Religion and the Challenges of Science, William Sweet and Richard Feist, eds. (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), xxi+ 235.
This volume seeks to answer the question of whether science poses a challenge to religion and religious belief. More specifically this collection of essays addresses whether or not scientific naturalism and religion are compatible. The volume provides needed background to the current science and religion debate, but also focuses on select themes of recent discussion within the ongoing dialog of science and religion. Within the book, one will find four themes, the first of which covers the history of the dialog between science and religion, outlining the overarching question of how one can explain the information-rich structures found within biology. Closely related, the second and third themes analyze the implications to theology of recent work within cosmology and biology, particularly in the areas of the apparent order, complexity, and regularity within the universe. The fourth theme makes explicit the underlying conceptual issues within the current debate of the relationship between science and religion, and it does so by attempting to define what exactly “science” is and what exactly is “religion.” It is argued that much of the debate regarding the apparent contrary claims within science and religion are based upon methodological and metaphysical assumptions. As a result, the readers are challenged to revisit, review, and rearticulate their conceptions of both science and religion.
A particularly strong chapter within the book is the second one, “Theological insights from Charles Darwin,” written by Denis O. Lamoureux. Within it, Lamoureux examines the religious views of Charles Darwin, and concludes that, contrary to common opinion, Darwin was not a militant non-theist after the composition of his famed On Origin of Species. Rather, Lamoureux makes a rather convincing case that, though Darwin had abandoned the personal God of the Judeo-Christian faiths, he nonetheless could be labeled what today is called a deist in that he ceded to a first cause of the universe resembling the God within Judeo-Christian belief. In so believing, Darwin seemingly posited that God created through physical processes, primarily biological evolution, a viewpoint which is known as methodological naturalism. Lamoureux’s assertion is based not only on Darwin’s concession within the Origin that God may have “breathed [life] into a few forms or into one,” but also his own admission in a personal letter of 1860 that he had no intention to write atheistically. Rather, Darwin attempted to refute the “old” design argument of William Paley that held that each and every variation within the evolutionary epic had been providentially arranged by God. Lamoureux concludes his chapter by stating that Darwin offers rich theological insight into the apparent design that we see everywhere, wrongly or rightly, within nature. Another particularly strong chapter is “Biology and a Theology of Evolution,” by Arthur Peacocke in which it is strongly asserted that God’s creative action is in and through the natural processes of the world. In averring this idea, Peacocke argues that evolution is not a threat to religion, but is rather a stimulus for better understanding God’s actions within the cosmos.
In its conclusion, one will find in this book the suggestion that religion and science do not offer conflicting truth claims and that science can contribute to a maturity of belief to religion. However, this proto-compatibility, as it were, can only be attained by adhering to what Sweet refers to as an “open-ended compatibility”, wherein both the claims of science and religion are open to be revisited, revised, and reinterpreted (6). This book does a great job at outlining the options available in describing the relation between science and religion, and offers the notion that the tensions between science and religion are not as great as commonly thought, and as such is a great resource for scholars and members of the general public alike.
Bradford McCall, Regent University