Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation

by John F. Haught

A theologian reflects on the issues that still divide scientists and religious believers. †

Genres: Religion, Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theology

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian, specializing with systematic theology. He has special interests in science, cosmology, ecology, and reconciling evolution and religion.

Haught graduated from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore,, and he received a PhD in Theology from The Catholic University of America in 1970.

Haught received the 2002 Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the 2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and, in 2009, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Leuven.

He is Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. There, he established the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion and was the chair of Georgetown's theology department between 1990 and 1995.

Reviews

[Maya Bohnhoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due to the nature of how I make use of books like this one (read, absorb, formulate my thoughts, write about it, then repeat the process) it may take me the rest of the year to finish it, BUT I find it fascinating. What some of the other reviewers seem to miss is that Haught is not representing four viewpoints that he personally espouses, but is trying to accurately portray viewpoints held by atheists, agnostics, liberal and conservative theological camps etc.

Because I am frequently engaged in dialogue with folks from all these viewpoints on the subject of science and religion, I find Haught's portrayals pretty accurate. The material is sometimes repetitive because some of the viewpoints overlap and I find the way he chose to handle this—by keeping each viewpoint separate and cogent—keeps the material from becoming confusing and the reader from getting lost in the competing ideas.

The most fascinating thing to me about this "debate" is that the two extremes—atheists who believe that science and religion are hostile entities and theists who believe the same thing—are in such hearty agreement on the point. It's a thing of beauty when two groups that are supposedly at opposite ends of a spectrum share a central point of unity ... flawed though their reasoning may be.

I'm finding Haught's book useful because it clarifies the points of contention and agreement between different points of view and carefully follows the reasoning behind each one. That careful attention to nuance of thought is missing in many of the works I've read that treat the same subject.

There is, to me, one glaring flaw in Haught's reasoning, but it has more to do with the nature of religion than with the nature of science. He asserts that religion, like science, the universe and all life, is meant to evolve (a point upon which I heartily agree), but then stops short of taking this idea to its logical conclusion—that a 2000 year old revelation targeted to a pre-scientific society cannot be the last word in religion.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best-crafted and most sensitively written books on science and religion. The author lays out many of the "conflicts" between science and religion, and then one by one shows how they can be seen to be illusions of either trying to read religious scriptures and literature as scientific texts, or trying to hold that scientific results can "prove" or "disprove" the existence of God or can be the basis of morals.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN “INTRODUCTION FOR NON-EXPERTS TO THE CENTRAL ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION TODAY”

John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian and Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, “For almost twenty-five years I have been teaching a course on science and religion to undergraduates at Georgetown University. During just this one quarter of a century the cosmic landscape has dramatically shifted, and so has my whole approach to the subject. These years have witnessed, for example, fascinating debates and finally a virtual consensus about the big bang origins of the universe. During this period science has gained a fuller grasp of the chemical basis of life and the physiological aspects of mind… Do these developments have any significant religious or theological implications? I have written this book in order to set forth some responses to this question… I have written this book, then, as an introduction for non-experts to the central issues in science and religion today… although the ultimate objective of this work is conversation, I think we can begin to arrive at it only by first examining what the various parties are bringing to the table.”

In the Introduction, he adds, “you may have found, as I have, that recent scientific developments have made the idea of God no less religiously intriguing and intellectually compelling than it was before the age of science. In any case, the encounter of religion with science has generated a considerable amount of confusion. I intend this work then to be a new kind of introductory guide for those who wish to see their way through to some degree of clarity on a very complex subject.” (Pg. 7)

He states, “I see four principal ways in which those who have thought about the problem express their understanding of the relationship of religion to science. (1) Some hold that religion is utterly opposed to science or that science invalidates religion. (2) Others insist that religion and science are so clearly different from each other that conflict between them is logically impossible. Religion and science are both valid, but we should rigorously separate one from the other. This is the CONTRAST approach. (3) A third type argues that although religion and science are distinct, science always has implications for religion and vice versa. Science and religion inevitably interact, and so religion and theology must not ignore new developments in science. For the sake of simplicity I shall call this the CONTACT approach. (4) Finally, a fourth way of looking at the relationship… emphasizes the subtle but significant ways in which religion positively supports the scientific adventure of discovery. It looks for those ways in which religion, without in any way interfering with science, paves the way for some of its ideas, and even gives a special kind of blessing, or what I shall call CONFIRMATION, to the scientific quest for truth.” (Pg. 3-4)

