This is actually a very instructive example, since there are force fields that untial very recent history were unknown to science. The ‘Weak Nuclear Force’ was first proposed to exist by Enrico Fermi in 1933, and was understood properly as a symmetry-broken aspect of the electro-weak force by Glashow, Salam and Weinberg in 1968.  For many years its existence as a fundamental force field was contested – and its carrying particles, the W and Z bosons were not directly detected until 1983.  Should there be a new force field yet to be discovered, there simply needs to be significant weight of experimental evidence and some form of theoretical concept that allows a predictive approach to further experiments, and what was once outside science will become part of its accepted wisdom.

All you need is love…

So before 1933, and arguably before 1983, science was ignorant of an entire force field.  Did that make it fatally flawed? Was skepticism such as it was within the science community unwarrented suppression of challenging ideas? I argue in Faith and Wisdom in Science that, on the contrary, the weakness and implausibility of young ideas in science needs the exercise of love towards them on the part of their proponents.  The theological insight that our relationship with the natural world is one that starts with ignorance and fear and makes a long and arduous journey towards knowledge and wisdom is well-illustrated by the metaphors of thorns and briars of Genesis chapter 3 and even of the pains of childbirth in Romans chapter 8.  Being wrong does not make science flawed, it is part of the painful journey to understanding that underscores science as the deeply human activity it has always been, and the highest of our imaginative projects.

Christian Voices in the Contempory World: at All Saints Ecclesall in Sheffield – Humble Science?

Gary Wilson, vicar of All Saints in celebratory mood.

If Lent is a traditionally a time for deprivation of comfort, hard discipline and resisting temptation then it must be a wise church, if a particularly determined one, that invites a ‘Faith and Wisdom in Science’ evening of talk and discussion as part of their Lent course. So it was that the vicar of All Saints, Ecclesall, Gary Wilton invited me to lead an evening for a lively, attentive and challenging group of about 170 as part of their Lent course ‘Christian Voices in the Contempory World’.  Perhaps approproately also, we spent a fair bit of time in the Book of Job, a story of anger, pain and penitance as well as the most profound ancient text I know that treats the relation between humankind and the material world around us.

Actually I had first met Gary in 2012 at a conference on dialogue between Science and Religion that he was arranging as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Brussells for CERN.  The Director of the great European particle physics facility, Rolf Heuer, had requested the three-day meeting, since repeated, as part of CERN’s responsible engagement with the global public.  That meeting, bringing scientists and theologicans, some believing some not (in both camps) and representing Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, was extremely interesting.  A fair bit of the material on different religions’ approach to science derives from pointers given to me at that meeting (in chapter 8 by the way).

The Sheffield evening was no less stimulating. After the talk, we covered two sets of three questions from the audience.  They both fitted together in interesting ways.  The first (summarised) set was:

1. How can lay people really engage with science in a meaningful way?
2. Can Narrative act as a way into science?
3. Do we not need scintists to show more humility?

I think that these belong together because one of the offputting things about science is the way that scientists tend to assume the role of unassailable expert when we communicate science.  It needs to be said much more often that scientists make mistakes over and over again – it is hard to re-imagine the world and find ways  of seeing into its deep working structure.  We get closer all the time, but the difficulties and the slip-ups ought both to keep us humble, and to remind us that we need all the help we can get.  I still believe that the musical analogy I use in Faith and Wisdom in Science has some value here.  Just as musicians need the many ways in which audiences give them feedback in performances, so scientists need to listen to the reception of their work.  We should not underestimate the intellectual ability of non-experts to think about and question science (this is continually done in the mind-numbingly slow and superficial presentation of science on television).

One way of doing this is indeed to work through the narrative of a science story.  I think that no-one has done this better than Bill Bryson in his A Short History of Nearly Everything.  The twists and turns, the disappointments and delights, the characters and the catastrophes of science are all there.  Underlying the book is also the desire, born in a lay person with no science background, to grasp at some idea of the deep human need to understand why the sky is blue.  But crucially it also drives at a knowledge of how we now understand such things.  I think  that more along the lines  of Bryson’s approach, together with an expectation that lay audiences can and will help scientists to think more imaginatively, and an emphasis and development of the poetry and play of science, may recover lost ground.  Humility is indeed a good place to start.

More from Ecclesall in the next post!