Science & Christianity

S CIENCE & C SCIENCE HRISTIANITY & CHRISTIANITY ▼ FESTSCHRIFT IN HONOUR OF HAROLD TURNER & JOHN MORTON BEING THE PAPERS AND DISCUSSION FROM A SYMPOSIUM HELD IN ed. L.R.B. M AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND APRIL 21 2001 ed. L.R.B. MANN ANN CCE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND CENTRE FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION Science and Christianity Festschrift in honour of Harold Turner and John Morton being the papers and discussion from a symposium held in Auckland New Zealand April 21 2001 L.R.B. Mann editor University of Auckland Centre for Continuing Education ISBN 0-86869-009-0 25031 booklet intro pg.p65 1 8/28/01, 3:06 PM Designed and Printed by Premier Print Services Auckland, New Zealand, August 2001 2nd impression October 2002 CONTENTS Preface 1 John Morton and Harold Turner : Rob Yule 3 Opening remarks : Graeme Finlay 7 Christianity, Science, and New Zealand Society: Harold Turner and John Morton in historical perspective : John Stenhouse 9 The Galileo affair : Stephen May 29 Intelligence or Design: Theological Reflections on the Design Argument : Nicola Hoggard-Creegan 49 The Contemporary World of Bioethics : D. Gareth Jones 69 Atheistic Science: a broth of contradictions : Neil Broom 87 Causes in Biology : L. R. B. Mann 105 The Word and The Process: Science and Philosophy in an Evolving Biosphere : John E. Morton 121 Recasting Establishment History: The Roots of Science : Harold Turner 149 To Render Praise: Humanity in God’s World : Murray Rae 177 The Rebirth of Nature and the God of a Living World : Rupert Sheldrake 203 The Discovery of the Beginning : Rob Yule 213 Discussion : contributors & chairmen 229 Closing remarks : Michael Pender 241 Turner bibliography 247 Morton bibliography 249 The contributors 251 Let’s Thank God for the Wonder that is Science : Tim Watkin (NZ Herald) 255 25031 booklet intro pg.p65 3 8/28/01, 5:05 PM Preface On April 21 2001 two senior Christian scholars were honoured by a symposium in Auckland on the theme ‘Science and Christianity’. Some 150 participated. The papers and edited discussions from that symposium are here presented as a Festschrift dedicated respectfully to the guests of honour, Rev. Dr Harold Turner (90) and Professor John Morton (77). The idea for this symposium arose a half-year earlier and was implemented through the University of Auckland Centre for Continuing Education by a small committee I convened. Thanks go to those colleagues - Neil Broom, Graeme Finlay, and Nicola Hoggard-Creegan - for their work, including proof-reading. We thank Rt Rev Rob Yule, moderator of the Presbyterian church in New Zealand, for his introducing the guests of honour. The actual talks of only a half-hour were about half the length of the papers here printed. Two friends unable to be present on the day have contributed papers. We especially thank them for these valuable augmentations of this Festschrift. The article about the symposium in the main Auckland newspaper that day is reproduced with permission. For this 2nd impression the opportunity has been taken to correct minor errors. It is with deep regret that we have to record the death of Dr Turner in May 2002. The burgeoning renewal of natural theology is evidenced by these proceedings. This Festschrift is dedicated to the needs of the offspring of atheism & agnosticism who now make up the first generation to know less than the one before; and to the two distinguished scholars whom we honoured on a memorable day; and, further afield, to all who yearn for improved relations between science and Christianity. L. R. B. Mann editor 1 photograph by permission NZ Herald Unified Belief There is no chasm between religion and science, say Professor John Morton (left) and Dr Harold Turner 2 John Morton and Harold Turner Rt. Rev. Rob Yule One of my brothers, now a surgeon at Dunedin Hospital, studied zoology at Auckland University under John Morton in the mid-1960s. I remember a vivid description of his teacher giving a lecture on butterflies. Reaching the climax of the lecture, Morton stretched out his arms to reveal the brilliant hues of a particular butterfly, sketched in gaudy chalk on the inside of his academic gown. The lecturer flapped his wings and, to the applause of his audience, launched himself off the podium. These days John Morton is less likely to emulate the feats of New Zealand aviation pioneer Richard Pearse. A year ago he sustained a fall the after-effects of which prevented him from presenting in person at the symposium held at Auckland University in his honour the paper now published in this festschrift. His enthusiasm for conveying to generations of students the wonder of living organisms and their ecology is legendary. One of the old school, even in the 60s, he always lectured in an academic gown. Students remember him coming early to his classroom, to fill the roll-round blackboards with diagrams in coloured chalk of the particular creatures whose structures and functions would be extolled that day. A Baptist minister friend of mine recalls