Science and Religion: A Critical Survey

by Holmes Rolston III

This landmark book, first published in 1987, is now back in print, with a new introduction by its award-winning author. An interdisciplinary approach to the central themes of scientific and religious thought, this book was widely heralded upon its publication for the richness and depth of its contribution to the science and religion dialogue. “notable for its breadth and depth . . . filled with admirably argued and powerfully presented treatments of critical issues.”—Joseph Pickle, Colorado College,  Journal of Religion and Science “a superb and subtle book.”—David Foxgrover,  Christian Century “a monumental work . . . [T]he book is truly outstanding.”—John H. Wright, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley,  Theological Studies “Rolston’s presentation of the methods of science, along with up-to-date summaries of the main achievements of the various sciences, is commendable for its clarity and critical acumen.” —Choice According to Holmes Rolston III, there are fundamental questions that science alone cannot answer; these questions are the central religious questions. He uses the scientific method of inquiry to distill key issues from science, and then he integrates them in a study that begins with matter and moves through life, mind, culture, history, and spirit. Incorporating religious and scientific worldviews, he begins with an examination of two natural physics and biology. He then extrapolates examples from two human psychology and sociology. Next, he moves to the storied universe and world history, raising and addressing religious questions. “Never in the histories of science and religion have theopportunities been greater for fertile interaction between these fields, with mutual benefits to both,” states Rolston. The re-publication of this book provides current researchers and students in the field an invaluable, timeless methodological resource.The new introduction offers updated insights based on new scientific research. 

Genres: Science

358 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Holmes Rolston III was an American philosopher who was University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science and religion. Among other honors, Rolston won the 2003 Templeton Prize, awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997–1998. He also served on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
The Darwinian model is used to define the main thematic concepts in Rolston's philosophy and, in greater depth, the general trend of his thinking.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PHILOSOPHICAL SURVEY OF THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Holmes Rolston III (born 1932) is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He gave the Gifford Lectures in 1997-1998, and won the 2003 Templeton Prize. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 358-page paperback edition.]

He wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “This work is a broadly conceived critical survey of the dialogue between science and religion. We survey the sciences to inquire what room they leave for religion. Although the legitimacy of the problem of God in the legacy of the West is, in the end, a crucial issue, we do not intend to establish any particular religion. Our plan is not to do natural theology, much less supernatural theology, but to show the natural and social sciences are open to theological inquiry beyond. More than this, the sciences themselves … address incompletely the ultimate questions and must be complemented by religious interpretations. We take representative issues from the leading sciences and integrate them in a survey that… begins with matter and moves… through life, culture, history, and spirit.” (Pg. v)

He adds, “The religion that is married to science today will be a widow tomorrow. The sciences in their multiple theories and forms come and go… But the religion that is divorced from science today will leave no offspring tomorrow. From here onward, no religion can reproduce itself in succeeding generations unless it has faced the operations of nature and the claims about human nature with which science confronts us… Religion that has too thoroughly accommodated to any science will soon be obsolete. It needs to keep its autonomous integrity and resilience. Yet religion cannot live without fitting into the intellectual world that is its environment. Here too the fittest survive.” (Pg. vii)

He explains in the first chapter, “The thesis that will emerge is that in general logical form science and religion, when done well, are more alike than is often supposed, especially at their cores… positivistic and scientistic view that exalt science and downgrade religion involve serious misunderstanding of the nature of both scientific and religious methods… science and religion typically offer alternative interpretations of experience, the scientific interpretation being based on causality, the religious interpretation being based on meaning… But both disciplines are rational, and both are susceptible to improvement over the centuries… The conflicts between science and religious interpretations arise because the boundary between causality and meaning is semipermeable.” (Pg. 1) Later, he adds, “we know that the master paradigms in the two fields are---that science is a study of causes and religion is an inquiry into meanings.” (Pg. 24)

He suggests, “If we may mix the languages of sacramental religion and recent physics, God is ‘in, with, and under’ the energy pit out of which all comes, the prime mover lurking beneath the scenes… God is in, with, and under the superposed quantum states, out of which potential all that is actual comes. God is behind the tectonic principles that produce and conserve all the nature that forms over this noise and potential… God supplies the infinite and random potential. The world emerges as God not only plays dice, but perhaps loads the dice from below. This does not prevent, but rather makes possible the emergent freedom in the organismic creatures, who through interaction draw this potential into their own programs. So we expect not only creations that form as a result of, and at the whim of, the divine ground below.” (Pg. 63-64)

Later, he adds, “life is an accident waiting to happen, because it is blueprinted into the chemicals… only much more startlingly so because of the rich implications for life… Life is not an accident, whatever place dice-throwing plays in its appearance and maturation. It is something arranged for in the nature of things. The dice are loaded.” (Pg. 113)

He says, “The world of physics leaves a space into which God may be inserted. But this is permissive or congenial evidence, nothing more. This inference… will be done on a meaning quest, by those thrust on a search that wants God not so much for the First Cause as for the Ground of Meaning.” (Pg. 76)