He points out, “if theism is flawed because the God-hypothesis is unfalsifiable, then it seems only fair to ask whether scientism can itself meet the falsification test. To do so its advocates must be able to state under what conditions it could be falsified. They must actively look for ways to show that science is inadequate. Instead of doing so, however, they steadfastly ASSUME it to be true, no matter what. At least in this respect their faith in science looks suspiciously like the religion they reject for being unfalsifiable… it may not be science but SCIENTISM that is the enemy of religion… [Scientism is] a belief system that assumes, without any scientific demonstration, that science is the ONLY appropriate way of looking at things.” (Pg. 16-17)

He notes, “Physics leaves out anything that has to do with personality (features like intelligence, will, feeling, love, care, freedom, creativity, etc.); so we should indeed be very surprised, and even disappointed, if a ‘final theory’ in physics would uncover anything other than an ‘impersonal’ universe. If physics is not inherently wired to receive any personalist signals, should we wonder that none show up on its display screen? The existence of a ‘personal’ God is not an issue that science, including physics, can ever resolve. Science and religion are so radically independent that we should not expect one to shed very much light on the other.” (Pg. 32)

He states, “Our view is that faith in a personal God nourishes the trust that science silently draws upon as it makes its excursions into the unknown. Science needs to take for granted, since it cannot prove conclusively in advance, that there is a certain reliability or consistency to the physical activity in our universe. Although scientists expect it always to be surprising, they do not anticipate that the universe will ever be capricious… We have no right to expect that nature will be so predictable and reliable, but we BELIEVE that it is and that it always will be.” (Pg. 44)

Later, he adds, “Finally, a strong case can be made for the view that the radical monotheism of the God-religions has provided a most favorable historical context for the emergence and flourishing of science… theism conditioned the Western mind over the course of centuries for the kind of faith in the natural order and cosmic coherence that scientists have to take with them in their work.” (Pg. 46)

He strongly rejects creationism: “‘Creation science’ … is really not science at all. It does not seriously accept the self-revising method required by true science… Creation science would not even be worth discussing were it not for the fact that its devotees stir up so much public controversy in their attempts to keep evolutionary theory out of schools and textbooks.” (Pg. 51-52) He adds, “So-called ‘scientific creationism’ is objectionable in the first place because … it refuses to look at most of the relevant data… In the second place, however, scientific creationism is THEOLOGICALLY embarrassing… It completely misses the religious point of Genesis by placing it alongside ‘On the Origin of Species’ as though the biblical text could provide a superior SCIENTIFIC account of the origin of life… To us it is religiously offensive to see the biblical text so thoroughly degraded.” (Pg. 53)

He acknowledges, “Skeptics… [will] ask how we can reconcile our ideas about a providential God with the role that chance plays in life’s evolution. This is a crucial question… in our opinion chance is quite real. It is a concrete fact in evolution, but it is not one that contradicts the idea of God… The reason is simple: love typically operates not in a coercive but in a persuasive manner… It… allows… the entire created cosmos---to remain itself, though in such a way as to imply intimacy rather than abandonment.” (Pg. 61)

Later, he adds, “we are quite comfortable with the idea that a process of ‘natural selection’ is present as a constraining factor in the evolution of the earth’s biodiversity… For alongside of natural selection… there may be other creative, and less easily specifiable, factors involved in bringing about just THIS particular world.” (Pg. 64)

He suggests, “Our religious faith tells us that the same God who creates the universe also promises to save it from all its travail, suffering and death… The suffering of the innocent and the weak, highlighted so clearly by the evolutionary portrait of life, becomes inseparable from the divine eternity… For us the same God who invites the world to evolve is also intimately INVOLVED in the evolutionary process. God struggles along with all beings… so that in the end nothing is every completely forgotten or lost. (Pg. 69)

