RELIGION AND THE CHALLENGES OF SCIENCE Does science pose a challenge to religion and religious belief? This question has been a matter of long•standing debate • and it continues to concern not only scholars in philosophy, theology, and the sciences, but also those involved in public educational policy. This volume provides background to the current ‘science and religion’ debate, yet focuses as well on themes where recent discussion of the relation between science and religion has been particularly concentrated. The first theme deals with the history of the interrelation of science and religion. The second and third themes deal with the implications of recent work in cosmology, biology and so•called intelligent design for religion and religious belief. The fourth theme is concerned with ‘conceptual issues’ underlying, or implied, in the current debates, such as: Are scientific naturalism and religion compatible? Are science and religion bodies of knowledge or practices or both? Do religion and science offer conflicting truth claims? By illuminating contemporary discussion in the science•religion debate and by outlining the options available in describing the relation between the two, this volume will be of interest to scholars and to members of the educated public alike. This page intentionally left blank Religion and the Challenges of Science Edited by WILLIAM SWEET St Francis Xavier University, Canada and RICHARD FEIST Saint Paul University, Canada © William Sweet and Richard Feist 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. William Sweet and Richard Feist have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401•4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Religion and the challenges of science 1. Religion and science 2. Religion and science – History I. Sweet, William II. Feist, Richard, 1964– 261.5’5 Library of Congress Cataloging•in•Publication Data Religion and the challenges of science / edited by William Sweet and Richard Feist. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Religion and science. I. Sweet, William. II. Feist, Richard. BL241.R363 2007 201’.65–dc22 2006030598 ISBN 978•0•7546•5715•6 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall. Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Rethinking Relations between Science and Religion William Sweet Part I History and Contexts in Biology and Evolutionary Theory 1 ‘The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical 19 Sciences’, revisited: Youth, Science, and Religion in mid•Victorian Britain Hannah Gay 2 Theological Insights from Charles Darwin 39 Denis O. Lamoureux 3 A Model of Interaction Between Science and Theology 55 Based on the Scientific Papers of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Lodovico Galleni and Marie•Claire Groessens•Van Dyck 4 Biology and a Theology of Evolution 73 Arthur Peacocke Part II Physics, Philosophy, and Fine•Tuning 5 Creation, Metaphysics, and Cosmology 91 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. 6 Cosmological Theories and the Question of the Existence of 109 a Creator John L. Bell 7 Whitehead, God, and Relativity 121 Richard Feist 8 Design Inferences, Fine•Tuning, and the Prior Probability of 131 Divine Intelligent Agency: What the Fine•Tuning Argument Shows Kenneth Einar Himma vi Religion and the Challenges of Science Part III Naturalism and the Non•Natural 9 On Scientific Explanations of God•Experiences 145 Jerome Gellman 10 The Human Genome Revolution, Society, and Religion 153 Job Kozhamthadam 11 Partner of the Sciences or Object of Study? 169 Theology and Religion in Relation to the Sciences Willem B. Drees 12 Beyond Naturalism: Scientific Creativity and 185 Theological Knowledge Paul Allen Part IV Conceptual Issues 13 Can Science Provide Evidence for Metaphysics? 199 Leslie Armour 14 Science and Religious Belief: Some Conceptual Issues 217 William Sweet Index 233 Acknowledgements The relation between science and religion has been a major topic of discussion in the last decades of the twentieth century, and this issue promises to remain so in years to come. Unfortunately the intensity of this discussion often seems to be inversely proportionate to the quality of the discourse. This volume aims at clarifying some of the underlying conceptual issues involved, providing an opportunity to discuss the particular contributions of philosophy, the physical and biological sciences, theology and religious studies, and history to this issue, and considering directions in which philosophical reflection on this issue might be fruitfully pursued. We wish to express our appreciation to our fellow authors in this volume for their participation in this project as well as their patience. We also wish to acknowledge Iain McKenna, Douglas McDermid, and Jason West, who helped to engage some of the issues with the authors. We would like to thank Anne Keirby, of Ashgate Publishers, for her support of this project. Two of the essays here were published prior to the appearance of this volume. We would like to thank Philip Hefner, Editor•in•Chief of Zygon, for permission to reprint Arthur Peacocke’s essay, ‘Biology and a Theology of Evolution’ (which appeared in Zygon, 34/4 [1999]: 695–712), and the Editors of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, in which ‘Theological Insights from Charles Darwin’ by Denis O. Lamoureux appeared (in Vol. 56 [2004]: 2–12). We would particularly like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a grant that assisted in the publication of this volume. William Sweet and Richard Feist This page intentionally left blank Contributors William Sweet (Editor) is Vice•President (academic) and Professor of Philosophy at St Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the author of Idealism and Rights (1997, 2005), Religious Belief: The Contemporary Debate (2003) and, with Hendrik Hart, Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community (2007). He has edited several collections of scholarly essays, including La philosophie de la religion à la fin du vingtième siècle (1993), God and Argument (1999), Idealism, Metaphysics and Community (2001), Philosophical Theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2003), Approaches to Metaphysics (2004), The Philosophy of History: a re•examination (2004), and, most recently, Bernard Bosanquet and the Legacy of British Idealism (2007). He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, Vice President of the Istituto Internazionale Jacques Maritain (Rome), and President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. Richard Feist (Editor) is Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of Inference and Persuasion (2005, with Leslie Armour), and has edited Husserl and the Sciences: Selected Perspectives (2004) and Husserl and Stein (2004, with William Sweet), and has published in Études maritainiennes, Science et Esprit , Synthese , De Philosophia, and other journals. Paul Allen teaches in the Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; for several years he was also the Canadian Director of the Science and Religion Course Programme, sponsored by the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley). He is the author of Via Media: Ernan McMullin and Critical Realism in the Science•Theology Dialogue (2006) and has published in the Heythrop Journal, Théologiques, and the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion . Leslie Armour is Research Professor at the Dominican College, Ottawa, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of ‘ Infini Rien’: Pascal’s Wager and the Human Paradox (1993), Being and Idea: Developments of Some Themes in Spinoza and Hegel (1992), The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community (1981), The Faces of Reason: an essay on philosophy and culture in English Canada, 1850–1950 (1981, with Elizabeth Trott), The Conceptualization of the Inner Life (1980, with Edward T. Bartlett), Logic and Reality: an Investigation into the Idea of a Dialectical System (1972), The Concept of Truth (1969), and The Rational and the Real: an Essay in Metaphysics (1962). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. John L. Bell is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author (with D. DeVidi and G. Solomon†) of Logical Options: An Introduction to x Religion and the Challenges of Science Classical and Alternative Logics (2001), The Art of the Intelligible: An Elementary Survey of Mathematics in its Conceptual Development (1999), A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis (1998), Toposes and Local Set Theories: An Introduction (1988), Boolean•Valued Models and Independence Proofs in Set Theory (1977; 2nd ed., 1985), and (with M. Machover) A Course in Mathematical Logic (1977; 2nd printing, 1986). He has also published articles in Transcendent Philosophy , Archive for Mathematical Logic, Husserl and the Sciences, History of Mathematical Logic , Axiomathes, Philosophia Mathematica , Journal of Philosophical Logic, Stanford Encylopedia