Science and Religion

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science
Science and Religion

Author(s): Anthony O'Hear
Source: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp.
505-516
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for the
Philosophy of Science
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Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 44 (1993), 505-516 Printed in Great Britain
Science and Religion'

ANTHONY O'HEAR
1 Introduction
2 Religion and Revelation
3 Science and Religion: Convergence
4 Natural Theology
5 Science and Religion: Divergences
6 Coda: Anknupfungspunkte
I INTRODUCTION
In this paper, I want to explore certain convergences an

science and religion in a way which may strike some
and maybe even perverse. If this is the case, then all I
that what I have to say here reflects certain thoughts
had. If what I say strikes a chord in anyone else, so much
I hope that it will at least stimulate people to explor
disagreement with me.
A second preliminary remark I want to make conc
religion and of science. To take science first, as this is l
am discussing is contemporary science, realistically
words, I am taking the theories of science on their ow
understand and describe the world as it really is indepen
and to what extent scientific theorizing can deliver
course, controversial; however, I hope it can be agreed,
argument, that the prospect of fulfilment of such a p
been part of the reason people have had for engaging in
we perceive ourselves to be in a world which is independ
transparent to our first thoughts and impressions, and t
more about this world is a large part of the motivation
Even if science is also and importantly of great instrum
1 This paper was originally given as part of a symposium of scien

conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science in C
Versions were presented subsequently at Peterhouse Cambridge and t
506 Anthony O'Hear
instrumental value depends on its actually

truths which of necessity are independent
If science is seen as revelatory of a wo
independent existence apart from us, objec
religion as I understand it and wish to consi
of a revelation of a world independent of a
and desires is crucial to religion. It may be t
the notion of a revealed truth and that the notion of revelation is one
particularly attuned to the great monotheisms of semitic origin (Judais
Christianity, Islam), although I suspect that some notion of a human
transcendent wisdom revealed in sacred stories and texts is to be found in most
religions. Nevertheless, it is the comparison between revealed religion and
mature theoretical science which particularly interests me, and which will
concern me in this paper.
2 RELIGION AND REVELATION
It was in the great period of confrontation betwee

religion, in the nineteenth century, that strenuou
theologians and defenders of religion to prove the na
its conformability to human reason and value. Follow
and of David Friedrich Strauss, a flood of books appea
demythologize Christianity, to explain away the m
present Jesus as a fundamentally human and historical
the teachings of Christianity as a combination of H
secular morality. There were, of course, dissenting vo
Kierkegaard naturally and Cardinal Newman, who i
memorably insisted that a man who failed to per
mysteriousness of the revealed doctrine of the Trinity
it was he was being presented with. However, it was no
black day in August 1914 when Karl Barth found n
teachers he respected endorsing the Kaiser's war, that
against nineteenth century rationalistic, and mode
associated attempt to present Jesus as a secular hist
some comforting and comfortable version of progres
Church Dogmatics, Barth was to contrast what he ref
most dangerous enemy a man has on this side of the
other and utterly transcendent nature of God. Fo
fundamentally human construction; it is 'unbelief... t
godless man' ([1936], p. 300). In religion 'man bolts
2 My picture of Barth, and the quotations from his work are drawn
of Barth, Ch. 17.
Science and Religion 507
revelation by producing a substitute, by taking aw

