A 21st Century Debate on Science and Religion [1 ed.] 9781527500532, 9781443895934

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A 21st Century Debate on Science and Religion

A 21st Century Debate on Science and Religion Edited by

Shiva Khalili, Fraser Watts and Harris Wiseman

A 21st Century Debate on Science and Religion Edited by Shiva Khalili, Fraser Watts and Harris Wiseman This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Shiva Khalili, Fraser Watts, Harris Wiseman and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book 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 copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9593-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9593-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ................................................................................................... vii Alfred Pritz Preface ...................................................................................................... viii Fraser Watts and Shiva Khalili Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Science and Religion in a World of Religious Pluralism Philip Clayton Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 18 The Role of Christian Theology in the Conception of Modern Science Nancey Murphy Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 36 Naturalism versus Theism: What is at Stake? Mikael Stenmark Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 52 Religious Naturalism: Oxymoronic Muddle or Future Spiritual Juggernaut? Wesley J. Wildman Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 72 Is God Big Enough for Big History? William Grassie Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 88 The Origins and Functions of Religion: Social and Cognitive Aspects Fraser Watts Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 104 Renegotiating Identities in a Changing Environment: Changes and Transformations of Individual and Collective Meaning-Giving Beliefs Shiva Khalili

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Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 130 From Morality to Religion: A Bottom-Up Approach to Human Personhood Wentzel Van Huyssteen Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 157 A New Dualism Noreen Herzfeld Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 165 Religion and Science are Independent—But Why? Michael Ruse Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 177 Science And/Or Religion Abdolrahim Gavahi Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 192 Science Education and Ethics Education in Faith-Based Schools Michael J. Reiss Contributors ............................................................................................. 208

FOREWORD ALFRED PRITZ

This book is a summary of a congress held on 27-29th August, 2015 at the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna, Austria. It is also a result of two other congresses, held in May 2011, and 2006 in Teheran, Iran. At all three congresses, both the speakers and the audience focused on the topic of science and/or religion. From our point of view this question is central to the search for truth, and central regarding discernment of the proper relationship between science and religion. The search for truth is an interpersonal experience, but also a personal one. This means that we exchange our views and knowledge on what we call truth, but find that it lies in the personal, subjective world. Finding your personal truth is a result of all learning experiences made with people in your own history. Finding truth is a topic in both science and religion. The characteristics of the findings sometimes overlap regarding method-empirical or qualitative aspects, but they differ at the core. One might say that immersing yourself in religion has a clear goal–which is to find certainty or God. In science, the findings are always provisional and the researcher knows it, as long as he or she is not a believer in his/her own beloved results. Science opens the door for new questions. I also want to mention the spiritual and mystical aspects of human nature: the beyondness of moving yourself in the unknown sphere of a utopian world is difficult to grasp, and can be found in both science and religion. And this is beyond any measurement. In the book at hand you will find a variety of different views. It is indeed a bouquet of flowers, showing us how bright and wide the field of discussion is.

PREFACE FRASER WATTS AND SHIVA KHALILI

Debates on religion and science are changing, as far as both ‘religion’ and ‘science’ are concerned, and those changes are represented in this volume. It arises from a Congress held in Vienna in August 2015, jointly organized by Sigmund Freud Private University and the International Society for Science and Religion. The editors of this volume are members of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), and Shiva Khalili is also at Sigmund Freud University. The early decades of work on science and religion focused largely on Christian theology. The Christian colleges and seminaries of the USA played a leading role, and their focus was very much on the Christian tradition. But Christianity is an unusual world religion in many ways. It is much less a matter of cultural identity than most other religions, such as Judaism, Islam or Hinduism, and has become much more a private matter. More than with any other religion, Christianity is the subject of personal opinion and commitment, and less a matter of public identity. This is partly the result of a range of Reformational movements such as Lutheranism, and partly the result of other social developments in western civilization, including secularization. Christianity has also had a distinctive relationship with science. It has been much more closely intertwined with modern science (at least since the seventeenth century) than any other religion, and debates between Christianity and science are heavily influenced by their shared and intertwined history. Only Islam has had a comparable engagement with science, which was in a much earlier period. It is becoming increasingly important to widen the science-and-religion conversation beyond Christianity. Though it is very demanding to bring the whole range of religious traditions into dialogue with science at the same time, it is helpful to keep at least two religious traditions in play and not to focus exclusively on Christianity.

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At the Vienna Congress scholars from different cultural and religious backgrounds were present. Scholars from the Christian tradition represent the largest single group in this volume, but we are pleased to have two chapters from scholars from an Islamic background (Khalili and Gavahi), and there is also a chapter from a religiously uncommitted scholar (Ruse), and a Foreword from the Jewish scholar of psychoanalysis, Professor Alfred Pritz, the Rector of Sigmund Freud University, where the Congress was held and on which this book is based. While Christian scholars have been largely occupied with topics such as evolution and the Big Bang, and with issues about divine action, scholars in Islamic countries have been equally concerned with the relationships between humanities, social sciences and religious studies. Challenges between Islam and science have often focused on the value-laden fields of law, politics, economics and the social sciences. There has also been a broadening of the dialogue between science and religion in Christian countries to include an increasing emphasis on the human sciences. This volume represents the gradual broadening that has been discernable in recent years in the range of sciences that are brought into dialogue with religion. Initially, the main emphases were on physics and evolution, but there has been increasing interest in the dialogue with the human sciences. One of the most striking omissions from many science and religion courses has been the scientific study of religion. There is, potentially, a very interesting dialogue to be had between the self-understanding of insiders in the religious tradition, and an outsider’s perspective on the various scientific disciplines that study religion: biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and so on. Several of the chapters in this volume reflect this shift towards including the scientific study of religion, and several chapters take a particular interest in the role of religion in human evolution. Other chapters are concerned with the background assumptions that tend to be made when science and religion are brought into dialogue. Lurking behind many of the debates between science and religion are the assumptions of scientific naturalism with which science in the West has become intertwined. Arguably, it is these assumptions, at least as much as any findings from empirical scientific enquiry, that create problems in the relationship with religion.

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Relations between the religions of the world are not always harmonious, as everyone knows. That is part of the context for their respective engagements with science, as the first chapter of this book by Clayton explores. There is an urgent need, for the sake of the survival of humanity, for better relations between the religions of the world. This is a humanitarian as well as an academic issue. Relations between Judaism and Islam, and Islam and Christianity are often particularly vexed. Yet, it might be said that an engagement with science tends to bring out the most rational side of each religion. In so far as that is the case, it is potentially very helpful to widen the dialogue between religion and science so that it proceeds on a multi-faith basis. The International Society for Science and Religion is particularly committed to that goal. In Chapter two, Nancey Murphy explores the closely intertwined histories of natural science and Christianity, focusing particularly on the concept of ‘laws of nature,’ a concept that has become problematic for the relationship between science and religion. In Chapter three Michael Stenmark describes religious and secular forms of naturalism, and discusses their effects on the Weltanschauung (worldview) with the example of mind-body problem. Then in the following chapter, Wesley Wildman discusses another result of the science-based narrative, the rise of anti-supernaturalism and the increase of religious naturalism. He argues that this trend will change the political and socio-economic landscape, and suggests that societies will need to work out how to respond to this new trend. Building on that in Chapter five, William Grassie suggests that it is important in religious education to recognize scientific achievements, adopting a Big History perspective. Modern sciences claim to offer a grand narrative that unifies the knowledge that arises within the many languages of science. That can enrich each individual’s understanding of the nature of persons, and their sense of what it means to be a person. In Chapter six Fraser Watts discusses the assumptions of Cognitive Science of Religion about the origin and function of religion, and suggests an alternative position about the evolution of religion that better addresses its social context, and recognizes the rich diversity of religion. Evolutionary explanations offer an approach to the role of religion in the formation of frameworks of meaning. In Chapter seven, Shiva Khalili discusses the challenges and opportunities for identity formation and renegotiation in

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the 21st century, with its diverse narratives and meaning-giving beliefs and ideas. In chapter eight, Wentzel Van Huyssteen further explores human personhood at the intersection of modern evolutionary theories and Christian theology. Then, in Chapter nine, Noreen Herzfeld, discusses the relationship between Christianity and ontological materialism (such as one finds expressed in AI discourse) with respect to their implications on human self, and in particular, age-old questions of (im)mortality. Then, in Chapter ten, Michael Ruse elaborates arguments for the independence of the sciences and religion, taking an accomodationist position that permits the co-existence of science and religion. He discusses a set of questions that are unanswered by science and suggests that religion may be able to address them in its own way. In Chapter eleven Abdolrahim Gavahi describes an Islamic view on the meaning of science and religion, arguing for mutual recognition and respect between the two, and distancing himself from voices in the Islamic tradition that have been disparaging about science. Finally, in the last chapter of this book, Michael Reiss argues for the respectful consideration of a diversity of value and ethical standpoints and worldviews in schools, whether that be in faith-based or secular schools. Taken as a whole, the chapters emphasize the importance of a respectful dialogue between scholars of religions and the contributions of the natural sciences in helping to foster a safe environment for learning, development and growth for all individuals and groups, without any discrimination or aggression between followers of different traditions.

CHAPTER ONE SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN A WORLD OF PLURALISM PHILIP CLAYTON

In the ‘Science and the Spiritual Quest’ project some years ago, we gathered together scientists from multiple religious traditions who were deeply interested in whether these two important sides of their lives could be integrated. What none of us had expected, but should have known, is how very different were the problems we were struggling with. The Buddhist scientists seemed not to feel any threat from the sciences—even less than the Hindu scientists, who struggled with the limitations of scientific knowledge. Both had particular interest in consciousness and its powers. Christian and Muslim scientists struggled greatly with evolution and divine action; they spoke of the rejection of science by many in their communities, who felt that this was the only way to preserve the core tenets of their faith. By contrast, the Jewish scientists, also believers in God, felt less conflict; they seemed comfortable with physical and neurological accounts of evolution and consciousness. Of course, there are vastly different responses within each individual tradition. That fact does not decrease the challenge of pluralism, however; it greatly increases it.

Beyond the Warfare We live in a time of deep division: will the coming years reveal an increasing number of partnerships between science and religion, or will we see a battle to the death between the two? Ours is a world utterly transformed by the results of the sciences. It’s probably true that virtually everything you see around you at this moment—the room where you sit, the building, the city, its electricity, infrastructure, and means of transportation—are direct or indirect results of science.

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Scientific assumptions and scientific thinking may rest only skin deep for much of the world’s population, but no such ambivalence pertains to the fruits of science. One cannot state this point too strongly. It is true that religious people in much of the world are actively pushing back against what they call ‘the worldview of science.’ Many question the methods, the practices, the assumptions, and the funding priorities of science. They view research scientists with a suspicion bordering on complete rejection. And yet the same people bring no such skepticism to the things that science gives them. Everywhere on this planet people want good cell phones, good cars, state-of-the-art hospitals, safe food, modern cities, stable bridges, cheap manufactured goods, the best industrial products and the newest, most exciting electronic gadgets. It’s a strange situation, if one stops to think about it. The world has never been more reliant on the fruits of science. Yet the tree of knowledge that produces this fruit is widely viewed as suspect, even dangerous. And, around the world, it’s most often religious people who are the most vocal in condemning the very theories and assumptions that produce their favorite products. ‘Religion versus science’: in a world torn apart by wars, this is the most famous warfare of our time. On this warfare model, science exists as a challenge to religion, and the duty of religious persons is to protect their tradition against the dangerous encroachments onto their territory by scientists, whose major goal (they believe) is to destroy religion. Both sides of the battle believe that they must be kampfbereit, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Two sides at warʊthis, at any rate, is the dominant view of our times. Ironically, the very biology that the religious side contests helps to explain the situation. Over millennia, humans evolved to affiliate with an in-group and to fight members of the out-group. Evolutionary history helps to explain how we instinctually respond when there is a conflict: we take the side of our in-group and go to war. We defend the group that forms our identity at the time and we attack its enemies. As one title of the Vienna conference put it: Science. Or religion. I wish to focus instead on the peacemakers, and on the paths to peace. There are many who seek solutions, who prioritize partnership over war. In every religious and scientific community there are those who are already working to overcome the myth that religion-science warfare is the

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only possible form of relationship. These few pages lay out a vision of partnership, of science and religion. Specifically, I will argue that the future of this relationship does not lie in the integration of ‘religion as such’ with ‘science as such,’ but rather in constructive relationships between the sciences and each particular religious tradition. My thesis that harmony will be found (if it can be found at all) not at the level of generalities, but in the opening of specific religious traditions to the world of science. Until we acknowledge the vastly different challenges faced by the different religions, genuine progress is unlikely. In making this claim, I draw on the new field of ‘science and comparative religious studies,’ which promotes science-religion discussions within the unique context of each individual religious tradition. This discipline studies the diverse ways that the various religions are grappling with scientific methods and results, seeking to understand and explain these differences, but also noting common features that arise across multiple traditions. In social scientific terms, comparative work of this kind employs ‘emic’ rather than ‘etic’ methods; it uses the language (scriptures, beliefs, practices) that religious people use, rather than non-religious accounts of what they ‘really mean’ or ‘should’ mean. Before we get to the differences, however, let’s see how much common ground we can find.

Partnerships more Urgent than Ever At the 2009 World Parliament of Religions meeting in Melbourne, we organized three sessions on science, religion, and the environment. Over the course of the day some 600 delegates participated, representing most the religions of the world. After presenting his data on climate change, Nobel laureate Peter Doherty walked to the front of the stage and addressed the audience. “For 15 years I have traveled the world, presenting this data, but few have responded. I am not religious in any way, but I well recognize the emotional power of your various traditions to transform individuals and motivate them to live differently. I appeal to you from the depths of my heart to bring this message to your communities, to use all the resources of your tradition to influence how they live and act. Religion can build on the scientific facts and, I hope, help to bring about real change.”

The climate crisis is not the only area of common ground, of course, although it has become a vitally important one. Science-religion partnerships are in fact crucial across a wide variety of areas: medical ethics and assessments of quality of life profit from religious input. Moral

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outrage at the design and use of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons is often fueled by religious intuitions about what is unacceptable for one human being to do to another. Major pharmaceutical companies have convened religious scholars to assist them in sorting through the ethical issues that are raised by powerful new psychotropic medications. More generally, the growth of medicine and technology raises thorny ethical dilemmas. Yet there are relatively few religious thinkers who are well enough versed in the scientific details and nuanced enough in their judgments to be able to make useful recommendations for when and how the respective technologies should be used. The influence of our various fields does not stop with ethics, however. Cutting-edge scientific research raises some of the most interesting conceptual questions that humans have ever encountered. Many people in this room are leading scholars on these various topics. Physics raises fundamental questions about the nature of matter and energy, space and time, the birth of the universe and its far future destiny. Recent work on the origin of life compels us to reflect whether we are more than a biochemical accident and, if so, why and in what respects. Since the time of Darwin, philosophers and theologians have speculated about whether biological evolution is guided in some way, or whether evolution is random. How will we answer Jacques Monod, who advocates this latter view? Monod writes: “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of evolution” and “All forms of life are the product of chance” (Monod, 1971, 112 and 110). Advances in primatology confront us with the question of whether human beings are really qualitatively different from other advanced mammal species, as our religious traditions have taught, and, if we are, exactly how we are different. Comparative studies between humans and bonobos, for example, raise the question about which of the two species is the more moral, and which is the more brutal, in a dramatic manner. Finally, the rapid advances in the neurosciences, fueled by greatly enhanced imaging techniques, raise urgent questions about the nature and causes of consciousness and cognition, of rationality and morality. Does the power of neuroscientific explanation prove that we are (as Francis Crick once wrote): “nothing but a pack of neurons” (Crick, 1994)? Does it force us to conclude (as a well-known neurologist put it at a conference), “Wires and chemicals, that’s all we are—wires and chemicals”? Many religious (and non-religious) scholars stand opposed to this view. They make the case that we are somehow more, that our conscious experience is

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unique among the species on this planet. They stand much closer to the response made by the secular Jewish scientist Melvin Connor: In an engaging study of the conversations of three-year-olds, in the context of a longer chat between a boy and a girl, this occurred: “Hello, Mr. Dinosaur.” “Hello, Mr. Skeleton.” These three-word sentences probably contain enough complexity, enough levels of meaning, and enough imagination to ensure that comparable things will never be said by even the most brilliant talking ape… I suspect that we are seeing [in this example] the most rudimentary form of the key to being human: a sort of wonderment at the spectacle of the world, and its apprehensibility by the mind; a focusing, for the sheer purpose of elevation; an intelligent waking dream. In that capacity, perhaps, we find our greatest distinction, and it may be our salvation. (Conner, 2002, 170f)

The questions I have just summarized are among the most fundamental questions about human nature and the cosmos that are posed for us by this age of science. These questions arise naturally, compellingly, at the boundaries between recent scientific developments and the world’s most significant philosophical and religious reflection. Some of them are metaphysical questions; they entice us into the deepest mysteries about human nature, the origins of the universe, and human beliefs about the Ultimate: God, Allah, Brahman, the Tao, nirvana. But they are also existential questions—questions about meaning, the construction of meaning, the search for meaning. Yet, because they are about Sinnstiftung—the creation of meaning—social sciences such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology have important roles to play in researching them. Ours is a rich field. Exploring the ways that the religions of the world struggle with the implications of contemporary science raises issues that many people care deeply about, whether or not they belong to these religions. For this reason, I make the plea that scholars in this field not allow their books and research papers to devolve into highly technical prose, written for a narrow circle of academic specialists. The greatest work expresses the complex dilemmas and provocative possibilities that emerge at the ever-expanding intersections of science and religion, while remaining broadly accessible. At their best, authors write and speak not merely on behalf of themselves, their own religion, discipline, or culture. Rather, their work is relevant to all who want to know what it means to live on this planet in the 21st century. Their audience needs to be every person who seeks to understand the implications of being part of a single

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web of life that is becoming conscious of itselfʊof its origins and ultimate future.

A Discipline Under Attack So far, I have spoken in positive terms of commonalities that I believe unite many in this field. But there is also a rather less positive feature that ties together many of the chapters in this book: the authors work in a field of study that is viewed as highly suspicious by scholars, scientists, and religionists alike. Indeed, so great is the skepticism about this book’s topic that many critics question whether it is even accurate to speak any longer of ‘the’ field of science and religion at all. Consider this example: x The early ‘intelligent design’ movement rejected the standard scientific picture of cosmology, arguing that a superior science would explain the origin of the cosmos as reflecting the intentions of a very powerful, intelligent being. This ‘research program’ led in turn to the claim that the standard scientific picture of evolution is wrong, that because many biological structures are ‘irreducibly complex,’ only a direct divine intention could explain them. Both of these claims amounted to a radical rejection of contemporary science. x Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Many scientists and secular people drew the inference that religion is the kind of belief system that justifies killing innocent people. They proclaimed that religion is not neutral but very dangerous, and called for scholarsʊespecially scientistsʊto work actively against it. x Out of these two developments the ‘new atheism’ was born. The claim of its leaders has been that religion and science are fundamentally at odds. As Sam Harris writes, “The truth…is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.” (Harris, 2016, 63) x Although many religions were affected, Christians and Muslims in particular found themselves faced with a painful dichotomy: either support science and leave behind their religious beliefs, or maintain their religion and challenge science. Those who retained their religious identity began to develop arguments against the adequacy of science, and to proclaim the same incompatibility that the new

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atheists had alleged. Surveys at the time showed that over half of American evangelicals did not believe in biological evolution. This list could be continued further, but the point is clear. Both sides have taken an external cultural situation—the recent battle between their two institutions—and internalized it as if conflict were the only possible way to describe the religion-science relationship. Thus, for example, some scientists justify their attack on religion as if it were obvious that everything about religion must be evil, and now more moderate scientists are also beginning to view religion with suspicion. Likewise, some religious scholars attack science as if it is their #1 enemy. Neither group seems to recognize that they are not just working out the internal logic of their own field as much as responding to perceived aggression from the other side. The phrase ‘religion and science’ suggests that participants are involved in a single debate characterized by a common set of questions. Is there some sense in which this is true? Or, will it turn out that scholars in this field, and the general public as well, are actually involved in a broad range of significantly different debates? Or, are both things true? I will defend the third option, which means giving a positive answer to both questions. First, there are respects in which scholars from across the world’s religious traditions are working together constructively on overlapping topics characterized by common questions and assumptions. For this to happen, at least three conditions must be met: (1) There must be a core set of agreed-upon data and assumptions, however minimal. Publications and conferences in the field show that, differences notwithstanding, there is a baseline set of agreements and commitments that are shared across many of the discussions. One finds numerous examples of this in the library of 200+ volumes published together by the International Society of Science and Religion under the leadership of Professor Pranab Das (http://www.issrlibrary.org/). (2) One must find clear and honest formulations of disagreements. Can scholars clearly name the issues that threaten to separate the participants into warring factions? For example, for one research group, all valid explanations must be naturalist explanations, of the sort accessible to contemporary science; for another group, if

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explanations do not include some reference to God’s supernatural actions, they cannot be valid. (3) One must find constructive proposals to bridge differences. Having named their differences, can scholars then defend their views in ways that are accessible to others? Scholars are trained to analyze differences, formulate the underlying assumptions of the other side, and construct theories that might synthesize opposing positions. Will the coming years produce significant new mediating proposals on the major unresolved issues of our field?

Back to the Frontiers The birth of religion and science as a field is often located in the 1960s. It is sometimes connected with the publication of Ian Barbour’s Issues in Science and Religion, published in 1966, almost 50 years ago. I can remember the excitement of early work in the 1980s and 90s: the struggles to understand, the breakthroughs in finding common ground, the excitement of sharing results with one’s lab or religious group, the first conferences where understanding was reached and shared. What it would be like to recover some of that open spirit of inquiry that characterized those early years, the sense of exploration and discovery? What would it take for such a renewal to come about? One would have to identify the features of inquiry at the boundaries of religion and science where fruitful dialogue occurs in its most sophisticated forms. A list of the qualities of such inquiry would include some of the following qualities: x a willingness to compromise; x a mindset of quest, journey, learning, exploring; x an interest in new data, in new discoveries humans are uncovering about the world, and about ourselves; x an attitude of openness. Some will be exploring the philosophical or ethical implications of their science. Others will be motivated by ‘faith seeking understanding,’ though even they will not be claiming that they know all the answers in advance; x an excitement about differences between discussion partners, with the conviction that pursuing these differences can lead to deeper understanding. Let’s consider this last criterion for a moment. What does it point to, and what does it reveal?

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Irreconcilable Differences When two people file for divorce in the United States, they often cite what they call ‘irreconcilable differences.’ The differences between them, they say, are so deep that it was no longer possible to sustain the marriage, so divorce was the only option. Some view it as a good thing that two people who are so different can go their separate ways and escape from their tensions. Others view the separation as a tragedy in at least some cases, believing that if the couple had preserved, and had been more willing to compromise, they would have achieved a good partnership. In certain cultures, and at certain periods in the past, the marriage between science and religion was seen as a healthy and productive one. Today, however, it is clear around the globe that the conflicts have deepened between the members of this once fruitful partnership. Many commentators (both scientists and religious scholars) are now speaking of ‘irreconcilable differences,’ and are claiming that a complete divorce is the only solution. Probably the dominant view in the global media is that divorce is the only reasonable outcome. Science and religion, it is said, are like oil and water: they simply do not mix. Therefore, the best thing is to allow them to go their separate ways. Others among us, including many authors in this collection, hold a different view. We believe that declaring a complete divorce between science and religion is a tragedy. The partnership that they have had could and should be continued. It is somehow essential for the good of humanity. Many of us who identify as Muslim, Jew or Christian, as Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain, feel that we must speak up when fellow members of our various faiths dismiss science as an enemy of religion. We want them to understand that this divorce is not necessary, that if they do the hard work, if they are more willing to listen and rethink, and if the scientists are willing to do the same, the partnership can still be saved. Those of us who are scientists argue the same way with our fellow scientists. Sure, we say, some religious people are fundamentally opposed to science, and some religious beliefs are incompatible with science. Still, religion as such is not our enemy. We can learn to build useful bridges between our science and their religion. Indeed, we argue, we have already found some neutral territory, and even some places of harmony. We are convinced that the actual and potential partnerships between science and

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religion are valuable enough that it would be a tragedy to declare that the two sides are irreconcilably at war. Whether you pursue the partnerships from the scientific or the religious side, you almost certainly recognize that, globally speaking, ours is not the majority view. Many scientists and religious scholars do not share our position. Some are vehemently opposed to the work that we are doing to establish common ground, and many strongly condemn our efforts. Not long ago I spoke with a very famous scientist who had just published a book that included some comments about God (and who asked not to be named here). Although not a religious believer, my friend maintained that the idea of God might play some positive roles in the development of human history and civilization. This mild suggestion apparently drew outrage from many of his atheist friends. One told him, “You have gone over to the dark side.” “What did I do?” he asked me in confusion. “Is it not allowed any more for a scientist to mention the G-word?”

Comparative Sciences and Religions as New Paradigm Predictions of secularists notwithstanding, religion is not ‘withering away.’ Globally, it is expanding faster than ever. Yet, religious language is often used to promote dogmatism, the rejection of science, even violence. There is some encouraging data, however. In most cases, extremism in religious communities is inversely correlated with the degree of their engagement with science. To the extent that one can promote a serious and ongoing engagement with the methods and results of the sciences, one decreases the probability that religious communities will turn toward fundamentalism. The challenge is that each tradition makes its peace with science in different ways (so perhaps the title of this field should be not ‘Religion and Science,’ but rather ‘Religions and Sciences’). Until scholars in this area learn to understand and acknowledge the vastly different ways that the various traditions engage with science—what each tradition wants, what it needs, and what it fears—they will not really be able to answer the broader questions. Instead, they will continue to misunderstand and misrepresent other religious traditions, presupposing identity where in fact significant differences arise.

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Let’s consider some examples. I begin with two religious traditions that have been able to live in a mostly non-conflicting way with science: Judaism and Buddhism. We will then turn to other traditions that continue to struggle, unsure of how to incorporate the world of science into their thought and practice. The Jewish intellectual tradition has been able to incorporate modern science with relative ease. The reasons lie deep in the Jewish tradition—in midrash, in the Rabbinical tradition, and in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Although all of Tanak, the Hebrew Bible, reveals the nature of the Almighty, the first five books (the Torah) have the highest authority for Jews. Observance of the Mitzvot, the 613 commandments in the Torah, stands at the center of Jewish observance, and hence Jewish identity. Because the actions of observance are the most important, the interpretations that one offers about purely theological matters, and even about whether God exists and acts, come in second place. Concern for orthodoxy, or right belief, thus never played the same role for most Jews that it later played for Christians. Over the centuries, Jewish thinkers were able to draw on a wide variety of philosophical schools to express emerging understandings of Jewish identity and Jewish views of reality. Rabbinical discourse valued multiplicity, difference of opinion, and debate. When modern science arose, the sphere of debate was simply expanded to include the new theories about the natural world. Jewish communities generally valued the growth of knowledge, and many observant Jews became leading scientists. Over the last decades, Buddhism has also evolved to become one of the most science-friendly religions on the planet. As always, there are personal and political reasons behind this phenomenon. The 14th Dalai Lama has promoted and personally sponsored a wide variety of projects in religion and science. His famous comment is often repeated: “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims” (Dalai Lama XIV, 2011). Still, the reasons for the Dalai Lama’s support of science lie deep within Buddhist thought and practice. He speaks for much of the Buddhist tradition when he writes, “The … dimension … of basic spiritual well-being—by which I mean inner mental and emotional strength and balance—does not depend on religion but comes from our

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innate human nature as beings with a natural disposition toward compassion, kindness, and caring for others” (Ibid.). Buddhism, like Judaism, places its major emphasis on practice. Meditative practices are central, along with certain types of experience and states of consciousness that meditation can produce. In Mahayana Buddhism in particular, achieving the state of compassion, and expressing it in action, is the highest goal; metaphysical concepts are important only to the extent that they promote this outcome. Compassion simply means the desire “to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being.” The experiences that meditation produces are not supernatural; they come from “a natural instinct, [they are] bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness—or in a single word, compassion” (Ibid.). In short, concern for others is built into our biological nature. This approach leads to an avid interest in certain areas of science, which Buddhist practitioners, like many Hindu practitioners, view as natural allies to their own spiritual quest. In particular, many Hindus look to science to support traditional claims about the benefits of meditation and to verify the unusual psychological and physiological achievements of advanced meditators. Many practitioners are willing to distance themselves from ancient metaphysical teachings in the belief that what is most important to their religious goals will over the long term find scientific support and confirmation. While Judaism and Buddhism offer the most unambiguous cases, many other traditions have openings to science that are currently being emphasized and explored. Let’s consider three examples very briefly. First, Jainism provides a largely physical account of karma and a bodybased justification of its core ethical tenets. Jains do not require belief in God. Instead, they look to science to verify the remarkable abilities of their advanced practitioners or sadhus. They are also eager to use notions such as the conservation of energy or entropy to help explain their ancient doctrines. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism shares many features with the other world religions: it makes metaphysical claims, promotes a deeply mystical understanding of reality, and offers ethical principles to guide practitioners in their interactions with nature and with each other. Yet there is little in Taoist thought that cannot be harmonized with science.

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Indeed, in a variety of books with titles such as The Tao of Physics, Taoist philosophers have argued that contemporary science continues to move closer and closer to Taoist principles. The indigenous traditions offer a particularly important case. As the most ancient spiritual traditions on our planet, one might here expect the greatest distance from science. Instead, indigenous ways of life are often deeply ecological, suggesting remarkable parallels with the ecological sciences as they have evolved in recent years. I believe that, of the various traditions we have been considering, none has more global significance today than the engagement of Islam with science. Responses are radically divided, with some defending the full compatibility between the two, and othersʊprobably the larger number worldwideʊarguing for fundamental incompatibilities. To find solutions, Muslim scholars and imams are engaging with interpretations of Qur’anic texts and the classic traditions of Islamic philosophy and theology, as well as scientific theories and the history and philosophy of science. They face a series of contested issues: Qur’anic support for the pursuit of knowledge (scientific and otherwise) of the natural world; how to connect natural causes with God as the final cause of all beings and all phenomena; natural knowledge and revealed knowledge; the apparent randomness of the evolutionary process versus God’s direction of all creation; the uniqueness of human beings; naturalism versus God’s supernatural acts; and, of particular importance, how to read the Qur’an so that it does not become a direct competitor to science, while still allowing the scriptures to function as the authoritative record of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. This last task involves finding an appropriate hermeneutic for Qur’anic interpretation in the age of scienceʊa difficult but urgent task. Despite the widespread pessimism about this project among both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, I am confident that solutions can be found. Islam does not face a forced decision between a fundamental rejection of modern science on the one hand, and a de facto rejection of the entire tradition on the other. The Doha Declaration of 2008 provides an excellent example. It opens with the words: 1. We agree that the so–called ‘warfare between science and religion’ is unnecessary and destructiveʊto religion, to science, and to the future of our species and our planet. It has become possible in our day to formulate a unified vision which takes into account the best of science and the best of the religious traditions, without confusing the two.

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Chapter One 2. We call for worldwide attention in the 21st century to the need to work towards change on a very fundamental levelʊa change in the ways of thinking, believing, and knowing that have dominated the modern period. It is possible in this century to bridge the gap between the cultures of science and religion. Succeeding in this task will require greater openness to contributions from all fields of knowledge, including science, philosophy, the arts, etc. 3. We reject the view that all human knowledge is scientific knowledge. Scientific results cannot directly prove the existence of God any more than they can falsify God’s existence. Conversely, religious beliefs are not the same as scientific theories, nor are scientists in the position to make final pronouncements on religious matters. We encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of science, culture, and religion. Yet this discussion must be conducted with discipline and intellectual rigor by people with the requisite expertise.1

Consider also the stance of the Muslim scholar and Sufi expert, Fethullah Gülen. He writes unambiguously: “Science cannot contradict religion, for its purpose is to understand nature and humanity, which are each a composition of the manifestations of God’s Attributes of Will and Power” (Gülen, 2000, 7f.). By speaking more generally of religion, Gülen integrates the harmony of science and religion with a harmony between the Abrahamic traditions: “Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all come from the same root, have almost the same essentials, and are nourished from the same source. Although they have lived as rival religions for centuries, the common points between them and their shared responsibility to build a happy world for all of the creatures of God make interfaith dialogue among them necessary.” When it comes to the Christian dialogue with science, one is struck both by the strengths of the engagement, and by its shortcomings. Some of the most extensive literature comes from Christian authors, and virtually every topic of Christian theology has been brought into dialogue with the sciences. At one end of the spectrum, one finds conservative and

 1

The Doha Declaration of 2008 stemmed from the “Science, Cultures and the Future of Humanity” conference, May 30–June 1, 2008, which was organized by the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, the think tank of the Arabic television network Al Jazeera. For more information, see http://islam-science.net/dialogue-in-doha-science-cultures-and-the-future-ofhumanity-1498/ or http://www.templeton.org/templeton_report/20080723/.

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fundamentalist answers that reject science in toto as incompatible with Christianity, or that argue that religion actually produces better science than the natural sciences, as in the Intelligent Design movement. At the other extreme, one finds Christian doctrines interpreted in purely scientific terms, so that no supernatural elements remain—Christianity without God, without incarnation, without resurrection, without heaven or life after death ... and without any remaining tension with science. In between these two extremes Christian authors have explored a vast variety of scienceinspired interpretations of their tradition. This radical pluralism can be a strength when it models the variety of ways that compatibilities and incompatibilities with science can be expressed and incorporated. But there is also a dark side. The vast differences between conservative and liberal voices have fractured and fragmented the discussion. Instead of viewing the growing separation as a challenge to be overcome, one side tends to dismiss the other as so deeply wrong that it is unworthy of further attention. Publications, organizations, conferences, and funders are often devoted to the one particular camp or the other, but rarely to the task of finding common ground between them. An outsider might think that competing Christian schools are speaking about different religions altogether. One can only hope that Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu scholars will do better at formulating the common ground offered by their own particular tradition.

