Church of All Nations

delivered 25 Oct. 2009
by Rev. Dr Brian Howe & Dr Andrew Turner

Brian: Richard  Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others have sparked a debate around science and religion, atheism versus faith, stimulating a public interest in religion not seen since the ‘death of god’ controversy in the 1960s.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006)

Richard Dawkins is his book The God Delusion most aggressively argues the atheist position  from an evolutionary perspective, reminiscent of debates centering on Darwin’s work on The Origin of Species in the middle of the 19th Century.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought enormous change with an explosion of human knowledge about every aspect of the natural world as well as of every aspect of human existence.  The supremacy of  Christian theology was questioned as knowledge was increasingly subdivided into new and expanding disciplines.  The challenge of maintaining a universally held view of the world became increasingly problematic.

Andrew will provide some background to Dawkins and the contemporary debate:

Andrew: The battle between science and religion has raged for centuries because the Church thought it was the deposit of all wisdom and was interested in maintaining a lid on parishioners’ thinking.  The biggest battles have concerned planetary motion and evolution.

Thomas Huxley (1825-95)

Darwin had to publish his theory of evolution because he heard William Wallace was close to publishing his version.  Being a son of a Minister, he initially laid low because he knew the trouble it would cause, but others took up the cause of evolution.  Initially Thomas Huxley (left) stood up for evolution and became known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog.’

One of Huxley’s sons Sir Julian Huxley carried on the defence of evolution and became a world-eminent biologist at Oxford University.  He was the first CEO of UNESCO and a towering figure in biological science into the ’60s.

Richard Dawkins started his studies at Oxford and emerged as a professed atheist, secular humanist, sceptic and scientific rationalist.  He had had a normal Anglican upbringing and had doubts about church teaching from age 9, concluding that the theory of evolution was the best explanation of life’s complexities in his mid-teens.

He studied zoology at Oxford under Nickolaas Tinbergen, a Nobel Prize winner in the field of animal behaviour.  From 1995 to 2008 Dawkins was Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

He wrote the book The Selfish Gene in 1976 to explain the life sciences to a popular audience.  He has been a prolific writer and lecturer since.

In 2006, Dawkins wrote his seminal book The God Delusion to cover areas of his and others’ arguments that he thought  he had not nailed down in previous publications and lectures.  The God Delusion has sold more than any of Dawkins’ other books and brought acclaim from agnostics and atheists.

Dawkins would call himself an ethologist interested in animal behavior and advocates that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.  As his defence of evolution and evolutionary theory has been so forceful, Dawkins has been dubbed ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler.’

As the basis of Dawkins’ thought is advocating that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution, he is skeptical of the importance of group selection for understanding altruism because it would be a paradox to his evolutionary process that helping others would cost precious resources and decrease individual fitness, the basis of evolutionary selection.

Dawkins’ scientific critics believe that the gene-centred theory is misleading and the gene too small a unit to bring about change.  Dawkins muddies the waters with his definition of a gene, a definition that I would not apply in elementary science definition.

Advocates for higher levels of selection suggest that there are many phenomena including altruism that cannot be explained by gene-based selection.  One philosopher has suggested Dawkins’s theories are excessively reductionist.

Dawkins’ latest book is The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, published this year.  This book expounds the evidence for evolution and goes back across all his previous works, like The God Delusion, to better explain his philosophies.  It is not coincidental that it is published in the bicentennial year of Darwin’s birth.

British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)

Brian: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (left) is suggesting that people who believe in God, or even people who think that it may not be unreasonable to believe in God, are off their brains or at least a little potty.

Andrew, in introducing us to Richard Dawkins and his ideas, while indicating some reservation about aspects of his science, nevertheless recognises Dawkins as a distinguished scientist, an evolutionary biologist who has popularized a gene-centred view of evolution.

Not surprisingly, as a scientist who has specialised in the natural sciences, discussion of religious belief is influenced by a view of science that builds on his own strengths.  Thus he has effectively resumed the 19th-century debate as to whether Darwin’s views on physical evolution of natural species or their contemporary equivalent, eat away at the foundations of religious belief.

For Dawkins a reasonable belief will be one that is informed by a scientific investigation.  A polemicist, Dawkins is not interested in the extent to which the Churches came to accept many of the insights of the ‘new sciences,’ as they were then, and applied those insights, for example, to Biblical scholarship.

Charles Kingsley (1819-75)

Darwin, himself a former divinity student, expected the church to be critical when he published his work, and while many church leaders were initially very critical of Darwin’s findings, not all were critical.  For example the well-known contemporary churchman, novelist and writer Charles Kingsley (left) was sympathetic to the idea of evolution, and was one of the first to praise Darwin’s book.  He had been sent an advance review copy and in his response (four days before the book went on sale) stated that he had “long learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species.”  That is, he did not have a view of creation fixed by time and place and taking seven days.