which has to be given by God' ([1936], p. 302). Ac
the communication of God begins with a rebuff,
chasm, with the clear revelation of a great stum
99).
For Barth, God was totaliter aliter, wholly other
man must prepare himself by not attempting to
creating religious substitutes for revelation. In th
naturalistic theologizing, Barth's great enemy
denial of original sin and the suggestion that
hismelf without admitting the need for divine g
think Barth's position can seem attractive from a
attitude of the truly religious person is one of hu
otherness of God; in philosophical terms this may
realism about God's nature, an admission that all
to a divine revelation might be erroneous, a produ
right from a religious point of view at least to th
does not acknowledge the otherness of God, an
revelation and grace initiated by God, is likely
anthropomorphic fantasy and wish fulfilment. W
not recognized, it will be all too easy for one's con
than a projection of human desires and feelings,
the history of nineteenth-century rationalistic t
which God and Jesus are very clearly embodimen
wisdom of the age. (For this, of course, Strauss
ruthlessly excoriated by Nietzsche.)
I realise that speaking in this way I will pose con
who-like myself-do not believe in God or in
however, the religious impulse is anything at all
of Barth's perception. In other words, it must rest
of human knowledge, of the objectivity and transc
the consequent distance between the divine and
If the divine is to be object of worship it must lac
must be something which, in Aquinas's terms, is
no way determined' (Summa Theologiae, Ia.
subsistent would be contingent and either depe
subject to chance. In neither case would it have
sufficiency which would make it right to worship
the realm of existence, as we are ourselves, mo
Olympian Kronos or Zeus rather than that ete
conception turns all else and to which all else tend
nothing in its turn.
Equally, to think of God's essence as being in an
508 Anthony O'Hear
(again in Aquinas's terms) anything other th

essence is somehow capturable by human tho
want to think of God as having power, bu
because in our conception power is the abilit
God there are no obstacles to overcome. To s
power is at best a misleading analogy; and th
else we might want to say about God, that h
All attempts to define God's nature are impli
divine subject to specific and implicitly limi
open the way to further questioning about t
nature, whereas the direction of the relig
Aquinas once more and from his contempora
to take us to an act of understanding which
asked.
If the religious impulse stresses the absolute otherness and self-sufficiency of
the divine, it will also emphasise the limitations and imperfections of the
human. The doctrine of original sin is an apt expression of the sense of the
chasm between the human and the divine, and an apt way of curbing human
presumptuousness. Although such things can hardly be quantified it is not, I
think, coincidental that the worst societies people have had to suffer under in
this century have been inspired by dreams of the Nietzschean superman and a
materialist utopia: that is, by a principled and self-conscious denial of human
imperfectibility and ignorance. Religion, in emphasizing human frailty and the
distance between all human efforts and the truly good and beautiful should
clearly have a benign tendency to curb the pretensions to knowledge and
wisdom which lead to political totalitarianism. In this respect, Islam may be
seen as religiously inferior to Christianity precisely because it lacks any
tradition of a distinction between the two cities, the earthly and the divine, and
to those quick to speak of Christianity as a theocratic religion, it is worth
pointing out that despite well-publicized lapses, more often than not,
Christianity has survived and presented itself as a force distinct from, and often
actually opposed, to the earthly city and merely temporal rulers.
3 SCIENCE AND RELIGION: CONVERGENCE
As I have been emphasizing the way in which religion, properly under

will tend to reveal truths which could not be foretold by purely human
and will stress the otherness and objectivity of the divine, let me
turning to science, stress the strangeness and otherness of the wor
modern science presents us with.
Once atoms had no colour; now they have no shape, place or volume ... The
a reason why metaphysics sounds so passe, so vieux jeu today; for intellect
challenging perplexities and paradoxes it has been far su

science. Do the concepts of the Trinity the soul, haecc
matter and potentiality baffle you? They pale beside the
of closed space-times, event-horizons, EPR correlations
Thus van Fraassen ([19 8 5], p. 2 58), but now consider

the subject of the intelligibility of quantum mechanic
perhaps we are in the midst of ... (a long) drawn out pro

the nature of quantum mechanical reality. If we are inde
living-with-it period, it would explain something which i
great many theoretical physicists would be prepared t
about the conceptual foundations of quantum mechan
fraction of them ever direct serious attention to such
majority of them are right to submit themselves to a
absorption ([1986], p. 82).
The realist about science, here speaking about the

