Now available – the four excellent lectures from our Faith and Cosmology conference (15th November 2014) on YouTube.
Fr Andrew Pinsent – ‘Cosmology and Being’
Prof Bernard Carr – ‘Cosmos and creation’
Dr Peter Bussey – ‘Cosmology, how physics and theology meet’
Jamie Boulding – ‘The multiverse and participatory metaphysics’
This past weekend, I was on a hike in the Highlands with a group that included several people from the Science and Religion program here at the University of Edinburgh. Topics of conversation ranged from the philosophical status of zombies to the educational standards of UK primary schools, but eventually the conversation turned to the reactions we get when explaining to people that we work in the field of Science and Religion. Admittedly, the University of Edinburgh is one of a select few academic institutions with a specific Science and Religion postgraduate program, but I am always a bit surprised at the responses I get when telling people what I’m studying. A great many individuals respond with something along the lines of, “Science and Religion? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” Others politely offer a “Hmmm, how interesting,” while some excitedly assume that we’re spending our time defending young-earth Creationism.
Fair enough. Popular culture and media representations have a long history of portraying theology and “hard science” as being at odds with one another. A superficial gloss of Galileo’s conflict with the Church, or well-publicized tirades against the evils of evolution are often the first images to come to mind when the words “science” and “religion” are uttered in the same sentence. Obviously, most people actually working in this field do not assume a necessarily mutually exclusive relationship between the natural, empirical processes of the observable world and some sort of religious reality; if we did, we’d likely find better uses of our time! Much has been written about the exact relationship between science and religion, but what I found particularly striking this past weekend was the profound role that our assumptions play in these discussions. More interesting than the actual content of people’s reactions to Science and Religion as a legitimate field of research and discussion is the way that most of us experience our reactions as self-evident – myself included! For example, when we assume that science and religion are inherently at odds with one another, we are likely operating with an understanding that science deals with “cold, hard facts” and religion deals with untestable spiritual realities. What is even more interesting is that both atheists and those who believe in God often hold the very same assumptions. A theist might be assuming that although science deals with the observable world and religion handles theological realities, they are both part of the same reality, while the atheist might assume that what is not scientifically testable cannot be truly “real.” They both assume that science and religion are incompatible with each other, but for different reasons.
Without getting into a discussion of the various typologies delineating approaches to the relationship between science and religion (Ian Barbour’s work being an obvious example), the salient point is that we all come to the Science and Religion table with assumptions about reality, the boundaries of science, and the interaction between God and natural laws. Rather than immediately jumping into a heated debate about the latest provocative television sound bite, what if we started asking altogether different questions? Any impasse in public discussions regarding science and religion will likely be overcome only by first 1) recognizing that we all have assumptions about reality, science, and religion in the first place, and 2) questioning our reasons for holding those assumptions. It certainly can’t hurt, and might start an entirely new conversation about the “big questions” of life, meaning, and reality – questions that are not only of public interest, but personally relevant and compelling as well. And if nothing else, walks in the Highlands become much more interesting.
Many of us in the Science and Religion program have recently been examining miracles in our course on science and scripture, and today we took on the resurrection of Jesus. As you might imagine, this is a formidable topic, and one can come at it from all kinds of directions. One of the more inventive approaches we discussed comes from philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne in his book The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Swinburne begins with the hypothesis that Jesus was God incarnate and that he was resurrected, and he attempts to convince his readers using Bayesian reasoning that the likelihood of this hypothesis being true is overwhelmingly high. In fact, he comes up with a specific number: according to Swinburne’s analysis, there is a 97% probability that his hypothesis is true.
How on earth does Swinburne justify such a calculation? I’ll spare you the gory details and refer you to Wikipedia for more on Bayes’ Theorem. Suffice it to say that everything comes down to our confidence about a handful of scenarios. For instance, given the evidence of natural theology, how confident are we that a “traditional” God exists? Assuming God exists, what is the likelihood that God would become incarnate? How probable is it that the specific circumstances of Jesus’ life would come to pass if he was in fact God incarnate? Swinburne chooses values for the probability of each scenario in rather arbitrary fashion, applies the theorem, and voilà – mathematical proof that belief in the incarnation and resurrection is highly rational.
On the other hand, philosopher Larry Shapiro has a recent piece on miracles in which he wields probability to more skeptical ends. Instead of attempting to assign probabilities to theological claims surrounding the resurrection, he focuses on the reliability of human witnesses, the most direct evidence available to us. His result:
The base rate for the resurrection is (let’s say) one in 1 billion. The witnesses go wrong only one time in 100,000. One billion divided by 100,000 is 10,000. So, even granting the existence of extraordinary witnesses, the chance that they were right about the resurrection is only one in 10,000; hardly the basis for a justified belief.
Why do two approaches that use such similar methods yield such different results? I think the answer becomes clear when we examine the type of event that each author emphasizes. Swinburne attempts to quantify theological propositions that have deep implications for the nature of reality, while Shapiro turns his attention to measurable human behavior – a far more appropriate domain in which to apply statistical methods. Even as a believer, I think Shapiro’s skepticism rings more true. My natural instinct is to be suspicious of any model that claims to mathematically prove a theological proposition beyond all reasonable doubt; such a model trivializes faith. It seems fitting to me that a numerical analysis of the resurrection should yield a low probability because that result confirms my instinct.
What do you think? Are either of these approaches convincing? Can we plausibly estimate the numbers we need for this calculation? And of course, the question that’s been in the back of your mind this whole time: is there any theological value in applying mathematical methods to the resurrection, or are we wasting our time?
I’ve just discovered a fascinating project organised by one of our colleagues in philosophy at Edinburgh – Dr Michela Massimi – on the philosophy of the laws of nature, where the idea comes from, and what it means, all according to the seminal Enlightenment philosopher, Kant. Many questions that are of prime relevance to current debates in science and religion crop up here, not least the status of natural ‘law’, and the extent to which it could be a complete description of physical reality. The project, and its ongoing public outreach, are detailed here –
http://kantandlaws.com/home-new/
This is how the project is introduced:
‘What is the origin and nature of laws in physics and biology? In the eighteenth century, the philosopher Immanuel Kant gave remarkable answers to this question by drawing on the physical and life sciences of his time. Kant argued that the laws of nature, marvellously revealed by the sciences of his time (from Newtonian mechanics to the chemistry of Boerhaave; from the electrical experiments of Hauksbee to the hydrodynamics of Bernoulli; from natural history to the life sciences) were, in part, the result of our mind ‘projecting’, so to speak, an order onto nature.’