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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
The idea that theology might have something to say to science, especially if we see this as one of its responsibilities, might seem to us to be an odd question to ask. Ever since C.P. Snow proposed the idea of the ‘two cultures’, the impression of many, apart from those with a keen interest in interactions between science and religion, is that sciences are best left to their own devices. It seems obvious, at first sight, that it is primarily in the realms of history, language, literature, art and music that theology can find welcome dialogue partners. In popular culture, too, there is a residual memory that over-zealous religious fanatics in some way constricted science. The stories of conflict between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce, Galileo and the Holy See, have become inflated into mythologies of distrust and suspicion. The fact that the real historical accounts show many more nuances than this is important to establish, but is not really the point I am making here. Rather, I am suggesting that we have become so used to seeing the two areas of theology and science as separate, that we fail to notice in what ways the culture we five in is also one shaped by science, and that science itself is a profoundly cultural activity.
The temptation for those engaged in the dialogue between science and religion is simply to examine the particular discoveries in science and then discuss their implications for theology. While this can take us some way in the process of mutual understanding, what tends to happen is that science becomes the active partner, while theology is merely the passive recipient of what science is discovering.
1 J. Polkinghorne, Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne, London: SPCK, 1996, 6.
2 N. Lash, The Beginning and End of Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 78.
3 J. Bricmont and A. Sokal, Impostures Intellectuelles, Odile Jacob, 1997.
4 For discussion see R.N. Procter, Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991, 262-70.
5 J. Needham, The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West,London: Allen and Unwin, 1969, 190.
6 A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, 41.
7 Lash, The Beginning and End of Religion, op. cit., 80.
8 Funkenstein, op. cit., 12, 297.
9 C.C. Rassarn, The Second Culture. British Science in Crisis: The Scientists Speak Out, London: Aururn Press, 1993,196-208.
10 H. Brown, The Wisdom of Science: Its Relevance to Culture and Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 123.
11 D. Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality, London: Penguin, 1997.
12 R. Dawkins, The Values of Science and the Science of Values', in W. Williams, ed., The Valuesef Science, Oxford: Westview Press, 1999, 13-14.
13 Pope John Paul II, Faith and Reason, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1998, 41-5.
14 R. Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science. Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, London:The Penguin Press, 1998, x.
15 C. Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, London: Wildwood House, 1980.
16 J. Beihe, ReThinking Ecological Politics, Boston: South End Press, 1991, 107-8.
17 J. Brooke and G. Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998, 96.
18 P. Atkins, The Limitless Powers of Science', in J. Cornwell, ed., Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 122-33.
19 Deutsch, op. cit., 171 ff.
20 See, F. J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modem Cosmology: God and the Resurrection of the Dead, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1994.
21 F. Tipler, The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists', Zygon 24:2 (1989), 217-53, The Physics of Immortality, ibid., 220 ff.
22 R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
23 R. Dawkins, The Values of Science and the Science of Values in W. Williams, ed., The Values of Science, Oxford: Westview Press, 1999, 19.
24 Ibid, 35-7.
25 M. Midgley, Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: Problems of Philosophical Plumbing, London: Routledge, 1996, 149 ff.
26 John Paul II, Faith and Reason, op.cit., 152.
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