unconscious of the difficulty of understanding the w
any more than Newman was unconscious of the diffic
the doctrine of the Trinity which his Church reveals.
cases are rather similar: taken individually the various
Trinity and quantum mechanics are quite intelligib
when you try to put them all together. Maybe th
suggested in the case of religion, and as Polkinghorne
of science-to live with the contradictions, to subm
subliminal absorption in the hope or expectation that
paradoxical, understanding might be achieved; I have
theory really is contradictory, as opposed to simply st
the contradictions may produce a mental adjustment
actually do anything to diminish the problem.
The realist about the physical world, just as the r
might well make the following observation at this po
although attuned to reality at certain points, is n
instrument when it ventures outside its intellectua
surprising that it cannot formulate a non-contradi
account either of the divine or of the quantum wo
theological and the scientific, an explanation is forthc
relevant field of enquiry as to why the human mind
account of the objects in question. In the scientif
evolutionary story of the human mind and perceptua
to the perception and understanding of medium-sized p
conditions, and not thereby necessarily well-attuned t
very small. (While some would emphasize the und
correlation of mathematical and physical understandin
51o Anthony O'Hear
something very puzzling in the seventeen

paradoxes and problems of quantum theory,
adaptability of mind to matter at this l
improperly emphasize the distance betwe
distance whose effects of incomprehension
fall from grace.
My conclusion at this point, is that in t
matter realistically, both science and religio
human mind is prone to stumble into parad
that are strikingly similar.
4 NATURAL THEOLOGY
What does it mean to have a religious attitude to the world? It is, surely, to
the world and our life and consciousness as being the expression of the min
a Creating Spirit. It is to see the world as a veil behind which a divine purpo
hidden and, intermittently, revealed. It is to see meaning and will underly
the immense, unrelenting and ultimately meaningless processes of cha
growth and decay which make up the physical world. (I agree, by the
with the traditional theological distinction between deism and Christianity
truly religious attitide, such as is evinced in orthodox Christianity, would
God or the divine as intimately but silently involved in all material activi
although this may lead to theological difficulties in making the divine sub
to the sort of open future classical quantum theory apparently envisages.)
If there is a divine face behind the material world, can we learn anything
that face and its purpose from study of the natural world, from what mi
broadly be called natural theology? The first and most obviously rele
feature of the natural world is its orderliness; the way in which, despite
apparent diversity, complexity and size, its operations manifest a high degr
regularity and mathematically capturable order. Against Richard Swinbur
[1979] and others who have argued in this way, we are not entitled
conclude from this that there is or is likely to be a divine designer. The re
for this is that given by C. S. Peirce, namely, that the universe is by definit
unique phenomenon. We have no reason a priori to suppose that a hig
ordered one is in more need of a divine creator than a highly chaotic one,
indeed that a highly ordered universe could not have emerged thro
spontaneous evolution from less ordered states. Nor do we have
experience of supernatural agents creating worlds out of nothing so as to k
whether, in the case of this universe, such a thing is probable or not. But
can certainly conclude from the order in the universe that if we are prepar
see the universe as the creation of a divine mind, then that mind must be
comparison with ours, one of great subtlety and intelligence, remembering
course, that all such comparisons are strictly rel

