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The West is entering a new
chapter in its intellectual history, and John Polkinghorne is one of a
handful of scientists who have already, so to speak, managed to read
several pages ahead in the text. Belief in God in an Age of Science
is no mere rehash of the tired science-religion controversy. Rather,
this short volume, based on the Terry Lectures at Yale, explores the
sweeping consequences of recent revolutions in science for the conflict
between skepticism and faith. Those familiar with Polkinghorne — an
eminent Cambridge University physicist who also happens to be an
Anglican priest — will find here a distillation of earlier reflections
as well as some new argumentation. The book is worth reading not only
for its many insights, but also because it presages a new style of
thinking that takes us beyond not only the modern but also the
postmodern — a sophisticated, scientifically informed outlook which is
nonetheless animated by a firm, rationally supported religious faith.
As a physicist, Polkinghorne
understands what many Western thinkers without scientific training have
yet to realize: that recent science has shattered the materialistic
foundations of the modern secular world view. Modern philosophy from
Hobbes onward has taken its bearings from scientific
mechanism/materialism, from a vision of the universe as mere “matter
and motion.” Yet lately physics and cosmology have raced forward,
leaving this older outlook behind.
One key feature of the cosmos presented
by the new physics is its God-friendliness. Newtonian mechanics
ultimately led to the vision of a clockwork universe minus the
Clockmaker. But the more scientists have probed cosmic evolution, the
more they have realized, in Fred Hoyle's phrase, that the universe is a
“put-up job.” For human life to emerge, the blind mechanism of
natural selection was not enough; on the contrary, the laws of physics
had to be programmed minutely from the moment of the big bang. An
infinitesimal change in any of the physical constants would have
precluded life.
Present-day cosmology therefore leaves us
with a choice: either the universe was created by an Intelligent
Designer, or it is a massive and incredible coincidence the likes of
which we can hardly imagine. Drawing on the philosopher John Leslie,
Polkinghorne writes that there are two logical possibilities: “that
God is real, and/or there are many and varied universes,” the latter
being invisible, unsubstantiated, and probably undetectable in
principle. Polkinghorne does not belabor the point. While the God
hypothesis is not “logically coercive,” as he puts it, it easily
stands up against the alternative.
Yet Polkinghorne's interest is not in
proving God's existence but rather in showing how theology can “lay
claim” to an “intellectually satisfying understanding,” crucially
supplementing science. He also seeks to show how theology and science,
in dialogue, can inform and correct each other.
His target, in a sense, is the standard
modern formulation of the science-religion relationship, which ceded to
science the entire sphere of objective truth and — especially since
Friedrich Schleiermacher — consigned theology increasingly to
subjectivism and empty speculation. When it comes to science,
Polkinghorne opposes naive positivism. When it comes to theology, he
insists on a greater concern for objective truth.
Science, Polkinghorne emphasizes, is not
a value-free but rather a “value-laden” activity. Considerations
such as the “beauty” and “elegance” of theory are
“fundamental” to physics; scientific discourse depends on moral
virtues such as “honesty” and “generosity of intellectual
sharing.”
But he resists any notion that reality is
“socially constructed.” Likewise, he reproves some theology for
unconcern with simple truth in the literal sense of that term. He
advocates what he calls “critical realism” and “bottom-up”
theology, favoring quite orthodox and literal interpretations of key
Christian mysteries, including the incarnation, redemption, and even (as
he made clear in The Faith of a Physicist) the virgin birth.
Can the new physics beget a new theology?
Polkinghorne offers a fascinating gloss on the question of free will and
divine providence, noting that present-day physics — via quantum and
chaos theories — has swept aside the old principle of determinism. His
most eloquent observations concern what the laws of nature say about the
problem of evil, suggesting that a divine “letting-be” is needed to
underwrite human freedom.
It is in the nature of dense snow fields
that they will sometimes slip with the destructive force of an
avalanche. It is in the nature of lions that they will seek their
prey....it is in the nature of humankind that sometimes people will act
with selfless generosity but sometimes with murderous selfishness. That
these things are so is not gratuitous or due to divine oversight or
indifference. They are the necessary cost of a creation given by its
Creator the freedom to be itself.
Theologians and scientists alike will
find food for thought here, and philosophers should take heed — for
John Polkinghorne's intermarriage of scientific and theological insight
may well presage a new “post-secular” stage in Western thought.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Glynn, Patrick “New Physics, New
Theology.” National Review (April 6, 1998): 55-56.
Reprinted with permission of the National
Review. To subscribe to the National Review write P.O. Box
668, Mount Morris, Ill 61054-0668 or phone 815-734-1232.
THE AUTHOR
Patrick Glynn, associate director of the
George Washington University Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies,
is the author of God: The Evidence.
Copyright © 1998 National
Review
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