Of course, in the mid-19th century there was a strong sense of change, not just in the science of development but also in almost every field of knowledge.  The world was expanding rapidly, as was knowledge about it.  It was in the application of science to its own specialization, especially biblical studies, and the study of the history of the Church, that most clearly demonstrated the church’s willingness to draw insights from science to its own core discipline.  This was reflected in the development of biblical criticism based on scientific principles that enabled scholars to reconstruct much of the history of Israel, establish the time and context of much of the Old Testament literature as well as build a clearer sense of the contemporary world in which Jesus lived, taught and died.  This critical scholarship has been ongoing through the 20th century including in the various searches for the historical Jesus.

Edward Sugden (1854-1935)

Richard Dawkins, as I said earlier, is a polemicist and thus is not interested in the struggle between those in the church like E.H. Sugden (right), at one time the Minister of this church, who saw no essential conflict between religion and science and who believed that the systematic study of the scriptures could only benefit and not undermine people’s faith.

Of course various strands of fundamentalists have sought to undermine these efforts on the basis of the static view that God is literally in the written word as opposed to the view that God is present in the ongoing history of his creation.

However in resisting Dawkins’ argument  primarily on theological grounds, we have to careful to recognize the great benefits that have come with science in so many fields.  The modern world has been largely shaped by science and its application through so many technologies.

Our greatest worry about Dawkins’ approach is that he recognizes no limits to science and resents any suggestion that there may be some limits.  Science is not above culture, but is very dependent on cultural assumptions that will vary with each new generation.

The Enlightenment Room at the British Museum, London

Science, for example, is very much limited by the fashions of the age.  It was a view held by many scientists through the 19th and 20th Centuries that the aboriginal race in Australia was a primitive race that would inevitably die out and thus the importance of collecting all manner of artefacts including human remains that might tell us something of the origins of the human race.

Today, in the great museum in Paris on indigenous cultures, there is celebrated the ongoing and living history of a people who have been able to adjust to change over tens of thousands of years and who continue to practice their art and maintain there culture.  It is today a living culture from which we can learn. Our interest is not in an object of the past, but in a living relationship with people and an understanding of their vibrant culture.  (This comes through very strongly in Robert Manne’s edited volume of anthropologist W.H. Stanner’s work The Dreaming and other Essays).

I have asked Andrew to  say something about his own introduction to science and how his views as a scientist come together with his membership of this faith community.

Andrew: My entry into science: I spent all my school holidays with my grandfather and uncle on farms and was evacuated to a relative’s farm during World War 2.

Scholastically, I only ever got better that 50% for English at school on about 50% occasions and received lots of compensatory passes.  I have always been interested in and loved history and would have studied it if I had had a better grasp of English.

I didn’t want to do medicine, so our family doctor urged me to study dentistry, but I couldn’t bear to do to people what dentists had done to me.

With my agrarian background, the family doctor said not to do agricultural science as it was not suitable for me.  I still hadn’t made up my mind about what to do when, in about the last week of January, I got the letter from Melbourne University to enroll.  So I went along and spent an hour or two in the University Bookshop reading course prospectuses and found veterinary science; it had a good broad first year filled with science and little mathematics, so I enrolled in veterinary science.

It also gave me the opportunity to leave home and go live interstate.  There were no quotas in 1958 so my selection was accepted.  I haven’t regretted my decision as veterinary science and public service have been good to me.

In 2006 Dawkins produced a 2-part TV series ’The Root of all Evil?’ about what he saw as the malignant influence of religion on society.  Unfortunately, Christian philosophers have attempted a rebuttal of Dawkins’ philosophy by claiming his views extremist and ignorant of Christian theology and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently.  This argument sounds a lot like the Church’s reaction to evolution and planetary motion.

I would believe that Dawkins’s assiduousness has been fostered by his desire to counter lack of thought and creationism as espoused by followers of the radical religious right, particularly in the USA.

He believes his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science.  Dawkins’s opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence.

He describes himself as a cultural Christian.  Following the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre, Dawkins in response to a question about how the world might have changed said:

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense.  Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm?  September 11 changed all that.  Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.  Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labeled only by a difference of inherited tradition.  And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism.  Let’s now stop being so damned respectful!”

As I mused above, branding Dawkins as a crank unable to understand my religious point of view is hardly a satisfactory rebuttal of Dawkins’ philosophy.  Perhaps the Church needs someone as erudite as Dawkins to present an alternative view.