Conclusion: Seeking Common Cause across Differences In the religion/science discussion there are deep differences between religions and within religions. To affirm that all shareʊor should shareʊa common approach and set of assumptions misrepresents the field, which then obscures the real challenges that the dialogue is facing. Yet, in these pages I have also affirmed the positive vision that we are nevertheless involved in some significant ways in a common project. Scholarship in one area of science or in one religious tradition can profit those who are working in other traditions. As scholars study relations at the various intersections of science and religion, a shared body of knowledge emerges. I close with the hope that participants will be able to express their differences without rancor. It is possible to work out contrasting positions, pursue diverse research programs, and compose different arguments without ad hominem attacks the others, interacting with compassion rather than derision. It is inspiring, for example, to study the examples of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scientists who over the years have accepted

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the call to productive scholarship, and who have thus have been able to make progress even in areas where real conflict arises. Deep scholarship involves deep listening. The dialogue is at its best when participants make real connections across the diverse cultures of science and religion, finding common causes, common interests, as well as common challenges. The aspiration is large: to overcome the warfare between science and religion; to reconnect fact and value into a productive relationship; to replace rhetoric and violence with careful study and reasoned discourse; to seek what Jews call tikkun olam—the healing of the world. Common values can bridge competing perspectives. At our best, we value empirical data and seek to apportion our beliefs with the evidence. Recognizing that specialization can lead to fragmentation, we value interdisciplinary scholarship and the crossing of boundaries. We know that the natural sciences, although crucial for knowledge of the world, do not tell the entire story; rather, the techniques, methods, and conclusions of the social sciences also play an irreducibly important role. And both are supplemented by the humanities—by philosophy, ethics, and religious studies. In this field, many are motivated by the sense of a deeper dimension than is expressed in mathematical theories. For some, it involves metaphysical beliefs, perhaps based on certain core commitments of their religious tradition. For others, religion surfaces primarily as a dimension of experience, whether they label it ‘peak experience,’ or ‘ecstatic naturalism,’ or ‘the experience of the transcendent.’ And, for others, religion can express nothing more than the sense that there exists something beyond science, something beyond the level of everyday experience. At some point, in the sphere of religion, words break down, and the scholars have to pass the baton to artists and poetsʊor to the saints, sadhus, and gurus of the various traditions, who represent in their lives and actions the things that religious scholars struggle to express. For the first time in the history of humanity, humans now face a truly global crisis, one for which we are responsible. We have upset the natural rhythm of the planet, the homeostasis of the biosphere. The effects of human-induced climate change are already producing mass migration, starvation, deaths and extinctions of species. No one will be able to understand the crisis and take appropriate actions unless they listen

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carefully to science: to climatologists, environmental theorists, ecologists, and others. Yet science alone will not be sufficient to motivate the necessary response, which is a global turning toward a sustainable, ecologically-based civilization. Science alone will not produce the commitment to radical shifts in policy that the leaders of the world will need to make in the coming few years. Fortunately, humanity does have a resource to supplement scientific knowledge and technological ability: the call to compassion, and to the sacredness of all life, that resounds across the world’s spiritual traditions. These two values, brought to bear on what may be the biggest crisis that humanity has ever faced, can make a crucial difference. If the decision is separation— ‘science or religion’—then humanity is unlikely to marshal the moral and spiritual resources that are needed to slow the pace of climate change. If the decision is integration— ‘science and religion’— then humanity has at least a fighting chance. The stakes are high. Ancient religious traditions must be transformed to become allies rather than enemies of scientific progressʊand allies with each other. If they do, they can contribute their value frameworks and their shared call to compassionate action. Finding this common ground in the midst of difference will be necessary if humans are to overcome nationalism and ethnocentrism and respond in time to global climate disruption.

References Crick, F. (1994). The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Scribner. Dalai Lama XIV, Bstan-‫ތ‬dzin-rgya-mtsho (2011). Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Gülen, M.F. (2000). The Foundation 3 (2000): 7f. Harris, S. (2006). Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Knopf. Konner, M. (2002). The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit, 2nd ed. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt. Monod, J. (1971). Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. New York: Vintage Books.

CHAPTER TWO THE ROLE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN THE CONCEPTION OF MODERN SCIENCE NANCEY CLAIRE MURPHY

Introduction I had the opportunity to attend two conferences in Tehran: in 2006, Iran’s ‘First International Conference on Dialogue between Religion and Science’; and in 2011, a second conference, more limited, on ‘Psychology, Religion, and Culture.’ The question about the role of Christianity in Western sciences was in the air at the first conference (for an earlier discussion, see Stenmark and Golshani, 2005). When I attended the conference on psychology, I was convinced that psychology, especially its practical side, would have to be different in the Middle East than in the West. This left open a question: could all of the human sciences be somewhat (or even drastically) different in the Middle East compared to the West; and especially, would the natural sciences have come out differently if the Muslim world had continued to be as central to the development of science as it had been in the past? I suppose that college students in Iran (and elsewhere) study the same works in natural sciences as do EuroAmericans. But could it have been different—better or worse—if Islamic assumptions had had a stronger influence? Another question I have considered is what counts as the beginning of Modernity in the West. For my students I draw a diagram (a cartoon, really) that shows the Christian tradition, over its first few centuries, merging with Greek and Roman thought. I count the death of Augustine (430) as the date of the end of this process. From that point until the

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beginning of modernity, distinguishable.

theology

and

philosophy

are

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barely

At first, the medieval period in Europe was more a time for fighting than scholarly achievements. But in the later Middle Ages, in part thanks to Middle Eastern and North African influences, there came the high Middle Ages—with Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and Aristotle as the primary heroes for Christians. I tell my students that a heuristic device for interpreting the rise of science in the West and the beginning of the modern period was, among other factors, the dismantling of this ‘medieval synthesis.’ My picture of the development of modernity shows, first, the sciences of astronomy and cosmology departing from both theological and Aristotelian influences. Copernicus (1473–1543) devised the heliocentric model of Earth and planets that Galileo (1564–1642) later put forward to the Catholic clergy, precipitating the well-known (and much exaggerated) punishments of house arrest and censorship. The problem with the new astronomy was that it called Aristotle’s physics into question, leading to a scientific revolution in which the concept of ‘natural motions’ was replaced by the atomism that has gradually progressed from that point to our latter-day metaphysics and science of matter. Isaac Newton (1642–1727), of course, is the hero of early modern science. The development of concepts of the atom allowed for Robert Boyle (1627–91) and others to develop the science of chemistry. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is taken to have removed biology from theology. So my cartoon is shaped like an hourglass, with physical and theological strands coalescing in Ancient times up through Augustine, and then beginning to split apart in the sixteenth century to constitute a new modern worldview. I shall point out below that early natural scientists were much influenced by theology and not at all hostile to it. However, another way for science to be influenced by theology is by means of a struggle to eliminate theological elements from newly formulated ‘empirical’ sciences; this has been the case particularly in the human sciences. The first movement of the human sciences away from Christian theology and philosophy was made by Thomas Hobbes’s (1588–1679) writing of Leviathan. Historian Wallace Matson (1987, 292) claims that Hobbes was the first modern philosopher, in that he began to divorce ethics and political theory from

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theology. I would add that he was also the most prominent of early modern thinkers to reject all ancient and medieval concepts of the soul. David Hume (1711–1776), in the English-speaking world, was the most notable contributor to the divorce of the discipline of history from theological assumptions. He wrote a six-volume History of England with the express intention of displacing what was called the propheticprovidential view of history. The latter attributed historical events to acts of God performed for the purpose of perfecting human life. Hume’s History (1754–61) was written to show that history could be explained perfectly well by noting regularities in human nature. Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term ‘sociology’ in 1838, and argued that humans go through three stages: from the theological to the metaphysical, and finally to the scientific, which has no need for a concept of God. Adam Smith (1723–90) is the name associated with the history of economics. Note two things: first, he wrote before Darwin, and so what is now taken to be Social Darwinism in economic ethics preceded and shaped his biology. Second, although Smith speaks of a ‘hidden hand’ this is not to say that he meant the hand of God. Finally, the science of psychology is said to have branched off from the medieval synthesis in the 1870s. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is often mentioned first, and some articles on the history do not so much as mention Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). I believe that this neglect is due to the work of natural scientists such as Boyle, defining science in terms of universal laws discovered by means of repeatable experiments. I return to this in Section 2. One final comment on this somewhat canned account of the developments of the sciences over against philosophy and theology: The ‘standard account’ of the rise of modern science usually assumes that the sciences fell full-blown (i.e. much in their present forms) from the tree of medieval thought. So, in Section 2 I shall try to present a somewhat more sophisticated account of the development of modern science in the West, especially by rejecting the claim that science became possible by means of rejection of the ‘superstitions’ of theology. Section 3 focuses on the consequences of the crucial concept of the laws of nature, claiming not only that it is one of the ways Christianity influenced the very concept of science, but also that it has been highly detrimental to theology. In Section

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4, I present current challenges to the legitimacy of the concept of the laws of nature.

A Better Historiography of Early Science? I have alluded to the fact that the natural science in the early modern period was not identical to what we think of as science today. There was a gradual development from medieval ways of thinking to those of the late modern period. Second, early natural ‘scientists’ were not antagonistic toward theology. Using medieval language, they called themselves natural philosophers. Later historians have suggested that better terminology for these thinkers would be “physico-theologians” (Gaukroger, 2006, 149153). The intentional split between philosophy and theology on the one hand and science on the other—that is science as we know it—came later and was heavily influenced by philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). The physico-theologians worked out a variety of ways of understanding the relations between God and the natural world. Historian Michael Buckley (2004) describes three strategies. Galileo emphasized the introduction of mathematics into physics, claiming that math was the language in which the book of nature was written. He claimed that natural philosophy says nothing about religion. Theology and each of the sciences have their own special methods. This does not mean that God is absent from Galileo’s thought: “the heavens are prized as the creation of the omnipotent craftsman” and the highest object of philosophy is turning to the great book of nature—that is, the Bible (Buckley, 2004, 7). Science and theology do not interact but each contributes to the general advance of knowledge. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) is Buckley’s second example. It seems (to me) that Kepler is given disproportionately little attention in current accounts of the rise of science; I suspect that this is because one cannot explain his reasoning in astronomy without admitting his indebtedness to theology. He reasoned that the most perfect God could only create a most beautiful world. The most beautiful world is manifested through its agreement with geometry, the signature of God. For example, there are five intervals between what were then thought of to be six planets, and this is consistent with Euclid’s demonstration that there are only five perfect geometric solids. Concerning the role of specifically Christian theology, Kepler wrote that from the doctrine of the Trinity one can show the reason

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why there are three and only three stationary realities in Galileo’s astronomy: the sun, the fixed stars, and the intermediate space between them. One can see why a contemporary secular historian of science would not go into these details. Newton is Buckley’s third example. Newton argued that the universality of the fundamental coordinates of the universe demonstrated the existence of God, but one could also argue from the existence of God for the universality of mechanics. God’s role in Newton’s system is not only to set the universe in motion, but continuously to keep the universe from collapsing in on itself due to the force of gravity. He repeatedly asserted that the main business of his mechanics was to culminate with the first cause. I have now noted two important characteristics of early natural science: its slow development away from medieval natural philosophy, and its lack of antipathy toward religion. A third characteristic was its regular incorporation of elements that most today would reject on both scientific and theological grounds. These included alchemy, magic, astrology, and a surprisingly wide-spread acceptance of the legendary writings of Hermes Trismegistus, who was thought to have influenced both Plato and Moses. In fact, there were a variety of authors of the so-called ‘hermetic texts,’ which are now taken to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian era. This is important background for the main point of my section, the role in shaping Western science of specifically Christian theology, and, in fact, the theology of a specific (Calvinist) sub-tradition within Christianity. Historian of science Eugene Klaaren wrote on Religious Origins of Modern Science (1977), but while he uses the generic term ‘religion,’ I find his work to be the most enlightening account of specifically Christian theological influences. He uses the writings of Boyle for his primary example. Boyle was associated with the theological outlook of the reformer John Calvin. Klaaren argues that what we now know as science is the result of the triumph of Boyle’s and others’ law-governed, mechanistic world-picture over not only the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis, but also over an equally powerful alternative that he calls ‘spiritualism.’ The contest between spiritualism and our inherited legal-mechanical worldview is the one

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relevant for explaining the theological motives behind the scientific developments. The spiritualism of the seventeenth century was an amorphous yet influential cluster of ideas and practices. Its sources include Neoplatonism, a religio-philosophical system flourishing in the third century; mystical strands in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish thought; and the hermetic texts, which incorporated magic, alchemy, and astrology, and enjoyed renewed interest in the seventeenth century. Klaaren’s representative of the spiritualist tradition was Johan Baptist von Helmont (1577–1644). Helmont was a Flemish physician, who came under the influences of the hermetic writings. He held that the world was composed of matter and an efficient cause—a version of a world-soul. Helmont’s writings were translated by his son, and became available in England in 1648. The younger Helmont held theological positions regarding the relations of God and the world that his Calvinist contemporaries found entirely unacceptable: a Neoplatonic-kabbalistic theory of monads that emanate as pure spirits from the divinity—thus making the world itself, in a sense, divine. For the purposes of my narrative, the spiritualist view of divine action is most important: all created entities are forms of divine Spirit. The legal-mechanical tradition to which Boyle adhered, and to which he gave precise formulation, had its roots in late-medieval voluntarist conceptions of God. Voluntarism, an emphasis on God’s omnipotent will, is cited as one of the presuppositions of the rise of modern science. That is, if God’s ordering of creation is not limited by a rational order that humans could apprehend rationally, then the only way to know how the world in fact is ordered is to study it in detail. In response, Boyle developed an experimental method in chemistry and created the distinctive genre of the laboratory report. Boyle also contributed to the concept of natural order that featured law, design, and mechanical arrangements. The concept of a law of nature was developed by analogy to God’s laws in the Old Testament. Just as God’s law was given providentially to the Hebrews, the laws of nature were seen as God’s ongoing providence. It was for theological reasons that Boyle emphasized both the existence and inviolability of the laws of nature. He was opposed to the spiritualists’ ‘diffusions’ of God in the world such as Helmont’s world-soul on the basis of what might be called ‘Calvinist maximalism’—that is, the attempt to

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attribute as much power to God as possible. The concept of the laws of nature served as an intermediary between a thoroughly transcendent God and his creation. Boyle’s physico-theology was typical, in his day, of the legal-mechanical tradition that has come to define science (in the West) today.

Laws of Nature and Unintended Consequences I claimed in Section 2 that the earliest modern scientists—the physicotheologians such as Boyle—had theological motives for much of their work. In this section, I suggest that, ironically, their development of the concept of universal, deterministic laws had the unintended consequence of leading, for many in the West, to agnosticism or atheism. I suggest that there are four possible successor positions to the physicotheologians’ various reconciliations between Christian theology: deism; conservative Christian theology; liberal theology (in the theological sense only—not necessarily that of Christians in the pew); and agnosticism or atheism. Deism is said by many historians to be a hodgepodge of positions, but what is most often immediately associated with the term is the view that God initially created the laws of nature but has no further role in the world’s operation. However, this ‘absentee God’ was still needed to mete out reward or punishment in the afterlife. Philosopher Charles Taylor, in his impressive 800-page volume, A Secular Age (2007), proposes to explain how it happened that, whereas around the year 1500 in Europe it was almost impossible to disbelieve in God, by 2000 in the north Atlantic region, we live in a society in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others. In short, whereas Christians in 1500 (and some still today) see many events in the world as special acts of God, the development of the concept of a law-governed world made the claims for special divine action unintelligible. Taylor provides an enlightening term, ‘providential deism,’ to describe the position of the physico-theologians and its role in the transition from earlier concepts of God as an agent acting in the world to that of God as architect of a universe operating by unchanging laws. I follow Klaaren in taking Boyle as representative.

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Boyle (and contemporaries he represented) were not the Deists who were to become prominent in the eighteenth century. Boyle was thoroughly Christian in his theology, believing in God’s revelation in Christ and even the resurrection. In contrast to later Deists’ absentee God, Boyle argued for the continued dependence of creation upon God. And it was for theological reasons, as we have seen, that Boyle emphasized both the existence and inviolability of the laws of nature. However, this providential deism was an unstable position. How can one hold onto God as a source of revelation, and even as the cause of Jesus’ resurrection, while also ruling out even special providence in favor of only a general providence seen in the consequences of the laws of nature? Boyle denied special providence, writing that: “The omniscient author of things, who, in his vast and boundless understanding, comprehended at once the whole system of his works, and every part of it, did not mainly intend the welfare of such or such particular creatures, but subordinated his care of their preservation and welfare to his care of maintaining the universal system and primitive scheme or contrivance of his works” (quoted in Klaaren, 1977, 168). This concept of nature was rightly seen by some as a threat to religion. However, it was easily turned into an apologetic: Wallace Matson writes that the new “defense dwelt on the sublime conception of God to be derived from the majestic, inexorable, harmonious system of nature— God’s creation—revealed by Science. . ... In previous ages the occurrence of miracles had provided proof of the existence, power, intelligence, and goodness of God. Now the nonexistence of exceptions to the order of nature proved the existence, power, intelligence, and goodness of God” (1987, 337). The great irony in the history I have presented here is the fact that the apologetic use of science from the mid-seventeenth century through the nineteenth can be seen in retrospect to be a major cause of atheism, as Taylor and other historians (such as James Turner [1985] and Michael Buckley [2004]) have argued: providential deism, leaving no intelligible place for divine effects such as miracles and revelation, was in many cases replaced in the eighteenth century by Deism as usually understood. From the absentee God of Deism, it was a short step to atheism. The shift from providential deism to Deism itself was thus a consequence of the new account of divine action. From the Reformers’ view that the age of miracles had passed, the providential deists moved on to question the

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historicity of the founding miracles of the faith and thus of the whole concept of incarnation (Taylor, 1989, 272). The historicity of all of the Abrahamic religions was marginalized. I believe that this transition from providential deism, to Deism, and then to atheism is an important part of the story. But what the historians I have cited above do not address adequately is an alternative route from providential deism to atheism via liberal theology. My conclusions about the role of the problem of divine action in producing contemporary atheism and agnosticism is based, first, on the fact that in the U.S., Protestants are sharply divided into liberal and conservative camps. In the conservative camp are both fundamentalists and more moderate evangelicals. I have been shocked to find how poorly liberals and conservatives understand one another. I set out to trace the source of this radical theological divide in my Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda (1996), where I created ideal types to represent both liberal and conservative theologies. My conservative type includes a cluster of interrelated features: Scripture is used as an epistemological foundation, and scriptural language is taken to describe, in a rather straightforward way, objective realities. Because theology and science both speak of the same world, conflict between them is a live possibility. God not only works providentially through the laws of nature, but also occasionally intervenes in natural and historical processes, breaking or overriding the laws. God’s intervention is the source of revelation and is its credential as the epistemological source of theology. Theology of the liberal type began with Schleiermacher (1799), who was much influenced by Kant. As was everyone else in the eighteenth century, Kant was hugely impressed by Newtonian physics, but he rightly worried about its consequences for human free will and moral responsibility. To address this problem, he made sharp distinctions among three aspects of human experience: knowing, doing, and feeling; and among three associated spheres of culture: science, ethics, and aesthetics. Kant associated religion with the sphere of ethics. Schleiermacher accepted Kant’s three spheres, but placed religion in that of feeling. Religious language is neither about ethics, nor is it strictly speaking a form of knowledge. It is, instead, an ongoing attempt to express the inner religious feeling or awareness that is the source of all religion.

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Historical theologian George Lindbeck coined an apt term for this type of theology: experiential-expressivism. Since theology is not a body of knowledge about reality, it is a conceptual mistake to think that it can conflict with science or be confirmed by it. In the liberal tradition, the only form of divine action is immanently, through the laws of nature. Schleiermacher maintained that ‘miracle’ is merely the religious word for ‘event’ (1821-22, secs. 46-7). I call the conservative and liberal theories of divine action interventionism and immanentism, respectively. The most obvious apparent difference between liberals and conservatives is the role of Scripture. But the different status each attributes to the Bible is in fact due to their contrasting theories of divine action. For Christians who believe in special divine interventions there are a variety of ways of explaining how one particular set of books can constitute revelation, ranging from divine dictation, to a looser sense of inspiration, to the causation of revelatory events in history. For liberals, Scripture is important for theology but not its ultimate source. For Schleiermacher it was important because it contained expressions of the religious awareness of those who knew Christ directly. Later theologians, recognizing the typical connections between doctrines of revelation and interventionist accounts of divine action, have set out, in various ways, to argue that one can nonetheless attribute some authority to Scripture even though God only acts uniformly in all events. The beginning of liberal theology in ‘the turn to the subject’ has been described as equivalent to a Copernican revolution. I want to try to make clear how revolutionary the liberal theology beginning with Schleiermacher was, compared to that of the providential deists who preceded him. For the physico-theologians, right up through Newton, science was a means of doing natural theology. After the revolution, science is entirely irrelevant to theology, and theology’s starting point is human religious awareness. It has been all too easy, beginning with Ludwig Feuerbach in Schleiermacher’s own day, to say that religion is nothing but a creation of human thought and feeling. So the shift to experiential-expressivism was an immediate stepping stone to atheism for a few, but I believe there have also been subtle and deleterious effects in the twentieth century. My diagnosis is simplistic, but sometimes a caricature can highlight important features. First, the liberals’ immanentist account of divine action

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made God invisible. There can be no difference in the objective appearance of the world for an immanentist, a full-fledged Deist, or an atheist. I once heard Richard Dawkins arguing with biologist Simon Conway-Morris. Frustrated, Dawkins said to Conway-Morris: You and I agree on all the biology. Why do you insist on adding God to it? Second, the restriction of religion to individuals’ private inner experiences has made religion appear to many to be at least uninteresting or, more harshly stated, vacuous. Jeffrey Stout in his Flight from Authority writes of the liberal turn in theology that it “threatened to reduce the content, and therefore the interest, of theism as much as Deism had. . .. The price of saving theism was to isolate it from the theoretical life of the culture and to confine its import for the most part to private . . . existence” (1981, 10). Alasdair MacIntyre, speaking of liberal theologians such as Paul Tillich and Rudolph Bultmann, was even harsher: “any presentation of theism which is able to secure a hearing from a secular audience has undergone a transformation that has evacuated it entirely of its theistic content” (1969, 26). MacIntyre published this in 1968, before the appearance of the new atheism, and he attributed the lack of arguments against religion in that period to the fact that “theists were giving the atheists less and less in which to disbelieve” (1969, 24). So, to sum up, the providential deism of the physico-theologians had successors in Deism and liberal theology. In both cases, divine action is understood to be invisible. So in contrast to the ways God was regularly encountered in 1500, God is now, at most, encountered in one’s private inner life. And those private encounters provide no convincing evidence to the skeptic. Via two different routes, providential deism, paved the way to agnosticism and atheism. A fitting conclusion here appears in the introduction to Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson’s book, Divine Action (1990): The topic of divine action in the world has rightly come to occupy centre stage in both doctrinal and philosophical theology. Whatever theological question is raised, some conception of God’s action in the world will turn out to be involved in any answer proposed. The issue of objective theism— whether God-talk refers to transcendent reality or is only a symbolic expression of our highest aspirations or basic life attitudes—may seem at first to be an exception to this. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the

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question of divine action bears critically even on this apparently prior dispute. (1990, 1)

Taylor (2007), Turner (1985), Buckley (2004), and others all make the point in one way or another that modern preachers and theologians, in the process of conforming Christianity as best they could to the culture of their day, set the stage for unbelief. But what options did they have? I suppose one alternative can be seen in Catholicism before Vatican II, but Catholic Modernist theologian George Tyrrell quoted an anguished letter from a fellow priest in 1908, saying that he was “staggering like a drunkard under theological difficulties that weigh[ed] upon [his] mind,” and that the replies he’d been taught in seminary were “taken as ‘Chinese’” by the intellectuals he tried to address (quoted in Shultenover, 1981, 141). So holding onto a faith that was not adapted to modern thought would appear to be hopeless. But undoing the modern adaptation does not appear to be an option either. In Section 4 I offer a few reflections on how we might go forward from here.

To Have or Not to Have the Laws of Nature? Is there a way out of the dilemmas that the notion of the laws of nature has created for theology? We certainly cannot turn back the clock to an Aristotelian understanding of nature. But can we go forward? First I briefly acknowledge that the law-governed picture of reality has always been a matter of contention in the human sciences. Then I shall report on two recent research projects that have called the legal-mechanical worldview into question: one arising from theological concerns and the other from philosophy of science. In Section 1 I noted the ways in which providential deism was taken up in the human sciences. It even, for example, allowed human starvation to be described as God’s providential ordering of society in such a way as to promote human development overall. However, throughout the development of the human sciences, especially in Europe, there has been an opposing tendency based on the claim that the methods of the human sciences must be different from those of the natural sciences. The study of human behavior is not aimed at picking out brute causal forces that can be captured by descriptions of law-based regularity. Rather, people generally act on the basis of intentions, and understanding of those intentions always involves interpretation.

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As late as the second half of the twentieth century and up to the present, some philosophers and scientists still attempt to subsume behavior into the scheme of the law-governed universe. However, I have argued (elsewhere) that the burden of proof has shifted: arguing that behavior cannot be reduced to lawful regularities in the brain makes it clear that our usual way of understanding people is not by means of laws, but by narratives (Murphy and Brown, 2007). The earlier of the two research projects mentioned earlier was ‘the Vatican Project.’ It began when Pope John Paul II requested the Vatican Observatory, a 100-year-old astronomical research institution, to devote part of its staff time and finances to study relations between Christian theology and the sciences. At a planning meeting in 1989, it turned out that all of the topics suggested as foci for the project had to do in one way or another with the problem of divine action, as one might expect from my quotation of Hebblethwaite and Henderson in Section 3. We recognized that the problem itself originated with the mechanistic picture of the world developed from early modern physics. Since science itself had progressed so far beyond this, the question was: are there recent scientific advances that might contribute positively to understanding special divine action? We held a series of five conferences over 14 years examining the relevance of recent developments in science. We held a sixth conference to discuss the outcome of the work we had done. It was clear by the end that there had been four general approaches to special divine action. The first was the traditional Catholic distinction between God as primary cause and natural causes as secondary. The second was John Polkinghorne’s theory of divine action in chaotic systems (e.g., Russell et al. 1995). The third was Arthur Peacocke’s proposal that God’s action be understood on analogy to the way complex systems, such as human beings, exercise top-down control over their own parts (e.g., in Russell et al. 1995). He argued that while God is immanent in the world, the world is also, in a sense, in God. Therefore, the system of God-andthe-world is the most complex system possible, and there should be topdown effects from God on the world itself. The fourth approach was to hypothesize that God works at the quantum level of nature, determining otherwise indeterminate processes. By means of proper orchestration of countless micro-events, God produces special effects in the macro-world. All of the approaches were criticized severely, but the one whose criticisms seemed not to be fatal was the one involving quantum physics—

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‘quantum divine action.’ The theory that God acts by determining otherwise indeterminate quantum events is initially appealing due to the fact that quantum events obey only statistical laws, and there is no way to violate a statistical law. Proponents of this view include myself, Robert Russell, George Ellis, and Thomas Tracy (all in Russell 1995); earlier proponents were William Pollard (1958) and Donald McKay (1978). Note that this move can have an ad hoc flavor: here is an undetermined area of physics, so God’s action can be inserted here without violating any deterministic laws. My own argument for quantum divine action is based primarily on a theological argument. Most Christians accept the claim that God is both transcendent—beyond creation—and also immanent within all creatures, and this necessarily includes the most basic entities and processes known by physics. It has been common at least since Augustine’s day to define God’s action in all entities in terms of three concepts: sustenance, cooperation, and governance. Typical immanentist theories of divine action can easily account for sustenance and cooperation: God constantly keeps all things in being and cooperates with their natural causal powers. But now we are back to the original problem of divine action: what can we make of God’s governance if all entities are already governed by the laws of nature? This is where quantum indeterminacy is relevant, since these entities and processes are not already determined by laws. So God, immanent within the most basic constituents of physical reality, provides a measure of direction, yet this activity will be invisible to physics since outcomes will be attributable to chance. One of the criticisms of quantum divine action is that if God is working in all quantum processes then God is determining all events, and this would amount to occasionalism. This is a position Aquinas rejected (in contrast, I think, with many Muslim views) because it clashes with the doctrine of creation according to which creation involved making entities with their own causal powers. Notice that this understanding of the operation of the physical world is contrary to Boyle’s and his contemporaries’ drive to understand God as entirely transcendent. It puts God back into matter in a way somewhat akin to the rejected spiritualist tradition described in Section 2. I have been criticized also because it is claimed that my position would deny human free will. My response is that God’s governance is always

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restricted by respecting the natures of creatures. I said above that this theory provides for ‘a measure of governance’ because I am postulating that God works only by determining the what and when of the behavior of quantum-level entities, not interfering with their intrinsic natures. For instance, God does not give electrons positive charges. Further, I argue that while God may affect human thought and imagination, God never acts coercively in human life. By analogy, God never acts coercively in nature. Consequently, my concept of a law of nature is necessarily radically different from the standard account. The laws are not decreed once for all, governing processes from ‘outside.’ Rather the law-like appearance of the world is a consequence of the cumulative actions of God within creatures. Because of the regularity of these actions, it is possible to describe them using representations that we call laws. Thus, for theological reasons, I have come to the conclusion that regularities are results of the natures of entities, not the cause of the natures themselves. This reference to the natures of entities or structures is a theological argument for the main point of the second major research project, ‘The Order Project.’ The director, Nancy Cartwright, summarizes the point by noting that there has been little challenge to the assumption that if God is the source, then nature will be completely ordered, regimented under natural law. In the last decade and a half, however, a quiet revolution in Anglophone philosophic thought about the character of the laws of nature and the order they describe has cast serious doubt on whether the sciences describe a uniformly law-governed world. This questioning of the order of science has come from analyses of successful scientific practice across the disciplines, from fundamental physics through biology to political economy (see Cartwright, 1999; Bechtel, 2008). In philosophy of science it is no longer assumed without question that the order of nature is complete and that its laws are universal and without exception. Note, however, that even without the obstacle of laws of nature in describing possibilities for divine action in the world, there is still the problem of the point of contact between God and world. I have approached it by emphasizing a strong doctrine of divine immanence. Notice, again, though, that this understanding of the operation of the physical world is contrary to Boyle’s and his contemporaries’ drive to understand God as entirely transcendent. It puts God back into matter in a way somewhat akin to the rejected spiritualist tradition’s ‘diffusions of God in the world.’ The physico-theologians made a choice about the very nature of matter, for theological reasons. I have argued that this was a

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fateful move, contributing to a variety of other factors that have led to unbelief and secularization. The resulting sharp separation of science from religion, along with the widespread rejection of religion, means that there can be no turning back at this point: no theological arguments for a different understanding of matter will ever make a difference to the scientific understanding of matter. However, I want to close by quoting a late colleague of mine at Fuller. Theological ethicist Glen Stassen recently read my account of quantum divine action and wrote rather lyrically about it in his Thicker Jesus (2012). He started his career in physics and was involved in research using a Van de Graaff accelerator to probe nuclear isotopes with protons. His theological interpretation of the research is consistent with the theory of quantum divine action. He and his colleagues were bombarding nuclear isotopes with protons to study their binding forces. The nuclei, he says: … were telling us specific messages about their binding forces and their spins. And they were doing this as if alive. … The nuclei were responding to our questions, speaking our mathematical language, completely understandable, … For me it was an experience of God’s presence—or openness to God’s presence—in the very foundations of physical reality. ... For a person of faith, it means God is doing new things every moment. Our universe is not a stationary machine; it is dynamic … at its very base. … The nuclei of the atoms, the very building blocks of all nature, are each ‘deciding’ at every moment whether to stay the same or whether to split up and go different ways. They are … responding to God’s will! (2012, 84, 85)

So I suppose that work of the sort I and others have been doing can only be understood as an apologetic strategy within the Christian community. And this seems true for any conclusions about divine action that may emerge from the Order Project. But this is not entirely insignificant. Both projects, the quantum divine action project and the Order Project, offer new starting points for theologians finally to put their own house in order at the end of the Newtonian age.

Conclusion Note the irony that one of the most basic concepts underlying modern science, the laws of nature, was developed for (Christian, Calvinist) theological reasons, but this very concept turned out to have serious negative consequences for religion. So it is a hopeful sign that alternative

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concepts of the order of nature are in the process of being developed, in part with an eye toward undoing unintended damages to religion.

References Bechtel, W. (2004). Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neurosciences. New York: Routledge. Buckley, M. (2004). Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cartwright, N. (1999). The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, G.F.R. (1995). “Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action: The Nexus of Interaction,” in Russell et al. (eds.) Chaos and Complexity, 359-396. Gaukroger, S. (2006). The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford: Clarendon. Golshani, M. (2004). “Comment on ‘A Religiously Partisan Science? Islamic and Christian Perspectives,’” in Theology and Science 3, 1 (March): 88-91. Hebblethwaite, B. and Henderson, E. eds. (1990). Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer. Edinburgh: T & T. Clark. Klaaren, E. (1977). Religious Origins of Modern Science. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Lindbeck, G. (1984). The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia: Westminster. MacIntyre, A. and P. Ricoeur (1969). The Religious Significance of Atheism. New York: Columbia. MacKay, D. (1978). Science, Chance, and Providence. Oxford: Oxford University. Matson, W. (1987). A New History of Philosophy. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Murphy, N. (1995). “Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s Ass and Schrödinger’s Cat,” in Russell et al. (eds.) Chaos and Complexity, 325-358. —. (1996). Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. Murphy, N. and W.S. Brown (2007). Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University.

