Towards a Working Relationship: However may we understand religion and science, common sense suggests at least one thing: both make claims concerning the way things were, are and will be, as well as concerning what is the case. They make truth-claims. But how are the worlds of religion and science related? What is the relationship between scientific theory and religious doctrine? In Groundwork of Philosophy of Religion (119-123), David A. Pailian outlines six ways in which the relationship between theology and science can be construed.

Firstly, scientific theories and theological doctrines can be said to express the same truths about the world but in different forms of expression. So it is argued that what a scientist reports about the appearance of the species and what we find recorded in the Bible are ways of making the same point but in different ways. Each uses distinct frames of reference which draw our attention to different features of the phenomenon in question. In many instances this seems to be a reasonable way of establishing the relationship between religion and science. It becomes fatally problematical, however, when what one side in the relationship is saying demands a radical interpretation of one or more claims being made by the other side. What the author of Genesis 1; 27ff, had in mind in describing the creation of human beings, for example, is hardly what biologists have in mind when they write about the genetic developments which have led to the appearance of men and women in the evolutionary process.

A second way to establish a working relationship between religion and science is to say that theological doctrines and scientific theories are not seeking to maintain the same points but that, in certain fundamental instances, science supports religion and needs it for its intellectual completion. Sir Isaac Newton, for example argued that the orderliness of the Solar system is a witness to the skill of a Creator. Science, therefore, supports religion. But Newton also maintained that the exceptions to the universe’s orderliness witness to a divine Reality who is an active agent in the Solar system. Science consequently requires theological insights for its intellectual completion. What science can make sense of and what it cannot explain are both then taken to support theistic belief. This position becomes acutely strained when science’s support of theology turns out to be completely illusory. Using Newton as our example again, the claim that God explains why the universe is orderly turns out to be completely vacuous when it is recognized that it only establishes the existence of a prior cause and ends up by telling us little more that, ‘Things happen this way’. Not surprisingly, Laplace was later to say: ‘God - I have no need of that hypothesis’. The so-called ‘God of the gaps’ scenario has become increasingly incredible as more and more of the gaps have been filled in by natural, i.e. scientific, explanations.

Thirdly, it has often been held that science and religion make comparable claims but ones which in some cases are incompatible with each other. Granted that logically contradictory propositions cannot be simultaneously true, it follows that where conflict between the claims of science and religion occurs one of the parties will be wrong. This principle lay behind the notorious debates in the nineteenth century between science and religion over the theory of evolution. To hold Darwinian views seemed to the then Bishop of Oxford, ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce, to involve a denial of Christian claims concerning God, the Creator. As the history of the debate between science and religion shows, however, where conflict has arisen between scientific and theological truth-claims, it has usually been science which has offered the more convincing evidence and arguments. The grave danger involved when religion triumphalistically adopts this third way of relating to science hardly needs further elaboration.

A fourth possible way forward seems more promising. It argues that there can be no mutual support, or conflict, between science and religion because they belong to parallel but distinct ways of explanation, each covering the whole of Reality. There are no ways of comparing science and religion with each other because they are totally different intellectual activities, each of the which can lay claim to truths in their respective fields of enquiry. The claims of each are true and complete according to their own ways of perceiving things in terms of the internal logic of their respective ‘language games’ (Whittgenstein). There is a great deal of truth in this since, as I.T. Ramsay observed, religious language is very different to that of science. So ‘compared with "what’s seen" ... the characteristically religious situation’ is ‘nothing if not odd’ and ‘the currency for such an odd situation would have to be suitably odd language’ (Ramsey 1957 : 151). Talk of the ontological, in some sense necessary, Reality ought not to be treated according to criteria suitable for the everyday objects of our contingent and empirical world. But, on the other hand, it is rather disturbing to be told that one and the same world in fact is totally explicable in utterly different ways. Do we really want to end up in intellectual worlds which are in danger of never coming into contact, let alone merging? The idea is an affront to our common sense. It is also very doubtful whether any of the supposed total explanations can claim to be complete in a fully satisfactory way. Attempts to achieve such total understanding usually reveal systems of thinking which ignore, or inadequately account for, points which other ways of understanding emphasize.

Fifthly, it can be argued that both religion and science are inadequate as total explanations of Reality and that both should be understood as complementary positions. Each identify a particular aspect of the truth, it is claimed, but total understanding requires that both must be taken into account. A popular way of expressing this approach is to say that science seeks to answer questions like ‘What happens?’ and ‘How does it happen?’ in terms of observing empirical data, while religion deals with questions such as ‘Why does it happen?’ and ‘What is its purpose and goal?’ Science thus concentrates on efficient causes while religion focuses on final causes.

