The Copernican Legacy -Science & the Spiritual Quest
Let's imagine we're describing a conversation we overheard that took place in Paris over espresso at a Left Bank café among three world-famous scientists. Missing from our table is Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, whose atheist views have become part of the popular culture.
To provide a backdrop, a study published recently in the journal Social Problems indicates what many of us probably already suspect—scientists are less religious than the general populace. 52% of the scientists surveyed, as contrasted to 14% of the general populace, declare that they have no particular religious belief.
Another interesting finding of the study was that younger scientists appear more likely to have some form of religious faith than older scientists. Perhaps this phenomenon is just a result of generational change, but it is also possible to argue that it results from a weakening of the perceived opposition of science and faith, an opposition founded in the wars between the orthodoxy of the Church and early scientists in the 15th through 19th centuries. It may be that younger scientists do not see faith as demanding adherence to outmoded cosmologies.
As we wrote in yesterday's post Future Present a new world view has emerged of a biological universe that has implications for religion as profound as those of Copernicus in the 16th century. The biological worldview believes that the emergence of life and intelligence is pre-programmed into the laws and constants of physics, which function similar to cosmic DNA. Opposed to the biological world picture is the classic physical world view, believes that cosmic evolution ends in planets, stars, and galaxies
Our first conversationalist is Arizona State astrobiologist, Paul Davies author of The Goldilocks Enigma who plays the role of iconoclast, dismissing most of the standard Anglo-American views on God and physics: "The idea of a God who is just another force or agency at work in nature, moving atoms here and there in competition with physical forces, is profoundly uninspiring." His is a deep intangible, question: "Why a set of laws that drives the searing featureless gases coughed out of the big bang toward life and consciousness and intelligence and cultural activities such as religion, art, mathematics, and science?"
Davies invites the fullest possible scientific investigation of religion, its cultural origins and evolutionary functions, and he doesn't draw back from conclusions that many of us will find uncomfortable, concluding that "The emergence of life and consciousness are written into the laws of the universe in a very basic way."
Noble laureate biologist Christian de Duve, unlike Davies, speaks of a religious dimension not in terms of doctrines but as an elusive "something else." Religion for de Duve is bound up with the mystery-cum-scientific fact that "we belong to a universe capable of giving rise to life and mind." This subtle yet undeniable mystery is enhanced rather than diminished by science's steady progress in understanding the origins and evolution of life, deepening the mystery of being.
De Duve doesn't believe in the existence of gods, but he does feel that priests and religion are appropriate because of humanity's apparent need to believe in God. He hopes that, eventually, the myths of religion will be replaced with some other form of spiritual and moral guidance. In the meantime, religion needs to find a way to engage in dialogue with science and overcome the incompatibility between the two.
Perhaps the most complex almost mystical point of view that of the great CERN-based French theoretical-physicist Bernard d'Espagnat who blends quantum field theory and philosophical speculation to conclude that quantum mechanics detects and measures properties that are manifestations of a deeper and perhaps intrinsically unknowable "veiled reality." We have no reason to construe that deeper reality as physical rather than mental; after all, the world of our experience manifests both physical and mental properties.
d'Espagnat's world view is fueled by his belief that "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."
Posted by Casey Kazan with Jack Butler.
Related Galaxy Posts:
Origin of Religion -Human Brain as a "Belief Engine"
Neurotheology -Is God Hardwired in the Human Brain?
Richard Dawkins, Darwin, & the Big Question
I believe there is a misunderstanding that this article (unwittingly) would attempt to perpetuate right from the beginning: That both science and religion are seeking the same things, and in the same ways. The difference between religious and scientific points of view are in the end, not about gods, but about how we perceive reality, how we go about understanding it and using such knowledge for the betterment of mankind. Science uses the tools of rational perspective to observe the world around us, puts into words we can understand what is happening, and uses such knowledge to further our understanding of reality. Religion looks at all such attempts and does it's utmost to discredit anything gained by rational observation. Religion cannot make, and does not try to make, rational arguments on behalf of it's beliefs. It's rational thought that religion attempts to stifle.
In the end, if there is a god or intelligent design, it will be science that shows it to be true. Religion has never been about discovering the real. The mote in god's eye may be the seas we swim in, but saying it is so doesn't make it so. Science has been at odds with religion because science dares to ask why. The reason more younger scientists tend not to be so idealistically atheistic is religion is no longer the threat it used to be (in the modern world). Semantics also plays a big part. Being "spiritual" is what lies at the heart of most scientists: the undying thirst to understand what makes the beauty about us what it is. But that has nothing to do with religion. Just the love of life.
Regards
Dave
Posted by: Dave K. Welch | July 19, 2007 at 08:59 PM