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Peacocke, A. (1995). “God’s Interaction with the World: The Implications of Deterministic ‘Chaos’ and of Interconnected and Interdependent Complexity,” in Russell et al. (eds.) Chaos and Complexity, 263-87. Polkinghorne, J. (1995). “The Metaphysics of Divine Action,” in Russell et al. (eds.) Chaos and Complexity 147-156. Pollard, W. (1958). Chance and Providence: God’s Action in a World Governed by Scientific Laws. London: Faber and Faber. Russell, R.J., N. Murphy and A.R. Peacocke, eds. (1995). Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Press. Schleiermacher, F. ([1799] 1988). On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, transl. R. Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University. —. ([1821-22] 1928). The Christian Faith, H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (eds.). Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Shultenover, D. (1981). George Tyrrell: In Search of Catholicism Shepherdstown: Patmos. Stassen, G. (2012). A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Stenmark, M. (2004). “A Religiously Partisan Science? Islamic and Christian Perspectives,” Theology and Science 3, 1 (March) 23-38. Stout, J. (1981). The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. —. (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Tracy, T. (1995). “Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps,” in Russell et al. (eds.) Chaos and Complexity, 289-324. Turner, J. (1985). Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

CHAPTER THREE NATURALISM VERSUS THEISM: WHAT IS AT STAKE? MIKAEL STENMARK

What is naturalism and how is it related to science and religion? Are there different kinds of naturalism that we need to distinguish from each other, and what should we think about naturalism in the end? Are there any feasible alternatives to it? In short, what is at stake in the naturalism debate? These are the questions I shall try to address in this essay.

Different Kinds of Naturalism I shall, as a first approximation, take ‘naturalism’ as the most general name for any position that maintains that there is nothing beyond or besides nature. So, the root thesis of what I shall call ‘generic naturalism’ would be: (N1) There is nothing beyond or besides nature, and consequently everything that exists is a part of nature.

Naturalism is a philosophical view about the nature of reality, but also contains a view of our knowledge of reality. It is associated with the natural sciences and has both weaker and stronger ways of being construed. Nonetheless, naturalism comes in essentially two forms–at least if we look at the philosophical debate. The stronger form of naturalism is often called scientific naturalism or scientism and it contains essentially two claims: (SN1) The only things and properties that really exist are the ones that the natural sciences can discover.

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(SN2) The only kind of knowledge we can have is the one provided by the natural sciences.

The first claim is an ontological claim saying that ultimately reality is what the natural sciences say it is, and nothing more. So we could reformulate (N1) to capture this element by restating it as follows: (N1*) There is nothing beyond or besides scientific nature, and consequently everything that exists is a part of scientific nature.

The second is an epistemological claim about the limits of knowledge or justification: the things we believe are, at bottom, knowable or justifiable only through the methods of natural science. It is of course possible to embrace only the epistemic thesis, leaving it open whether there might exist things, processes or properties that science cannot discover; but I think it would be misleading to call such a view naturalism, whereas it could still be named scientism. We must not confuse scientific naturalism (SN1 and SN2) with methodological naturalism, which today constrains science. This, roughly, is the view that scientific methods should confine themselves to natural explanations without assuming the existence or nonexistence of God, gods, or a spiritual dimension of reality. Let me give a few instances of people who embrace scientific naturalism or quite similar views. We have philosophers who maintain that: “science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not” (Sellars, 1963, 173) and that “the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything; that science’s description of the world is correct in its fundamentals; and that when ‘complete,’ what science tells us will not be surprisingly different from what it tells us today” (Rosenberg, 2011, 6-7). Similar views are expressed by natural scientists. In his essay, ‘The Limitless Power of Science,’ Peter Atkins advocates the ‘omnicompetence of science’ and believes that “science, with its currently successful pursuit of universal competence … should be acknowledged king” (Atkins, 1995, 132). There are, however, numerous kinds of things and properties that do seem to exist but are not obviously within the purview of the natural sciences, such as values, purposes, beauty, evil, love, intentions, beliefs, reasons, responsibility, freedom, agency, consciousness, and social institutions such as marriage, laws, money, universities and countries. Perhaps you find it surprising that I have included social institutions and social facts, but one could argue that where we can see dollar bills, science can only see

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cellulose fibers with green and grey stains (Searle, 1995, 4). Likewise, where science can only see masses of metal in linear trajectories, we can see cars being driven along the road. Unreflectively, dollar bills and cars seem as natural to us as stones, water and trees, but they’re not! Indeed, if anything, it is harder to see objects as just natural phenomena, stripped of their functional social roles, but that is what the natural sciences are doing–and, strictly speaking, is solely what they can see and describe. There are basically two strategies that scientific naturalists can choose to adopt with regard to these social and mental phenomena: either they must somehow be described by science (the transformation-reduction strategy) or they must be explained away by science (the elimination strategy). Rosenberg would be an example of a scientific naturalist who opts for the latter alternative. He maintains that: “There is only one way to acquire knowledge, and science’s way is it. The research program this ‘ideology’ imposes has no room for purpose, for meaning, for value, or for stories. It cannot therefore accommodate the humanities as disciplines of inquiry, domains of knowledge. … the humanities are a scientific dead end … When it comes to real understanding, the humanities are nothing we have to take seriously, except as symptoms” (2011, 306-307). Values, meaning, purpose, love and beauty, as studied by the humanities, are illusions: the natural sciences have ruled them out. Edward O. Wilson, on the other hand, would argue that ethics and the humanities could and should be transformed. He wants to send the philosophers on sabbatical and let the biologists take over: “Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized” (1975, 562). Thus Wilson advocates the transformation-reduction strategy, at least when it comes to ethics and values. Other naturalists regard the worldview of scientific naturalists as too reductionist and embrace a more liberal form of naturalism. Mario de Caro and David MacArthur maintain that “all attempts to reduce, eliminate, or reconceive these concepts [such as intentionality, agency, freedom, meaning, reference, rationality, and personal identity] in terms of supposedly more scientifically legitimate notions do not just fail–they entirely miss the kind of importance that these notions have in our lives and experiences” (2004, 16-17). We can say that liberal naturalists typically reject both the exclusively scientific conception of nature and the exclusively scientific conception of knowledge, as embraced by scientific naturalists. Although they have respect for the results of the natural

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sciences and believe that these sciences provide paradigmatic examples of knowledge and rationality, they still believe that there are things we can know by means other than the methods of the natural sciences. They believe that things such as values, norms, meaning, reasons, intentions, and beliefs exist, and that we can know that these things exist, or at least be rationally entitled to believe that they exist. These things cannot be discovered by the methods of the natural sciences and cannot in that sense be naturalized. We can therefore identify two main claims of liberal naturalism and formulate them in contrast to scientific naturalism: (LN1) The notion of nature must be extended beyond scientific nature in order to fully capture social reality, mental events and normative dimensions of human life. (LN2) There are forms of knowledge other than the one provided by the natural sciences, such as the forms of knowledge which we can find in the social sciences, the humanities, jurisprudence, and in everyday life.

So (LN1) says that there are different modes of being, or aspects of nature, some detectable by the natural sciences, others by disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, literary studies and religious studies; whilst others do not require the existence of any academic discipline at all, since they are detectable by human reason in everyday life. These ways of being may or may not supervene on scientific nature, but they are not reducible to the latter and are of the utmost importance in coming to understand nature as it manifests through human life and experience. Moreover, (LN2) says that we can know things and be rationally entitled to believe things about these aspects or dimensions of human life. There are things that exist, or there are features of nature that the sciences cannot fully discover and consequently cannot know much about. So, there are other different ways of knowing things. There are other sources of knowledge than those provided by the sciences. Again, if we want to reformulate (N1) to capture the ontology of liberal naturalists we can perhaps state it as follows: (N1**) There is nothing beyond or besides either scientific or social nature, and consequently everything that exists is a part of scientific or social nature.

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But if you believe these things, why call yourself a ‘naturalist’ at all? I think de Caro and MacArthur give the answer when they say that naturalism originally entails “the rejection of supernatural entities such as gods, demons, souls and ghosts,” including “the Judeo-Christian God and the immaterial soul” (2004, 2-3). This ontological commitment is something both scientific and liberal naturalists have in common. So, we need to add to the root thesis of naturalism í that there is nothing beyond or besides nature, and consequently everything that exists is a part of nature í the thesis: (N2) There is no God, no all-encompassing mind, or any other gods, nor are there any entities in nature such as ghosts, spirits, or immaterial human souls.

Let us call the conjunction of these two theses generic naturalism. Another way to put it is to say that since (N1) is notoriously difficult to define in a precise way, it is often explicated instead in a negative way, in terms of (N2). But, notice that if we focus only on the root theses (N1) and (N2), or on generic naturalism, we would fail to identify and distinguish two of the most important rival versions of naturalism: scientific and liberal naturalism.

Naturalism and the Religions of the World It is, of course, thesis (N2) which has the greatest implications for the religions of the world. To start with, it implies that naturalists reject the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These theists typically believe that God is the creator of nature. But nature is all there is, so naturalists have to be atheists. They cannot í because of (N2) í be theists, nor can they, for that matter, embrace agnosticism. Moreover, polytheistic religions are also precluded. So, for instance, those understandings of Hinduism which are polytheistic, focusing on the great pantheon of Hindu gods and not seeing those gods as manifestations of one supreme God, are also incompatible with naturalism. Generic naturalism is, however, stronger than atheism in this sense: as a naturalist you do not merely deny that God or gods exists, you also reject belief in disembodied souls, spirits, or ghosts. Quentin Smith further notes that other “examples of hypothesized supernatural realities that govern or create in some sense the universe [whose existence the naturalists deny] are the governing mind posited by the Stoics or the ‘Absolute I’ posited by the early Fichte” (2001, 202). We could perhaps also add to this list

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Plato’s Idea of the Good, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, or Hegel’s Absolute. Hence, the existence of entities or realities such as Plato’s Idea of the Good, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, Hegel’s Absolute and the like are also denied by both scientific and liberal naturalists. While none of the major world religions are animistic (though they might contain animistic elements), most other religions are. Animism is, roughly, the idea that there is a pervading life and will in nature: a belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. Animists believe everything to be both material and spiritual in nature; but they do not necessarily believe in God or gods. Ethnic or indigenous religions would be the world’s sixth largest religious tradition if considered as a whole. To illustrate, the Sami of Scandinavia propitiate natural spirits and can address them in particular objects, such as stones or posts, which the Sami set up in auspicious places. The Inuit believe that animal spirits exist independent of bodies and are reborn, whereby precautions must be undertaken before, during and after the hunt so that that an offended animal will not later lead its companions away, causing the hunter and his family to starve. These are spirits that are part of nature and which people can interact with in a meaningful way, whether or not the high god(s) be taken to exist or be worthy of devotion, rites or prayer. Ethnic or indigenous religions are rejected by naturalists because of their animistic elements. Naturalists reject what we can call a deep notion of nature which sees these spirits or certain spiritual properties of living things as natural, and not as supernatural, phenomena. So, it would not be appropriate to say that ethnic or indigenous religions are ‘naturalistic,’ seeing that neither the restricted notion of nature embraced by scientific naturalists nor the more inclusive notion of liberal naturalists allows these elements to be a part of nature. In the naturalist’s terminology, these entities are to be classified as supernatural, just like the God whom theists believe to be the creator of nature. Yet, neither classification is really appropriate or unbiased: the animists believe that these spirits are indeed a part of nature, and the theists believe that God is the creator of nature. So, in the second case it would be more accurate to call it (if for some reason ‘theism’ is not good enough) ‘pre-naturalism.’ It is pre-natural since it contains the idea that God existed before nature.

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Religious Naturalism It does not follow, however, that one could not be a religious naturalist, and indeed a number of people involved in the science-religion dialogue favor such an alternative. Notice, first, that the two camps we found within naturalism in general can be found among religious naturalists as well. Donald A. Crosby, himself a religious naturalist, writes that: “Some religious naturalists insist that science alone, especially as exemplified in the natural sciences, is competent to provide objective and reliable descriptions of nature. … Others argue that other perspectives, such as those of the humanities, the arts, and the experiences of daily life, should be called upon to complement the natural sciences and to do justice to the fullness of nature in its multiple aspects” (2007, 673). Some religious naturalists are advocates of scientific naturalism, others of liberal naturalism. Either way, they accept generic naturalism (N1 and N2). Typically, they take science to have undermined traditional religious views of the world (such as the ones we discussed above), but it might also be our evolving moral sensibility or it might be philosophical arguments such as the argument from evil that play an essential part in their case against these traditional religious views of the world. What is it then that makes religious naturalists religious? What is it that distinguishes them from non-religious naturalists? Here are a couple of suggestions. Some religious naturalists continue to participate in, say, Christian or Sami practices and rituals but interpret the Christian talk about God, salvation and heaven, or the Sami talk about natural spirits and shamans, as metaphors for things or properties that are real within the boundaries of a naturalistic ontology, that is, are a proper part of scientific nature (if they embrace scientific naturalism) or are a proper part of either scientific or social nature (if they embrace liberal naturalism). The Christian theologian Gordon D. Kaufman would be one example of this kind of religious naturalist. He writes: Our symbol ‘God,’ heavy with the mythic overtones of our religious traditions, suggests a kind of being–an all-powerful sovereign, creator, and king of the universe–which no longer seems intelligible in our world, and which, moreover, may today deeply offend our moral sensibilities. To worship such a God, or to attempt to understand human existence in relationship to such a God, may thus seem to require a fundamental compromise of our moral and intellectual integrity …. Yet we have no other symbol in our western traditions which directs us so definitely toward an ultimate point of reference in terms of which all being and life,

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meaning and value, can be understood. … God is the corrective of—that is, ‘God’ is the name for that, whatever it might be, which serves to transform and correct—all our relativities, biases, and corruptions. (1993, 4, 7-8)

What characterizes religious naturalists of this sort is that they believe that: (RN1) Religious discourse is through and through figurative or metaphorical and says nothing about what is beyond the limits of nature, but still provides an indispensable means when it comes to overcoming obstacles and obtaining human flourishing and an ecologically sustainable world.

A non-religious naturalist would then reject this claim. But other religious naturalists think that at least the symbol of God points in the wrong direction. It should be given up, because it stubbornly connotes–despite all efforts at revision–a supernatural being that created the world out of nothing and is required to sustain its existence (Crosby, 2007, 674). Crosby therefore suggests that the core idea is that: “Religious naturalists find religious meaning, values, and importance solely in nature or in some aspect of the natural order. The antithesis of religious naturalism is any kind of supernaturalism, i.e. belief in supernatural beings, principles, or powers thought to reside in a supernatural realm. Nature and its ongoing changes are metaphysically ultimate for religious naturalists. … Nature in some shape or form is all there is now, ever has been, and ever shall be” (2007, 672). On this reading, what distinguishes religious naturalists from non-religious naturalists is rather that the former, but not the latter, maintain that: (RN2) Religious meaning, value, or significance can be attributed to or found in nature or in some aspect of the natural order.

Loyal Rue holds a view similar to this. He says that the central core of religious naturalism is that: “Nature is the sacred object of humanity’s ultimate concern,” and he believes that what characterizes religious naturalists is their reverence and awe before nature, and their love of nature (2005, 366). There is a way to live in harmony with the universe or nature, rather than merely in it, and this is achieved if we let nature become our ultimate concern. So, certain religious attitudes are added to naturalism, and it is this extra element that justifies the qualifier ‘religious’ before the word ‘naturalism,’ even when all God-talk or traditional religious discourse is rejected.

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The problem with this type of religious naturalism, as I see it, is as follows. Consider, for instance, that Richard Dawkins, the well-known advocate of non-religious naturalism or atheism, is also known for expressing wonder at living things, and for admonishing us to recognize that science itself inspires such wonder (1998). Dawkins maintains that real science does not diminish the enchantment of nature, but rather enhances the poetry of experience by revealing the workings of the natural world in their full wonder. Dawkins says that, when it comes to feeling awe about living things, he has more in common with the Reverend William Paley than with atheists such as Ayer and Hume. Nature, he thinks, is worthy of our reverence. But why should we not therefore classify him as a religious naturalist? If religious naturalists are to be known for their reverence of nature, Dawkins seems to qualify as one. How could this be the case if he is a non-religious naturalist? It appears that religious naturalists have work to do here to distinguish their view from non-religious naturalism. There is, however, a different understanding of naturalism to be found in the science-religion dialogue, and perhaps also beyond it. I think Willem B. Drees captures it well when he says that naturalism can be used as “a label for a worldview that follows the natural sciences as its major guide for understanding the world we live in and are a part of” (2006, 110). This view is not implied by the sciences but is, he thinks, a reasonable extrapolation therefrom. Science is not the only guide for understanding reality but is the most important and valid guide. One starts with natural science, one privileges it, and then one sees what beliefs, values and attitudes in religion, morality, politics, everyday life and so forth one should revise, reject or retain as they are. That privileging of science is what such naturalists are doing. We can call this view epistemic priority naturalism. Its core idea is that: (EPN) Naturalism follows the natural sciences as its major, but not its only, guide for understanding the world we live in and are a part of.

Religious epistemic priority naturalists, in contrast to non-religious ones, think that something of truly religious significance can be kept after religion has gone through such a process of naturalization. It is more a matter of methodological advice, of recommending a starting point, and what to privilege epistemologically when developing one’s worldview. And in cases of conflict or tension, it is a matter of restraining oneself to a particular naturalistic ontology. This is so because it is compatible, in Drees’ view, with a religious conviction that there is more than nature,

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whereas naturalism is traditionally perceived as the claim that there is nothing but nature (2006, 108). As such, Drees thinks that accepting the whole natural world as the creation of a timeless, transcendent God is consistent with naturalism, since the “naturalistically minded theist would claim that the sciences are explanatory within the world, but not explanatory of the world as such” (2006, 116). Contrast this kind of epistemological religious naturalism with Nicholas Wolterstorff’s equilibrium view. His advice is that in the attempt to unify one’s worldview and “bring our faith and our science into satisfactory equilibrium, the revisions required can go either way. Sometimes the best strategy is to revise something in our complex of Christian belief; but sometimes the best strategy is, on the contrary, to revise something in what science presents to us” (1996, 103). Neither science nor religion should, on this view, be privileged. It is interesting and worth pointing out that not all non-religious liberal naturalists, in contrast to scientific naturalists, would follow Drees’ naturalistic advice and embrace epistemic priority naturalism. Thomas Nagel for instance maintains that: The existence of conscious minds and their access to the evident truths of ethics and mathematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our place in it has yet to explain. They are clearly part of what is the case, just as much as the data about the physical world provided by perception and the conclusions of scientific reasoning about what would best explain those data. We cannot just assume that the latter category of thought has priority over the others, so that what it cannot explain is not real [as scientific naturalists think]. (2012, 31)

Nagel says that he agrees with Sharon Street in that an evolutionary selfunderstanding would almost certainly require us to give up moral realism, that is, the natural conviction that our moral judgments are true or false independent of our beliefs. This, however, he takes as grounds for questioning parts of evolutionary theory in spite of the scientific consensus in its favor and not, in contrast with Street, as a good or even decisive reason to reject moral realism (Nagel 2012, 29). A similar, non-conformist equilibrium view seems to be fairly common within the humanities, when it comes to tensions between their theories of human nature and human culture and those of natural scientists. Many of them would prefer to call themselves ‘humanists’ rather than ‘naturalists’

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and defend a humanistic rather than a naturalistic worldview. So, I think Drees perhaps points in the right direction in that naturalists privilege natural science and when they stop doing so it is questionable whether they really should be called, or call themselves, naturalists. Naturalism is, I think, best understood as the philosophical companion to natural science, and the question is how far you can deviate from that companionship and still be a naturalist.

What is at Stake in the Naturalism Debate? What should we then think about naturalism? Should it be an essential part of our worldview? Perhaps, the question is not whether the natural or physical sciences should be a part of our worldview, but whether we should embrace the ontological and epistemological add-on to science, the naturalistic Weltanschauung, that seems to be so irresistible to the secular Western intellectual elite today, or at least to those among them who are so deeply impressed by the natural sciences. What is the alternative after all, and how could we make a rational and informed choice on this matter? At stake in the naturalism debate are, at least, two questions: (1) is science the only reliable path to knowledge and understanding of reality, or is it, at least, to be given epistemic priority over all other sources of knowledge or modes of understanding? And (2) is there no more to reality than that which the natural sciences can discover? In short, what kind of epistemology and ontology should we accept? My view is that even if we merely assume that science offers us the most reliable and advanced form of knowledge we can have about the world (that is, epistemic priority naturalism), we will run into trouble. One major problem we face is that science is not particularly helpful–it could even be destructive–when it comes to knowledge and understanding of interpersonal relationships.1 Think of the stereotypical scientist (made fun of in comedies) who has limited, or no social skills, and little capacity to understand complex relationships among people. This caricature merely sees people as you would see things if your only resources were the pronouncements of science and mathematics (treating them as objects and lacking the means to take into account that they are subjects too), and who therefore lacks an essential body of knowledge to navigate the social world. Of course, most scientists are not like this, but they are not like

 1

I discuss other problems with scientific naturalism or scientism in Stenmark (2001).

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such a stereotype because in their social lives–whether or not they are aware of it–they rely on other means for obtaining knowledge than those offered by the natural sciences. What worries me is that scientific naturalism, which dominates the scene, seems to imply that this stereotypical scientist should actually be our norm, and it implicitly gives us the recommendation that the political leaders of the world should listen merely to him (yes, the stereotype is male), since genuine knowledge cannot really be found anywhere else. So, it should be said that too much science, to the exclusion of other sources of knowledge and understanding, is not just mistaken, but actually harmful and dangerous. I think it is enough, epistemologically speaking, that we respect science within its domain or area of expertise. We don’t have to take science to be the paradigm example of knowledge or rationality, and we certainly should not think that the only genuine knowledge about reality is to be gained through science and science alone. A purely scientific world would be an inhumane world. As such, I think there are both good epistemological and political reasons why we should in the end reject scientific naturalism. What is at stake in the naturalist debate, ontologically speaking, is how we perceive the fundamental character of the world. If naturalism is correct, then the world, at bottom, is wholly impersonal. Matter (or physical particles or the like) lies at the root of everything. Then, life and mind, or consciousness, is merely a consequence of physical laws. The polar opposite to naturalism, to this matter-first view, affirms instead an ontology in which consciousness is taken to be at the root of everything. Such a mind-first view contains the core idea that mind, rather than physical law, provides the fundamental level of explanation of everything, including the explanation of the basic and universal physical laws themselves. This view is familiarly expressed as theism in the philosophical literature. The basic idea is that there was in the beginning (or has always been) something with mind, namely God, and God is the creator or the source of everything that exists. The idea is that there is an all-encompassing mind in addition to the minds of human beings and other conscious organisms, and this mind is the foundation of the existence of the universe and its structure, and of our existence and nature. Mind is central to the story of reality and is not just an accidental product arising fortuitously some billions of years into the narrative; it is something that somehow guided the process from the start. An all-encompassing mind is the ground of all being.

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There is thus, according to such an outlook, a natural harmony between our consciousness, even self-consciousness, and the fundamental character of reality, and you cannot quite think of yourself as leading a merely human life. Instead, it becomes a life in the sight of God or the allencompassing mind. What such a life implies in more detail is understood in different ways by the religions of the world. Paul Draper clarifies the two alternatives when he writes: “Reality has (at least) two parts, the physical and the mental, and neither is reducible to the other (though one might be merely a property of the other). Next, it is very likely, I believe, that either the mental world ultimately explains the physical or vice versa. One world is very probably a product of the other” (2002, 208). So, theism is an alternative to naturalism or, if you prefer a different terminology, the mind-first view is the polar opposite of the matter-first view, and either the mental world ultimately explains the physical world, or vice versa. Should one then be a naturalist or a theist? Which ultimate explanation or account of the world is better justified? So far I have only been talking about naturalism and theism or the matterfirst and the mind-first view–but that is not religion. A religion such as Christianity (and we could tell similar stories of the other world religions) does not arise and does not continue to exist in order to explain particular phenomena in nature or the world beyond, or to show that the mental world ultimately explains the physical world. It rather arises from experiences of God’s presence in people’s lives through Jesus Christ and because it offers a path from sin, suffering and evil to salvation, healing and human flourishing. This is something Christians today still think is of profound importance, and so this tradition is alive and well. God is taken by Christians (and of course by other faith communities too) to be the supreme object of worship and prayer, and not an ontological hypothesis or a deep philosophical explanation of the nature of reality. Believing in God is a commitment to a self-transforming way of living in the world, of seeking to know, love and respond to a supreme reality. Whereas the goal of scientific and philosophical inquiry is to explain what is going on in the world and determine what kinds of things ultimately exist, the goal of a religion such as Christianity is rather to transform people’s lives in response to an encounter with a divine reality (Stenmark, 2012, 63f). To put it simply, Christianity (or religion) is not an explanatory enterprise like science and philosophy, but a soteriological one.

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But if your self-understanding when it comes to religion is along these lines, if you have what I will call a ‘traditional religious sensibility’–the answer is still pretty straightforward. You would for religious reasons embrace theism or the mind-first view and reject naturalism or the matterfirst view simply because it accords much better with your prephilosophical religious point of view. Of course, if you found out that there are strong philosophical or scientific reasons to embrace naturalism, you might reconsider, but naturalism would not be your spontaneous first choice. But suppose you don’t have a traditional religious sensibility, how should you think then? Perhaps you are deeply impressed by the natural sciences but are still at least open to the possibility that there might be more to reality than what the sciences can and will discover? You realize that we face a fundamental divide in worldviews here, and you are inclined to think that probably Draper is right in that either the mental world ultimately explains the physical or vice versa: either matter or mind lies at the root of everything. How should you then proceed? Should naturalism be an essential part of your worldview? Must the secular Western intellectual elite’s choice of naturalism over theism be irresistible for you, or not? The core issue seems to be how to understand ourselves: how do we fit in? And this is a real challenge for naturalism. John Searle, himself a naturalist, states the challenge in this way: “How can we square this selfconception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational etc., agents with a [naturalistic] universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, non-rational, brute physical particles?” (2007, 4-5). Searle’s hope is that at least parts of this self-conception can be preserved in a naturalistic worldview. Paul Churchland is not nearly as optimistic. He thinks that: “The important point about [the naturalistic interpretation of] the standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcomes of a purely physical process. … If this is the correct account of our origins, then there seems neither need, nor room, to fit any non-physical substances or properties into our theoretical account of ourselves. We are creatures of matter. And we should learn to live with that fact” (1984, 21). So the question is whether the ontology of naturalism is rich enough to accommodate our natural selfconception of ourselves or whether, in the end, it forces a naturalist to partially or completely abandon it.

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On the other hand, the ontology of theism or the mind-first view seems certainly to be rich enough to include such a self-conception. Anyway, in a theistic universe the existence of persons is nothing surprising. If an allencompassing mind is the ground of all being then the existence of creatures such as us, with the abilities we have, fits neatly into the picture. It is not that such a worldview requires the existence of more limited minds and intelligences than God’s. For all we know, God could have created a universe of pure matter, but if consciousness is the root of everything, then the existence of mental states like thought, reasoning, and evaluation, which have their limited beginnings in a few other species but are fully exemplified by humans, is not a mystery. Our natural selfconception however is not something that fits easily into a naturalistic universe; a universe in which matter or elementary particles is at the root of everything; a world which is at bottom wholly impersonal. Whatever (on the grounds of good common sense) we take ourselves to be, it seems to fit better with a theistic than a naturalistic worldview. On such a view, there is a natural harmony between our consciousness, even selfconsciousness, and the fundamental character of reality, but (and this might be the sticking-point) you cannot then quite think of yourself as leading a merely human life. Instead it becomes a life in the sight of God or the all-encompassing mind. However, as Thomas Nagel points out, the thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. He believes that this is one manifestation of a fear of religion that has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life: “The priority given to evolutionary naturalism in the face of its implausible conclusions about other subjects is due, I think, to the secular consensus that this is the only form of external understanding of ourselves that provides an alternative to theism …” and theism ought to be avoided at all costs (Nagel, 2012, 29). But, I would say, that “you don’t have to be afraid of theistic religion; it comes, after all, in many colors!” The price you pay, though, is that you cannot then quite think of yourself as leading a merely human life. Instead it becomes a life in the sight of God or the all-encompassing mind.

References Atkins, P. (1995). “The Limitless Power of Science.” In J. Cornwell (ed.), Nature’s Imagination. The Frontiers of Scientific Vision. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Caro, Mario de and David MacArthur (eds.) (2004). Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Churchland, P. (1984). Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Crosby, D. A. (2007). “Religious Naturalism.” In Chad Meister and Paul Copan (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge. Dawkins, R. (1998). Unweaving the Rainbow. London: Penguin Books. Draper, P. (2002). “Seeking but not Believing: Confessions of a Practical Agnostic.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (eds.), Divine Hiddenness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drees, W. B. (2006). “Religious Naturalism and Science.” In Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaufman, G. D. (1993). In Face of Mystery. Boston: Harvard University Press. Nagel, T. (2012). Mind and Cosmos. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenberg, A. (2011). The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Rue, L. (2005). Religion is not about God. New Brunswick, Nj.: Rutgers University Press. Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press. —. (2007). Freedom and Neurobiology. New York: Columbia University Press. Sellars, W. (1963). “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” In Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge. Smith, Q. (2001). “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism”, Philo, 4. Stenmark, M. (2001). Scientism: Science, Ethics and Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate. —. (2012). “How to Relate Christian Faith and Science.” In Jim Stump and Alan Padgett (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Wolterstorff, N. (1996). “Theology and Science: Listening to each Other.” In W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman (eds.), Religion and Science. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER FOUR RELIGIOUS NATURALISM: CONTRADICTION IN TERMS OR FUTURE SPIRITUAL UGGERNAUT WESLEY J. WILDMAN

Introduction To some, the phrase ‘religious naturalism’ sounds oxymoronic, a contradiction in terms (for example, see relevant parts of Beilby, 2002; Craig and Moreland, 2000; Goetz and Taliaferro, 2008; Plantinga, 2011; Rea, 2004). The two-fold point of this chapter is first to indicate the sense in which religious naturalism is a conceptually coherent philosophical position, and second to ask whether there is any pathway to a world in which religious naturalism becomes a dominant view instead of the niche outlook it is at present. What are the intuitions that lead thoughtful people to dismiss religious naturalism out of hand? One such intuition springs from assumptions about the common-sense content of naturalism. Virtually all forms of naturalism reject disembodied intentionality, awareness, and agency—no ghosts or gods, demons or angels, ghosts or jinns, ancestor spirits or bodhisattvas. Meanwhile, some thinkers define religion in terms of supernaturalism, in the specific sense of disembodied intentionality, awareness, and agency that religious naturalist rejects (e.g. Dawkins, 2006; Dennett, 2006; Shults, 2014). This combination of views certainly yields a clean contradiction. Yet there are other ways of defining religion that do not make supernaturalism a necessary condition, and those alternatives are both more in tune with the scholarly study of religion and potentially open to consistency with antisupernaturalist naturalism. Both Dawkins and Dennett acknowledge that

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their definitions of religion as necessarily supernaturalist don’t capture everything happening under the umbrella of religion but insist on that definition in order to isolate what they think of as the corrupt core of religion, the object of their attacks. Another intuition that makes religious naturalism seem oxymoronic derives from assumptions about the philosophical content of naturalism. David Ray Griffin’s (2004) well-known argument about types of naturalism summarizes one such set of assumptions, following a strategy set forth by William James in his attack on what he called medical materialism (James, 1902). Suppose naturalism is assumed to imply a metaphysics that is some or all of sensationist (senses are the sole means of perception), atheistic (there is no ultimate reality), and materialistic (every aspect of reality is wholly material). Any two of these render compatibility with virtually everything deserving the name ‘religion’ deeply problematic. But naturalism need not affirm all or any of these doctrines. Griffin himself rejects all three of them in articulating his process naturalism, arguing for a form of naturalism that is prehensionist, panentheist, and panexperientialist. Many articulations of religious naturalism follow Griffin in rejecting narrow naturalistic doctrines in favour of alternatives, or else they creatively reinterpret them, in search of a type of naturalism that can sensibly be called ‘religious.’ A third intuition springs from famous theological rejections of naturalism. Paul Tillich was a renowned Christian theologian who closely approached the position of religious naturalism (see Tillich [1951-1963]). He affirmed God understood as ground-of-being and rejected both supra-naturalism– the idea that there is a highest being corresponding to the word ‘God’–and super-naturalism–suspensions or violations of the categories and dynamic structures of Being–which jointly rule out disembodied awareness, intention, and agency. That certainly approaches the territory of religious naturalism. Yet Tillich refused to apply the term ‘naturalism’ to his view. While he appreciated naturalism in most respects, he explained his rejection of the term with reference to the alleged failure of all naturalisms to register the infinite qualitative difference between nature and its ground (i.e., for Tillich, God). If Tillich thinks naturalism and theologically robust religious worldviews are at odds, why bother to pursue religious naturalism? In reply to Tillich, however, we must ask how much transcendence is really enough for religion. Maybe Tillich demanded more transcendence than necessary. Alternatively, perhaps naturalism can be made open to infinite transcendence, or at least in-principle unlimited

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transcendence. Along either path lies a meaningful way to position naturalism as a religious worldview. Each of these three powerful intuitions can evidently be met with a reasonable reply that keeps the conversation about religious naturalism open. If we reject the supposedly necessarily supernaturalist character of religion as well as the supposedly necessarily sensationist, atheistic, and materialistic character of naturalism, and if we overcome Tillich’s protests over too little transcendence, how might we describe religious naturalism in a compelling and consistent way?

