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 PrintableVersion Real scientists, real faithThe professionalsREAL SCIENTISTS, REAL FAITH This collection has 19 contributions from scientists, all highly credentialed and some quite well-known: Francis Collins, who was Director of the Human Genome Project; Mike Hulme who was a joint recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; and two fellows of the Royal Society, Bob White and Simon Conway Morris, both of Cambridge University. They were all asked to tackle two questions: what difference their faith makes to their scientific practice; and, what difference their science makes to their understanding of their faith. The personal testimonies, or reflections, are surprisingly diverse. For example, Denis Alexander’s chapter includes reflections on life in the Muslim world and John Wyatt reflects on the painful privilege of caring for dying babies. Overall this is a fascinating and challenging collection. But who are the ‘real’ scientists of the title? The book’s implicit answer is that they are ‘senior scientists’ (p. 6) in the mainstream of secular science, who believe ‘that the natural (or scientific) and the religious accounts of the world are incapable of conflicting; any apparent differences may result from imperfect scientific understanding or wrong exegesis … Scientific interpretations may be provisional, but they are based on the way things are. It is distorting and ultimately self-defeating to try to temper scientific knowledge because of theological or philosophical doctrine’ (p. 9). The critical assumption here is that scientists should not allow faith commitments to influence their science. That assumption flies in the face of the last 60 years or so of work by the historians and philosophers of science. The evidence they have provided confirms that every human being, and every human enterprise, operates within a faith context. It is not a question of ‘science’ versus ‘faith’, but rather a question of which science we are talking about, and whose faith is shaping and directing it. In this book, Darwinian evolution is regularly presented as real science and creationism/intelligent design is disparaged. Senior scientists who would challenge that perspective were not invited to contribute. Presenting just one side on a critical issue is unexceptional. The problem is that the book does not claim to be about that issue and the bias is not declared. The book, therefore, does its readers a disservice. This is a real shame, because, as already noted, there is otherwise much of interest and value in its pages. Dr. Arthur Jones, © Evangelicals Now - November 2009 |
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