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By Steve Weatherbe
WHILE scientists who are also devout Christians may
have to park their faith before going to work at some North American
universities, the Rev. Canon John Polkinghorne wears both his science and
his religion on his sleeve for all to see.
The one-time physicist, who went on to become an
Anglican priest and theologian, gave five talks at the University of
Victoria in mid-October.
“My role has been to get scientists to take
religion seriously, and religious people to take science seriously,”
he told BC Christian News the day before the opening lecture.
Religious people, “especially in America,”
regard science with fear, he said – whereas scientists regard
religion “wistfully but warily.”
Warily, because they suspect religion is “a
matter of closing your mind to reality and believing the impossible,”
because scripture or some religious authority commands it.
Wistfully, because most scientists are neither atheists
nor believers, and do realize that science does not answer the important
questions.
“I was a particle physicist,” said
Polkinghorne. “And I understood that particle physics has nothing to
say about how I live my life. I also believe in God the Father, and that
belief has everything to do with how I live my life.”
Hosted by UVic’s Centre for Studies in Religion
and Society, the lecture series was titled Theology in the Context of
Science.
It explored Polkinghorne’s efforts, after he left
scientific research, to close the perceived breach between religion and
science – and to show how theology and scientific enquiry are on
parallel and complementary journeys.
Made both a knight and a member of the British Royal
Society for his work on quarks (one of the fundamental components of
matter), Polkinghorne left academe for the priesthood because most
mathematicians do their best work in their youth; therefore, he felt, it
was time to move on.
Far from leaving science behind, however, he
founded the Society for Ordained Scientists and the International Society
for Science and Religion.
He has written a series of books – slim, but
dense – with titles such as Scientists as
Theologians, Belief in God in an Age of Science
and Quantum Physics and Theology.
His aim is to refute the claims of such atheist
polemicists as Richard Dawkins that religion and science (or faith and
reason) are irreconcilable.
On the contrary, Polkinghorne regards Dawkins’
own thinking as “mechanistic,” and his conception of the
universe as “clock-like.”
In the priest-scientist’s mind, the universe is
more “cloud-like” – with knowledge deriving from many
quarters, and not just from the scientific method.
He takes a similarly dim view of both creationists and
Intelligent Design advocates. Their idea of God, he said, imagines him
“poking his finger” into the world to make it work.
Polkinghorne sees the American conflict over whether
evolution or creation should be taught in schools as a false conflict.
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He believes that fundamentalist Christians who read the
Genesis accounts of creation literally are making both scientific and
theological errors.
“When we read any kind of deep literature, if we
are to give it the respect that it deserves, we must make sure we
understand the genre of what is written.”
He believes the Genesis description of creation is a
theological account of the reason why the universe exists, and humanity within it – but not a
physical description of how it came about.
“Everything exists because of the will of the
Creator.” This is consistent, he says, with the theory of evolution,
and at least some Christian thinkers have always believed so since Charles
Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago.
Polkinghorne sees the notion of God creating a universe
in which life can create itself through evolution a grander one than that
of a God who “created a ready-made world.”
He said he sees God in the “fruitfulness”
of nature, by which he means its ability to organize in ever more complex
formations, from suns to solar systems to at least one life-hosting planet,
and from lower to higher forms of life – which are paralleled in
fields of study, from mere physics through biology to psychology and
sociology.
Along the same lines, he also argued that
Darwin’s driving force behind evolution – survival of the
fittest – is inadequate to explain why humans have evolved to the
point of understanding, for example, particle physics. “It goes far
beyond anything of relevance to survival fitness.”
Polkinghorne said he finds scientific indications that
the universe has “anthropic” fine-tuning – features
apparently designed with a view to supporting life, even human life –
and says most physicists agree.
Polkinghorne’s own Royal Society got embroiled in
the origins issue in September. A society staff person, Michael Reiss, told
the news media that science teachers should let students express their
belief in scriptural accounts in class to further discussion.
After a media furor, he was forced to resign.
Polkinghorne deplored this and described Reiss as “the victim of our
sound-bite culture.”
In the end, Polkinghorne argued, Christians should pay
attention to science “because we worship the God of truth”; and
scientists should pay attention to religion – because they, too, are
searching for the truth.
“Neither,” he concluded, “has a
monopoly on truth
November 2008
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