An Emerging Consensus on Religious Naturalism In recent years I have been teaching a graduate seminar on varieties of religious naturalism in which we work through the key works of this growing literature (Berry, 1999; 2009; Clark, 2007; Cohen, 1958; Corrington, 1992; 1994; 1996; 1997; 2013; Crosby, 2002; 2008; Dewey, 1934; Eddy, 2003; Goodenough, 1998; Gottlieb, 1996; Griffin, 2004; Habermas, 2008; Hardwick, 1996; Hogue, 2008; 2010; Johnston, 2009; 2011; Murry, 2006; Peacocke, 2007; Peden, 1994; Peters, 2002; Raymo, 2008; Reich, 1998; Ritchie, 2008; Rue, 2004; Santayana, 2009; Shook and Kurts, 2009; Stone, 2008; White, 2008; Whitehead, 1996; Wildman, 2009; 2011; 2014; Forthcoming-a; Forthcoming-b). In the process, I have identified seven principles that express an emerging consensus on the conceptual content of religious naturalism. They express this consensus in a family-resemblance way, in the sense that most but possibly not all principles are affirmed in every contemporary expression of religious naturalism, and many expressions of religious naturalism affirm all seven principles (see Wittgenstein, 1953). Principle #1: Nature is sacred in its beauty, terror, scale, stochasticity, complexity, and evolutionary change. Principle #2: The sacredness of nature expresses the self-transcendent potential of nature, including through natural creatures with self-awareness and moral imagination such as human beings. Principle #3: The sacredness of nature imposes moral obligations upon us to understand, appreciate, and preserve the parts of nature we impact, taking responsibility for our creative strategies through increasing compassion and control.

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Principle #4: There is no supernature: no supernatural agents, no supernatural means of knowledge, no supernatural authorizations, and no supernatural deity. Principle #5: Religions encode wisdom about sacred nature but it is often expressed in myths and legends that harden into literal descriptions of reality. Therefore, religious naturalism can affirm traditional religions in some respects and must criticize them in other respects. Principle #6: Human beings are vulnerable to cognitive error, which keeps religious distortions and superstitions alive. Careful education can confer on individuals the ability to recognize and contest these cognitive biases, if they so choose. Principle #7: Religious naturalism will become increasingly attractive and socially viable as plausibility structures are changed by education that corrects cognitive biases, by civilizations that eliminate deprivation conditions, and by centralizing humanist and ecological values in our quest for planetary and species survival. The cumulative affirmation here is that naturalism, understood in a particular way—namely, as affirming most or all of the seven principles in the list above—can be religiously relevant and can define a life world for people drawn to it. It is arguably this religious understanding of naturalism, so richly represented in the literature, that should be the target of analysis and critique, rather than the simplistic, misleading, or religiously underdetermined alternatives. It is also this religiously potent version of naturalism that needs to be formalized, if only to catalyse understanding and to focus relevant critique.

Formalizing Religious Naturalism It is possible to formalize this emerging family-resemblance consensus in such a way as to overcome the intuitions leading to judgments of incoherence, articulate the in-principle-unlimited self-transcendence of nature, centralize humanistic and ecological values, connect with profound religious concepts such as grace and God and suffering and emptiness, resolve the problem of religious diversity, and create the conceptual basis for a spiritual movement that in all likelihood will increase in social viability. Such, at any rate, is my claim. At this point we move from interpreting and summarizing extant literature to a constructive

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formalization of religious naturalism, which is presented here as a complex hypothesis affirming all seven of the principles in the emerging consensus and is crafted to be as open to evaluation and correction as possible. The place to begin a formalization of religious naturalism is with ontology. Here are four (necessarily hypothetical) propositions about religious naturalism. Hypothesis #1 of 4: Naturalism’s Ontological Inventory Hypothesis Awareness, intentionality, and agency are exclusively properties of emergent systems that we call bodies with central nervous systems. Consequently, there is no disembodied awareness, no disembodied agency, and no disembodied intentionality. The contention that there is disembodied awareness, agency, or intentionality is called supernaturalism, and grounds the possibility of beings such as angels, demons, jinns, bodhisattvas, ancestors, spirits, ghosts, and gods. The rejection of supernaturalism in this specific sense is called naturalism, and rules out of reality all such beings, including any deity conceived as an aware, intentional, or agential being. Hypothesis #2 of 4: Naturalism’s Ontological Transcendence Hypothesis The natural world understood in terms of the Ontological Inventory Hypothesis is self-transcending, both reflexively—self-transcending emergence is a side effect of cosmic development and biological evolution—and purposively—self-transcendence permits emergent some creatures to set and achieve goals, thereby establishing new forms of life that can become the basis for further novel goal-setting and goal attaining. The combination of reflexive and purposive self-transcendence makes possible a process of complexification and intensification that is in principle perpetual and unlimited, though in practice this process may be hedged about by limitations and may even significantly collapse in certain circumstances. Hypothesis #3 of 4: Naturalism’s Ontological Sacredness Hypothesis The self-transcending quality of natural reality is the fundamental sign of its religious sacredness and the source of its spiritual relevance. The condition for the possibility (or the Whence, employing a term from

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Schleiermacher, 1976) of the in-principle-unlimited self-transcendence of nature is the actual ontological referent of ultimacy language in all religious and philosophical traditions, and its status as the condition for the possibility of anything actual implies that it infinitely transcends the determinate objects and processes of nature. This Whence is named and thus partially cognitively grasped and imperfectly existentially engaged in a host of ways, which collectively amount to complementary perspectives on something that necessarily surpasses the complete cognitive grasp of any determinate being. Symbolic expressions of ultimate realities are frequently and mistakenly taken to refer to supernatural entities; these mistaken identifications are facilitated by inbuilt cognitive biases within the human mind. These facts concerning the reference and symbolism of ultimate realities resolve the conceptual aspects of the problem of religious diversity, though taken alone they have little impact on the practical aspects of that problem. Hypothesis #4 of 4: Naturalism’s Ontological Components Hypothesis Naturalism may rule out disembodied awareness, intentionality, and agency, but it does not rule out values, potentials, regularities, and other non-material aspects of nature, which are necessary for articulating anything of importance, including science, spirituality, morality, and aesthetics. In fact, ontological monism of the materialist and idealist kinds can account neither for the Ontological Transcendence Hypothesis’s unlimited self-transcendence of nature nor for the ultimate existential value of unlimited self-transcendence for emergent beings. Ontological dualism presupposes disembodied awareness, intentionality, or agency, and thus is ruled out by the Ontological Inventory Hypothesis. Consequently, the ontological components of nature must be simultaneously material and valuational, yielding a dual-aspect or di-polar monism. Such di-polar monism can be conceived in a variety of ways, from primal substances to moments of process, and from elements of semiotic flux to venues of natural potentialities. The specific variety of religious naturalism I find most compelling is a consistent extension of the formalized conception expressed in the four ontological hypotheses, above. Pressing into that territory would take us beyond the limited scope of this chapter (Wildman, 2014) but one point is particularly relevant here. Religious naturalism of the specific type I affirm is substantially identical with three other conceptual models of ultimacy: a particular type of ground-of-being theism (familiar within

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western philosophical theology), a particular version of ĞnjnyatƗ or ultimate emptiness (familiar within south Asian philosophical theology), and a particular version of axiological depth structures and flows (familiar within east Asian philosophical theology). Thus, religious naturalism in my preferred sense implies a resolution to the problem of plural religious worldviews, partly by rejecting supernaturalism as false and misleading and partly by conceptually harmonizing non-supernaturalist religious worldviews. Also, religious naturalism in my preferred sense has persisted on the anti-supernaturalist underside of most supernaturalist religious and theological traditions for millennia, particularly in their more mystical and philosophical sub-traditions (see Wildman, 2009; 2011; 2014; 2016; Forthcoming-a; Forthcoming-b). These points illustrate the kinds of development possible within this formalized statement of religious naturalism. In fact, all varieties of religious naturalism consistent with this formalized statement of its ontological and axiological character have the following virtues: x a deep solution to the problem of religious diversity, x a solid theory of religious semiotics that articulates an object for religious symbolism while rejecting supernatural formulations of that object, x a science-friendly religious outlook that resists mistaken scientific pretensions to omni-competence, x a humanistic moral framework that is fully responsive to the intrinsic values of natural objects and processes, x a spiritually evocative perspective on life in a post-supernaturalist world, and x a noble heritage running through the large literate traditions of religious philosophy.

The Future of Religious Naturalism: Niche Interest or Spiritual Juggernaut? The question now becomes how big religious naturalism, so understood, can become. Can it define a religious or spiritual path for large numbers of people in future generations? A useful starting point for this discussion is the following observation: cognitive science of religion has established that the cognitive tendency to supernatural beliefs arises in each new generation of human beings.

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Therefore, so long as this tendency is not systematically and effectively challenged, religious naturalism will remain a minority niche interest. Can this situation change? More specifically, can the plausibility of an antisupernaturalist way of reading the world, which requires energy-intensive contestation of many cognitive defaults for our species, ultimately overcome the plausibility that attaches to supernaturalism when those cognitive defaults are not contested and the associated energy not expended? If we were to enter a substantially post-supernaturalist era, it would be because plausibility structures shift quite dramatically from what they have been in the long history of our species. Religious naturalism would then have a chance of becoming the centrist movement that it never can be otherwise. As a centrist movement, religious naturalism would have to handle two perpetual challenges. On the one hand, religious naturalism would have to fight off the no-religion, no-spirituality minority, the people who don’t see a point to religious or spiritual beliefs or activities of any kind, even the anti-supernaturalist kind. On the other hand, religious naturalism would have to keep supernaturalist religious believers at bay, using religious naturalism’s superior plausibility to confine supernaturalist interpretations of reality to the same kind of niche position that religious naturalism currently occupies. Many groups are trying to bring about precisely this kind of revolution, battling both supernaturalism and antipathy toward all forms of religion and spirituality. A good segment of Unitarian-Universalism is religious naturalist and is probably still the largest single organization of this kind. The Sunday Assembly movement is probably growing the fastest. And there is a veritable host of smaller movements and independent religiousspiritual groups with similar goals. All such groups face an important problem: our species has a strong track record of organizing religious and spiritual groups around supernaturalism but very little expertise or experience in organizing religious and spiritual groups in postsupernaturalist civilizational conditions. There is a lot of social experimentation underway, accordingly, as people try to figure this out. Can we generate any insight into the conditions under which this transformation of religious naturalism from a niche interest to a spiritual juggernaut might occur?

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Predicting the Future of Spirituality? I built a computer model to simulate this process of shifting plausibility structures on which the proliferation of religious naturalism depends. This model aims to generate insights germane to the question of interest in this paper: under what conditions does religious naturalism achieve cultural prominence? The question that the model asks is not identical but it is very similar: under what conditions do post-supernaturalist religious and spiritual worldviews achieve cultural prominence? The model is presented elsewhere (see Wildman, Forthcoming-c). Here I aim to summarize findings from the model. The engine of the model is a synthesis of leading theories of religion, spirituality, and secularism in the modern period: x Human Development Path (see Norris and Inglehart, 2011) x Existential Security Path (connected to the Human Development Path by two orange links; see Norris and Inglehart, 2011) x Cultural Particularity Path (see Putnam, 2010) x Supply-Side Path (see Stark and Iannaccone, 1994) x Cognitive Dissonance Path (see Berger, 1967) x Subjectivization Path (two links running out from the ‘Increased Sense of Freedom’ block; see Heelas and Woodhead, 2005)

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Fig. 4-1 Integrated theoretical elements of the model.

Figure 4-1 depicts the model’s causal architecture, which connects and significantly extends ‘one structural equation model and one conceptual model’ built on World Values Survey data (see Norris and Inglehart, 2011). Contrary to expectations formed by the often vociferous disputes among proponents of some of these theories, the model demonstrates that a synthesis of theories is possible. There must be some adjustments here and there due to differences in scope of fundamental concepts. For example, Putnam’s theory, which I am calling the Cultural Particularity Path, requires narrowing and specifying the concept of religious culture, limiting its scope to prominent liberal and conservative religious-cultural

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trajectories. There also has h to be careeful coordinattion between demandside (e.g. Innglehart & Norris) N and su upply-side (e.gg. Stark) theo ories, but they can fiit in the sam me conceptuall framework despite the mood in sociology thhat one must choose betw ween them. A As in economiics, so in sociology oof religion: booth types of theories are needed becaause both demand andd supply are geenuine causal factors. The model ooutputs the nuumber of traditional supernaaturally mindeed people and the num mber of post--supernatural people who vvigorously co ontest the cognitive ddefaults thatt reliably produce p supeernatural wo orldviews otherwise. F Figure 4-2 shoows one proccess by whichh the post-sup pernatural religious annd spiritual people p grow in number uuntil they beccome the majority, wiith an overall much lower population p duue to the low birth b rates of post-supeernaturalists. The horizonttal axis count nts years afterr roughly 1700 CE, thhe dawn of moodernity, while the verticall axis counts people in millions. Fiigure 4-2 alsoo shows the effect e of a deestabilizing event e that triggers the weakening off the very cond ditions that prroduce a majo ority postsupernaturallist religious culture, causiing the entiree system to reevert to a high-populaation, dominanntly supernatu uralist religiouus culture.

m dominantly supernaturalist to dominantly post-supernatu uralist and Fig 4-1 From back again.

The model describes noot an inevitab ble movementt in one direection, as classic secularization theoory once prop posed, but a ccausal architeccture that permits cultuural and worldview traffic in both directtions. The model sheds light on the conditions foor traffic movement, in eithher direction. What are the conditioons under whhich post-sup pernaturalist rreligious and spiritual

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outlooks rise in prominence? Figure 4-3 summarizes the findings: the conditions that need to strengthen for post-supernaturalist religious and spiritual outlooks to rise in prominence are four: existential security, free self-expression, scientific and humanist education, and cultural pluralism. Societies cultivating such conditions are energy expensive so their equilibrium, while stable, is less stable than societies that don’t require the systematic contestation of the cognitive defaults that reliably produce supernaturalist worldviews. This implies that they are more vulnerable to being overturned should a destabilizing event occur, weakening some or all of the key conditions. That is the path for traffic moving toward a resurgence of supernaturalist religious and spiritual cultures. Consider each of these four conditions in turn.

Fig 4-2 The conditions that need to strengthen for post-supernaturalist religious and spiritual outlooks to rise in prominence.

First, existential security and insecurity refer to a profound vulnerability of human beings to free-floating anxiety about safety. The keys to reducing existential anxiety include eliminating deprivation conditions, minimizing exposure to violence, increasing one’s inter-personal network of healthy

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relationships with friends and family, and achieving self-reliance and confidence in one’s ability to navigate life challenges. Elements of existential security may persist even when safe and happy life conditions are present—it appears to be a fundamental part of the human condition— but it can certainly be minimized by attacking problems that threaten more concrete forms of insecurity. Increasing existential security undermines the impulse to seek protection from supernatural agents and coalitions. If a religious tradition is to survive in the mainstream of a post-supernaturalist culture, it must be capable of authentically shifting its theological and liturgical focus from divine agents to justice, reverence for life, the cultivation of virtuous persons, and social transformation. Second, free self-expression refers to ability to express one’s opinions without fear or risk of social marginalization or penalties that in other circumstances serve to enforce compliance with majority norms. Increasing free expression undermines the power of social prohibitions against acting on personal convictions, liberating people to choose patterns of social affiliation that match their actual beliefs as they develop. If a religious tradition is to survive in the mainstream of a post-supernaturalist culture, it must be capable of authentically shifting from authoritarian structures to support systems for shared spiritual and religious quests. Third, both scientific and humanistic education are important in different ways. Education in modern science undermines the plausibility of (without necessarily logically contradicting) supernatural-agent beliefs, which humanistic education guards against religious and spiritual inertness by continuously representing the depths of nature and the human condition. If a religious tradition is to survive in the mainstream of a postsupernaturalist culture, it must be capable of authentically shifting away from supernaturalist frames of reference for spiritual and religious life journeys and toward those associated with religious naturalism. Fourth, cultural pluralism refers not to mere diversity of cultural backgrounds within a given social environment but to a policy of openness to and acceptance of that diversity as enriching every individual life as well as shared collective life. Cultural pluralism serves to undermine the plausibility of all exclusivistic, supernaturally authorized coalitions. If a religious tradition is to survive in the mainstream of a post-supernaturalist culture, it must be capable of authentically shifting away from an inclusivist or exclusivist vision of relations among diverse spiritual paths and toward a view of all paths somehow perspectivally related to one

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another, in the sense that any one journey can find profound resonances with as well as distinctiveness from others. The modern period (from about 1700 onwards) has seen a marked and progressive increase in these four key conditions. This has arguably produced a high degree of secularism in many societies but that is not what this model is about. It is quite possible to be highly secularized and not at all interested in contesting the cognitive defaults that so reliably give rise to supernatural worldviews. We see this in some forms of New-Age spirituality, which enshrine supernaturalism while wholeheartedly rejecting traditional religious organizations and authorities. A postsupernatural stance is quite distinct from this. The trend toward postsupernaturalism runs parallel to, but partially independently of, secularization trends. The transition from traditional supernatural to postsupernatural worldviews is the more difficult of the two to achieve because of the consistent re-education it requires, and it is the more profound of the two for the future of spirituality. It follows that the relevant measures of emerging post-supernaturalist worldviews, and with them religious naturalism, are not traditional secularization indicators. Rather, what matters is the extent to which people actually hold non-supernatural beliefs. Demographers only recently began asking the relevant questions. Many of those with no religious affiliation (the so-called ‘Nones’), including the large majority of selfidentified atheists and agnostics, reject supernaturalism. Among people in the USA affirming belief in God, slightly more than a quarter would say that their conception of God is a principle rather than a personal being, which is a key marker of anti-supernatural worldview (see the Pew Religious Landscape Survey in Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2008). These people are worshipping in churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples along with supernatural believers; they are employing complex hermeneutical manoeuvers to be present to proceedings and to their worshipping friends and neighbors. Add to this the largely postsupernaturalist Nones and this means that the post-supernatural count is now up above a third in the USA—and it’s heading higher. The percentage is doubtless much higher in northern European countries but it is important to keep in mind that we require explicit measures to distinguish postsupernatural worldviews from secular outlooks, and we don’t have them for as many nations as we’d like.

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Evaluating the Prospect of a Prominent Religious Naturalism The insight of the model is that post-supernatural religious and spiritual worldviews—and with them religious naturalism—become more prominent in the presence of four strengthening key conditions: existential security, free self-expression, scientific and humanist education, and cultural pluralism. In concluding this chapter, it is worth reflecting on whether a trend toward post-supernaturalism is a good outcome for human civilizations. Several thoughts are germane here. The trend toward post-supernaturalism in western cultures can be thwarted by interfering with science education as in resisting the teaching of evolution, by imposing sharp limits on personal self-expression as in some small-town religious cultures, or by rejecting a pluralistic attitude to cultural and religious diversity, among other ways. It can also be thwarted by a major ecological or nuclear disaster that focuses energy expenditure on survival and robs energy from the educational and social processes necessary to contest systematically the cognitive defaults that reliably produce supernatural worldviews. Religious naturalism in a postsupernatural world may be a stable equilibrium but reversal of the processes that bring human societies to that point appears notably easy to achieve; indeed, the recipe for resisting and overturning postsupernaturalism is right there in the model: simply interfere with some or all of the four key conditions. Traditional supernaturalism defines a broader stable equilibrium for civilization, one that is difficult to escape and thus also difficult to disrupt even in the face of the kind of major destabilizing event that would threaten the relatively narrower stable civilizational equilibrium of post-supernaturalism and religious naturalism. For religious naturalism to become prominent, a large amount of energy must be inserted into the cultural system; each new generation of babies will gravitate to supernaturalist worldviews if that trajectory is not contested. Second, another challenge facing religious naturalism in a dominantly post-supernatural world is that human beings have almost no experience organizing social life without the aid of beliefs in supernatural monitoring and punishment that tend to increase good behavior and establish a basis for stability-enhancing and economically vital trust in one’s coreligionists. How would societies in a post-supernatural world generate the social cohesion that religious civilizations used to supply through

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supernatural beliefs? Secular nations demonstrate that social cohesion without traditional religious authorities can work well—in many respects better than traditional societies if pluralistic attitudes are to be accepted as an indicator of social health. Presumably something similar applies to social cohesion in a thoroughly post-supernatural environment. But there are many unknowns here. Third, it may be that a post-supernatural world offers the only realistic way for humans to survive and flourish in our ecosystem. This case is argued by a variety of thinkers from Harris and Hitchens to Shults (see Harris, 2006; Hitchens, 2007; Shults, 2014)—we must urgently overthrow supernaturalist religion if we are to achieve universal human rights, ecological sustainability, and non-violent international relations. Of course, those thinkers are not particularly interested in saying what religion and spirituality may look like in the post-supernaturalist world for which they long, but the growth of religious naturalism suggests that spiritual questions in individual and corporate life will still be a vital concern in a post-supernatural world. Is religious naturalism going to become a spiritual juggernaut, reducing traditional supernatural religious and spiritual outlooks to counter-cultural niche interests? It certainly is possible. But a dominantly post-supernatural world is politically and economically untested, and vulnerable to disruption, so it would be a difficult road. It would certainly be safer for religious naturalism to ride on the anti-supernaturalist undersides of the existing juggernaut religions with their endorsement of supernatural agents and authorities, as religious naturalists have done for millennia—safer in the sense of more predictable and less likely to provoke a destabilizing response. But anti-supernaturalism is spreading whether or not anyone is noticing, and religious naturalism is silently increasing its market share in the process. One way or another, societies are going to have to figure out what to do with this emerging new reality in human civilization.

Acknowledgements The first part of this paper is related to parts of Wesley J. Wildman, ‘Religious Naturalism: What It Can Be, and What It Need Not Be,’ Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences 1/1 (2014): 36-58.

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References Beilby, J. K. (2002). Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Berger, P. L. (1967). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Doubleday and Company. Berry, T. M. (1999). The Great Work. New York: Three Rivers Press. —. (2009) The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Clark, T. W. (2007). Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and its Uses. Charlestown, MA: Acme Bookbinding. Cohen, J. J. (1958). The Case for Religious Naturalism: A Philosophy for the Modern Jew. Jenkintown, PA: The Reconstructionist Press. Corrington, R. S. (1992). Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press. —. (1994). Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Advances in Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —. (1996). Nature's Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. —. (1997). Nature's Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. —. (2013). Nature's Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Craig, W. L. and J. P. Moreland (2000). Naturalism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Routledge. Crosby, D. A. (2002). A Religion of Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —. (2008). Living with Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co. Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking. Dewey, J. (1934). A Common Faith. 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eddy, B. (2003). The Rites of Identity: The Religious Naturalism and Cultural Criticism of Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goetz, S., and C. Taliaferro (2008). Naturalism. Cambridge, UK; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

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Goodenough, U. (1998). The Sacred Depths of Nature. New York: Oxford University Press. Gottlieb, R. S. (1996). This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment. New York: Routledge. Griffin, D. R. (2004). Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox Press. Habermas, J. (2008). Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Hardwick, C. D. (1996). Events of Grace: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Theology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Harris, S. (2006). Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Heelas, P. and L. Woodhead (2005). The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hitchens, C. (2007). God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve. Hogue, M. S. (2008). The Tangled Bank: Toward an Ecological Ethics of Responsible Participation. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications. —. (2010) The Promise of Religious Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. James, W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902. Longmans, Green & Co. Johnston, M. (2009). Saving God: Religion After Idolatry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. (2011) Surviving Death. Carl G. Hempel Lectures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Murry, W. R. (2006). Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books. Norris, P. and R. Inglehart (2011). Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Second ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Peacocke, A. R. (2007). All That Is: A Naturalistic Faith for the TwentyFirst Century: A Theological Proposal with Responses from Leading Thinkers in the Religion-Science Dialogue. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Peden, C. and L. E. Axel (eds.). 1994. New Essays in Religious Naturalism. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. Peters, K. E. (2002). Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.

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Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2008). “U.S. Religious Landscape Study.” http://religions.pewforum.org/. Plantinga, A. (2011). Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Putnam, R. D. (2010). American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Raymo, C. (2008). When God is Gone, Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist. Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books. Rea, M. (2004). World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reich, L. (1998). Hume's Religious Naturalism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Ritchie, J. (2008). Understanding Naturalism. Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing Company. Rue, L. (2004). Religion Is Not About God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our Biological Nature and What to Expect When They Fail. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Santayana, G. (2009). The Essential Santayana; Selected Writings. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Schleiermacher, F. D. E. (1976) [1821, 1830]. The Christian Faith. Edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Shook, J. R. and P. Kurts (2009). The Future of Naturalism. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Shults, F. L. (2014). Theology After the Birth of God: Atheist Conceptions in Cognition and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stark, R. and L. R. Iannaccone (1994). “A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the ‘Secularization’ of Europe,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33/3: 230-252. Stone, J. A. (2008). Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Tillich, P. (1951-1963). Systematic Theology. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, C. W. (2008). The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1996). Religion in the Making. Lowell lectures, 1926. New York: Fordham University Press.

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Wildman, W. J. (2009). Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing. —. (2011). Religious and Spiritual Experiences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. —. (2014). “Religious Naturalism: What It Can Be, and What It Need Not Be,” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1/1: 36-58. —. (2016) "Reframing Transcendence: Ground-of-Being Theism and Religious Naturalism," in Niels Henrik Gregersen and Mikael Stenmark (eds.), Naturalism and Beyond: Religious Naturalism and Its Alternatives. Leuven: Peeters. —. (Forthcoming-a) Science and Ultimate Reality. —. (Forthcoming-b) Anthropomorphism, Apophaticism, and Ultimacy. —. (Forthcoming-c) “Modeling the Two-Way Shift between Supernatural and Post-Supernatural Civilizations.” Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

CHAPTER FIVE IS GOD BIG ENOUGH FOR BIG HISTORY? WILLIAM GRASSIE

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd; Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! .

— Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Man’ (Pope, 1891) The new natural history of humans, the evolution of life, and the journey of the universe provide a new foundation for a sacred naturalism and a shared common humanity, even as it challenges the self-understanding of our received religious traditions and concepts of the divine. Unfortunately, most religious people know little or nothing of these new sciences. Their

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concepts of God and their tradition are way too small to embrace the bigness of Big History.1 The New Narrative goes by many names—the new cosmology, the epic of evolution, the journey of the universe, and the great story (Berry & Swimme, 1992; Chaisson, 2001, 2006; Christian, 2004; Dowd, 2009; Swimme & Tucker, 2011). Today, it is most commonly known as Big History (Brown, 2007; Christian, 2004, 2011; Spier, 1996, 2011). It is the scientific account of the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe, the 4.5billion-year evolution of our planet, the 7-million-year rise of our species, and the 10,000-year accelerating drama of human civilization, all told as an integrated narrative. The New Narrative is extremely practical. This epic of evolution, pieced together by diverse scientific disciplines, contains the knowledge and know-how needed to grow, sustain, and adapt in a rapidly changing world. We affirm Big History in deed, if not in thought or understanding, every time we pump fossil fuels into our vehicles or log on to the Internet. The challenges of energy, food, population, politics, industry, technology, finance, and morality look different when viewed from the blended perspectives of the new narrative. Embedded in Big History are also new understandings of human nature, including our spiritual and religious natures. It is the foundation of evolutionary psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, behavioral economics, physical anthropology, genetic genealogy, history, most of modern medicine—indeed all of the human sciences. By its very nature, Big History undermines ethnic chauvinism, extreme nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and foolish sexism. The contours of religious, ideological, philosophical, and metaphysical debates shift when examined under the lens of this modern global origin story. New concepts, metaphors, and hermeneutics are required. Many embraced the New Narrative as a powerful pedagogical tool for promoting general science literacy and critical thinking. Bill Gates created the Big History Project—a free online high school curriculum for high school students. The integrated curriculum provides a mnemonic for understanding, remembering, and applying the many details of science and

 1

This paper draws on previously published materials available at www.metanexus.net and www.grassie.net.

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history, while providing an ennobling perspective of our lives. Unfortunately, humans around the world are mostly unengaged, ill informed, and frequently outright hostile to the new origins story of modern science. If they don’t know the big ideas of all the big disciplines, they will not be able to adequately understand and interpret the new cosmology in ways that both honor science and their traditions. The common pitfall is to use contemporary science as a proof text for sacred scriptures. There are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist version of this trope. Religious popularizers select insights from contemporary science and then interpret these back into their sacred scriptures suggesting that these modern insights were already foreseen in religious texts written over two thousand years ago. This, however, is a foolish undertaking. Take any introductory college textbook on physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, engineering, and related fields and place it next to the sacred scriptures of your choice. There is essentially no overlap between the contents. The other pitfall is to advocate pseudo-science through an alternative account of creation and causation in opposition to known evolution and cosmology. This too is a fool’s errand. Instead, religious people around the world should learn the fundamental facts of science and different strategies for interpreting those facts. To read ancient scriptures as science is a profound category mistake.

The Hermeneutics of Big History There is broad agreement about many fundamental facts of science, but also room for diverse interpretations of that content. We need to better police the boundaries between the content of science and the interpretation of science. The oracles of contemporary science often argue for a stoic, existentialist, and atheist interpretation of Big History, as if this were a necessary conclusion. For instance, the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the

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whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s salvation henceforth be safely built (Russell, 1917, 93).

This is not a necessary or even obvious conclusion based on the objective facts. Indeed, Russell’s statement can be seen as self-contradictory, providing no support for even pursuing scientific knowledge. As Alfred North Whitehead quipped, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study” (Whitehead, 1929, 12). Instead, scientists practice what I call “altruistic fidelity to the phenomena” (Grassie, 2010). The scientific enterprise is thus built upon a moral ideal, that we should be selfless in seeking truth. These values often put scientists at odds with their own self-interest, as well as authorities, be they religious, corporate, or governmental. The practice of science is—or at least, can be—an expression of pure fascination and love. Of course, science is also a very messy business. There are egos and interests involved. Personalities, power, and politics are also part of the often-chaotic process. There are Promethean tragedies enacted and feared, terrible possibilities unleashed, powers and principalities supported by the applications of science. Scientists can be corrupt. They can blindly follow money, ideologies, or fame. Scientists may also possess increased powers of selfish rationalization. They tend to be overly compartmentalized in their lives. Their myopic visions can become dogmatic propositions. They are humans, after all, and exhibit all the flaws and failings that we encounter in other domains of human life. Science is always social, political, personal, economic, cultural, and historical. In spite of this, the miracle of science is that there is a progressive unfolding of reality, a process that allows for self-transcending knowledge and noble purpose. This self-transcendence can be seen as an intimation of a greater transcendence at work in the universe. Here, we see glimpses of spirituality at the heart of the scientific enterprise. Science is progressive, and it tends toward consensus of necessity. Science discovers, illuminates, and crafts facts, and we rely on these complex facts in practical ways. Unlike religion, science involves pretty much the same

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collection of complex facts in all cultures around the world. These facts are uncovered with considerable effort by peer-reviewed scientific guilds from a multitude of specializations and societies. It is a remarkable global division of labor and cooperation. The cumulative result of this detailed and systematic study of nature is something quite remarkable and unexpected—a grand narrative that unifies the knowledge and the many languages of science. All of the facts discovered by scientists working in narrow specializations turn out to be hierarchically organized by chronology, scale and thresholds of emergent complexity. The jumble of disconnected facts you learned in high school and university turns out to be an amazing story—a history of nature and our species. The physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker called this history of nature “the most important discovery of modern science” (von Weizsäcker, 1949). We call it Big History.

The New Natural History of Humans Of particular concern to religious advocates in diverse cultures is the new story of human origins and the new insights into human nature resulting from the human sciences. The old creation stories will no longer do, though people cling to them. Religious scholars, archeologists, anthropologists, philologists, historians, psychologists, and other scientists have analyzed and dissected sacred scriptures and the history of religious movements from around the world (Grassie, 2010; Pals, 2006; Preus, 1996). This historical critical approach to understanding religion can lead to disenchantment of religion and the universe. Religious origin stories may be profound, but they are not true in the way that science is progressively factual. In his book The Evolution of God, Robert Wright reviews and synthesizes historical critical scholarship on scriptures and the evolution of religion. He argues that “the origin and development of religion can be explained by reference to concrete, observable things—human nature, political and economic factors, technological changes, and so on” (Wright, 2009). Here, he joins other contemporary scholars who seek to explain the phenomenon of religion in human history as a ‘dependent variable.’ Why did religions evolve? Are religions adaptive, when and why? How do religions function and malfunction to promote survival and reproduction, differentially for individuals and communities?

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Wright shows how different social structures—living in win-lose competition with neighbors or win-win cooperation with neighbors—led to contradictory attitudes and teachings based on the same sacred text. The actual content of sacred scripture closely follows “facts on the ground” (Wright, 2009, 81). Wright believes in moral progress and a built-in evolutionary logic that favors cooperation and compassion over competition and conflict. The overall trajectory of human cultural evolution has been a win-win of ever-expanding circles of cooperation in ever-larger networks. Religion is the glue of effective cooperation, often in deadly competition with outsiders, but at other times in mutually enriching trade. The evolution of God from animism, to polytheism, to monotheism, to secularism is an ever-expanding circle of moral consideration. “Cultural evolution,” writes Wright, “was all along pushing divinity, and hence humanity, toward moral enlightenment” (Wright, 2009, 72).

The Great Matrix of Being Everything that exists in the universe, every process that science has discovered, every power of nature that humanity has harnessed, all that constitutes our human bodies and brains, our histories and cultures—all this and more—can be located within a number of natural hierarchies. We can call these hierarchies ‘the Great Matrix of Being’ and it is essential to understanding the new narrative (Grassie, 2013). The great matrix is measured in scales of: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

time size energy density flows electromagnetic radiation information density flow consciousness thresholds of emergent complexity

1. Time: The universe has a scale of time measured in billions of years down to the nanosecond vibrations of cesium in atomic clocks. Our best calculations suggest that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, that humans are 200,000 years old, and that the drama of human civilization began some 10,000 years ago. Chronology is one dimension of the great matrix.