Evolutionary processes have occurred and they will drive changes that will occur with climate change.  I need to also acknowledge that evolutionary science spawned eugenics which has faded but not gone away and is now espoused by some religious bigots.

I remain optimistic about the future; that humans will come to some accommodation about what to do about natural disasters and scientific and religious bigotry and divisiveness.  The key to this rapprochement might be for the western, mainly Christian, nations financially assisting the developing and underdeveloped countries to meet development and climate change goals.  Of this, I am not so optimistic because religions, including both Islam and Christianity, might get in the way of reaching a ready rapprochement.

Concluding Comments

Brian: It is interesting how much attention that Dawkins, Hitchins and others arguing the atheist position have generated given that we have seen in recent years little discussion going as between Christians and atheists.  The reason for this may be that Dawkins and Co. fear a religious resurgence not so much among liberal minded Christians but among the more conservative churches and sects in Christianity and possibly beyond:

‘Fundamentalist religions is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well meaning, eager young minds.  Non-fundamentalist ‘sensible’ religion may not be doing that.  But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children from their earliest years that unquestioning faith is a virtue.’

My long experience in a mainstream church has never asked people to be unquestioning in their beliefs.

I can recall speaking with David Marr to a packed lecture theatre at Melbourne University on the topic of ‘Morality: First Choice or Last Resort.’  After we had explained our positions at some length on a range of issues including boat people, children overboard, refugees, whistle blowing etc., the first question came: ‘You have confused me; Why is there not a simple formula that I can act on?’

Dawkins reminds me of scientists I have known for whom there will always be the one answer that is right or wrong.  Of course, faith is not like that it, always exists alongside doubts.

As Paul says his  first letter to the Corinthians:

‘Things go beyond our seeing, beyond our hearing, things beyond our imagining; all prepared by God for those who love him.’

‘I came before you, weak, nervous, shaking with fear,’ are not the words of someone who has it all worked out, rather from some one who feels himself driven, not withstanding his personal weakness.

While Paul, on his way to Corinth, understood that the wisdom he brought was not the product of an Athens academy, that did not mean that he did not understand, was not a scholar, of the new wisdom that Jesus brought to Jew and Gentile alike.

Dawkins talks as if there is no alternative way of knowing if that form of science in which he was schooled does not drive it.  It is not just that today we recognise the limits of empirically derived knowledge, it is also clear that there are significant differences in disciplines because of differences in subject matter.  There is a vast difference between being a historian focused on the history of the natural world and a historian studying human history knowing that we cannot completely separate our own thoughts and feelings and life history from the history we would like to write about.  There is an objectivity about studying the natural world that is not possible when we study ourselves and our own history.

In a community of faith we cannot escape the big questions in life of meaning and purpose, of ethics and morality, our hopes and dreams for the future and at the same time the doubts that may haunt us in the still of night.

Job has a deep sense of human frailty.

‘At an hour when dreams master the mind and slumber lies heavy on a man-silence I hear a voice-was any man found blameless in the presence of God?’

Alone there is a relentless quality about self-questioning. Job reflects:

‘In his own servants, God puts no trust and even with his angels he has fault to find.
What of those who live in houses of clay who are founded on dust?
They are crushed as easily as a moth
One day is enough to grind them to powder.’

Is there certainty somewhere that promises reality for our dreams, we could be alone in our tent in the central desert?  Job reflecting on the human condition:

‘They vanish forever, no one remembers them
Their tent peg is snatched from them and they die for lack of wisdom.’

Of course science is a great source of knowledge, but not the source of all knowledge.  We see only in part and will only see in part in this life.  On the other hand, the intuitions on which science is founded are not discovered without the discipline of research and similarly, for serious Christians, the discipline of faith that enabled Paul to break through in the Roman world was at least partly built on the way that he cultivated his mind.  You could not build a theology as powerful as Paul’s theology with out great attention to what he had been taught, firstly in the synagogue and then by Jesus.

There is for many of us a moment when we sense the heart of our faith, and then there is, as there was for Paul, struggle.  Science does not like the notion of a paradox, but at the heart of our faith is crucifixion — “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him go out and die” — and on the other hand, there is the miracle of new life and new possibilities.  It is not one or the other; the two things must be brought together in the empty cross.

Dawkins challenges us to move out of our comfort zone and to engage with others and when we do this we will find on the one hand we need to understand our own faith, as we will find others willing to give us a hearing.

The Church is nothing if it is not both a place of reflection and a community of engagement.  It demands from us the discipline of learning as well as the will to act.  Of course, being a Christian, growing in faith, is a discipline, hard work and even a polemicist like Dawkins challenges us to read more and to be more knowledgeable about our faith.