Of Natural Selection, he asserts, “it hardly seems surprising to theism that God would arrange a world in which some individuals leave more offspring than others, which means that they are more fit, any more than it disturbs theism to find that God has arranged a world in which some astronomical systems, elements, or microparticles are more stable than others, which means that the stablest survive… Nor is it surprising that God used such processes in the incremental generations of a universe and of life on Earth.” (Pg. 100)

But significantly, he continues, “natural selection does not go very far in explaining how far up the scale evolution has gone… This paradigm treats the most striking feature of all, the ascent of life, as an anomaly, that is, something that cannot be predicted, derived, or given account of out of the theoretical model… The seminal principle is missing entirely, and randomness stands in the gap. And randomness is noise, not explanation.” (Pg. 106) Later, he speculates, “The randomness is God’s giving freedom to individuals at the same time that God shapes the destinations of the whole… The individual paths are left open; the course of history as a whole is hewn by God. But that is the divine love of freedom, the divine love in freedom. God is veiled in the probabilities and possibilities.” (Pg. 132)

He argues, “Critics have often faulted ex nihilo accounts of creation, it being incoherent to hold that something comes from nothing. Evolutionary theory softens that by assembly, but it continues to deliver mind and life ex nihilo, where absolutely none were before. Only it masks this by doing it incrementally rather than swiftly… the theory conceals the fact that it describes technical conditions necessary for the production of life with no account of the necessary or intelligible derivation of what emerges… One gets, at length, brilliance of mind by organizing armies of stupid atoms.” (Pg. 122)

He asserts, “if sociologists ever step into the substantive debate about the soundness of a belief system… they will find that … Social scientists are, from their discipline alone, undertrained for this task… The mysteries of birth and death, of being and nonbeing, good and evil, the worth of redemptive suffering, the tragedy of meaningless suffering---all the core problems remain quite inexorably there after anything tacit and sociologically functional in religion has been exposed and reviewed. The questioner’s puzzlement does not vanish. This is why religion has not disappeared with the arrival of social science… social science can give us only an incomplete answer to the question of, and questions in, religion. In this sense and in the end, the question of religious origins is not a scientific question.” (Pg. 226)

He points out, “Note that the problem of suffering, a classical obstacle to belief in God, is not solved or dissolved by eliminating God in favor of some naturalism or Oriental nontheism. It stays on our hands as a given in natural history, a given in personal life. Any theory that makes sense of things must have its substitute for a theodicy, must recommend some conduct in view of its analysis here, or admit to failure. When God goes away, evil remains, and sometimes grows the more urgent and bleak; Notice how, for instance, to ask why there is suffering is already to suppose that there should not be unfair suffering, and thus to suppose that there is, or ought to be, fairness in the universe.” (Pg. 287)

He summarizes, “God makes God’s presence known, yet also … this has to be ‘detected.’ … Theology tracks the richness of the divine Subject, who oversees the storied world history. Just as there are special phenomena to which physics turns for its revelations, there are crucial events to which theology turns expecting to detect the One who generates love and freedom. But these will not be manifest in the categories of physics; we can build no bubble chambers to register love and freedom. Such phenomena show up only at the higher organizational levels, primarily in events of the historical and personal life. They will involve transscientific categories, supersignals.” (Pg. 323) He adds, “God is most nobly revealed in freedom, power, and wisdom as these come to focus in righteous love. God is SUBJECTIVELY present in intersubjective human life… The forces of causal attraction with which physics begins are supremely transformed when, in end result, one person is attracted to another in holy agape. Before this phenomenal … effect, science is speechless. But theology finds this the clearest of the tracks of God, seen pivotally in Jesus, where his royal freedom is holy love. Through him, this regenerating life force is loosed across history, with intensity enough to keep his normative life present in his disciples. We can conceive no higher form of God’s presence.” (Pg. 330)

He concludes, “Perhaps the most we can conclude … is that theology is a multiple-paradigm science, where each theory has something to commend it, each fits some of the data of experience, but each has its unsatisfactory areas… These theories to some extent feed off each other’s weaknesses. Still, all of them have considerable plausibility and explanatory power. Whether or not we conclude that God is a process, we can at least conclude that theology is. And we can commend it… as a noble attempt to make sense of nature and history.” (Pg. 334)

He ends, “We must go beyond science. We see now what science cannot supply, and why it cannot supply it… One can find room for God in and beyond the sciences, in and beyond nature and history; but this room for God, though it is impressive, is not so unambiguous or commanding as to produce life-orienting faith, unless and until one finds room for God within one’s own personal life. But this need not be cause for lament. This too is intelligible under the theistic model of a God who nurtures freedom, love, and faith. This too is part of God’s design. God did not leave himself without witness in nature and history, but God leaves a chief witness in the person, to be found as, and only as, the person in daring expectancy reflects God.” (Pg. 343)

This book is one of the most interesting books about the relation between science and religion that has been published since the mid-20th century, and will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the subject.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down, the best book I have read on this broad and important topic. It is a slow and dense read but only because it is so thorough and his insights are so many. I will need to return to it many times.