Is there “a philo­soph­i­cal incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between reli­gion and sci­ence. Does the empir­i­cal nature of sci­ence con­tra­dict the rev­e­la­to­ry nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two insti­tu­tions must be con­sid­ered essen­tial­ly antag­o­nis­tic?” These were the ques­tions raised by Jer­ry Coyne, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, in a long and meaty book review (“See­ing and Believ­ing”) appear­ing in The New Repub­lic. Over at the Edge.org, a num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic thinkers, who reg­u­lar­ly engage with these essen­tial ques­tions, have offered their own thoughts on the mat­ter. You’ll find short pieces by Stephen Pinker, Daniel Den­nett, Sam Har­ris, George Dyson and oth­ers. This one pas­sage by Karl Giber­son par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me (though it’s not exact­ly a reflec­tion of my world­view):

Empir­i­cal sci­ence does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Dar­win showed only too clear­ly. But empir­i­cal sci­ence also trumps oth­er empir­i­cal sci­ence. Ein­stein’s dethrone­ment of New­ton was not the whole­sale under­min­ing of the sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise, even though it showed that sci­ence was clear­ly in error. It was, rather, a glo­ri­ous and appro­pri­ate­ly cel­e­brat­ed advance for sci­ence, albeit one not under­stood by most peo­ple. Why is this dif­fer­ent than mod­ern the­ol­o­gy’s near uni­ver­sal rejec­tion of the tyran­ni­cal anthro­po­mor­phic deity of the Old Tes­ta­ment, so elo­quent­ly skew­ered by Dawkins? How is it that “sci­ence” is allowed to toss its his­tor­i­cal bag­gage over­board when its best informed lead­ers decide to do so, even though the ideas con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late on main street, but reli­gion must for­ev­er be defined by the ancient bag­gage car­ried by its least informed?

The world dis­closed by sci­ence is rich and mar­velous, but most peo­ple think there is more to it. Our reli­gious tra­di­tions embody our fit­ful and imper­fect reflec­tions on this mys­te­ri­ous and tran­scen­dent intuition—an intu­ition that, as artic­u­lat­ed by some of our most pro­found thinkers, seeks an under­stand­ing of the world that is goes beyond the empir­i­cal.
 

At least in Amer­i­ca, Charles Dar­win has become the favorite whip­ping boy for many fun­da­men­tal­ists on the right. In one neat pack­age, you get in Dar­win all things deplorable. A god­less “sec­u­lar human­ist” who denied the sanc­ti­ty of human­i­ty, God’s prov­i­dence, and the integri­ty of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?

Some­where lost in today’s cul­ture wars is the real Charles Dar­win. Aired first in Octo­ber, this pro­gram, pro­duced by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Medi­a’s Speak­ing of Faith (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site), revis­its Dar­win’s life & thought with James Moore, a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar who has writ­ten Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist. And here’s the pic­ture that we get. Like many impor­tant sci­en­tists who came before him — Galileo, Coper­ni­cus and New­ton — Dar­win believed that sci­ence could help explain the laws of nature cre­at­ed by God. Fur­ther, he saw his Ori­gin of Species as describ­ing the forms of life that owed their exis­tence to God’s law — a law that expressed itself in nat­ur­al selec­tion. Read­ers will find that Dar­win’s text is lit­tered with ref­er­ences to cre­ation. And Dar­win, him­self, was not­ed for say­ing that when he wrote the book, his faith in God was as strong as that of a bish­op, although his faith did wane lat­ter in life. Sim­ply put, Dar­win was hard­ly the ene­my of reli­gion that many con­sid­er him today.

Again, you can access this pro­gram with the fol­low­ing links: (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Addi­tion­al­ly, you can access a free e‑text of On the Ori­gin of Species here, along with a free audio­book ver­sion here.

You may also want to check out a relat­ed pro­gram by Speak­ing of Faith: Ein­stein and the Mind of God

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