natures, and cannot give us any direct knowledg
Apart from the existence of manifold types of o
presence of conscious and self-conscious life in t
be seen as having some significance for religi
religious thinkers, I am not impressed by the anth
it very hard to accept that from science alone on
metaphysical significance about any chain lin
moment of the Big Bang to the emergence of co
billion years later. It may well be true that a tiny
obtaining at the Big Bang would have rendered th
impossible. But it does not follow from that that
our seeing the whole universe from the Big B
intentionally directed to the production of consci
role of chance and luck. Whatever exists now, cle
have been foreshadowed in whatever prior condi
development, and, of course, from this tautologic
infer a lot from what exists now about what there was and would have to have
been ages before (such as covalent bonding at a very early stage in the history
of the universe). But one certainly cannot infer from any of this that those prior
conditions were put there deliberately to get the later result. The whole
process-prior conditions, later result and intermediate stages-could be a
product of some overall chance factors. It could, in addition, be chance-ridden
at every stage, as on some evolutionary accounts-and rather against the
anthropic principle-the emergence and development of life was on this
planet.
Nevertheless, even if the presence of conscious life in itself gives us no direct
argumentative path to the Creator's nature or intentions, it may, like the
presence of order, give us some clues as to the nature of the Creator, if there is
one. In particular it may inspire us to focus on a notion of the Creator as on
having a mind, and as being the mind behind the physical world, and revealed
in part by that world. It is from our experience of ourselves and our fellows that
we see certain physical movements as expressive of intention and of mind.
From a religious point of view, an analogy will be drawn between our
embodied consciousness manifesting its intentions in bodily movements, and
the divine consciousness permeating the physical world with its meanings and
intentions. (Though the problems involved in applying the concept of
consciousness to God are immense, for consciousness in us is typically
successive and directed towards objects, while for the orthodox, God is both
timeless and requires no object outside himself. It is perhaps not coincidental
that the notion of the Trinity has often been invoked to deal with these
problems, though not, I have to say, in a way that makes them any less
intractable.)
512 Anthony O'Hear
It will be clear even from these brief remarks that I do not see natural
theology as providing any proof of the existence of God, nor indeed any very
substantive information about the nature of God, even on the assumption that
God exists. The world revealed to us by natural science is, at best, silent on the
probability of a divine Creator.
5 SCIENCE AND RELIGION: DIVERGENCES
Does science undermine religious faith? Obviously it has done so and often
does, particularly when dogmatic religion over-reaches itself and m
empirically false claims. But such activity on the part of religionists shoul
condemned as an aspect of perennial temptation which man has to create
own religion in his own image. The question I would like to consider is whe
science means that a religious attitude to the world and a patient search
divine revelation is in itself misguided. Playing down the probative force
natural theology, as I have shown, means that scientific investigation can
se have nothing to say either for or against a fundamental religious attitu
insight. What we have in science and in religion are at bottom two separ
and non-conflicting modes of discourse. Science is the attempt to clas
describe and explain natural phenomena in mathematico-reductive te
that is, it sees the great diversity of natural phenomena in terms o
quantifiably describable operations of smaller numbers of objects or proc
which are seen as causally responsible for the phenomena. In so doin
abstracts from what it sees as causally irrelevant properties of the phenom
secondary qualities and much else besides. From the point of view of hum
experience, the scientific picture omits much that is significant and impor
this is no criticism of science as such, but only of the attitude of mind w
would see scientific discourse as the only valid approach to the world.
It is this scientistic frame of mind rather than sciences as such which po
threat to religion, but such an attitude has a certain shallowness. For
thing, it would repudiate as meaningless questions about the totality of t
process within which the objects and processes science treats of operate.
can legitimately fail to follow the religious path in seeing the totality in ter
the intention and sustaining love of a divine will, and, for the sorts of rea
adduced in the section on natural theology, discount the probative power
religious explanations of that totality; but it would surely be misguided to
that religion is not a genuine attempt to address a genuine question, a ques
which science cannot within its own terms even raise. In this sense, I agr
with John Polkinghorne that theology's 'regal status lies in its commitmen
seek, the deepest possible level of understanding' ([1988], p. 1), even thou
cannot follow him in thinking that theology (or any actual revelation) actu
achieves what it seeks.
From where might one come to see the universe in personal terms, and open
oneself to the possibility of some revelation of the