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2. Size: The universe also has a size scale. The smallest unit is the Planck scale—1.616252 x 10-35 m. The concepts of size and distance break down at this scale as quantum indeterminacy becomes absolute. From observation, the most distant thing that we know of in the universe is the background radiation from the big bang, which is 13.8 billion light-years away from Earth (13.8 x 109) x (3 x 109 meters/second). When we talk about the very fast, the very dense, and the very hot, these concepts of space and time become elastic, but in between the extremes, size matters. And curiously, the human scale—measured in centimeters and meters— exists about halfway between the very small and the very large and is the only scale where certain types of complexity could exist (Primack & Abrams, 2006). We tend to focus on how puny we are in the scale of hundreds of billions of galaxies, but we should also remember how enormous we are when compared with the atomic and subatomic levels. Space-time is a continuum in relativity theory, but for human purposes we normally treat them separately. Chronology and size are the x and y axes that establish the great matrix in two dimensions. 3. Energy Flows: The intensity of energy flows is another axis in the great matrix. There is no uniform measurement of energy because energy comes in so many different flavors, as it were, including heat, electrical, chemical, nuclear, and kinetic. Physicists calculate the energy of the universe at the moment of the big bang as 1019 GeV (billion electron volts). At the opposite end is absolute zero or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius (minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). At both extremes, matter exhibits strange behaviors. All complex phenomena in the universe involve energy gradients (moving from hot to cold), which we can measure in ergs per second per gram. It is counterintuitive, but when normalized for mass, a photosynthesizing plant has about 1,000 times the energy density flow of the sun. A mammalian body has about 10,000 times the energy density flow of the sun. The human brain, consisting of about 2 percent of our body weight but consuming about 20 percent of our food energy, has an energy density flow about 75,000 times greater than the sun. And if we include all of the energy consumed outside of our bodies in our global civilization, then many humans today achieve energy density flows millions of times greater than the sun (Chaisson, 2011, 2014). Energy flows are an essential

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component of all complex adaptive systems, including human life (Hidalgo, 2015; Lane, 2015). 4. Electromagnetic Radiation: Electromagnetism is a form of energy critical to almost all phenomena that we encounter in daily life. Negatively charged electrons are bound by electromagnetic waves into orbitals around positively charged atomic nuclei. Atoms combine into complex molecules through electromagnetic geometries and preferences. All chemistry, and therefore all biology, is governed by electromagnetic forces. The ATP molecules in your cells, the neurons in your brain, the gasoline burning in your car, the food you eat, and all the electronic devices in your life—from the light bulb to the Internet—utilize electromagnetic energy flows. The entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation goes from radio waves at one end, through microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, and x-ray to gamma radiation at the other end, but our human eyes have evolved to see only a small range of visible light. From radio telescopes to electron microscopes, electromagnetic radiation is central to all of the prosthetic ‘seeing’ devices of science and technology. The tools by which we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and understand the universe of the very small and the very big, the very hot and the very cold, the very fast and the very slow, all utilize the electromagnetic effect in their technologies of perception. The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation is the fourth axis in the great matrix of being. 5. Information Density Flow: Information is an elusive concept in the great matrix. Scientists don’t always mean the same thing when they invoke the word. Information has different meanings in computer science, physics, genetics, neuroscience, economics, linguistics, and semiotics. There are layers of emergent informational complexity in the universe (Gleick, 2011). Physicist John Wheeler famously quipped, “It from Bit,” by which he meant that a mathematical order must have preceded the materiality of the universe itself. Wheeler writes, “every it—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence … from bits” (Wheeler, 1989). Information defines the complex structures up and down the ontological hierarchies of the great matrix. Along with energy density flows, information density flow structures matter into complex processes and

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evolving entities that otherwise would not exist. Information is embodied in the structures of molecules that would otherwise be unrelated atoms, in our human languages that would otherwise be meaningless noises and scribbles, and in the memory of your computer that would otherwise be random 0s and 1s. Today, we are drowning in information. David Foster Wallace called it Total Noise—“the tsunami of available fact, context, and perspective.” To be informed about the world around us in all its aspects “is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help” (Wallace, 2007). Whatever information might be, we are compelled to postulate information density flow as another kind of hierarchy in the great matrix of being (Hidalgo, 2015). 6. Consciousness: We might also postulate a hierarchy of consciousness. The brain-mind is an emergent phenomena and potentially scalable. A roundworm has only 302 nerve cells, while a human brain has 86 billion nerve cells (Koch, 2012). Surely, there are objective differences in brainmind complexity between the two and throughout the animal kingdom. Counting nerve cells alone, however, does not really give us an adequate measure of brain-minds because brain-minds require bodies and metabolism, vocal chords and oppositional thumbs, and an enriching social and natural environment in order to realize their potential. Perhaps someday we may have a robust measure of consciousness that will allow us to compare dogs with cuttlefish, elephants with birds, and smart phones with smart people. We may also come to understand consciousness as a function of information density flow in concentrated nodes within vast biophysical and social networks. 7. Emergent Complexity: When we put it all together—space, time, energy, matter, electromagnetism, information, and consciousness—we end up with emergent complexity. Here, too, we lack a rigorous definition. Hierarchies of complexity are not discreet, measurable qualia in nature, but are nevertheless empirical certainties. The telling of Big History typically orients around eight thresholds of emergent complexity. For instance, the creation of the heavy elements in the stellar foundries from which we derive the elements of the periodic table was a threshold of emergent complexity necessary for complex chemistry to later evolve. When complex chemistry catalyzed life, we saw again something new and different. And when the evolution of plants and animals gave rise to

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species with a central nervous system, complex brains, oppositional thumbs, vocal chords, language, tool-making, and collective learning, something new emerged again in the universe, at least on one small planet. It is important to emphasize that emergent complexity requires lower levels of complexity to exist and properly function. Higher orders of complexity are built bottom-up, though emergent properties cannot be fully explained from below (Deacon, 2011; Ellis, 2016). With thresholds of emergent complexity, the great matrix is not simply a coordinate system of reality, but now also an epic narrative of becoming.

Sacred Naturalism The seven dimensions in the great matrix of being give us seven ways of measuring reality — by time, size, energy density flow, electromagnetism, information density flow, consciousness, and thresholds of emergent complexity. Again, all phenomena can be located within this matrix. We might as well title this paper ‘Is God Small Enough for Big History,’ because the smallest dimensions of the universe are as many orders of magnitude smaller than the human scale, as its largest dimensions are greater. When individuals fully grasp the enormity of time, space, energy, and the emergent complexity involved in creating and sustaining our very being, they can have a profound mystical experience. Moreover, this subjective awareness of objective reality can then be called forth at will, as a kind of instant spiritual experience that enriches aesthetic, intellectual, embodied, and compassionate living. The individual is able to deconstruct and reconstruct the self in relation to larger and smaller dynamic systems at many different orders of magnitude. It is a kind of mindfulness meditation in which the mind is full of the universe at multiple scales and perspectives. Many understand the new sciences as a new revelation—a sacred naturalism— that has the potential to transform humanity.

Our Privileged Place in the New Narrative Understanding these hierarchies of modern science, measured in orders of magnitude and graphed on logarithmic scales, typically evokes amazement and wonder, but humans are also compelled to ask about meaning and purpose. We are not necessarily compelled to adopt Bertrand Russell’s prosaic nihilism as the one true interpretation of contemporary science.

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In his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson reflects on this new understanding of reality: If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here—and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans, we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp (Bryson, [2003] 2005, 478).

In their book The View from the Center of the Universe, authors Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams also argue for a ‘meaningful universe’ and ‘our extraordinary place in the cosmos.’ Contrary to the dominant existential interpretations of modern cosmology, as seen in the writings of Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg, and others, the authors observe: There is nothing in modern cosmology that requires the existential view, nor anything that requires the meaningful view. The bottom line of both views is scientific accuracy: both hold that interpretations of reality where science is compromised for ideological purity should be rejected. But given this bottom line, an attitude toward the discoveries of modern cosmology is every person’s choice. … The existential view automatically feels more familiar and natural because the West has cultivated it for generations. … But where the existential view veers off into emotions like despair or resignation or a feeling of insignificance or even dark satisfaction, those emotions are arbitrary and unnecessary. The meaningful universe encompasses the existential, in the sense that the meaningful can understand the existential, but the existential cannot see the meaningful. … … The choice of attitude is not a casual one. It’s all too easy to see scientific cosmology as an intellectual challenge, entertainment, cocktail banter, or even, as some cosmologists treat it, a professionally played sport, because these are the normal attitudes as long as we don’t participate in what a new universe means. But cosmology is not a game; it has the power to overturn the fundamental institutions of society (Primack & Abrams, 2006, 274-275).

Primack and Abrams give the following evidence in support of their meaning-filled interpretation of contemporary cosmology: x We are made of the rarest material in the universe: stardust. x We live at the center of our Cosmic Spheres of Time, because

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every place is the center of its own cosmic spheres of time. … x We live at the midpoint of time, which is also the peak period in the entire evolution of the universe for astronomical observation. … The universe as we are observing it today will truly become mythic, since it will become the lost Golden Age—a fabulously rich sky that, our distant descendants will know, actually existed but will never be seen again. x We live at the middle of all possible sizes. … Life of our complexity could bloom on no other size-scales of the Cosmic Uroboros. x We live in a universe that may be a rare bubble of spacetime in the infinite, seething cauldron of the eternal meta-universe. … x We live at more or less the midpoint in the life of our planet. … x We live at a turning point for our species. … (Primack & Abrams, 2006, 270-272). Recovering a meaningful cosmology, grounded in contemporary science, is a key to properly appreciating human life and solving many of the pressing evolutionary problems that threaten our civilizations. They call for “disciplined imagination” in the integration of contemporary science and our received wisdom traditions (Primack & Abrams, 2011). For instance, it is possible for each of the following to claim Big History as foundational to its perspective: x Stoic, Existentialist, Atheist x Techno-Utopic x Free Market Libertarian

x Evolutionary Theist x Eco-Romantic x Socialist, Communitarian (Grassie, Forthcoming).

What this means is that while Richard Dawkins, Pope Francis, Deepak Chopra, Ray Kurzweil, Charles Koch, and Bill McKibben don’t really have many factual disagreements about the sciences behind the new narrative, each offers a different interpretation of the story (or could if they chose to frame their politics and philosophies that way), each might select and emphasize partial aspects of Big History. Each might employ it differently. The new narrative is ideologically flexible. The challenge is in the exegesis of a common text—Big History.

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The Road Not Taken “What would a religion well suited to an age of advanced science and rapid globalization look like?” Robert Wright asks (but doesn’t answer) in his book, The Evolution of God (Wright, 2009, 6). Any God big enough for Big History would need to be fully imagined and understood through the breadth and depth of the contemporary sciences. The latter include the new natural history of humanity, the historicity of our religious and cultural tradition, and the new sciences of human nature-culture. Instead of supernaturalism, we would understand this big-enough God through the revelations of the super-nature of the Great Matrix and the New Narrative. While some scholars today exercise ‘disciplined imagination’ in the constructive engagement of science and religion, popular religiosity is far from understanding, let alone adequately interpreting the new narrative of Big History. We face a massive educational challenge. And while the new natural history of humanity can be interpreted in ways that are friendly toward religious intuitions and spiritual sensibilities, it is not much use in supporting traditional concepts of God or the historicity of diverse sectarian scriptures—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, or otherwise. I repeat: ancient scriptures may be profound, but they are not true in the way that science and history are. Human origin stories have been of great interest to cultural anthropologists, who collect and analyze these stories to decode the dynamics of different cultures. In her book, Primal Myths, Barbara Sproul assembled hundreds of creation myths from around the world. She writes: The most profound human questions are the ones that give rise to creation myths: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the purpose of our lives and our deaths? How should we understand our place in the world, in time and space? These are central questions of value and meaning, and, while they are influenced by issues of fact, they are not in themselves factual questions; rather, they involve attitudes toward facts and reality. … Myths proclaim such attitudes toward reality. They organize the way we perceive the facts and understand ourselves and the world. Whether we adhere to them consciously or not, they remain pervasively influential (Sproul, 1991, 1).

Perhaps we are in need of a modern creation story. Instead, we have today what religion scholar Loyal Rue calls ‘amythia’—the lack of a unifying and ennobling origin story (Rue, 1989). David Christian begins his book

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Maps of Time by reflecting on the importance of origin stories and the contemporary absence thereof: Creation myths are powerful because they speak to our deep spiritual, psychic, and social need for a sense of place and a sense of belonging. Because they provide so fundamental a sense of orientation, they are often integrated into religious thinking at the deepest levels, as the Genesis story is within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. It is one of the many odd features of modern society that despite having access to more hard information than any earlier society, those in modern educational systems do not normally teach such a story. Instead, from schools to universities to research institutes, we teach about origins in disconnected fragments. We seem incapable of offering a unified account of how things came to be the way they are (Christian, 2004, 2011, 2).

To reiterate: it is possible to interpret the New Narrative and the Great Matrix—Big History by any other name—in ways that are friendly to religious intuitions, though it would be silly to look for the specifics of science in sacred scriptures. Religionists must first comprehend science as a unified body of knowledge before they can constructively debate scientism and productively engage in the necessary reformation and productive evolution of their own sacred traditions. Big History invites a prolonged ‘exegetical debate.’ One should not simplistically confuse the content of science with one’s own metaphysical prejudices and ideological preferences. But we must learn to walk, before we can run. We need to humbly put questions about the universe and the universal back at the heart of general education, indeed at the center of meaningful religious education. In short, we have a global education challenge of enormous magnitude. If our gods are too small for Big History, then it is because we are too small in understanding ourselves and how incredibly fortunate we are to be witnesses to and participants in this extraordinary moment in the natural history of our planet and the cultural evolution of our species. The challenge is to study this New Narrative with “ears that hear and eyes that see” (Proverbs 20:12).

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References Berry, T., & Swimme, B. (1992). Universe Story, The: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Brown, C. S. (2007). Big History : From the Big Bang to the Present. New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton. Bryson, B. ([2003] 2005). A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition. New York: Broadway Books. Chaisson, E. (2001). Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. (2006). Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos. New York: Columbia University Press. —. (2011). Energy rate density as a complexity metric and evolutionary driver. Complexity, 16(3), 27-40. —. (2014). The Natural Science Underlying Big History. The Scientific World Journal, 2014, 41. Christian, D. (2004). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. (2004, 2011). Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Deacon, T. W. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W.W. Norton. Dowd, M. (2009). Thank God for Evolution. New York Plume. Ellis, G. F. R. (2016). How can physics underlie the mind? Top-down causation in the human context. New York: Springer. Gleick, J. (2011). Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. Grassie, W. J. (2010). The New Sciences of Religion: Exploring Spirituality from the Outside In and Bottom Up. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. —. (2013). The Great Matrix of Big History. Retrieved from http://grassie.net/the-great-matrix-of-big-history/ —. (Forthcoming). Our Common Story: The Interpretation of Big History. Hidalgo, C. (2015). Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies. New York: Basic Books. Koch, C. (2012). Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. Cambridge: MIT Press. Lane, N. (2015). The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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Pals, D. L. (2006). Eight Theories of Religion (Second Edition ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Pope, A. (1891). An Essay on Man: Moral Essays and Satires. London: Cassell & Company. Preus, J. S. (1996). Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Primack, J. R., & Abrams, N. E. (2006). The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos. New York: Riverhead. —. (2011). The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rue, L. D. (1989). Amythia: Crisis in the Natural History of Western Culture. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Russell, B. (1917). Mysticism and Logic. London: G. Allen & Unwin. Spier, F. (1996). The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang Until Today. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. —. (2011). Big History and the Future of Humanity. New York: WileyBlackwell. Sproul, B. C. (1991). Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Swimme, B., & Tucker, M. E. (2011). Journey of the Universe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. von Weizsäcker, C. F. (1949). The history of nature. Chicago]: University of Chicago Press. Wallace, D. F. (2007). Both Flesh and Not. In D. F. Wallace & R. Atwan (Eds.), The Best American Essays 2007. New York: Mariner Books. Wheeler, J. A. (1989). Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, 354–368. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The Function of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wright, R. (2009). The Evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

CHAPTER SIX THE ORIGINS AND FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION: SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE ASPECTS FRASER WATTS

In this chapter I will explain why I am unconvinced by some of the assumptions about the origin and function of religion that are currently being made by some of those working in the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), and to sketch out an alternative position that integrates the social and cognitive aspects of religion better than CSR does. It is debatable whether or not the position I will set out here should be classified as falling within the ‘cognitive science of religion.’ If the term is defined broadly then, yes, I am doing CSR, though developing an alternative theoretical position within it. However, if you define CSR more narrowly, as referring to those who sign up to the kind of theoretical position developed by Pascal Boyer (2001) and Justin Barrett (2004) then, no, I am not doing CSR, as I am departing from some of the assumptions on which their project is based. It depends whether one thinks CSR is a doctrinaire theoretical position or an open field of enquiry. I don’t subscribe to the former, but what I am doing here can be seen as a contribution to the latter. Many of the claims made by CSR seem to arise more from background pre-empirical assumptions than they do from scientific data. CSR adopts assumptions that may be attractive to some, but which lack adequate scientific support. In my view, CSR makes a lot of assumptions that, despite being poorly supported by data and being implausible on various grounds, are passed off as fact (Watts, 2014). These assumptions then constrain how CSR theorizing proceeds, forcing it down particular tracks. There are many who share the basic assumption of CSR, that religion is a natural phenomenon, but who do not subscribe to assumptions such as the

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massive modularity of mind, that impose unnecessary constraints on CSR theorizing (Smith, 2009). A related problem is that cognition is the key feature of religion in CSR. That is inherent in a project that calls itself the cognitive science of religion. It leads to the view that the evolution of religion is to be explained primarily in terms of developments in cognition, and to a relative neglect of social aspects and the context of religion (Turner, 2014). In contrast, I advocate open-minded enquiry into the relative importance of social and cognitive aspects of religion, unconstrained by any dogma that dictates that cognition is primary. The assumption that cognition is primary is linked, I suggest, to the insistence that religion is an evolutionary by-product rather than being adaptive (Kirkpatrick, 2005). My proposal distinguishes clearly between the prerequisites of religion and the consequences of religion. I suggest that religion depends on cognitive developments, but that the adaptive benefits of religion are social. In one sense, it is correct to say that religion is a product of cognitive developments. However, to say that it is only a by-product, and that it has no adaptive value, misses the social contribution that religion makes. That, in turn, results from the exclusive emphasis in CSR on cognitive rather than social aspects of religion. It seems highly likely that there is cognitive-social co-evolution associated with religion. Early forms of religion probably did depend on developments in cognitive processing capacities. However, the growing social benefits of religious practices drove further developments of the physical brain and of associated cognitive capacities. The social benefits of religion depended on cognitive capacities, but I suggest that they also drove a further enhancement of those capacities.

Modes of ‘Religion’ A key problem with CSR theory is that it has become too wedded to a unitary account of what should be classified as ‘religion,’ and is inclined to assume that all religion is essentially the same (Watts & Bretherton, in press). In particular, there is sometimes a surprising lack of recognition of the extent to which religion itself has evolved. The implicit assumption seems to be that ‘religion,’ when it first evolved, was essentially the same as it is now in the 21st century. However, that is an untenable assumption. There is a good deal of consensus about the evolution of religion, at least

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among those who recognize that religion has shown an evolutionary development. The early phenomena that might now be recognized as ‘religion’ were very different from what it has become in the 21st century. It is widely assumed that shamanic religion antedated doctrinal religion (e.g. Dunbar, 2014), and that seems correct. Shamanic rituals are characterized by coordinated rhythmic movement and intense experience. In Dunbar’s view, they are well designed to give rise to collective endorphin release, which made an important contribution to social bonding, and was one of the key factors that enabled emerging humanity to achieve larger group sizes than their primate ancestors. Shamanic rituals may have also contributed to healing (McClenon, 2002)–they do not require language and may have antedated its development. However, such rituals may well have involved collective singing, which also contributes to endorphin release. It is hard to be sure how far back shamanic rituals go, but they may go as far back as Neanderthals, who were, it has been suggested, notable for their singing (Mithen, 2006). Doctrinal religion, in contrast, is associated with sacred spaces, priestly hierarchies, theologies, gods, and formal rituals. The rituals tend to be more frequent but less intense. The gods are often what Norenzayan (2013) calls ‘Big Gods,’ who regulate people’s lives. The social effects of shamanic religion are mediated through the social bonding that is facilitated by collective endorphin release, whereas the social effects of doctrinal religion are mediated through other processes, such as fear of supernatural punishment. The mechanism in the two cases is quite different, though both contribute in different ways to maintaining social cooperation. Any society needs a way of dealing with ‘free riders,’ and it seems that fear of supernatural punishment may be a way of dealing with that problem, though the processes involved in fear of supernatural punishment may be more complex than is yet realized (Bourrat et al., 2011). If there is an intermediate stage between shamanic and doctrinal religion it is probably based around storytelling. Telling stories, as with shamanic dancing, contributes to social cohesion, but it does so in a more linguistic way than shamanic dancing. Stories enable people to develop a sense of shared identity by rehearsing a narrative about who they are, and how their identity has evolved. Such stories play an important part in religion; the story of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible can be seen as an exercise in their building a narrative identity for themselves as the people that God delivered from Egypt and led through the Red Sea to the promised land of

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Canaan. Quite apart from the content of stories, the process of telling them, gathered around a campfire, may also have contributed to social bonding. Robert Bellah (2011) has developed a rather similar overview of the evolution of religion, making use of Merlin Donald’s general theory of cognitive evolution and applying it to religion (Donald, 1991). Bellah’s treatment of the evolution of religion is enormously rich and subtle, and all I can provide here is a brief schematic account. His theory is influenced by Donald’s distinction between four different stages in cognitive and cultural evolution, with three transition points between them. The four stages are episodic culture, mimetic culture, mythic culture, and theoretic culture. It is worth emphasizing that Donald’s model is a hierarchical one, in which earlier modes of cognition continue alongside newer ones, rather than being replaced by them. Episodic culture is practical and procedural, but mimetic culture adds to this a mode of culture that is symbolic, though still pre-linguistic. Cognition in this phase is symbolic but, as Donald says, it is slow-moving and rather restricted in subject matter. Donald argues that this is a distinctively human mode of cognition. However, one might add that it is only a transitional phase and one that doesn’t last; it is not what is characteristic of humans. Shamanic dancing is the kind of religion found in a mimetic culture. Mythic culture is very different. The embryonic capacity for cognition that is seen in mimetic culture rapidly develops into a mode of symbolic cognition that is faster, more versatile, and is applied in a pervasive and integrative way. That seems to be what is most distinctively human. Mythic culture is still an oral one, but it uses narrative language rather than the more abstract forms of cognition that predominate in our own culture. The development of language makes it possible to tell the stories through which myths develop. It is characteristic of religion in this phase to proceed by telling stories and developing myths. Mythic culture leads on, in Donald’s theory, to a theoretic culture that depends heavily on external symbolic storage. It is in theoretic culture that written language develops. Scriptures can be built up, and doctrines and moral codes can be formulated. These new cognitive capacities make possible the development of doctrinal religion that is regulated by priests.

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Harvey Whitehouse (2004) has offered a convergent perspective with his distinction between imagistic and doctrinal religion. Though he approaches things primarily from an anthropological rather than an evolutionary perspective, he would probably accept that, in evolutionary terms, imagistic religion is older than doctrinal religion. He would probably also not dispute the suggestion that there can be hybrid modes, or that imagistic religion can take different forms. There is also a related approach in Donovan Schaeffer’s book on Religious Affects (Schaeffer, 2015). Schaeffer takes a particular interest in the waterfall dance Jane Goodall observed being performed by chimpanzees (Goodall and Berman, 1999). Goodall noted that, when chimpanzees reach a particularly impressive waterfall they stop walking and go into a kind of dance, swinging through the spray, hurling heavy objects, stamping their feet rhythmically in the water, and making displays towards the waterfall. Donovan suggests that religion begins with the kind of coordinated bodily actions seen in a waterfall dance, which seem to be associated with a mood of fascination and wonder. That is convergent with Dunbar’s proposal that religion starts with trance dancing and with Bellah’s assumption that the earliest phase of religion is seen in a mimetic culture. CSR theory generally lacks this kind of subtle account of how religion itself has evolved. It has also not faced the implications of the fact that more cognitively sophisticated forms of religion come relatively late in human evolution. A theoretical approach to religion that is committed to the primacy of cognition is always likely to exaggerate the importance of cognition in the earliest forms of religion. In fact, it seems that cognition initially played only a small role in religion, but played an increasingly important role as religion changed and evolved. A commitment to the importance of cognitive aspects of religion is likely to distort all this.

Beyond Massive Modularity of Mind A key assumption generally made within CSR is that the human mind is organized into modules with specific functions. It is an assumption that has been adopted within much of evolutionary psychology. However, I suggest that it is an unnecessary assumption, and one that also tends to distort the CSR approach to religion. I do not deny that there are specific modules (the proposal that there is a module for language is one of the more convincing examples). However, I

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see no reason to take the modularity of mind so far as to claim that the human mind is organized entirely in terms of modules, and that there is no general-purpose central processing capacity at all. That is what is known as ‘massive modularity.’ There are alternative views of the evolution of the cognitive architecture, such as Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) of Philip Barnard, which make provision for the evolution of central processing (e.g. Barnard et al., 2007). If you assert that the mind consists entirely of specific modules, and that there is no central processing, you limit how you can explain the appearance of religion in evolution. One option might be to suggest that a specific module for religion develops during evolution, though that has few supporters. The available neuropsychological data seems to suggest religion makes use of pathways and capacities that serve other purposes rather than representing a dedicated religion module (Watts, in press). That leads to the assumption that religion makes use of pathways and structures that serve other purposes. However, in CSR, that is often linked to two other assumptions that seem gratuitous. One is that religion is an evolutionary by-product and serves no adaptive purpose; the other is that cognitive capacities, such as that for agency detection, are misapplied in religion and are, in effect, a cognitive error. I suggest that both assumptions are implausible. Allowing that there are more centralized modes of cognition, in addition to specific modules and capacities, opens up a wider range of possible explanations for the evolution of religion. I propose here that religion is made possible by an evolutionary development in central processing capacity. One of the features that makes such a proposal attractive, from a scientific point of view, is that it provides a parsimonious explanation of the whole range of concurrent evolutionary developments that Mithen (1996) calls the ‘cultural explosion.’ Parsimony in science does not always mean that a given theory is necessarily correct, but it is attractive, and is generally to be preferred unless there is some good reason for not doing so. An explanation of the evolution of religion in terms of how central processing evolved in humans can easily explain the wider cultural explosion, whereas explanations in terms of specific modules find it harder to do so. There has been much discussion about where to locate the key cognitive difference between humans and other species. You can draw up a long list of differences in the capacities of humans and other species. For example,

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Amatit and Shallice (2007) have the following list: the making of tools and instruments; the use of signs and signals; language; a capacity for categorization and organization; dynamic concepts and aesthetic sense; a capacity for meta-representation; an algorithmic capacity; theory of mind; and a capacity for anticipatory planning. It is tempting to select one of these distinctive capacities and to argue that it is the fundamental one from which everything else flows. Language has had its advocates, so has tool use, and theory of mind. Amati and Shalice argue that it is the capacity to organize and control mental operations, especially sustained, non-routine, multi-level ones. It is hard to see how to resolve such debates about which distinctive human accomplishment is the fundamental one. I think that framing human distinctiveness in terms of specific competencies is the wrong level at which to be theorizing, and that we should be locating the fundamental human difference at the level of cognitive architecture. Specifically, humans have a cognitive architecture that provides them with alternative modes of central cognition, giving them a cognitive versatility unmatched by any other species. A key distinctive feature of humans, I maintain, is that we have two ways of doing central cognition. Other species have central cognitive capacity, albeit more limited than we have, but they don’t have two such different ways of doing central cognition in the way humans do (Barnard et al., 2007). The claim that humans have two modes of central cognition is not really controversial, though the widespread consensus that exists has been obscured by the fact that there is no agreed theoretical formulation, and no agreed terminology. In elaborating this, I start with the ‘Interacting Cognitive Subsystems’ model of Philip Barnard. It is one of the few theories to offer a comprehensive model of human cognitive architecture and is, I believe, one of the most precisely specified of such theories. It has been set in evolutionary context, with an explicit position about the human difference (Barnard et al., 2007). It has also been applied to a wide range of human functioning, and I have myself developed its application to religion (Watts, 2013; Watts, 2014), something that I will discuss further below. Barnard describes the evolutionary development of an increasingly differentiated cognitive architecture, going from five to eight subsystems in our primate ancestors. However, until humans, there was still only one subsystem for central processing. The crucial change that came about with humans was the move from one to two central subsystems. One, the so-

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called ‘propositional’ system, is linked to language, and is rational and articulate. That is the most distinctively human subsystem. Its development frees up the other central subsystem, the so-called ‘implicational’ system, which is more intuitive and schematic, and is more closely linked to the body and to affect. Having these two central subsystems considerably increases the cognitive versatility of humans. The range of things we can do with one or other system is much broader than with any other species. It also gives us choices. We can put the main emphasis on rational or intuitive functioning; some people go one way on that, and some the other. We can also bounce things between the two systems, rather like a rally in tennis. That can set up some self-sustaining loops, some of which are helpful, though some, like those that operate in depression, are very unhelpful. A somewhat similar theory has been described by Iain McGilchrist (2009) in The Master and his Emissary, though his focus is on the physical brain rather than cognition, and on cultural history more than evolution. McGilchrist’s core argument surrounds the observation that while (contrary to popular opinion) the brain’s two hemispheres are involved in performing basically the same tasks, they do so in fundamentally different ways. He contrasts that the left-brain is rational and linguistic, and that the right-brain is more intuitive. This is a shorthand that works, as McGilchrist is well aware, for the 70% of the population whose left-brain is the socalled dominant one. Things are different for those who have dominance the other way round, and for those with mixed dominance. Most species have differences between the two hemispheres, but in humans these differences are more pronounced than in any other species. As the left-brain of humans became more specialized for language it became more radically different from the right brain than in any other species. Also, intriguingly, in humans the two brains are physically less inter-connected than in any other species, so they can each do their own thing relatively independently (McGilchrist, 2009). We can multitask, doing one set of things with the left-brain, and a very different set of things with the right brain. This is very useful, but it is achieved at the cost of a certain disconnectedness between two modes of cognition that many humans know all too well from experience. Both Barnard and McGilchrist are developing what in popular language might be called a distinction between ‘head’ and ‘heart.’ Humans have both head and heart available to them, and I claim that sets them apart from other species.

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In human evolution, McGilchrist claims that thought comes earlier than language, and that human communication used gesture and singing before it used speech. He goes on to describe a cultural oscillation between periods in which the left-brain is very dominant, and periods in which there is a corrective movement in the other direction. However, he sees the general movement as being towards ever-increasing ascendency of the rational cognition of the left-brain. Even aspects of human culture like religion and art, that might normally exemplify right-brain cognition and which might have served to correct excessive reliance on the left brain, have tended to be hijacked by the left-brain, and are now often done in a rather left-brain way. Literalist fundamentalism is an obvious example of religion that has been taken over by the left-brain. McGilchrist thinks that the standard terminology of the left-brain as ‘dominant’ is misleading. He jokes that the left-brain, with its capacity for language, has got itself called the ‘dominant’ one, whereas it is actually the larger right brain that underpins common sense, and which we really can’t do without. He sees the left-brain as being (in its ideal role) a good servant, or ‘Emissary,’ to the right brain, which should ideally be understood as being the real, silent ‘Master.’ Unfortunately, the left-brain, precisely because it is lacking in powers of common sense, doesn’t quite realize that is how their relationship should be, and has tended to become arrogant and to get above itself.

Dual Cognition and Religion So far I have set out the view that humans are distinctive in having two modes of central cognition, drawing on both Barnard and McGilchrist (though I could have drawn on others). I will now apply this to religion, showing how these developments in central cognitive capacity made religion possible. This is a kind of proposal that is not open to those who arbitrarily adopt massive modularity of the human mind. My proposal is that religion is one of a range of human accomplishments that are made possible by the evolutionary development of two distinct modes of central cognition. I have argued elsewhere, particularly in Head and Heart: Perspectives from Religion and Psychology (Watts, 2013), that religion is quintessentially ‘implicational’ in Barnard’s terminology, i.e. it is more intuitive, and less propositional than much human cognition. There are various reasons for making this proposal. First, there is no direct pathway

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from implicational cognition to articulation, which I suggest explains why religious experience is often said to be ‘ineffable.’ Second, implicational cognition is schematic and emblematic, in that it works with broad schemas that are instantiated in many different contexts. A good example from Christian thinking is the ‘death to resurrection’ schema, found in many different contexts, above all with Jesus, but also with baptismal thinking, in personal experience after times of loss, and in the theology of reconciliation, to name but a few. Third, implicational cognition is better connected with body and affect. I would argue that religious cognition is an embodied and socially embedded form of cognition. There is, admittedly, something paradoxical about claiming, on the one hand, that religion is made possible by the evolution in humans of two distinct modes of central processing and, on the other, that religion is quintessentially implicational. The paradox arises from implicational cognition being, in evolutionary terms, the older mode of social cognition, and propositional cognition being the newer one. If other primates have central processing capacity that is very similar to the human implicational subsystem, why do they not also have religion? This is a fair question, and there are two responses to it. One is that religion involves a to-and-fro between the two central modes of cognition, between implicational and propositional cognition in Barnard’s terms, and left-brain and right-brain in McGilchrist’s terms. As I have already said, religion becomes increasingly cognitive as it evolves. As it does so, it comes increasingly to resemble what we recognize as religion in our own time. In the early stages of the evolution of religion you find elements that represent embryonic ingredients of the package that we call religion, but not religion as we now know it. This transition from embryonic elements of religion to a package that is recognizable as religion is something that deserves more attention than it has received. My other response to the above paradox makes use of the suggestion that humans are ambivalent about the newer, propositional mode of cognition. This newer mode has been enormously useful to humans, but it seems to have left us with an unwelcome sense of being disconnected from the older, more intuitive, affective, embodied mode of cognition. There is a hankering to get back to it, and I suggest that religion enables people to do that. Indeed, I suggest that it has increasingly become a key factor in the appeal of religion in our present society that it enables people to do that.