Again there are serious problems with this way of establishing the relationship between religious and scientific claims. For example, what happens when conflict occurs due to scientific questions about the structure of reality being in total contradiction to the answers to religious questions about its purpose? If science were to show that all events, including human decisions, occurred according to strict necessity, inside a closed deterministic mechanism, there would be little left of the religious conclusion that the purpose in reality is in part to allow human beings to develop as creative and morally responsible free agents. The position would then be seen to lead to conflicting rather than complimentary positions. There is however an even more serious difficulty. The attempt to prevent the claims of religion and science clashing tends to lead to religious claims being regarded as wholly about ‘values’ but not about ‘facts’, i.e., what is the case. Religious claims, however, do rest upon matters of fact, e.g., that there is a God who is the being on whom all things depend for their existence but who depends on nothing for the Divine existence. They are not just about values. (The tragic consequences of removing religious claims from the public world of facts and depositing them in the private world of values has been well documented by Lesslie Newbigin. One can have sympathies with Newbigin’s critical analysis of the dualism’s which divide Western culture without agreeing with the neo-Barthian theological proposals he advances to overcome the demise he sees in our culture (Newbigin 1986: 21-41). Nor, conversely, are scientific claims necessarily value free. Modern philosophy of science has pointed out that there is a subjective element in all scientific enquiry. The supposedly factual approach of the scientist is not value free. (See Polanyi 1958).

Each of the above approaches to defining the relationship between the claims of religion and science are in varying ways problematical. They presuppose that science and religion are two different ways of understanding which, though initially independent of each other, must be shown to be related or unrelated in some way. A radical dualism is posited which itself is rooted in a more fundamental dualism between faith and reason. The basic problem in each of our five examples then turns upon mediating between the two supposedly different modes of thought. It is to the credit of these dualistic approaches that they highlight the sources of the respective insights of science and religion, but, as we have seen, their failings hasten the quest for a more adequate view.

Such a position is found in the sixth approach offered (and also advocated) by David A. Pailin. This operates on the ground that sees theology and science being involved together in producing ‘a single harmonious story which links together the Creator and the created’ (Pailin 1986: 123). The theological task is one of producing an overall understanding. Being primarily concerned with God, theology is committed to discerning how every valid insight into the nature of reality can be combined into a single and unifying story which can be told concerning the way things are. It engages in a holistic task in which scientific disoveries are part of the data which it has to examine critically and then incorporate in its overall understanding, along with all the other data provided by commonly accepted sources of religious insight. So theology is that way of thinking which tries to incorporate all other ways of thinking, including science, in a total perspective in which all knowledge is embraced holistically.

If we talk about the debate between religion and science then we must recognise that we possess a very eirenic view of the past relationship between the two disciplines. Looking back at the conflict and controversy between religion and science we could be forgiven if we talked about unholy war rather than debate. Certainly, from my perspective, religion’s attitude to science in the past hardly represents something for which the Church can be proud.

Bruno was burnt at the stake in the name of religion for advocating something we now all take for granted, namely, the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun. His Copernican view confliced with what the Church taught on the basis of two verses of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures (Joshua 10: 13-14). Galileo Galilei, a more famous exponent of Copernican ideas, was imprisoned and silenced (or so it was thought) for his views. At the back of this, of course, was the threat to the authority, and hence power, of the Church to be judge and jury concerning every truth about the way things are in the universe. When we consider the challenge to religion posed by Newton and Darwin we find the same reluctance of religious people to be open to new thinking. Add to this brief list the name of Albert Einstein and then we have roughly charted the great revolutions in scientific thinking. A scientific world-view emerged which has made completely obsolete the traditional Christian world-view that had been unquestioned for well over a thousand years. If the evidence of what I hear Christians saying today is representative then I am forced to conclude that the Christian religion has not yet managed to replace the old secure world-view now dismantled by science with an understanding of reality commensurate with what we now know.

People throughout the centuries have attempted to prove - or disprove - the existence of God. The fact there are still both atheists and theists suggests that their efforts have not been finally conclusive. Modern philosophers of science, like Karl Popper, hold that something is the case until it is shown to be false. That would prompt the theist to challenge the atheist to show convincingly that the proposition ‘God exists’ is false. This might suggest that the question of the existence of God is less vulnerable to science than in the days when verification, rather than falsification, was taken to be the test of truth. Life is much easier if the atheist has to show that the proposition ‘God exists’ is false, rather than the theist positively verify that same claim. But there is a lot of truth in the observation that if we could prove that God exists then the God who was proved to exist would not be attractive enough to warrant our worship! It’s the sheer mystery of God which is all-important for religious belief.

God is God, the source and goal of all life, the One who is the very ground which makes anything ultimately possible and who is the basis of what is of ultimate significance. God is not an empiral reality whom we talk about like a table or chair. The Deity is a necessary Being. Therefore, no amount of scratching around in the empirical world is going to establish God’s existence. We are plunged here into metaphysics rather than physics. And, as such, scientific investigation finally can neither help nor hinder us concerning the question of the ‘existence of God’. (See Hartshorne 1967: 66-89). All that we can do is test our theistic story concerning the ways things have been - and are - by the usual tests associated with metaphysical claims : Is the story coherent? Is it comprehensive? Is it fruitful? Is it economic? and so on. Or, to put it another way, is the story the most reasonable and believable story that can be told? It is my belief that a theistic story can be told which satisfies these criteria and that science contributes to it rather than undermines it.