it seems, from science, which for its own purpose
world-view everything that pertains to the pe
inherent weakness of the attempt, from the n
explain the existence of the world in terms of a div
natural theology and the ambiguity of the world r
mean that the religious can rest on some Barthian
grace which rests on no human pre-disposition to
very least, Barth's position makes it impossible to
respond to a purported revelation at all, or eve
news as potentially divinely inspired. In face o
naturalistic basis for religion, combined with the
of the physical world, the religious impulse to
physical terms might most plausibly be seen as stem
thus be seen as stemming, in the first place, from that sense of the
meaningfulness of our lives which derives from our feeling ourselves bounden
by certain duties, duties towards truth, towards goodness, towards beauty,
towards our fellow men, towards our ancestors and our children, duties we
neither chose nor can abrogate without irreparable damage to ourselves as
human beings and to the fabric of human culture and society. The religious
impulse might be seen also as a response to the experience of a natural object or
a work of art as beautiful: in which we see a thing not just as 'a fragment of
nature' (in Wittgenstein's phrase), but as something which mediates between
our own longing for perfection and some other world in which that perfection
is actually realised. A sense of the unconditional nature of these duties and
feelings is undoubtedly sustained by a mature religious faith and, for many
religious people at least is made an object of legitimate concern only on the
assumption that the universe itself is guided by a personal force which our
sense of duty and of beauty in some dim way reflect, and which speaks to us
and responds to us through those feelings.
Certainly any purely secular account of mortality and aesthetics such as
that offered by sociobiology will struggle to make sense of the absoluteness of
moral obligation and of the apparently timeless and transcendent sense of
rightness one sometimes has in the experience of something beautiful. The
non-religious might respond by denying the full force of alleged feeling or sense
in either case or by attributing the feelings to sociobiological or psychological
causes. The latter move fails to do justice to the intuition many have that
thinking of the moral or aesthetic urge in terms of prior causal conditioning
does nothing to diminish in them the sense that they remain here and now
bound by the absolute demands of morality and aesthetics. If prior causal
conditioning extraneous to the actual rightness or wrongness of the demands
were all there was to it, once we realised that most, if not all, of our moral and
aesthetic attitudes were initially given to us by instinct or upbringing, we
514 Anthony O'Hear
would begin to think ourselves as less uncon

fact we do. The former move-that of deny
course, remains a possibility: but it is at leas
take into account very significant aspects o
Without being religious one can also find
duties and also towards our need for grace
moral weakness and self-deception ethically
shallow utopianism of a Marx or to the wilf
to come closer to home, to the melodram
Man's Worship) or to the self-proclaimed im
Beliefs). To treat values and obligations as a
choice and so to be abrogated at will, as K
beings as constrained by nothing higher th
those choices to create utopian societies, ha
civilization or for culture, as I hinted earlie
psychic health of the individual.
Whatever stand one takes on the acceptabi
of the world and of human life, though, it
cannot be seen to conflict with religion, if e
The one looks at the world in an impersonal way, prescinding from
fundamental questions of the meaning of the whole, while the other takes the
whole as given and attempts to see it in terms of personal meaningfulness.
Indeed, far from being in a state of mutual conflict, if anything I have just said is
correct, science and religion could even be seen to be part of a mutually
sustaining harmony. A religious attitude to the world can motivate the desire
to understand God's creation better and more truthfully, and also to respect its
integrity. Equally the sense of the objectivity and otherness of the world
evinced in science can put us on our guard against those religions and
ideologies which in effect, and as Barth warned us, idolize human subjectivity.
6 CODA: ANKNUPFUNGSPUNKTE
In this paper, I have stressed the way both science and religion treat aspects
reality far beyond normal human experience, the grasp of which may
beyond human intellectual powers. In order to stress the otherness of t
subject matter, I have taken as examples of doctrines of science and religion
quantum theory and the Trinity respectively. I have taken a realist attitude
both these doctrines, as I feel that is the only way to take them seriously. I h
also focussed on writers, like Karl Barth and John Polkinghorne who, whil
being realists about their subject matter, are open and explicit about t
difficulties the subject matter presents to our understanding, in theologica
terms about the way it may prove a stumbling block to belief; a scandal to th
Jews and to the Greeks, foolishness.
There is, naturally, a danger in this approac