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This suggestion also explains some of the appeal of ‘spirituality,’ which also serves the same purpose, without some of the features of religion that some find unwelcome. Mindfulness, for example, is perhaps attractive to so many people because it affords respite from analytical, left-brain cognition, and it enables people to reconnect with an evolutionarily older form of cognition (Watts, in press). I could make similar points using McGilchrist’s lateralization theory. He says that the right-brain has a stronger sense of the Other, to which it reaches out. That includes the social Other but also, I might suggest, the transcendent Other. The right-brain is also more humble, and probably has antecedents in the trance dances of the Paleocene Epoch (or earlier), which is how Robin Dunbar and others think religion began (Dunbar, 2014). Trance dancing is ‘natural’ in a way that doctrine is not. Religious narratives, such as Christian salvation history, perhaps occupy an intermediate position, and have their origin in stories told around the campfires of early humanity. Further, I suggest, again following Dunbar, that the more natural aspects of religion tend to facilitate social cohesion, whereas the less natural aspects, such as doctrine contribute to social regulation in very different ways, such as fear of punishment. Though religion contributes to within-group social cohesion, it can also lead to divisions between groups. Dunbar suggests that this is not unexpected, given that religion evolved to give cohesion to groups of up to about 150 (Dunbar, 2013). McGilchrist sees a general movement in cultural history towards increasing reliance on the left-brain. That has produced some distortions of art and religion which have made it harder for them to redress the balance between the two modes of thinking–a balance that McGilchrist thinks is urgently needed for human survival. Though McGilchrist is not conventionally religious, there is much implicit religious thinking in his position, as he recognizes. For example, the narrative of the Emissary usurping the proper role of the Master is an apocalyptic narrative, warning about the dangers this has placed humanity in, and our need for rescue from it. It is a religious grand narrative in secular guise. In the 21st century, there are complex social movements going on surrounding religion. On the one hand, there is a movement towards doctrinaire, fundamentalist religion, which has many of the hallmarks of what McGilchrist would recognize as the left-brain developing a caricature of religion. There is also a powerful movement in the other direction, with

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a movement away from doctrine and religious institutions, and towards forms of religion that feel more natural. William James was an early prophet of this movement, with his emphasis on religious experience, and it is also to be found in the present widespread interest in religious practices such as mindfulness. I am not suggesting that mindfulness is easy to learn, but it offers a path back to a mode of cognition which, once you have learned to do it, feels more natural.

The Naturalness of Religion and of Naturalism Finally, and in light of all this, I want to ask: how natural is religion? Anyone addressing the question of the naturalness of religion needs to acknowledge their debt to Robert McCauley and the position he sets out in his book, ‘Why Religion is Natural (And Science is Not)’ (McCauley, 2011). The title states his position very clearly: religion is natural in a way that science is not. I broadly agree with that conclusion, though I am not convinced by the way in which McCauley argues for it, especially the parts of his argument derived from Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). Basically, I agree with McCauley that religion is one of the more natural things that humans do, though I want to emphasize more strongly than he does how diverse religion is, and that some approaches to religion are more natural than others. I will present an alternative argument for conclusions similar to those of McCauley that clarifies this point. I suggest that it is reasonable to say that the heart is more ‘natural’ than the head. It is more intuitive, and is earlier both in evolutionary and developmental terms. It is less effortful, requires less cognitive capacity, and is better connected with both the physical body and social world. In Barnard’s terms, implicational cognition is more natural than propositional cognition. In McGilchrist’s terms, right-brain cognition is more natural than left-brain cognition; it is more contextual, and connects better with both the physical body and the social body. However, religion is multifaceted, and some aspects of religion feel more natural than others. In our present society, it is noticeable that it is the more natural approaches to religion that are thriving, whereas more doctrinal and ecclesial forms of religion are fading away. Doctrine is probably the least natural aspect of religion, and it probably goes back only to the Neolithic period. Charismatic and Pentecostal religion hark

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back to the shamanic rituals of early humanity, and feel more natural. In a rather different way, meditative religious practices, demanding though they are to acquire, also seem to feel more natural than doctrine, once people have learned how to do them. It is intriguing that, while belief in God has been declining, belief in an afterlife has been growing in the post-war period (Watts, in press). Belief in the afterlife, and in angels, seems to bubble up in ways that feel natural to people. Belief in God might be bubbling up too, as it also addresses the wish to connect with ‘something more,’ with the Other. However, belief in God has become so closely intertwined with more analytical modes of cognition that it always feels less natural, and so it is in decline. Doctrinal and ecclesial religion don’t seem to feel natural to people, and there is now a cultural movement against them. I also want to raise a related question about the naturalness of philosophical naturalism. In CSR there is an underlying assumption that naturalism was the intuitive outlook of emerging humanity, or at least that it would have been if religion had not led to an unfortunate departure from so-called ‘naturalistic’ assumptions, which are held to be intuitively obvious. However, I suggest that this is another unconvincing assumption of CSR (Watts, 2014). I reject the idea that naturalism is self-evident and, but for cognitive mistakes associated with religion, would have seemed obvious to emerging humanity. On the contrary, I suggest that naturalism is a modern construction that feels no more natural than doctrinal religion. Naturalism is a highly sophisticated, modern intellectual position that is not natural at all, and is often enunciated with the blinkered arrogance that McGilchrist associates with the left-brain. In CSR, modern naturalism often gets projected back, anachronistically, onto emerging humanity. It seems much more likely that humanity began with monistic assumptions that did not separate the natural from the spiritual, or the animate from the inanimate. For, the normal developmental movement is from conceptually undifferentiated to more differentiated forms of cognition. The background CSR assumption, that naturalism is natural, sits uneasily with the assumption, also found in CSR, that religion is natural (Boyer, 2001). It requires a kind of ‘Fall’ from naturalism into religion to get from one to the other. The CSR Fall takes the form of too easily triggered agency detection crossing over from the animate world to the inanimate

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world, which is seen in CSR as ‘domain violation.’ I find the CSR narrative of an intuitively obvious distinction between the animate and inanimate worlds being violated by hyperactive agency detection to be a highly dubious interpretation of the evolutionary data. I am not suggesting that explicit supernaturalism feels any more natural than naturalism. However, I do claim that a monistic worldview, which has not yet learned to make the distinction between naturalism and supernaturalism, (which comes earlier in development and evolutionary terms), feels more natural. It is what, I suggest, was intuitively obvious to emerging humanity. From Justin Barrett’s research on childhood theism, it may also be intuitively obvious to young children too (Barrett, 2012). So, I agree with McCauley that religion, or at least some forms of it, are natural in a way that science is not. Religion characteristically makes use of a mode of cognition that feels natural to humans, though religious practices and experience are more natural than religious doctrines and institutions. I suggest that the dual cognition theory that I have developed here, around the claim that humans uniquely have two ways of doing central processing, provides the most convincing account of what it is about some forms of religion that make them feel natural.

Summary In this chapter I have criticized the assumptions of mainstream cognitive science of religion on a number of points, and claimed that: x an over-emphasis on cognitive aspects of religion in CSR has led to a neglect of the social functions of religion; x there has been a neglect within CSR regarding how diverse religion is, and how it has evolved from relatively non-cognitive to more cognitive forms; x the focus on the modular mind in CSR has distracted attention from the impact of evolutionary developments in central processing capacity on the emergence of religion; x humans are distinctive in having two central modes of cognition, and the forms of religion associated with each mode are very different; x some forms of religion, those that make use of older, more intuitive modes of cognition, feel more natural than those that do not;

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x an undifferentiated, monistic conceptual structure is evolutionarily earlier and feels more natural than modern naturalism, and there is no need for an explanation of now naturalism gave way to religion.

References Amati, D. & Shallice, T. (2007). On the emergence of modern humans. Cognition, 103(3), 358–85. Barnard, P. J., D. J. Duke, R. W. Byrne, and I. Davidson (2007). Differentiation in Cognitive and Emotional Meanings: An Evolutionary Analysis. Cognition and Emotion 21(6), 1155–83. Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. —. (2012). Born Believers: the Science of Children’s Religious Belief. New York: Free Press. Bellar, R. N. (2011). Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press Bourrat, P., Q. D. Atkinson and R. I. M. Dunbar (2011). Supernatural punishment and individual social compliance across cultures. Religion, Brain and Behavior 1(2), 119-134. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion Explained: the Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors. London: Vintage Books. Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Harvard, Harvard University Press. Dunbar, R. I. M (2013). The origin of religion as a small-scale phenomenon, In S. Clarke, R. Powell, and J. Savulescu (eds.) Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Dunbar, R. (2014). Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction. London: Penguin. Goodall, J. and P. Berman (1999). Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. New York: Warner Books. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion. New York: Guilford Press. McCauley, R. N (2011). Why Religion is Natural (And Science is Not). New York: Oxford University Press. McClenon, J. C. (2002). Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution and the Origin of Religion. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

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McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Makings of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mithen, S. J. (1996). The Prehistory of the Mind. London: Thames & Hudson. —. (2006) The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Schaefer, A. E (2015). Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution and Power. Durham: Duke University Press. Smith, B. N. (2009). Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press. Turner, L. (2014). “Neither friends nor enemies: the complex relationship between cognitive and humanistic accounts of religious belief.” In Evolution, Religion and Cognitive Science: Critical and Constructive Essays, ed. F. Watts & L. Turner, 152-172. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watts, F. (2013). “Dual system theories of religious cognition.” In Head and Heart: Perspectives from Religion and Psychology, ed. F. Watts & G. Dumbreck, 125-154. West Conshohoken, PA: Templeton Press. —. (2014) “Religion and the emergence of differentiated cognition.” In Evolution, Religion and Cognitive Science: Critical and Constructive Essays, ed. F. Watts & L. Turner, 109-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. (in press) Psychology, Religion and Spirituality: Theories and Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, F. & Bretherton, R. (in press) “Religion’ is complex and diverse”. Religion, Brain and Behavior, in press Whitehouse (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

CHAPTER SEVEN RENEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT: CHANGES AND TRANSFORMATION OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEANING-GIVING BELIEFS SHIVA KHALILI

Beliefs, including worldviews, provide a framework of meaning and norm-setting behavior for individuals and groups. Not only are the explanations for phenomena and daily life events; the origin, end, and meaning of life and being a person; but also identity formation and interpersonal relationships, are based upon this framework. In this chapter I summarize some of the evolutionary explanations for the formation of these beliefs, then briefly review their functions and changes throughout history in the context of changing environments (climate, tools etc.). Together with humanist and existentialist philosophies, the naturalisticoriented modern sciences of the 21st century provide ideas and holistic narratives, that have become a source of meaning-giving beliefs and ideas for increasingly more individuals across the world, replacing traditional religious beliefs, or the reformists’ interpretations and narratives regarding the origin, and end, and meaning of life. I will discuss some challenges to individuals in secular and religious societies, and related risks and benefits, with respect to these changes in individual and collective beliefs. I will suggest that ‘secular’ scientific education (including information about all cultures and religions in their evolutionary and developmental context), psycho-educative programs (such as life-skills training that includes critical thinking as well as general information about human cognitive biases), together with respect and celebration of elements of all cultures as part of modern humanity’s heritage can decrease in-group/out-

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group aggression, and discrimination related to membership of a certain meaning-giving belief system. This can help provide a safer context for developing and (re-)negotiating identities in a changing environment.

Introduction Today in the first half of the 21st century we can see a spectrum of ‘meaning-giving’ presuppositions, attitudes, beliefs and values among different societies and individuals. Allport (1955) describes these as beliefs and attitudes that shape the person’s whole life. Changes, transformations or even revival of specific traditional beliefs can be easily recognized in many individuals, groups and societies. These core attitudes are held as true (beliefs) and provide the meaning-giving framework for other cognitions, emotions and behavior. They also shape and form the basis of the mindset or perceptual setting of a person and enhance the readiness to perceive, and interpret phenomena, and act or react in a certain way. In this regard persons’ reflection on self, their views about others, the whole world, and all their interactions, are shaped and evaluated by these beliefs. The context and the culture of a person include a set of beliefs shared in that specific culture that enhance the feeling of belongingness between members of that culture, and hence the cooperation within that community. However, these shared beliefs seem to generate an in-group identity that makes the group members, or the followers of the belief system, prone to prejudices and aggression towards out-group others and discrimination towards non-believers, or those that think differently.

Formation of meaning-giving belief systems: an evolutionary approach Cooperation and survival through norm-setting behavior and moralities Norm-setting behavior can be observed and are reported in many social species. With the progress in animal observation more and more data about expression of fairness, compassion, loyalty to group, respect for authority, grief, forgiveness, and even politics in primates such as Bonobos and Chimpanzees (de Waal, 2009, 2016) are reported. The ability to feel empathy in these species contributes to many specific behaviors similar to humans that in their turn help to form norm-setting and normfollowing behavior as well as some basic moralities. The group life of social species also succeeds through time saving and survival behavior of

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loyalty to group and respect to authority. Further, social learning in these species leads to socially transmitted skills that seem to be a ‘knowledge’ (a specific culture), and a shared intentionality that enhances the collaboration between the individuals of a group (Rozin, 2010). Learning dominance hierarchies together with the empathy-related behavior can be termed as the species’ morality or norm-setting behavior keeping the group together and at the same time contributing to the welfare, stress reduction and sense of belongingness for the individual members. Haidt and Kesebir (2010, 800) define moral systems by their function: “Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.” In this regard, it seems that the basic human moral foundations observed in diverse cultures look very similar to the primates. Haidt and Graham (2007) divide these moral foundations into two groups of individual moral foundations (care and fairness/reciprocity), and social moral foundations that function as group binding moralities (group loyalty, respect to authority). Even the moral foundation of purity as a human specific morality, seems to have evolved from the physical purity, disgust (food-poisoning, etc.) and contamination basis found in other species related to their food behavior. These are further expanded to spiritual and/or the whole person’s physical and psychological purity. In summary from the evolutionary point of view our ancestors living in small groups similar to other primates have developed norm-setting behaviors and basic moralities, enhancing their cooperation and survival. In the multi-level societies of primates and in groups of about 100 (adult) individuals these behaviors help the survival of the group (Dunbar, 1993, 2003). However, these specific behaviors and moralities seem to have been developed and elaborated later within a changing environment and with the help of a network of language supported beliefs and narratives to bind larger groups and organize and maintain cooperation and a social order in the human communities.

Perception and the search for good Gestalt Over millions of years of evolution, the capacities for perception within each species have become adapted to specific stimuli and interaction with their environments, and in relation to how important those environmental features and their changes are for the survival of the species. The body,

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brain and senses have been specialized to pick up information and process it, and eventually to produce a reaction that would be helpful for the adaptation to the environment. In this sense, the meaning-giving process for each species is already happening with the formation of speciesspecific senses. This process gets further developed when reinforced by life-experiences leading to associations with other brain areas and bodily states. Senses translate some aspects of the environment to electrochemical processes, and it is crucial for the living organism to be sensitive to the changes in its environment. This necessity can be observed in specific perceptual and change-monitoring processes in humans (such as Gestalt laws of perception: closure, similarity, proximity, simplicity, continuity). The continuous interaction of the organism’s situative condition (including its ‘mind-set’ and preparedness, based on its past states and its biological situation), and the ongoing sensory input that activates other associations, emphasize the togetherness of perception and cognitions. Species usually ‘trust’ and behave automatically according to these patterns that have arisen from the importance of organizing/givingmeaning to environment and monitoring change. For human survival, the specific heuristics and Gestalt laws have become crucial for discriminating between stimuli and make decisions rapidly. In a changing environment with new or conflicting information (from outside or inside), the conflict between perception and other cognitions gained this way usually demand changes in some related cognitions, emotions and behaviors. When change doesn’t occur, trusting old patterns may lead to biases and failures. Human visual illusions show a spectrum of the biases we have in this, our best developed sense (Frith, 2007). These biases represent the way our brain interprets itself and produces meaning relating to specific data. Visual illusions also show that, even when new information and cognitions are introduced, and the brain itself ‘knows’ about the falseness of its interpretation, yet its function in processing the first kind of data (sensation) still automatically produces the false perception/interpretation (the false meaning) of that data. Such processing happens despite repetition and knowing about the visual illusion in question. Though such primary perception cannot be changed in such cases, yet ‘awareness cognitions’ can change and produce different ‘perception-

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related cognitions’ that may help ‘not to trust’ the initial perceptions that one knows to be illusory, and not to act or decide hastily upon them. These ‘related cognitions’ are close to the concepts of reflection and critical thinking in their function and effect. They may also bring to mind the role of new information and processing in changing the readiness of body to act in certain ways (‘readiness potential’), and encouraging a vetoing of the program prepared on the yet non-conscious physiological level (Libet, 1985; Blackmore, 2004). Much research in social psychology (Ariely, 2009) show biases in perception and cognition such as intuitions, heuristics and decisionmaking in many fields of life. Meaning-giving interpretations are usually held as true beliefs until conflicting information and cognitions are gathered (especially in changing environment and new situations). These organizing/meaning-giving beliefs interact with all human concerns, including existential questions, psychological and physical health concepts, even to one’s approaches to peace and conflict resolution. Such beliefs are based upon basic explanations of phenomena, but also put some restrictions on these explanations. The immediate associations of events, their outcomes, and meanings, seem to be crucial for learning and survival in a dangerous environment that demands quick reactions. Such associations happen in information perception and processing, as part of the ‘search for good Gestalt.’ This is an automatic process of categorization (pre-stage meaning) and narrative relation, an organizing activity driven by the urge to justify or explain one’s experiences, and come to a closure. Newberg (2011) calls this ability the ‘cognitive imperative,’ based on the ingrained need in human beings to organize their world cognitively. Sperry (1969) reported in his split brain experiments, the automatic urge of the left hemisphere to come up with justifications of its perceived information of events (activated and performed by right hemisphere processes), in spite of its total ignorance of the data or ‘reasons’ and the activated associations of the right hemisphere for its behavior. Indeed, psychopathology and neuroscience provide a large literature and numerous case studies regarding such misinterpretations, false cognitions and beliefs. Ramachandran and Blakeslee (1999) describe cases with different areas of brain damage resulting in changes, or the lack of ability

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to change the (meaning-giving) beliefs, and in particular the beliefs and narratives regarding self and identity. In a similar way, the evolutionary approach explains the formation of supernatural and afterlife beliefs, emerging from the efforts of our ancestors in organizing and giving meaning to their confrontations with various phenomena, such as bodily functions, injuries, death, dreaming, and specifically, dreams of dead persons (Ogilvie and Hamilton, 2012). Adaptation theories (together with non-adaptive by product theories of beliefs) and Terror Management theory emphasize the role and function of agency detection in generating explanations (such as in supernatural beliefs) for simple natural events like rain, flood, thunder, light and darkness, for reducing the fear arising from the ignorance of the causes and mechanisms of events. The capacities for observation were limited and there were no other tools to gather more information about the phenomena. The ability to produce words for the unseen (Harari, 2014) as a specific feature of human language, has contributed to these processes. Apart from reducing fear and generating an illusion of control through performing rituals, these simple supernatural explanations (naming and invoking unseen agents), shared by a group contribute to the cooperation and social order within a group. Such early meaning-giving beliefs were formed in relatively small group contexts. “These groups were held together by a few behavioral mechanisms that have genetically evolved in nonhuman species to permit limited amounts of cooperation” (Sheriff, Norenzayan and Henrich 2010, 122). Since basic moralities and cooperation have helped our ancestors to live and survive in small groups, it seems that with changes in environments, and increase of the number of group members, shared beliefs about the explanation of phenomena gradually became an important factor in groupbinding and the formation of individual and group identities (see Harari, 2014). These belief systems have been formed to generate or modify the application of inner and outer resources for individuals and groups, supporting ‘inner peace,’ by generating meaning and structure for human life, as well as improving ‘outer peace,’ by regulating social relationships in resource-limited environments. We can observe the existence of such ancestral/supernatural meaninggiving beliefs in the 21st century by looking at uncontacted tribes in Amazonas, Africa, West Papua, and the Sentinelese, the so-called

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‘primitive societies.’ These are similar to pre-agricultural era groups, mostly in environments with a slower rate of change and limited exposure to diversity (climate, trade, written culture etc.). Herein, tool making has remained almost unchanged and is not developed to more advanced levels of technology or observation tools. Though these societies have not been static and have indeed gone through historical change, the rate of change is slow, showing limited interaction with new information. As such, conflicting cognitions, and changes in interpretations and beliefs occur only rarely and slowly. This is true, especially when the social environment of supernatural beliefs remains limited to cooperation in very small groups. Dunbar (1993, 2003) reports of how larger groups in New Guinea gathered in villages routinely split once they exceed about 150 adults. He argues that larger groups tend to become unstable and eventually split into smaller groups as the moralities and shared beliefs and narratives are not adequate to bind the group together, solve the conflicts within the group, and maintain a social order. With climate change and change in environments leading to the appearance of agriculture and formations of villages with larger groups of adults living together, the separated superstitious explanations seem to become more coherent and associated to more aspects of the members’ lives (Harari, 2014). Tuzin (1976/2001) detailed the historical emergence of an anomalous village of 1500 people and describes how culturally evolved beliefs about social organization, marriage, norms, rituals and supernatural agents converged to maintain harmony and galvanize cooperation in a locale where this scale was previously unknown.

Interaction between meaning-giving belief systems and their environment “The cognitive and behavioral capacities that make human culture possible–complex communication skills, social learning mechanisms, biased information processing that favors common traits and prestigious individuals–evolved because they allow individuals to readily adapt their behavior to the novel and changing environments at rates much faster than genetic evolution” (Shariff, Norenzayan, Henrich, 2010, 119-120).

The historical review of the formation and development of meaning-giving beliefs show that the cognitive capacities of such groups (including the use of language and tools); as well as other features of their regional cultures

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(which contain elements of previous cultures and meaning-giving beliefs); and also changes in their environment (natural and social, war and trade relationships with other groups, confrontation with diversity, and growing population); have all contributed to the narratives that provide the foundation of meaning-giving belief systems, and to the structure of codes and rituals produced for their organizing functions. The relationships between hunter gatherers and their natural environment, and also to their own tribe members, and to other tribes have led to similarities between meaning-giving beliefs of separate and different tribes before agricultural revolution. Moreover, the findings from studies regarding shamanic and natural religions show common features of simple supernatural beliefs, nature and ancestral related rituals, healings and dances, be that in tribes or later in rather closed communities without much use of language (Dunbar, 2003). Harari (2014, 101) describes the agricultural revolution and the gradual transformation of ancient foragers to temporary and then to permanent villagers as influenced not only by the changes in natural environment, the advantage of security of larger groups, toolmaking and food/wheat storage, but also as a process being influenced by meaning-giving beliefs. Hence, in both pre-agricultural and agricultural societies these shared narratives and beliefs have contributed to life style and tool-making, interacting with language development. “Religions evolve along culturally distinct though partially convergent paths that are constrained by a complex evolutionary landscape reflecting cognitive, emotional, and material conditions for ordinary social life” (Shariff, Norenzayan, Henrich, 2010, 22). Yet, the rate of change in these beliefs and their narratives, together with their related evolving concepts (spirits and gods, personhood, world, knowledge, health, death etc.) seems to have depended on the confrontation with new perceptions and conflicting cognitions as well as emotional experiences of individuals or groups. Information or ‘exposure to diversity’ including the changes in social, biological and physical environment seem to have had a key role.

Tools and Diversity: the effects of information growth The adaptation to new information and experiences that need to be defined and organized into a shared narrative demands changes in the previous narratives. With larger groups and settlements, the simple supernatural

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agents that were not almighty and all-knowing, and could easily be manipulated and influenced by simple rituals, developed to mightier agents that were aware and in control of all aspects of the individuals’ lives, including all deeds, thoughts and imagination, and afterlife (Ogilvie, 2013). These shared beliefs, and the new social orders grounded upon them, were more able to bind people together and to facilitate social cooperation and ethical behavior. On the other hand, the processing of growing amounts of data gradually led to tool inventions and other capacities such as writing (Harari, 2014). This, in its turn, changed the availability and functional dimensions of shared narratives as they were changed from oral to written format. Tools, trading, cognitive and language development bring more information and ways to categorize and process information. In this way (parts of) the meaning-giving narratives undergo smaller or greater changes. With further observation and language development more detailed narratives evolve. Wallis Budge (1988) describes the changes of religion from worshipping fetishes, to animals and gods in human form, with respect to their interaction with the social order and developments. In one of the most ancient texts (Egyptian, circa 5000 years ago), the heart or chest is described as the locus of life, and the seat of intellectual functions, as well as the volition and action (knowing, feeling and acting). The text refers these to the activities of an entity, Ptah, who dwelt there. This is an early form of a faculty psychology, where different operations or functions serve a central executive entity, a soul (Ibid). The efforts at systematic observation and explanation of ancient Egyptians influenced many emerging civilizations during that period and later in the history. Parts of the oral and written culture of ancient Egyptians, including elements and concepts of their meaning-giving belief system, their narratives of supernatural beliefs and afterlife myths, their system of medicine (including diagnosis, prognosis, medical examination, surgery, detailing cures, ailments and anatomical observations), early ideas of humoral theory and blocked channels (as later seen in yin-yang beliefs) have influenced the belief systems and medical traditions of (or show similarities to) other separately developed belief systems. This is so, even in different social and natural environments–before advanced progress in tool making. The differences are mostly connected to the number of supernatural forces (one vs. a diversity of God(s)); rituals and power references in interpersonal relationships; social rules; hygiene rules; and

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specific features of after-death ideas in correspondence to natural experiences and observations, geographic-environment and other cultural features. In this respect, we can observe the togetherness of fractions of science, philosophy and religion in the meaning-giving belief systems as well as interactions and consistencies between the thoughts regarding environment, worldview and spiritual/religious beliefs. This can be traced through meaning-giving systems of beliefs found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrian, Abrahamic religions, all the way to the modern naturalisticoriented system of sciences. Confrontation with diversity, new information and information processing tools (such as coinage) together with changes in social orders and prosperity also contributed to the emergence of new ideas and new schools of thought in ancient Greek environment. The availability of non-local information and a higher standard of living seemed to have prevented the existence of strict orthodoxy of thought. People worshiped the family and city divinities, and accepted or rejected other gods more or less at their discretion. The political power of spiritual and religious tradition (the priests) had declined in the society. The accumulation of surplus wealth had led to the leisure of some classes of the citizens, allowing time for creative thought regarding questions of the origin and the nature of the world itself. Naturalism, the belief that nature requires for its operations only principles inherent in nature without appeal to outer supernatural factors, found a favorable social setting in this environment (Harari, 2014). This shift in meaning giving ideas and beliefs by philosophers however remained limited to their schools and students and was not transmitted to the public majority. The Abrahamic religions and belief-systems, in their turn, have tried to provide a consistent, organized system of personal, social, economic and political rules and codes accompanied by explanations based upon theistic worldview. However, these systems of knowledge based on the dominant mainstream understanding and interpretation of religions became later mostly connected to power institutions and were not progressive when confronted by new ideas and data (such as those provided by new observation enhancing tools). This lack of tolerance and self-critical thinking required when confronted by diversity can be observed throughout the history of all meaning-giving belief systems and religions

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(Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic)–so too their propensities towards discrimination, experiences of dogmatism, fanaticism, fundamentalism and in-group/out-group aggression. Systematic observation, and improved tools for doing so, bring more information about the previously unseen objects and unknown mechanisms. Inventions like the telescope, the microscope, and Darwin’s observations have brought new information and accordingly new ideas (such as heliocentrism, germ and evolutionary theories) to explain the phenomena. These new narratives conflicted with aspects of existing belief-systems and have caused changes or revolutions in some of the personal and shared meaning-giving beliefs. Shariff, Norenzayan and Henrich (2010, 132) explain the changes and transformations of religious meaning-giving beliefs in interaction with cultural evolutionary processes. They argue that religions are coevolutionary phenomena, and that modern religious beliefs are deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and part of a more fluid and responsive cultural system. “Religions are both a cognitive by-product of reliably developing aspects of our cognition and a consequence of long-term cultural evolutionary forces, including those very forces that shaped the complex, large-scale, cooperative institutions that dominate the modern world. However, the evolving human cognition and cumulative knowledge and experiences strongly constrains the forms of religious representations” (Ibid.), and the contents of meaning-giving beliefs. The 21st century witnesses great changes, not only in the tools and the quantity of information available, progress in modern sciences (with their explanations for phenomena and their underlying mechanisms), but also changes in natural and socio-political environments. These changes in cultures and social structures interact with meaning-giving beliefs and ideas.

The system of naturalistic-oriented modern sciences: a source of meaning-giving ideas Today’s modern sciences present a system of interconnected theories and supporting data networks with their explanations of phenomena and their underlying mechanisms and interactions. All along its development, scientific knowledge has been a part of and interacted with other meaninggiving beliefs. During the last 200 years a replacement of the metaphysical

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religious-theological presuppositions of the knowledge system with a naturalistic worldview has taken place. Showing the abilities of explanation and using new data and novel facts, critical thinking and dialogue, self-review and modifications, being based on diversity in its origins (as diverse as Indian number system, Ibn Sina’s medicine, preRenaissance Chinese technology, etc.), interaction with other cultures, investigating of a variety of issues by educated academics, scientists and theorists from different cultural and religious backgrounds, attending to whole-part relationships and holistic approaches, respect of diversity, interaction with various intellectual and socio-political movements (relating to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and spirituality and so on), have gradually led the naturalistic-oriented modern sciences to evolve from a European Renaissance movement and later naïve empiricism into a dynamic and progressive system reflecting the accumulation of all human collective learning and experiences. The sciences today are becoming a source of meaning-giving beliefs or ideas for more people around the world. This common culture and its scientific language about nature (mostly accurate interconnected terms and concepts with guidelines for interpretations and understanding) together with supporting philosophies of existentialism, humanism, naturalism, emergentism, pluralism, etc. offer narratives about beginnings and endings, the meaning of life, personhood, health and moralities. Hence, modern progressive science-based system of ideas has become another way of developing a personal sense of life meaning. Sciences and technologies (tools) also change the natural and sociopolitical environment. The availability of non-local information and alternative narratives, globalization, and new social structures influence rapid cultural changes that may bring conflicts between new information and experiences and (parts of) the belief systems. Cultural evolutionary models also show how sociality influences the emergence and rate of cumulative cultural evolution. The larger and more interconnected populations are, the more likely the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution is, and the faster the rate if it does emerge (Henrich, 2016). Overall, growing up in a larger, more interconnected network, gives people access to more models to select among and learn from. It also provides opportunities to question, reflect, develop or change some of meaning-giving beliefs or ideas and renegotiate identities.

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Identity and identity renegotiations Erikson (1968) describes identity formation as one of the major challenges for adolescents and young adults. Berzonsky (1990) introduced the ‘identity style’ as a model for how individuals process identity-relevant information to clarify and refine their identity, goals, purpose, values, qualities, and interests. These processing styles can be based upon active search for information (informational); accepting the norms and standards of other people or groups (normative); or avoiding or postponing the confrontation with the existential questions (diffuse-avoidant). Modern and post-modern identity theories do not address identity formation and its challenges only with respect to adolescence. A person’s formation of identity is continuously influenced by a network of intra- and inter-personal factors and the interactions between the persons and their contexts. Personal identity and the formation of self is based upon selfknowledge and self-reflection or awareness of self (Leary and Tangney, 2012). It addresses existential questions and includes a narrative about self from past to future that involves exploration and commitment (Marcia, 1980). Narrating the self from past to future includes changes and transformations that make the identity dynamic during the person’s various life-stages. In these narratives of self, the person gives meaning to personal experiences and reflects on the evolving self (cognitive capacities, culture and language, etc.). These processes interact with social identity and socialization, norms and roles and indicate how an individual views him or herself both as a person and in relation to other people, ideas and nature, helping in drawing boundaries and organizing a narrative (Weinrich and Saunderson, 2003). Further, these narratives are interconnected with collective and gender identity and the sense of community and belongingness (in-group/out-group sense), by using inclusive vs. exclusive markers such as language and demographic features, religion, race, occupation, and so on. Similar to the development from childhood to adolescence and later to adulthood, changing contexts, information and tasks may lead to identity crises, to conflicting cognitions, and cognitive dissonance that demand reconstruction and identity negotiations (Blume, 2010). This involves the necessity of giving meaning to experiences, reflecting on the evolving self as an individual and as member of a social group within the larger context of an individualist or collectivist culture with certain shared meaning-

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giving beliefs, subcultures, economy and politics, various groupbelongingness, etc. The rapid social, cultural and economic transitions characteristic of the past few decades, and achievements in scientific knowledge and technology, have led to changes in living conditions and living styles, as well as in parts of the individual and collective traditional meaning-giving belief systems (such as much of health/illness beliefs). Different beliefs, ranging from simple causal beliefs that act as explanations for the events of our everyday lives, to more complex social beliefs (e.g., religious or paranormal ideas) often play a key role in identity formation. The main purpose of belief is to provide meaning and certainty “about matters that have to do with the idea we hold of ourselves” (Damasio, 2012). Identities are tied to actions and narratives. They tend to remain stable in stable situations as actions and narratives remain predictable. An opportunity for new action (such as new tasks based on new information related to scientific narratives and new experiences) can destabilize identities. In an unstable situation, participants have a unique opportunity to renegotiate their identities (Blume, 2010). Confrontation with diversity challenges existing narratives. Doubts and uncertainty may be the result when former meaning-giving beliefs are not adequate or conflict with new information and experiences. In such a phase, narratives that can promise absolute security and safety to the ingroup members may become attractive for those who do not have adequate emotional and social support, or life skills. Such individuals that cannot deal with the uncertainty during their experience of identity crisis are prone to the tribal effect of seeking safety in groups without any critical thoughts. Here they get relief and set their priorities in the group moral foundations, such as respect to authority and loyalty to group (above individual moralities of fairness and care), which brings emotional support and social structure. However, in times of competition this group identity may contribute to in-group/out-group aggression and discrimination.