He argues, “the world of reductionism is too suffocating for us. A world in which our own feeble (scientific) minds are made the upper limit to everything is terrifyingly small… the reductionist belief system DEMANDS, in an utterly arbitrary fashion, that there shall be no aspects of reality that remain off limits to human scientific conquest. We consider this postulate too heavy a burden for us humans to bear… We do not forcefully and arbitrarily insist that reality subject itself completely to scientific reduction… We consider it both irrational and idolatrous to embrace the creed of reductionism. We need other ways of knowing… if we want to get in touch with the real substance and depth of things.” (Pg. 86)

Later, he says, “The scientific sense of ‘wonder’ about cosmic origins is already incipiently religious… big bang theory… [and] the religious quest for the source of our being… are existentially inseparable… they both flow concretely from a common human concern to discover our roots. We humans are forever haunted by origins.” (Pg. 118)

He says of the “multiverse” concept, “if there were an infinite number of attempts at universes, sooner or later one of them is bound to succeed in having those special conditions that give rise to life. In such a case our own apparently improbable existence would not be so unexpected after all… Nevertheless, until actual evidence of such innumerable worlds comes forth, it seems more appropriate … that we look at the relationship of the religious doctrine of creation to the world of current scientific Consensus.” (Pg. 105)

Later, he suggests, “In the absence of any belief that the universe is the free creation of God skeptics are forced to appeal to either chance or necessity as its ‘explanation.’ They appeal to chance in the case of the multiple-worlds view and to necessity in the case of the inflationary hypothesis [of Alan Guth]. We suspect that neither of these two choices is always motivated purely by science itself.” (Pg. 134-135)

He concludes, “The fundamental unity of science and religion… is most explicitly anticipated in the approach that I have been calling confirmation. This fourth way suggests that science and religion… share a common origin in the remote and mysterious fountainhead of a simple human desire to know. Both science and religion ultimately flow out of the same ‘radical’ eros for truth that lies at the heart of our existence. And so, it is because of their shared origin in this fundamental concern for truth that we may never allow them simply to go their separate ways.” (Pg. 203)

This is one of the most interesting books on the issue of religion/science interaction and dialogue, and will be of great interest to anyone seriously studying the subject.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Când auzim cuvintele „ştiință” şi „religie”, ne gândim imediat la istoria tumultuoasă a relației dintre ele. Dar cronica întâlnirii religiei cu ştiința nu e deloc doar cea a unui conflict. În paginile următoare vom observa că există cel puțin patru tipuri distincte de relații între ştiință şi religie :
1) Conflictul – convingerea potrivit căreia ştiința şi religia sunt fundamental ireconciliabile;
2) Contrastul – punctul de vedere potrivit căruia nu există vreun conflict real între cele două, religia şi ştiința răspunzând, fiecare, la întrebări total diferite;
3) Contactul – o abordare care caută dialogul, interacțiunea şi o posibilă consonanță între ştiință şi religie, şi, mai ales, căile prin care ştiința poate modela înțelegerea religioasă şi teologică;
4) Confirmarea – o perspectivă ceva mai paşnică, dar extrem de importantă, care clarifică modalitățile prin care religia sprijină şi alimentează, în profunzime, întreaga activitate ştiințifică.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Science and Religion seems to be simultaneously too simple and too complicated. Each chapter responds to a question that is scientific/philosophic from four viewpoints along a spectrum ranging from "science and religion can't be buddies" to "science and religion would not work without each other." Because of the repetitive nature of the book, it can be predictable and monotonous at times. However, for someone who does not have too much experience with scientific discoveries of the past decade that weren't learned in school, or someone who is stuck on traditional theology and not used to thinking about theology in a vague, "monotheistic" sense, then the book may be a little bit too complicated. I found myself in those positions often.

For someone interested in the topic of interesting ways that science and religion can intersect, I would suggest doing a little more scouting and find a different sort of book.

[Soeltra yani · Rating 3 out of 5]

gua beli waktu penasaran dengan judulnya, ternyata boleh juga. kapan2 lah..dibikin reviewnya sendiri.hehehe...