between divine revelation and our natural exp
human language can be adequate to the reality
Humean riposte that belief in a God of whom
nothing without falling into error is little differ
lead to scepticism concerning any purported r
and historically definite terms. The hapless Emil
ous 'Nein!' from Barth for his Nature and Grace
that there were some points of contact (or Anknii
experience and the divine. Therefore, it is hardly
of Barth's followers were to take the Humean roa
God. Theology's great unfulfilled quest remai
speaking and thinking about the divine while
maintaining the reality and believability of the d
evident projection of human desires and fantasie
of religion in human inwardness, as I have done,
Barthian riposte that my approach to religion is m
particularly as actual religions fail to command m
see it, is that we, as humans, have certain inkling
difficult to naturalise. So the religious quest is no
purported fulfilment of the quest raises as many
But without labouring the point, I am not sure t
so different. Physics, and the other mature scienc
between our highly limited and highly specific ex
reveal to us. This is a problem which is partic
quantum theory, where the theory itself is beset
but it is one which is raised by any theoretical ac
beyond whatever we take the experiential data to
the account we have which is true rather than t
accounts all equally consistent with our experience? The problem will
continue to arise even if we follow Hacking [1983] and Giere [1988] in taking
technology legitimately to extend our experience beyond what can be observed
by our naked senses. Cyclotrons doubtless give us experience of protons and
neutrons; they do not, however, reveal to us what protons are made of or how
nuclear forces work. For reasons of which philosophers of science need no
reminding, science is always going to strive for ultimate explanations and
discoveries, which are beyond human powers to verify or falsify. On the other
hand, to push too hard in the direction of empiricism will reduce all our science
to some sterile version of instrumentalism.
Both science and religion, present the problem of the Ankniipfungspunkt. In
both cases, credibility and intelligibility require points of contact between our
human world and the worlds of which they speak. There is a sense, too, which
we have briefly touched on, in which there is within our human world a need
516 Anthony O'Hear
to push out into both those other worlds. In

lose touch with our own world and, however
scepticism and unbelief on the part of our f
University of Brad
Bradford
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AQUINAS, ST THOMAS, Summa Theologiae (left incomplete by Aqu

BARTH, KARL [1936]: Church Dogmatics, Vol. I, transl. G. Thomps
BARTH, KARL [1960]: The Epistle to the Romans, New York.
BRUNNER, EMIL [1934]: Natur und Gnade.
VAN FRAASSEN, BAS [1985]: 'Empiricism in the Philosophy of Sc
Science, edited by P. M. Churchland and C. A. Hooker. Chica
Chicago Press, pp. 245-308.
FULLER, PETER [1988]: Theoria, London: Chatto and Windus.
GIERE, RONALD N. [1988]: Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach
of Chicago Press.
HACKING, IAN [1983]: Representing and Intervening, Cambridge: Ca
Press.
KEYNES, J. M. [138]: 'My Early Beliefs', in his Two Memoirs, Rupert Hart-Davis, London
[1949].
NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY [18701: A Grammar of Assent, London: Longmans.
POLKINGHORNE, JOHN [1986]: The Quantum World. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
POLKINGHORNE, JOHN [1988]: Science and Creation. London: SPCK Press.
RUSSELL, BERTRAND [1903]: 'Free Man's Worship', reprinted in his Mysticism and Logic,
Allen & Unwin, London [1917].
SWINBURNE, RICHARD [1979]: The Existence of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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The British Society for the Philosophy of Science

Science and Religion

Science and Religion'

In this paper, I want to explore certain convergences an

1 This paper was originally given as part of a symposium of scien

instrumental value depends on its actually

2 RELIGION AND REVELATION

It was in the great period of confrontation betwee

revelation by producing a substitute, by taking aw

(again in Aquinas's terms) anything other th

3 SCIENCE AND RELIGION: CONVERGENCE

As I have been emphasizing the way in which religion, properly under

challenging perplexities and paradoxes it has been far su

Thus van Fraassen ([19 8 5], p. 2 58), but now consider

perhaps we are in the midst of ... (a long) drawn out pro

The realist about science, here speaking about the

something very puzzling in the seventeen

course, that all such comparisons are strictly rel

5 SCIENCE AND RELIGION: DIVERGENCES

oneself to the possibility of some revelation of the

would begin to think ourselves as less uncon

There is, naturally, a danger in this approac

to push out into both those other worlds. In

AQUINAS, ST THOMAS, Summa Theologiae (left incomplete by Aqu

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