Science and/or religion: contribution to a safer environment for identity renegotiations Most nations are currently experiencing a confrontation with diversity, and witnessing changes from closed traditional societies with local information to more open societies with the availability of non-local information.

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These include narratives containing different and sometimes conflicting norms. The personal construction of meaning-giving system of beliefs, unlike in previous centuries, occurs in an environment with different social networks and information from different meaning-giving beliefs and narratives. The narrative tradition (White and Epston, 1990), discourse theories and dialogical self-theory (Hammack, 2008; Hermans and Dimmagio, 2004) emphasize the larger social groups and the influence of ‘dominant’ or ‘master’ narratives. These master narratives can be religious and traditional narratives, or in the postmodern social conditions of globalism and media saturation the conflicting narratives and demands of media (Gergen, 2000). Discourse communities provide the materials from which narratives are constructed (Blume, 2010). Within a discourse community people share a language and certain meaning-giving beliefs. The multiple cultural discourses offer competing definitions of identities. Some discourses are dominant, pushing out those that are marginalized. Discourses carry hidden meanings that ‘position’ their participants to experience their lives in different ways. Race, nationality, religion, gender discourses continue to have considerable influence on relationships and operate as a discursive reality that has power even when it is not explicit (Ainsworth and Hardy, 2004). When context-specific identities conflict (Davies and Harré, 1990) the individual who is influenced by multiple discourse communities faces identity struggles. These multiple discourse communities with conflicting messages and narratives are more or less available in almost all societies, from traditional religious to more secular societies. Changing environment and social structures have led the power institutions, science and religion organizations, and scholars, to try to attend to the relationships between religion, science and technology with different approaches and outcomes such as nationalism (focusing on advantages for national in-group members and national identity narrative); fundamentalism (focusing on the original understandings and interpretations of religions and in-group religious identity); scientism (trust in existing understanding of scientific achievements, degrading other meaning-giving beliefs and narratives); religious reformist interpretations (focusing on hermeneutics, and efforts to bring consistency between traditional meaning-giving beliefs and social order structures, modern and postmodern environment and information, enhancing the in-group identity sphere); more moderate and

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non-dogmatic science-based meaning-giving ideas. This latter involves generating progressive and dynamic, multi-level meta-narratives embracing the achievements of modern sciences but also the accumulated knowledge of all human cultures. This extends in-group identity to all humans as a global or universal identity, undermining in-group/out-group markers of meaning-giving belief systems. The membership of each meaning-giving beliefs/ideas-group brings its own set of benefits and vulnerabilities.

Benefits and vulnerabilities of religion/ideology-based systems of meaning-giving beliefs As mentioned before, one function of religious beliefs has been to provide meaning and purpose in life. They can also produce a life structure, using rituals, prayers, communication and inner dialogue with a higher power that can bring the cognitions and the emotional sense of ‘not being alone,’ helping with loneliness and isolation feelings and fears. The attempt and efforts towards the manipulation of God(s) or spirits generate in their turn the feeling of control and reduce depression. Religious beliefs may also contribute to a healthy life style in specific environments (wash rituals, religious prohibitions, etc.). Another benefit is cooperation preparedness, and hence the perceived social support of the group and community, which relies on the function of the tribal effect and in-group/out-group markers. At the same time, religions offer certain moral codes and a motivation for compassion towards others. For religions and spiritual traditions, morality has been seen as objective moral standards that are usually associated with the afterlife. These can sometimes motivate people with justifications or reward/punishment arguments. The evil of religious people or others is associated to personal or context failures and/or the vulnerabilities of every meaning-giving belief system such as in-group/out-group aggression, discrimination, blind obedience, group loyalty etc. From a modern perspective, the problems raised for followers of religious meaning-giving beliefs can be also seen as a result of the religions’ historical contexts: mostly agricultural era (high group competition in limited resources environment), and/or patriarchic contexts involving human right issues, gender discrimination and vulnerability to in-group/outgroup aggression that continue to exist and can still be observed. Other risks include blind obedience to authorities, uncritical acceptance of sometimes irrational or/and supernatural beliefs, lack of critical thinking about ‘sacred issues’ as these usually cannot be questioned easily, and the

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risk of dogmatism. Religious scripts and religious scholars deal with some concepts that cannot be defined precisely and can have quite different meanings in different interpretations. These belief-systems tend to be static or slow to change, and to involve intolerance when confronting diversity and/or novel facts. As for all groups and belief-systems the possibility for abuse by economic/political power institutions and authorities is always a risk.

Benefits and vulnerabilities of science-based systems of meaning-giving ideas Science-based meaning-giving ideas come from naturalistic-oriented (postmodern) science that is itself progressive and dynamic. Modern technologies and sciences contribute to this system of knowledge separated from religious and supernatural beliefs. This growing system is no longer the naïve dogmatic scientism from the 60s and 70s, and is enriched with philosophies of humanism, existentialism, pluralism, etc. Such science explores and tries to understand the mechanisms underlying the world with detailed data and precision of language. It has become open to diversity, applying critical thinking, self-reviews and modifications, moving away from the early mechanistic worldview towards a more holistic and systemic network approach. In this system, religion and all beliefs, cognitions, emotions and behavior of individual and groups are themselves subject to investigation, and can be questioned. The risks remain, as with all meaning-giving ideas/beliefs, in the possibilities for control, as well as restrictions and abuse by economic/political power institutions. The modern science-based system of meaning-giving ideas contribute to naturalism and are proliferated worldwide through scientific education, modern health and mental health organizations, scientists and media. More people with different cultural and religious backgrounds are finding in the modern sciences and their meta-narrative a meaning of life and experiences of awe and joy close to spiritual experiences. The meaning of personhood is understood through the evolution of universe, as being stardust, and children of survivors in millions of years of survival (Dawkins, 2000), wherein universe comes to understand itself (Tyson, 2006). Spirituality and transcendence mean taking a part/whole and unity perspective with respect to the universe, and experiencing the awe and joy

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of this understanding. Neil Degrasse Tyson (2006) describes his experience as a quest of understanding and experiencing the joy of thinking about the universe with all its mysteries and wonders. This system of science-based meaning-giving ideas can provide a structure to life and contribute to a healthy life style in various ways and environments. Indeed, most of the health/illness part of traditional religious/spiritual beliefs and associated prevention/treatment rituals and behavior have been replaced by science-based ideas and rituals since germ theory. In regards to the perceived social support in the 21st century with all the changes in interpersonal, inter-state, country, region and global connections, tools and technologies (such as internet and social media), the very means for expressing and perceiving emotional and social support are undergoing some changes. However, most special events, such as birth, marriage and death, are accompanied by the presence of religious/spiritual agents and rituals. It can also be observed that some celebrate elements of their culture or religion as a social event without any belief in the meaning-giving part, such as celebration of Christmas or Nowruz for secular people. There are efforts from atheist organizations, such as the Richard Dawkins Foundation, to emphasize the presence and involvement of celebrities from the sciences as new rituals enhancing belongingness and social support for atheists. For the scientific system of meaning-giving beliefs/ideas, evolving moral foundations are also objective moral standards observed in different species and having certain functions (de Waal, 2009). For different human cultures there is an evolutionary explanation for all our moral intuitions and standards such as contribution to individual-social wellness and welfare. According to the political and socio-economic context, life and security standards, priorities of moral foundations may differ for the individuals involved (see Haidt & Graham, 2007). The cultural beliefs, meaning-giving belief system, and the context features contribute to the setting of moral priorities and their elaboration to a moral system. In naturalistic-oriented sciences morality and compassion do exist with or without the belief in supernatural or religious traditions. The sciences offer explanations and suggestions for moralities, and they investigate the vulnerabilities of our moral foundations (personal and context features). The social moralities (respect to authority, loyalty to group) seem to be prone to irrational behavior/aggression and discrimination (Zimbardo,

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2008; Milgram, 2010). In times of pressure and difficulties, the tribal effect and the desire to find security in groups, and generate rapid and shared decisions increase. When group moralities increase, critical thinking may decrease, leading to a decline in individual moralities toward outgroups. Cikara et al. (2014) found reduced self-referential neural response during intergroup competition that predict competitor harm. The individual moral foundations seem to be vulnerable to pressure and situations with lack of self-reflection. Belongingness to a certain group, and the observation of the behaviors of the in-group/out-group members, can affect one’s moral codes. Reminders of moral codes during difficult situations seem to be relevant for individual moralities (Ariely, 2012). The sciences are collecting more information and explanations about morality as well as guidelines for moral behavior in different contexts. In short, in a way similar to religious meaning-giving beliefs, sciencebased meaning-giving ideas deal with existential issues (meaning of life), provide healthy life-structure, social support, and moralities including guidelines and related institutions. They emphasize the default shared situation universal to all humans, life, stardust or the universe, as well as the priority of individual moralities of fairness and care. They also suggest the necessity of critical thinking, self-reflection and political awareness to help to undermine the risks and dangers of social moral foundations, improving their benefits towards a more global and universal term of belongingness.

Renegotiating identities in a changing environment Being born in one culture with its system of meaning-giving beliefs and the confrontation with other narratives and conflicting information may lead to a ‘pick and choose’ situation (Ogilvie, 2013). The holistic sciencebased narrative seems to be accepted by individuals or groups living still in societies with mostly religious backgrounds. So, some elements of the former belief systems or cultures continue to exist in lifestyle, ceremonies and language. For the atheists/sceptics/agnostics/ non-believers, the beliefs supporting the existence of supernatural forces and entities and the associated rituals are questioned and abandoned. This process of renegotiating identities is dynamically changing cultures in many societies (see Kitayama & Bowman, 2010). For the theists however, there are those more or less sympathetic towards this ‘pick and choose’ policy, trying to negotiate beliefs and facts without

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much loss of faith. If there is more rejection and the traditional or reformist interpretations remain to give the core meaning, the person continues to experience the challenges of the competition between the narratives and accessible new information. When new data, facts are accepted and their interpretations grow, it may that persons’ belief-systems does not really need the religious core beliefs to make meaning any more. The meaning-giving is given through the science-based part of the beliefsystem. The belief-system is gradually changed from religious to secular, science-based existential/humanist, naturalistic-oriented system of meaning-giving ideas. In this gradual change of beliefs between two or more systems of meaning-giving beliefs/ideas and the dynamic construction of a new system, there is a conflict in the individual with respect to different spheres of personal identity, values and the social identities. The spheres of identity in general and the different kinds of social identities one person holds are related to the functions, benefits and risks of the membership to certain systems of meaning giving beliefs/ideas. In a changing environment with non-local information, tools, new roles and opportunities the person often switches between identities. In this regard it is crucial that the choices and awareness are towards broader universalist and tolerant identities as opposed to narrow and rigid (specific group member) identities. Factors like experiencing exclusion, inequitable access to resources, lack of access to law enforcement, distrust in power of law and social order in specific societies, instrumental usage of in-group/out-group markers by power institutions, and various pressure (such as decrease in economic welfare), lead to the perception of competition in individuals appealing to their collective identities. This in its turn is mostly associated with the tribal effect of shared worldviews. Lack of capacities for critical thinking, political awareness and tolerance of uncertainty in one’s personal worldview may contribute to seeking of the safety of groups and security of absolutist narratives, such as fundamentalism, nationalism or scientism (see Sanaa and Mohanad, 2016). A safe space for identity renegotiations can be helpful for preventing such processes. Scholars from both science and religion could contribute to this by respectful attending to the other, and efforts towards understanding the others’ narratives. Identities are co-created with those around us (Blume, 2010). The 21st century context is a globalized world of diversity, with

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scientific achievements and technologies, and spiritual and religious traditions, and their followers and non-followers. So, co-creation is a negotiation process in this changing context of new relationships and opportunities to co-create a new version (understanding) of religion and the sciences. As such, there are suggestions that can be made, for both sides, that might contribute to a safe environment for understanding narratives and renegotiating identities.

Suggestions for religious-minded scientists x Religious-minded and theistic scientists can communicate the inspiring and empowering side of science, identifying consistency/conflict relationships, while applying critical thinking and self-reflection, and exploring alternatives to their own assumptions and interpretations. These can contribute to the personal experience of negotiation. x Theistic scientists from different religious and spiritual traditions can introduce and discuss their new understandings of religion, God and personhood, and contribute to a more rational, universal and comprehensive narrative of religion using the language and knowledge offered by the system of the sciences of our times. In this process of identity renegotiation, a new identity for religious/spiritual traditions and theologies can be gained. x By establishing a positive expectation, individuals can work together to improve the relationship. Exploring scientific achievements and the sciences’ dynamic meta-narratives can also help the review of historical changes and interpretations as well as the dialogue and discussions between theologies. Applying sciences can contribute to the understanding of the basic concepts, principles and doctrines and to how they are and can be prioritized. It is also crucial for religious traditions to highlight basic doctrines and incorporate the possible changes of understanding while undermining secondary behavior codes and cultural in-group/out-group markers or rituals and their sacredness. Philosophies can serve as tools to help theologies in dialogue with each other and sciences by building clear accurate concepts related to modern scientific achievements and using the language of science as a common ground. In this process of unifying theologies with shared scientific understanding (Newberg, 2011), differences in interpretations, the cultural differences and features (non-basic meaning-giving beliefs and rituals) can be separated as nonsacred and as personal choices undermining in-group/out-group discrimination, fundamentalism and intolerance.

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Suggestions for the Sciences: creating a climate for identity renegotiation x Daniel Dennett (2011) suggests an adequate scientific education for all, including evolution, scientific and historical facts about all religions. This could be a first step towards undermining the group effects of religions. x Showing respect to diversity and elements of all human cultures, such as arts and literature, by scientific institutions and as a content of public education will enhance the sense of similarity, belongingness and global identity. x Offering life-skills training programs including critical thinking, selfawareness, information about cognitive and perceptual failures, skills for coping with uncertainty for all ages could be planned by mental health or other related organizations. NGOs and organizations of scientists could contribute to the promotion of awareness of politicaleconomic powers and their issues (for example, the Richard Dawkins Foundation aims to create such awareness of some political issues). x Individuals using communication technologies and common scientific education seem to feel more connected to each other despite the differences in their cultural, religious, geographic and demographical context. Guided activities on the internet, educational games and social networks with regular courses and programs at social places such as schools, workplace and communities can enhance compassion, care and fairness. These activities, together with the respect to parts of all human cultures, can highlight and celebrate the potential for identity change. Scientific education offers language that facilitates identity conversations. The interconnectedness of information and social media can provide opportunities to act differently. The respected presence of all cultures facilitates the retelling of identity stories. Scientific education and lifeskills training programs may contribute to the abilities of critical thinking and revisions of narratives as well as political awareness.

Conclusion and Summary Today, the system of meaning-giving ideas as an evolving ‘meta-narrative’ told through the system of naturalistic-oriented sciences that has emerged from all collective learning and experiences of humanity has recognized the importance of story/narrative revision in the scientific method. This

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helps to clarify both the limitations and the effectiveness of science more generally. Grobstein (2005) further describes the contribution of the sciences as follows: Science is continually testing not only its understandings of the material under investigation but also its own ways of making sense of things it is investigating and hence the revisions of narratives…. Science can engage all cultures and human beings in the elaboration of scientific narrative/stories. Science is a distinctive form of meta-narrative that has the appealing property that its own success necessarily both draws on and can contribute to many other kinds of human activity. It encourages and supports the development of shared human stories of exploration and growth. … Science can best and most distinctively contribute to culture by providing stories that may increase (but never guarantee) human well-being, by serving as a supportive nexus for human story telling in general, and, finally, by exemplifying as an available alternative for all humans in their own story telling its most characteristic value: a commitment to skepticism and a resulting open-ended and continuing exploration of what might yet be. (Grobstein, 2005)

Meaning-giving beliefs and ideas deal with the existential issues of personhood. Identities and meaning-giving beliefs are intertwined, and both interact with culture. In this regard, the dynamic and progressive naturalistic-oriented system of the modern sciences that is itself a significant aspect of human culture, “representing the cooperation on the kinds of story revisions that emerge from sharing distinctive perspectives” (Ibid.) can contribute to a ‘safer,’ less vulnerable system of meaninggiving ideas that can, in their turn, foster a safer context for developing and (re-)negotiating identities in a changing environment.

References Ainsworth, S., Hardy, C. (2004). Critical discourse analysis and identity: why bother? In Critical discourse studies Vol. 1, No 2 October 2004. p 225-259 Allport, G.W. (1955). Becoming; Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York: Harper Collins Publ. —. (2012). The (honest) truth about dishonesty: how we lie to everyone— especially ourselves.

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http://meshesblog.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/3/0/56303307/the_honest_t ruth_about_dishones_-_dan_ariely.pdf (19.12.2016) Berzonsky, M. D. (1990). Self construction across the life-span: A process view of identity development. In G. H. Neimeyer & R. A. Neimeyer (Eds.). Advances in personal construct psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 155186). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Blackmore, S. (2004). Consciousness: an introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Blume, T. W. (2010). Counselling for Identity Renegotiation. In: Identity, 10: 2, 92 — 105 Cikara, M., Jenkins, A.C., Dufour, N., Saxe, R. (2014). Reduced selfreferential neural response during intergroup competition predicts competitor harm. In: NeuroImage 96(2014) 36–43. http://saxelab.mit.edu/resources/papers/Cikara_2014.pdf (20.12.2016) Damasio, A. (2012). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Vintage Books. Davies, B., Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: the discursive production of selves. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior, vol.20, pp. 43-65. Dawkins, R. (2000). Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston New York; Mariner Book. Dennett, D. (2011). On What should replace religions? Ted Talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U (20.12.2016) Dunbar, R.I.M. (1993). Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:681–735. —. (2003). The social brain: mind, language and society in evolutionary perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32, 163-181. Erikson, E.H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: W. W. Norton Company. De Waal, F. (2009). Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. —. (2016). Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? New York, London: W.W: Norton and Company. Frith, C. (2007). Making up the mind: How the brain creates our mental world. Malde MA: Blackwell publishing. Grobstein, P. (2005). Revisiting Science in Culture: Science as Story Telling and Story Revising, Journal of Research Practice, Volume 1.1, Article M1. (20.12.2016) http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/9/18 Gergen, K. (2000). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. Basic Books.

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Haidt, J., Kesebir, S. (2010). Morality. In S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.) Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th Edition. Hobeken, NJ: Wiley. Pp.797-832. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research. Hammack, P.L. (2008). Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity. originally published online 9 May 2008. http://psr.sagepub.com/content/12/3/222 (20.12.2016) Harari, Y.N. (2014). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. London: Vintage, Pinguin Random House. Henrich, J. (2016). The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Hermans, H.J.M., Dimaggio, G. (2004). Eds: The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy: An Introduction. Hove and New York: BrunnerRoutledge. Kitayama, S., Bowman, N.A. (2010). Cultural consequences of voluntary settlement in the frontier: evidence and implications. In: Schaller, M., Norenzayan, A., Heine, S. J., Yamagishi, T., & Kameda, T. (Eds.): Evolution, culture, and the human mind. New York, London: Psychology Press. (p. 205-229) Leary, M.R., Tangney, J.P. (2012). Handbook of self and identity (Eds). New York: Guilford Press. Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. In: The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 8: 529–566. Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of adolescent psychology, 9(11), 159-187. Milgram, S. (2010). Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper Collins Publ. Newberg, A.B. (2011). Principles of Neurotheology. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing limited. Ogilvie, D.M. (2013). A Partial History of Afterlife Beliefs. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~ogilvie/HistoryAfterlife.htm#_ftn1 (20.11.2016) Ogilvie, D. & Hamilton, L. (2012). Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences, 2nd Second Custom Edition for Rutgers University. Boston, MA: Pearson.

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Ramachandran, V.S., Blakeslee, S. (1999). Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York: Harper Collins Publ. Rozin, P. (2010). Towards a Cultural/evolutionary Psychology: Cooperation and complementarity. In: Schaller, M., Norenzayan, A., Heine, S. J., Yamagishi, T., & Kameda, T. (Eds.): Evolution, culture, and the human mind. New York, London: Psychology Press (pp. 9-22). Sanaa, I.M., Mohanad, M.A. (2016). Identity Crises and ReligionismAttitudes. In: Psychology, Psychotherapy and Religion: Research and Therapy Trends, SFU Research Bulletin, 4. Jahrgang, Nr.1/2016. Sapolsky, R.M. (2007). A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons. New York: Touchstone P. Schaller, M., Norenzayan, A., Heine, S.J., Yamagisgi, T., Tatsuya, K. (2010). Evolution, culture, and the human mind. New York, London: Psychology Press. Shariff, A.F., Norenzayan, A., Henrich, J. (2010). The birth of high gods: how the cultural evolution of supernatural policing influenced the emergence of complex, cooperative human societies, paving the way for civilization, In: Schaller, M., Norenzayan, A., Heine, S. J., Yamagishi, T., & Kameda, T. (Eds.): Evolution, culture, and the human mind. New York, London: Psychology Press (p. 119- 137). Sperry, R. W. (1969). Cerebral organization and behavior. In: J.O. Whittaker (Ed.). Reader in General Psychology. Fargo: North Dakota State University Tuzin, D. (1976). The Ilahita Arapesh. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. (2001). Social complexity in the making: A case study among the Arapesh of New Guinea. London: Routledge. Tyson, N. D., (2006). Session 2 discussion at Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religionreason-and-survival/session-2-4 Wallis Budge, E.A. (1988). From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt. Dover Publications. Weinreich, P., Saunderson, W. (Eds) (2003). Analysing Identity: CrossCultural, Societal and Clinical Contexts. London: Routledge. White, M., Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W.W. Norton. Zimbardo, P. (2008). The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. London: Rider.

CHAPTER EIGHT FROM MORALITY TO RELIGION: A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO HUMAN PERSONHOOD WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN

Introduction My research and writing over the past few years represent some core perspectives on one of the most salient shared problems today in the interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the sciences, the problem, namely, of human personhood. Also in my recent Goshen Lectures (March 2015) I especially wanted to ask whether the history of human evolution as such might provide us with important bridge theories to theological anthropology and thus to a positive and constructive way of appropriating Darwinian thought for a public, interdisciplinary Christian theology. From a more philosophical point of view I am now asking whether Darwin’s perspective on human evolution can help us move forward to more constructive, holistic, notions of self and personhood, and thus make more intelligible what anthropologist Chris Fowler has appropriately called ‘the production of personhood’ (cf. Fowler, 2004). I will presuppose here what I have argued elsewhere, which is that in the history of hominid and hominin evolution we find surprising answers to the enduring question of what it means to be a self, a human person.1 In fact, what we now know



1 cf. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen: Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Wm. B. Eerdmans 2006); “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Origins and Religious Awareness,” in Colin Renfrew and Iain Morley (Eds.), Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009); “What Makes Us Human? The Interdisciplinary Challenge to Theological Anthropology and Christology” in Toronto Journal of Theology 26/2, 2010, 143-160; “When Were We Persons? Why

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about key aspects of hominid/hominin evolution affirms what Darwin argued for as crucial aspects of human distinctiveness, or human species specificity. To this end I want to consider the problem of human evolution and its broader impact on theological anthropology, by tracking a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood, aspects that were all of great significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition, the evolution of imagination, music and language, the evolution of moral sense, and the evolution of the religious disposition. In this way I hope to show that the evolution of these crucial aspects of humanness ultimately converges holistically on the complex problem of the evolution of human nature and of the human self. In addition, however, another question also needs to be asked: do we still understand the idea, or rather the fact–if you want–of human evolution in the same way that Charles Darwin and Neo-Darwinians understood and now understand it? This, I believe, is a crucial question for this paper, and certainly also for the theme of the conference as such.

Rethinking Darwin on Human Evolution Today then, and not surprisingly, scholars from numerous and highly diverse fields are not only addressing the question of what makes us human and what it means to be a ‘self,’ but are also seeking multidisciplinary input from other disciplines to inform and enhance their answers to this fundamental issue. These questions do not only pertain to empirical questions about what distinguishes humans from our hominid ancestors, but they often also refer to a very different kind of question, namely, which of our specific peculiarities give us humans our distinctive ‘species specificity’ and significance? What is interesting is that this question is specifically not only empirical, since we humans in a sense actually draw the hominin-human boundary in ways that are also determined

 Hominid Evolution holds the Key to Embodied Personhood”, in Neue Zeitschrift for Systematische Theology 52, 329-349, 2010; “Post-Foundationalism and Human Uniqueness: A Reply to Responses” in Toronto Journal of Theology 27/1, 2011, 73-86; “Coding the Nonvisible: Epistemic Limitations and Understanding Symbolic Behavior at Çatalhöyük”, in Ian Hodder (Ed.), “Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study (Cambridge University Press, 2010, 99-121); “The Historical Self: Memory and Religion at Çatalhöyük,” in Ian Hodder (ed.), Vital Matters: Religion and Change at Çatalhöyük (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 

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by our cultural contexts (cf. Cartmill and Brown, 2012, 182). One popular way of defining human distinctiveness is, of course, to make a clear distinction between anatomical and behavioral differences. The meaning, the markers, and the justification of human identity and status have of course fluctuated throughout Western academic history. Generally, of course, language has been viewed as a crucial marker (cf. Deacon, 1997; Mithen, 1996; Mellars, 1989, 1991; Nobel and Davidson, 1996; Tattersall, 1998, 2002; Botha, 2011, 2012, 2013). In addition, conceptions of defining humanness have lately shifted toward our capacity for ‘prosociality,’ which we share with primates, as well as our unique propensity for imitation (cf. Cartmill and Brown, 2012, 182). Also, music (Mithen, 2006), sexuality (Sheets-Johnstone, 1990), and empathy (de Waal, 2006, 2009; Sheets-Johnstone, 2008; Kirkpatrick, 2005; Boehm, 2012) are in the process of being thoroughly researched and hailed as the foundations not only of language, social norms and morality, but also of symbolic and even religious behavior. Another genuinely panhuman trait is the remarkable human capacity for seeing things from someone else’s perspective, generally known as Theory of Mind. Humans are indeed strongly disposed for intuitively understanding the motivations of others–so much so that we often see motivations where they do not exist. This unique ability does, however, give us adaptively valuable insight into the intentions of our friends, enemies, predators, and prey. And, as is well known, both sadism and compassion are neurologically grounded in this disposition (cf. Cartmill and Brown, 2012, 182). For scientists like Águstin Fuentes (cf. 2009) and Richard Potts (cf. 1996, 2012), the real success of humans as a species can be attributed largely to our tendency and capacity for extreme alteration of the world around us. We not only construct material items, we engage in the creation and navigation of social and symbolic structures, space and place, in a manner unequalled by other organisms. Most anthropologists would agree that human identity should be seen as interactively constructed by, and involved in the construction of a conflux of biological, behavioral, social, and symbolic contexts (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 12). The problem is that even anthropologists (like many theologians!) often refuse to acknowledge a significant role for biological features and biological histories (evolution) in human action, sensation, and engagement.

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Importantly, some evolutionary anthropologists actually now find the distinction ‘Darwinian’ and ‘Neo-Darwinian’ unhelpful for many of the current evolutionary theories of interest, and argue that we should recognize that there is an expanding body of research and theory that is not captured by these headings anymore (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 12). Basic Darwinian theory prioritizes natural selection and sexual selection as the prime factors in evolutionary change and the emergence of adaptations.2 However, without discounting the important roles of natural and sexual selection in biological systems, some anthropologists want to emphasize that scientists are now expanding on Darwin’s contributions, and invite us to focus on more recent, emerging trends in evolutionary theory. Famously, of course, already in a 1983 landmark essay, Richard Lewontin pointed the way forward to a more revolutionary and interactionist view of the process of evolution (cf. Lewontin, 1983). Lewontin started out by pointing to the general, accepted view that the modern theory of evolution is often seen as a fusion or synthesis of the two great insights of nineteenth century biology: Darwin’s realization that the variation among species arises from the conversion of variation between individuals within species (adaptation), and Mendel’s discovery of discrete factors as the basis for the inheritance of differences between individuals (genes). The general belief is indeed that the immense progress made in biology in the 20th century and now in our century, rests firmly on these two major discoveries of a previous time (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 273). In a fascinating analysis, Lewontin then goes on to show how these very same developments, however, served to keep us locked into a rigid framework of thought about the development and evolution of organisms: from the very source of Mendel and Darwin’s success as biologists, the way that internal forces (cf. genes) were separated from external forces (environment/adaptation), flows the conviction that genes are regarded as the cause of organisms (Mendel), while the external world, the environment, acts on the organism

 2

Natural selection is generally seen as the process by which certain phenotypes (morphology and behavior) that are most effective at reproducing themselves (and thus their genetic basis or genotype) in a given environment, become more frequent in a population across generations. Sexual selection is the overrepresentation of specific phenotypes across generations as a result of mate choice and or intrasexual competition. Those traits that lead to the success of particular phenotypes and become the predominant traits in subsequent generations are termed adaptations. These traits, and the individual possessing them, are then said to be more ‘fit.’ And it is these ‘fit’ phenotypes that will strive for optimality and will rise to a majority status within the population over evolutionary time (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 12).

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and causes the form of organisms (Darwin). It is, however, this very distinction that causes some of the most serious problems for evolutionary biology. In Darwinism, through time, the living organism then was seen as the interaction of two causal sequences, namely internal forces produced the variation among organisms, while autonomous external forces molded the species on the basis of these autonomous internally caused variations (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 273). So, the essence of Darwin’s account of evolution was seen as the separation of causes of ontogenetic variation, as coming from internal factors, and phylogenetic variation, imposed from the external environment by way of internal selection. Lewontin was quick to point out, however, that as time passed, Mendel’s view of organisms as the manifestation of autonomous ‘factors’ (genes) with their own laws, and Darwin’s view of organisms as passive objects molded by the external force of natural selection, increasingly came into conflict with the known facts of development and population biology (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 275). Indeed, anyone interested in the development of evolutionary biology should be concerned about two issues about the forms of organisms: one is indeed the ontogenetic process which the sequence of forms that comprise an individual’s life history come into being. The second is the phylogenetic process by which the species as collective entities form and change based on the variation among the individuals that make them up. Classical, post-Darwinian, post-Mendelian biology has indeed settled on two metaphors through which these processes are seen. The first, ontogenetic process is seen as the unfolding of a form, already latent in the genes, requiring only an original triggering at fertilization and an environment adequate to allow ‘normal’ development to continue; the second, phylogenetic, process is seen as problem and solution. The environment ‘poses the problem,’ the organisms ‘posit solutions,’ of which the best is finally ‘chosen.’ Lewontin then set out to show that these two Mendelian and Darwinian metaphors are in fact wrong: individual development is not just an unfolding, and evolution is not a series of solutions to present and solve problems. Rather, genes, organisms, and environments are in reciprocal interaction with each other in such a way that each is both cause and effect in quite a complex set of ways. The known facts of development and of natural history make it patently clear that genes do not determine individuals nor do environments determine species (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 276).

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What various biologists have shown is in fact the reciprocity of effects of genetic state on environmental sensitivity, and of the environmental state on genetic sensitivity of the developing organism (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 278). On this view the final step is to incorporate the organism as itself a cause in its own development as a mechanism by which external and internal factors influence its future. Therefore, to describe phenotype as the consequence of gene, environment, and contingent ‘accident,’ leaves out of the account entirely the element of temporal order which is the essence in a developmental process (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 279). The organism is not simply the object of developmental forces, but the subject of those forces as well. In this sense organisms as entities are one of the causes of their own development (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 279). What we find here also is a far more nuanced view of adaptation itself: the environments of organisms are made by the organisms themselves as a consequence of their own life activities. In this sense one can even say that organisms do not just ‘adapt’ to their environments, but they construct them out of bits and pieces of the external world, thus implying that organisms determine what is relevant as they construct their environment, and organisms alter the external world as it becomes part of their environments (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 280f). Clearly, then, the metaphor of construction rather than adaptation leads to a different formulation of natural selection and evolution as such. In fact, on a constructionist view organisms and environment coevolve, each as a function of the other (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 282). The profound implication of this is that the coevolution of organisms and environments are not arbitrary forms of evolution but are constrained, which explains the phenomenon of convergence: some pathways through the organismenvironment space are more probable than others precisely because there are real physical relations in the external world that constrain change (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 283). Organisms, then, make and are made by their environment in the course of phylogenetic change, just as organisms are both the causes and consequences of their own ontogenetic development. On Lewontin’s transfigured view of Darwinian evolution, then, this means the study of evolution does not have to lean so heavily anymore on an impoverished view of the relation between gene, environment, and organism (cf. Lewontin, 1983, 284). Also evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm, for instance, has very recently pointed out how clearly Charles Darwin always implied that potentially changeable environments are continuously acting on the gene

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pool with significant results for evolutionary development and even speciation (cf. Boehm, 2012, 3f.). At the heart, then, of Darwin’s project we already find what evolutionary biologists and anthropologists today are calling a process of niche construction: in a remarkable interactive process potentially changeable natural environments were, and are, acting continuously on variation in the gene pools of populations, and in this way gene pools were modified over generations. In discussing equations that describe and explain this kind of coevolution of both organism and environment, Markus Mühling has recently pointed out that both in fact function alike as causes as well as effects, and that on this view the traditional unidirectional character of evolutionary theory should be abandoned (cf. Mühling, 2014, 144ff.). Relying on an analysis of Lewontin’s classical essay, (cf. Lewontin 1983), scientists like John Odling-Smee, Kevin Laland, and Marcus Feldman have also proposed that classical evolutionary theory, therefore, has to be expanded in such a way that the new theory can satisfy the new demands resulting from the work of Lewontin and others (cf. Odling-Smee et. al., 2003). This is only possible when niche construction is not viewed as another given fact of nature readily explainable by classical Neo-Darwinism, but only if niche construction itself is in fact seen as an additional mechanism of evolution working at the very same basic level as natural selection (cf. Mühling, 2014, 145).3 Niche construction thus occurs when an organism modifies the relationship between itself and its environment by actively changing one or more of the factors in its environment, and thus also potentially in itself. These definitions are more than just mere definitions, because they do indeed provide a new mechanism additional to natural selection. And Mühling is right: by doing so, niche construction broadens Neo-Darwinism in another respect as well: classical Neo-Darwinism knows only one inheritance system, namely the genetic system: the genetic pool alone plays the role of a system of transferring information over time. But niche construction now clearly has the consequence that information can be transferred in other additional ways too, one of which Olding-Smee et.al., has called environmental or ecological inheritance (cf. Mühling, 2014, 147). In particular, it is Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb’s important work, Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005), that has called for the renewal of

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cf. Mühling, 2014, 144-149, for categories, principles, and definitions of niche construction.