the same enthusiasm on field trips, as Morton strode hither & thither on the seashore, bending over and drawing attention to some living curiosity in the inter-tidal zone. John Morton graduated MSc from the University of Auckland, and gained his PhD at the University of London. He became one of Britain’s leading marine biologists, gaining a DSc for his work (mainly on molluscs) while still quite young. Then as the first Professor of Zoology at Auckland he was instrumental in founding that university’s Marine Laboratory at Leigh, near Warkworth. While a member of the Auckland Regional Authority he promoted regional parks, making a significant contribution to preserving Auckland’s glorious coastline. In numerous conservation campaigns he defended New Zealand ecosystems against loss to logging, rubbish dumps and property developments. A devoted Anglican layman, he gave long service to diocesan and national Synods, and was 3 instrumental in arranging the ordination of women. His 1972 book on the interface of science and Christianity, Man, Science and God, informed by his love of William Temple and Eric Mascall, is something of a classic in integrating belief in God with evolution. My first encounter with Harold Turner was hearing him give a public lecture at Victoria University in 1976, when I was Ecumenical Chaplain there. I remember being so excited about this little-known expatriate New Zealand scholar who believed, as I did, that religious faith related to the whole of life. His lecture fascinated me, as a geographer by training, for he spoke of the impact of religion on geography. I remember him describing a journey on a steamer up the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia, being able to tell at a glance which were the Muslim and which were the Christian areas. The Christians kept pigs, which foraged in the undergrowth and kept a rich tilth for the abundant vegetation, whereas the Muslims kept goats, which ate everything in sight, leaving a denuded, eroding landscape. There was a political incorrectness about that lecture that Turner still displays. For him truth, especially truth about religious faith, is more important than whom it offends. He has hewed an independent path in scholarship that puts him in the forefront of the global study of religions as living movements, not just as textbook abstractions. He has always been a pioneer, whether it was starting New Zealand’s first university bookshop and co-ed hall of residence in Dunedin, pioneering research in West Africa on African independent churches and new religious movements, or, in retirement back in New Zealand, initiating the DeepSight Trust for the study of Gospel and cultures. Never an armchair scholar, Turner was active in field work and ventured into territory - geographical and intellectual - where fainter spirits feared to tread, as in his first-hand studies of African syncretistic religions or of Rastafarianism in New Zealand. He often found himself an advocate of the underdog and a voice for the marginalised. This is what makes his opposition to the campaign to legitimise homosexuality so significant, because it does not arise from lack of sympathy for the formerly marginal status of gays and lesbians, but rather from the observation that the claims of the homosexual lobby bear little relationship to the actual realities of human physiology and culture. 4 I have an interesting relationship to the theme of this symposium, because I studied in the sixties under the two main representatives of the secularising stream in New Zealand scholarship that this symposium has identified. I studied history at Auckland under Keith Sinclair, noted then for his opposition to the inclusion of theology or even religious studies in the Auckland University curriculum. In one of those divine ironies that Harold Turner will relish, with his appreciation of the laughter of God, a son of Keith Sinclair’s became a convert to Christianity under my father’s ministry at St Stephen’s, Ponsonby, and is now training to be a Presbyterian minister. And I studied for the ministry at the Theological Hall, Knox College, Dunedin, when Lloyd Geering was Principal and first gave public glimpses of his views on the resurrection. In those years Geering was studiedly evasive about his real beliefs, but I predicted that if he carried on the path he was then beginning, he would end up where Feuerbach stood one hundred and sixty years ago, namely, that ‘God’ is just a human construct. As a survivor of the secular sixties, whose views were initially formed in response to secular teachers like Sinclair and Geering, and as an outsider to the church establishment who has ended up - in the same humour of God - as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, I feel privileged to honour two of New Zealand’s greatest Christian scholars - Dr John Morton, devout Anglican, pioneering conservationist and student of living organisms, and Dr Harold Turner, the finest academic scholar of living religions the Presbyterian Church has produced.

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