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evolutionary theory by arguing for ‘evolution in four dimensions’ rather than for a focus on just one, namely the genetic. Jablonka and Lamb’s basic claim is that biological thinking about heredity and evolution is undergoing a revolutionary change and what is emerging is a new synthesis that challenges the classic gene-centered view of newDarwinism that has dominated biological thought for the last fifty years. In addition to genetics as an important inheritance system, Jablonka and Lamb now argue for three other inheritance systems that also have causal roles in evolutionary change. These other systems are the epigenetic, the behavioral, and symbolic inheritance systems. Epigenetic inheritance4 is found in all organisms, behavioral inheritance 5 in most, and symbolic inheritance occurs only in humans (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 1-8; Fuentes, 2009, 13). Symbolic inheritance, of course, comes with language and the ability to creatively engage in information transfer that can be complex and contain a high density of information. What makes the human species so different and so special, and what makes us human, lies in the way we can organize, transfer, and acquire information. It is, therefore, our ability to think and communicate through words and other types of symbols that makes us a fundamentally different kind of niche constructor. On this view, then, rationality, linguistic ability, artistic ability, the moral sense and religiosity, are all facets of symbolic thought and communication (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 193-231).6

 4

On a cellular level epigenetic differences are the consequences of events that occurred during the developmental history of each type of cell, that determined which genes are turned on, and how they act and interact. Thus, although their DNA sequences remain unchanged during development, cells nevertheless acquire information that they can pass on to their progeny. This information is transmitted through what are known as epigenetic inheritance systems, or EISs for short. It is these systems that provide the second dimension of heredity and evolution (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 113). 5 Here Jablonka and Lamb argue that the capacity to learn has indeed evolved genetically, but learning itself is now also recognized as an agent of evolutionary change (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 155ff.). Therefore, cultural evolution in animals, and thus humans, can be complex, gradual, and cumulative, and involve several different aspects of behavior (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 180). 6 This makes clear that the symbolic system, the peculiar, human-specific way of thinking and communicating may have exactly the same basic neural underpinnings as information transmission in other animals, but the nature of the communication (with the self and with others) is not the same (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 194).

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On this view, although it is clear that the symbolic system of acquiring and transmitting information has properties that it shares with other inheritance systems, it is also clearly different from any of them. Jablonka and Lamb thus argue convincingly that human cultural evolution, which is based largely on information transmitted through symbolic communication, has characteristics that make is very different from other types of biological evolution (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 155f.). Their view of human behavior and cultural evolution also clearly differs from the classic NeoDarwinian view and the question of how a cultural entity or behavior has been selected for and who benefits from it. On the contrary, the focus here is as follows: in order to understand why a particular cultural entity exists or changes one has to consider its origin, its reconstruction, and its functional preservation. Thus is also implied the question of why a new behavior or idea is generated, how it develops, and how it is finally passed on. On this view, then, cultural evolution can clearly not be explained in purely Neo-Darwinian terms. To understand how and why cultures change, we need a far richer concept of the environment than is traditionally used in Darwinian theory. It is therefore necessary to recognize that the environment has an interactive role in the generation of cultural traits and entities, as well as their selection and construction (cf. Jablonka and Lamb, 2005, 222f.). On this view there clearly is much more to evolution that simply the inheritance of genes. Moreover, and importantly, this interactionist perspective blurs any clear prioritization in inheritance systems and thus requires a clear move away from approaches that are limited to either social or biological focuses. On this view ‘evolution as interactive construction’ represents the idea that evolution is never only a matter of biologically developing organisms, but of organism-environment systems interacting and changing over time in a dynamic interactive process of niche construction as a significant evolutionary force alongside natural selection (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 14; also Ruse, 2012, 125). 7 For an understanding of human evolution this is obviously extremely important: most anthropologists would agree that humans are constructed by, and involved in the construction of, contexts that are simultaneously

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In this synergistic interaction between organisms and their environment niche construction emerges as inherently a constructivist process in which biological, ecological, and social/cultural spheres not only interact, but also provides a model for human genetic and cultural evolution by incorporating three levels or dimensions: genetic processes, ontogenetic processes, and cultural processes (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 14).

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physiological, behavioral, historical, social and symbolic. In this sense, human behavioral evolution must be seen primarily as a system evolving, rather than a set of independent or moderately connected traits evolving (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 15). On this view, niche construction is a core factor in human behavioral evolution. The startling conclusion, however, is that we should consider the potential impacts of a diverse array of processes that affect inheritance and evolutionary change, and the possibility that natural selection can occur at multiple levels and may not always be the only, or main, driver of change (cf. Fuentes, 2009, 16). Crucial to our ability for symbolic behavior is our equally remarkable ability for imagination. From a philosophical and theological perspective, it is exactly at this point where the evolution of the moral sense and of morality become crucially important. To approach and understand these defining traits, especially also the propensity for religious imagination, Fuentes has suggested an important distinction: the quest for understanding the human propensity for religious imagination and, I would add, the quest for understanding the evolution of the moral sense, can be aided and enriched by investigating more fully the core role of the evolutionary transition between becoming human and being human (Fuentes, 2014, 1; cf. also Mithen, 1996). A distinctively human imagination is, of course, part of the explanation for this evolutionary success. I do believe, however, that in order to begin to understand the emergence of the moral sense and of religion, it would be important to find interdisciplinary points of connection across explanatory frameworks whose focus lie outside the limits of just one specific set of explanations of religion and of any one specific religious tradition (cf. Fuentes, 2014; also van Huyssteen, 2006).8

Human Evolution and Imagination: From Symbol to Metaphysics In my book Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, I argued, from an evolutionary point of view, for the naturalness of religious imagination (cf. van Huyssteen, 2006, 93ff.). If indeed there is an evolutionary naturalness to the moral sense and to religious imagination, or even to the propensity of religious belief, then it

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Cf. also Stosis, 2009, 315-317, “The religious system is an exquisite, complex adaptation that serves to support extensive human cooperation and coordination, and social life as we know it.”

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would be a valid question to ask how such an imagination, as part of a niche constructive system, emerged over the course of human evolution. Against the background of a broader, more robust view of the many dimensions of evolution that included extensive, interactive niche construction, we can indeed say that Homo sapiens sapiens is a species that had a hand in making itself. From this follows the central theses of evolutionary anthropologist Águstin Fuentes’ work: Fuentes first argues that an evolutionary assessment of a distinctively human way of being in the world includes the capacity and capabilities for the possibility of metaphysical thought as a precursor to religion; secondly, this can be facilitated by recognizing the increasingly central role of niche construction9, systemic complexity, semiotics, and an integration of the cognitive, social, and ecological in human communities during the Pleistocene era (roughly two and a half million years to twelve thousand years ago; cf. Fuentes 2014).10

 9

Regarding the concept niche: a niche is the structural and temporal context in which a species exist. As such it includes space, nutrients, and other physical factors as they are experienced, and restructured and altered by the organism and also shaped by the presence of competitors, collaborators, and other agents in a shared environment (cf. Fuentes, 2010). The human socio-cognitive niche is a cognitive and behavioral configuration that is derived relative to the sociobehavioral contexts of previous hominins. In modern humans, it includes cooperation, egalitarianism, theory of mind (mindreading), cultural transmission and innovation, and language. This is a complex and composite niche unique to the human species and is likely a system whose various components emerged during the Pleistocene to reach its current form (cf. Deacon, 1997, Fuentes, 2014). 10 Following up on my own quest for understanding the naturalness of the propensity for religious imagination and for our aesthetic, creative capacities, Fuentes now believes this idea can be aided significantly by investigating more fully the core role of the evolutionary transition between becoming human and being human (cf. Fuentes, 2014)10. This transition itself can be understood better by a broad assessment of hominin evolution over the last 6 million years (the term ‘Hominin’ includes humans and all of those genera and species derived from the lineage that split with the chimpanzee lineage roughly 7, 8 milllion years ago). And here the focus should be on the terminal portion of that epoch, meaning the final transition from the archaic form of our genus Homo sapiens into the current form of Homo sapiens sapiens. The focus on this transition, which is a shift to a wholly human way of being in our current socio-cognitive niche, will add to our insight into how we, as humans, experience the world in the here and now. Fuentes now suggests that we can connect this emergence of a distinctly human sociocognitive and ecological niche to existing in a meaning-laden world, and to the emergence of an imagination that facilitates the capacity and capabilities for the

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While many scholars are proposing that the origin of religion and of religious belief is either an adaptation/exaptation, or a by-product of our cognitive complexity, others suggest that it is more complicated than that (cf. Wildman, 2009; Boehm, 2012; Barnard, 2012; Donald, 2001; Stosis 2009; van Huyssteen 2014). In addition, Àgustin Fuentes also argues that evolutionary answers to the question of the origin of such systems might not lie either in the specific content of religious beliefs, or only in neurological structures themselves, but rather (at least partially) emerge out of the way in which humans successfully negotiated the world during the terminal stages of the Pleistocene (Fuentes, 2014, 3). Evolutionary epistemologist Franz Wuketits has already argued that metaphysical belief is the result of particular interactions between early humans and their external world and thus results from specific life conditions in prehistorical times (cf. Wuketits, 1990, 118). More importantly, within this evolutionary context one can now envision a distinctive imagination as a core part of the human niche that ultimately enabled the possibility of metaphysical thought. It is ultimately this component of our human niche as our way of being in the world, that is the central aspect of our explanation for why Homo sapiens has flourished while all other hominins, even members of our own genus, have all gone extinct. It is especially interesting to note how most scholars today also acknowledge and accept a ‘hierarchical progression’ model of the evolution of symbolic and semiotic capabilities in humans (cf. Robinson, 2010; Mithin, 2006; Donald, 1991, 2001; Noble and Davidson, 1996). Andrew Robinson (cf. Robinson, 2010, 147) in particular has suggested that the three main assumptions behind these hierarchical approaches to human evolution and to human semiotic competence can be seen as follows: (1) The evolution of human semiotic capability moves, in some sense, from the use of simple to more complex and sophisticated signs; (2) The culmination of this process is the capacity for using symbols; (3) Once this capability has been acquired, further developments in human evolution may follow from the possibility of using symbols in novel ways.

 possibility of metaphysical thought. Moreover, this process is intricately connected to our success as a species (Fuentes, 2014, 2).

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Implied in views like these is of course the fact that Darwinism is itself evolving. Andrew Robinson has focused in his work on the well-known ‘three phases of evolution’: the first major historical phase that stretched from the publication of the Origin of Species and lasted into the early twentieth century, the second phase that culminated in the ‘Neo-Darwinian synthesis’ and the combination of natural selection with Mendelian genetics, and the third phase that originated around the 1970s with various pressures on the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, notably Gould and Eldridge’s thesis for a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ that directly challenged conventional evolutionary gradualism (cf. Robinson, 2010, 182ff.). Robinson also helpfully suggests that these three phases in Darwinian evolution broadly correspond with three key themes in the history of evolutionary thinking: the theme of evolutionary continuity which arose especially in the first phase of Darwinism, when the theory of ‘descent with modification’ became widely accepted in scientific circles; the theme of ontological naturalism which arose especially from the second phase of Darwinism, when the Neo-Darwinian synthesis demonstrated the power of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism; and, finally, the theme of historical contingency, which has been much informed by new insights into complex system dynamics and the loosening up of ‘adaptationist’ thinking in biology.11 What does seem interesting is that an inherent feature of niche construction as an elementary evolutionary fact seems to be that, in contrast to other mechanisms like selection or gene drift, niche construction indeed does seem to introduce a certain directedness into the evolutionary process (cf. Olding-Smee et al. 2003, 33; also Mühling, 2014, 147). For Mühling this kind of directedness which niche construction adds to the process of evolution is a non-teleological one, but it is a kind of information related to purpose and ‘semantic information,’ and by ‘semantic information’ these biologists mean information that relates to the fitness of specific organisms, their requirements in their local environments, etc. One might even say that the niche constructing activities of organisms could be oriented toward targeted future outcomes of organisms-environment interactions on the basis of at least rudimentary and semantically informed search plans (cf. Olding-Smee et al. 2003, 177f.). Therefore, in this limited and, in most species, entirely noncognitive sense, niche construction

 11

Andrew Robinson moreover suggests that the relevance of evolutionary theory to theology might be developed precisely in terms of issues arising from the themes of continuity, naturalism, and contingency. Cf. 2010, 186ff.

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must be preparative or predictive in character (Olding-Smee, as quoted in Mühling, 2014, 147). On this view, then, looking at human origins and the archeology of personhood, and thus at the evolution of our lineage across the Pleistocene, it is evident that there is significantly increasing complexity in the way we interface with the world (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 9): increases in the complexity of culture and social traditions, tool use and manufacture, trade and the use of fire, as well as enhanced infant survival and predator avoidance, increased habitat exploitation, information transfer via material technologies, that have increased in intensity rather dramatically in the last 400,000 years. All of these increasing complexities are tied directly to a rapidly evolving human cognition and social structure that require increased cooperative capabilities and coordination within human communities. Thinking of this as specific outcomes of a niche construction actually provides a mechanism, as well as a context, for the evolution of these multifaceted response capabilities and coordination within communities (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 9). I believe one can, therefore, correctly claim that our niche construction framework may provide an all-important interactive bridge that transcends too simplistic distinctions between biological and cultural evolution because it emphasizes the active role that organisms play in the evolutionary process. In the case of humans, we are not just passive vehicles for genes, but we actively modify sources of natural selection in environments. In terms of non-teleological directionality, finally, and in terms of our own human constructed niche, the emergence of language and a fully developed theory of mind with high levels of intentionality, empathy, moral awareness, symbolic thought and social unity, would all be impossible without an extremely cooperative and mutually integrated social system in combination with enhanced cognitive and communicative capacities as our core adaptive niche. Interestingly, on this point Fuentes himself wants to incorporate an analysis on compassion (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 10). I believe this can be pushed even further back by tracing the deep evolutionary roots of empathy and attachment (cf. van Huyssteen, 2014; Hrdy, 2009, 82ff.; Kirkpatrick, 2005; Sheets-Johnstone, 2008). Our genus thus provides a scenario wherein we can envision a distinctively human imagination as a key part of our niche and as a part of the explanation for why our species succeeded and all other hominins became extinct. Fuentes

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puts it rather forcefully: the imagination and the infusion of meaning into the world by the genus Homo in the late Pleistocene is what underlies, and preceded our current ability to form a metaphysics which in turn eventually facilitates religious beliefs. This landscape of meaning and associated imagination is also a system that facilitates an array of other symbolic and meaning-laden aspects of human behavior and experiences that are not at the core of our current niche and lives (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 11). Important though, there is no single trait that explains human evolutionary success, nor is there a particular environment that created it. And part of this significant toolkit includes a robust imagination and a landscape and perceptual reality wherein everything, whether material or not, is infused with multifaceted meaning. Humans have an imagination that is part of our perceptual and interactive reality and is a substantive aspect of lived experience. Thus, it is realistic to accept that at some point in the last 400,000 years language and hypercomplex intentionality acted to ‘lock-in’ the more-than-material as our permanent state of being, and so laid the groundwork for the evolution of morality, the possibility of metaphysics, aesthetic propensities, religious imagination and the propensity for religious belief (cf. van Huyssteen, 2006), as crucial parts of the uniquely human experience. Now existing in a landscape where material and social elements have semiotic properties, and where communication and action can potentially be influenced by representations of both past and future behavior, implies the possession of an imagination, and even something like ‘hope,’ i.e., the expectation of future outcomes beyond the predictable (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 13). The assertion here is, then, that this interactive process occurs as a component of the human niche as it moves dynamically through the Pleistocene as part of the emerging human toolkit. Importantly, imagination, and therefore, religious imagination, on this view is not just an exaptation, a spurious byproduct of evolution, but crucial to the process of human evolution and incorporates behavioral processes and a sense of imagination and hope that would, and did, increase the likelihood of innovation and successful responses to evolutionary challenges (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 14). This brief review of human origins and human evolution demonstrates the path and substantive impact of changes in behavior, life histories, and bodies in our human ancestors and us humans ourselves. From this, it is clear that patterns in the Upper Paleolithic would lead to the unambiguous appearance of ‘art’ and ‘symbol,’ now also combined with the evolution of

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empathy and compassion and the deep caring for others (cf. Boehm, 2012; Fuentes, 2014; van Huyssteen, 2014). It should therefore not be surprising that a distinctively human imagination is part of the explanation for human evolutionary success and can be seen as one of the structurally significant aspects of the transition from earlier members of the genus Homo to ourselves as we are today.

From Empathy to Moral Awareness: a Natural History of Morality? A better understanding of cooperation, empathy, compassion, the use of and engagement with materials, symbols and ritual, and the notion of a semiotic landscape in which humans and our immediate ancestors existed, do indeed move us along in our analysis of what it meant to become human. And the understanding of all of this is indeed a true interdisciplinary process: the insights we gain via the fossil and archeological record, and behavioral, neurological, and physiological systems, provide a more robust understanding of how humans perceive and experience the world. And it is this process that creates the possibility for an imaginative, potentially metaphysical, and eventually religious, experience of the world (cf. Fuentes, 2014, 17). This should lead to a better understanding of the ubiquitous importance of the propensity for religious imagination, and the reality of religious experiences for Homo sapiens sapiens. This does not imply an argument for any particular adaptive function of religiosity, but rather an argument that in an evolutionary context neither morality nor religion nor religiosity could suddenly have appeared fully blown, and it is therefore valuable to search for the kinds of structures, behaviors, and cognitive processes that might facilitate the eventual appearance of such patterns in human beings. If having an imagination is a central part of the human niche, and this imagination is a basal element in the evolution of morality and the development of metaphysics, one could see how both adaptive and imaginative perspectives could employ that fact as a central part of our understanding of who we are as humans. I believe that a vision of deep empathy for others not only reveals the evolutionary origins of the roots of morality in humans but also could open up a way to bridge the gap between evolutionary and theological meta-narratives by making a proposal for a bottom-up, contextual form of evolutionary ethics, and then allows us to ask specifically how this might apply to the evolution of morality, to ethical judgments, and the status of ethical judgments and moral codes in theology. Most importantly, this will

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imply a Christian ethics, and a notion of morality that proceeds not ‘top down’ from a consideration of rules, duties, rights, moral judgments, moral status, but proceeds rather, from the examination of the fundamental evolutionary realities of human nature, i.e., from a natural history from morality. I will develop this argument against the background of an analysis of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's engagement with the work of Hannah Arendt on the notion of evil, and in conversation with Richard Joyce, as well as the most recent work on the origins of morality by anthropologist Christopher Boehm and philosopher Philip Kitcher. Finally, I argue that the works of evolutionary ethicists are of great importance for theologians because of their direct interest in how the evolutionary origins of human behavior are to be explained, and in which way our behavior has been constrained, but not determined, by biological factors. Following from our earlier discussion of niche construction in it will be clear that evolution by natural selection and genetics can play an important role in our tendency to think in normative terms, i.e., our innate sense of moral awareness. However, evolutionary explanations of this moral awareness cannot explain our moral judgments, nor justify the truth claims of any of our moral judgments. Why and how we make moral judgments can only be explained on the more complex level of niche construction and cultural evolution, and by taking into account the historical embeddedness of our moral codes in religious and political conventions. For Christian theology, in the end, the choice will not be between a moral vision that is inherent in revelation and is, therefore, ‘received’ and not invented or constructed. Instead, on a post-foundationalist view, our moral codes and ethical convictions of what is ‘received’ are themselves interpretative enterprises, shaped experientially through our embeddedness in complex niches of communities and cultures. Against this background, I want to try in this essay to begin to bridge the gap between evolutionary and theological meta-narratives by making a post-foundationalist proposal (cf. van Huyssteen, 2006, 6-24) for a bottom-up, contextual form of evolutionary ethics, and then specifically ask how this might apply to the evolution of morality, to ethical judgments, and the status of ethical judgments and moral codes in theology. Importantly, of course, Sheets-Johnstone argues that the pan-cultural origins of both empathy and evil clearly have their roots in the evolutionary heritage of humans, though just as clearly those roots stretch all the way from the biological to the cultural. The whole point, then, of Sheets-Johnstone argument for the pan-cultural origins of evil is to show that violence, war, and suffering, are socially-elaborated, biological

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derived phenomena. And to best unravel the pan-cultural origins of evil though a local, bottom-up, contextual, phenomenologically informed attention to war and violence, Sheets-Johnstone now turns to Hannah Arendt’s most famous writings on war and evil. Here, what Arendt has called the ‘banality of evil’ is indeed pan-cultural, not only in the immediate sense of being a present-day world-wide human phenomenon, but in the enduring sense of being a chronic historically-laden human phenomenon (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 137). This certainly directly implies the natural history that undergirds the banality of evil, a history that, cultural variations notwithstanding, has phylogenetic, and thus evolutionary roots. Thus, it becomes clear why, in completing this argument, SheetsJohnstone has called for philosophical and evolutionary ways to understand how empathy is indeed a spontaneous outgrowth of affect attunement (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 211), and also why she wants to build on her research on empathy to develop a ‘rationality of caring’ that in turn offers deepened understandings of empathy. As has now become clear, she also wants to ground her phenomenological approach by consciously embedding it in Charles Darwin’s natural history of the moral sense. In doing so she is making a bold attempt at revealing the inherent link between ethics and biology, thereby laying the ground for a genuine evolutionary ethics (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 286). In this way, a rationality of caring grows out of the insight that one’s own body is the standard upon which the plight, concerns, thoughts, and feelings of another are grasped. One’s own body is indeed a semantic template for those inter-corporeal understandings that ground the rationality of caring, and in fact generate caring as an attitudinal affect (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 287). In this ‘transfer of sense’ an understanding of another’s movements, gestures, words, cries, postures, and expressions (i.e., another’s behavior in the widest possible sense) is engendered and the capacity for empathy is revealed, a capacity to enter in a dynamically and affectively intuitive sense into the life of another. A genuine evolutionary ethics thus makes explicit the epistemological structures of empathy and caring while at the same time it anchors those structures in the corporeal facts of evolutionary life (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 288), and thus enables a leading of the moral life. Or, as Sheets-Johnston strikingly puts it: before being able to give reasons for one’s actions and beliefs–the common criteria of rationality–one should be able to act reasonably in the world and have reasonable beliefs about it (cf. Sheets-Johnstone, 2008, 302).

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The works of evolutionary ethicists are, therefore, of great importance for theologians because of their direct interest in why humans behave the way they do, how the evolutionary origins of human behavior are to be explained, and in which way our behavior has been constrained by biological factors. In this sense one could say that the starting point of evolutionary ethics is the insight that morality has a biological, evolutionary basis. Ethical behavior is indeed a product of our biological evolution but this fact by itself does not entail any normative assertions: from the fact that morality has developed we cannot conclude that any particular trait of human behavior is good or bad (right or wrong) in an ethical sense. Put differently, an evolutionary account of ethics does not support any particular moral code, but it may help us understand why such codes have developed (cf. Wuketits, 1990, 202). We should therefore be careful to always distinguish between the evolution of moral awareness and any attempt at the evolutionary justification of moral codes. Evolutionary ethics in this second sense has a bad history and has resulted in ideologies like Social Darwinism. When I use the term evolutionary ethics I use it to characterize specifically the view that morality has evolved and there are clear pointers to the biological roots of moral behavior in pre-human history, as the work of primatologist Frans de Waal (2006), scientist Donald Broom (2003), and philosopher Richard Joyce (2006) have clearly shown. However, from the evolutionary genesis of our moral awareness we cannot derive moral codes of right or wrong. Accepting that our moral awareness has evolved also means accepting that our moral codes could not be fixed forever as unchangeable entities. The work of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone has recently found, in my view, strong affirmation in anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s latest publication, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (2012). Boehm, in a strong affirmation of Agustin Fuentes and other evolutionary anthropologists’ notion of niche construction, argues that human behavior is not determined either by biology, or by nature, but by interactions between these two factors. Boehm also recognizes that culturally instilled beliefs and attitudes support evolved dispositions, that brain mechanisms affect the evolution of culture, and that cultural innovations affect biological evolution (cf. Boehm, 2012, 3f.). Boehm puts it as follows: “In modern terms, what Darwin’s theory told the world was that potentially changeable natural environments were acting continuously on variations of gene pools of resident populations.” In this way Boehm

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starts the challenging task of offering us a natural history of morality, something that Darwin himself could not fully accomplish: not because of any lack if insight or ambition, but because in his time he lacked the necessary data from primatology, paleoanthropology, cultural anthropology, and psychology, along with explanations of brain functions from cognitive neuroscience (cf. Boehm, 2012, 13). Boehm’s basic thesis, then, is that prehistorically humans began to make use of social control so intensively that individuals who were better at inhibiting their own antisocial tendencies, either through fear of punishment or through absorbing and identifying with their group’s rules, gained superior fitness. And by learning to internalize rules, humankind acquired a conscience (cf. Boehm, 2012, 17). In this sense the long ‘road to morality’ ends with the first fully ‘modern’ humans, and they were basically the endpoint for moral evolution in the biological sense. In this sense one could say that the uniquely self-conscious agency of the human person went hand in hand with the evolutionary development of the uniquely human conscience, and thus, as we saw earlier in the work of Maxine Sheet-Johnstone, with an inherent moral sense for right and wrong (cf. Boehm, 2012, 17). What is more, it is also exactly the development of conscience, which gave us the first primitive sense of right and wrong, that quickly re-enforced the remarkable degree of empathy, and finally the accompanying traits of extrafamilial generosity and altruism, that enrich our human lives today (cf. Boehm, 2012, 18). Boehm would also acknowledge recent work establishing the existence of empathy, undoubtedly a precursor of morality, in primates. But it is our evolutionary developed conscience, which has endowed us with a universal sense of shame, manifested in the unique human ability of blushing as an expression of shame, which was pivotal in the origin of morality (cf. Boehm, 2012, 14ff.). The important question, then, “what can Darwinian evolution teach us about the nature of morality?” for the better part of the twentieth century was indeed answered with: nothing (cf. FitzPatrick, 2012, 1). What Darwin can answer us about morality certainly is that any objective basis of morality is an illusion, and there is nothing, objectively, what we ought morally to do. However, what distinguishes Philip Kitcher’s ‘ethical project’ is how seriously he takes Darwin in trying to show that Darwin’s work does, however, have serious normative and meta-ethical implications (cf. James, 2013, 134).

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The scope of this project, aptly named The Ethical Project (2011), is indeed vast: stretching from the emergence of ethical discourse and practice among our Paleolithic ancestors and its subsequent development of ancient and modern history up to the present. Kitcher is particularly concerned to resist any notion of a relativistic ‘mere change’ of the history of ethical thought and practice and to try and probe how such changes through history actually came about, and most importantly, whether there is any real progress in the evolution of ethics. Kitcher especially wants to maintain that any traditional philosophical thought that construes progress in terms of more accurately grasping ethical ‘truths’ fails miserably on this front (cf. FitzPatrick, 2012, 167). What we need, on the contrary, is an historical account of ethical problem solving, which he then develops as a form of pragmatic naturalism. This form of pragmatic naturalism now clearly converges, epistemologically, with what I have earlier presented with the notion of evolution as niche construction: Kitcher invites us to look at the emergence of ‘socially embedded normative guidance’ in the form of developing ethical codes in concrete historical contexts and then to ask about their functions in human social life. Against this background Kitcher proposes that socially embedded normative guidance functions as a social technology responding to the problem background confronting our first fully human ancestors (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 221f.). Thus, we find in prehistory the origins of the first basic form of ethics: moved by a sense of the fragilities and tensions of their social life, they first guided their behavior by regularities to help them avoid trouble, and later discussed with one another rules to govern conduct, to be applied in increasingly explicit systems of punishment. Ethical codes thus served the function of solving original difficulties, even if probably only dimly understood by these early ancestors. Ethical progress eventually consisted in functional refinement, first aimed at solving the original problems more thoroughly and more reliably. In the course of this kind of progress, however, the problem background itself changes, generating new functions for ethics to serve, and hence new modes of functional refinement (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 221f.). In developing this natural history of ethics, Kitcher now pinpoints the original function of ethics as a remedying of altruism failures; i.e., remedying those altruism failures provoking social conflict (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 222f.). Clearly, then, for Kitcher, in the history of the evolution of ethics, whether in prehistory, ancient, modern, or recent history, there is no appeal to

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anyone’s having had insight into any form of objective truth. However, unlike Richard Joyce, he does not opt for relativism or skepticism but comes forward with what I would call a strong post-foundationalist alternative: replacing the traditional model of progress as a looser adherence to ethical truth with a model modeled after technology, Kitcher argues that just as we can speak of technological progress in terms of a functional refinement to artifacts whereby they perform their given functions more reliably, quickly and cheaply, so we too can speak of ethical progress or ethical progressive transitions simply in terms of functional refinements to ethical codes (cf. FitzPatrick, 2012, 168). On this view then, progress takes place when our ethical codes are changed in ways that enable them to perform better their primary function of remedying altruism failures and promoting social harmony. So understood, progress in ethics is not understood at all as aligning with independent normative truths, but as a direct form of problem solving, an ongoing process of conceptual and functional refinement. In this sense, there is no prior conception of ethical truth, so that people make ethical progress when they discover independently constituted ethical truths: ‘progress’ is in fact the prior notion, and descriptive versions of rules come to count as true in virtue of the fact that they enter and remain in ethical codes that unfold in a progressive sequence, or as Kitcher puts it, “truth happens to an idea” (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 246). In this sense, we are never at the end of the ethical project, never at some hypothetical limit of any progressive sequence of ethical practices. Yet, we confidently assert some ethical statements (for example, “honesty is typically good/right, and murdering people who have done no harm is typically wrong”). The confidence that we have is that something very like what our imprecise statements express will be found in later progressive extensions of our own practice. Therefore, despite the variation we find in the world’s ethical experiments, some themes are discovered again and again (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 247). But here also lies the possibility of pluralism: there is indeed a core set of impressive concepts which we can hail as ‘ethical truths.’ There are also areas in which the convergence of progressive traditions is genuinely in doubt. Rival traditions thus offer different elaborations of the ethical project, alternative cultural lineages, and societies belonging to those lineages may be no means find the same problems salient (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 248f.). In this evolution of the ethical project, however, it is often an innovator that justifiably makes a revisionary, even revolutionary,

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proposal if the ethical processes are likely to lead to ethical progress. For instance, empathetic understanding can foster societal discussion to remedy existing altruism failures, and someone who becomes a strong leader in this venture can indeed be seen as a justified agent of ethical change. Kitcher then offers a fascinating example of just such a figure: if one looks at what emerges, for instance, from the Christian gospels, the person that emerges as the most striking example of empathetic identification in recorded history is Jesus (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 250f.). The sweeping exhortations to forgive, to cherish and nurture those whom society neglects or despise are much more than attempts to deal with altruism failures on a large scale: because of the scope of his sensitivity to others, one might credit Jesus with a capacity for empathetic understanding whose exercise reliably generates progressive proposals for ethical reform. In Kitcher’s view there are indeed no ‘moral teachers,’ but there are justified reformers who make proposals, and we can count him as one of the greatest (cf. Kitcher, 2011, 251). Against this background Kitcher would argue that we can derive from the empirically discovered function of ethics, nothing less than a normatively binding, secular, and richly egalitarian ideal: an ideal of ethical deliberation involving strong mutual engagement and problem solving, and thus, ethical progress. In this way, he succeeds to capture an element of objectivity by always again appealing to the ‘original function of ethics,’ the remedying of altruism. And what counts as a good life is subject to functional refinement over time, and there is no guarantee that our current conception is ideal or that future conceptions will inevitably be progressive. And it is in this sense that ethics is a work in progress, which does not mean that we cannot give some content to the good. This, on my view, converges clearly with my earlier use of the idea of niche construction: for Kitcher does emphasize, after all, that as human societies evolved, people developed richer conceptions of human flourishing, to which ethical codes were, and are, a direct interactive response. 12 The never-ending process of ethical evolution, I would propose, thus should be at the heart of our discussions of human evolution now, and in the future.

 12

cf. FitzPatrick, 2012, 174, on particular episodes of ethical progress, such as the feminist, gay rights, or animal welfare movements, as deserving a greater focus in treatments of moral epistemology.

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—. (2010). “On Nature and the Human: Introduction,” and “More Than a Human Nature,” in American Anthropologist: Vital Forum, Vol. 112, Issue 4, pp.512-521. —. (2012). Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You. Busting Myths about Human Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. (2014). “Human Evolution, Niche Complexity, and the Emergence of a Distinctly Human Imagination.” Forthcoming. Hrdy, Sarah. (2009). Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Joyce, R. (2006). The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MA: MIT Press. Ingold, T. (2010). “What is a Human Being?” in American Anthropologist: Vital Forum, Vol. 112, Issue 4, p.512f. Jablonka, E., and Lamb, M. (2005). Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion. New York/London: The Guilford Press. Kitcher, P. (2011). The Ethical Project. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Lewontin, R.C. (1983). Gene, Organism, and Environment, in D.S. Bendall (Eds.) Evolution from Mice to Men, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Marks, J. (2010). “Off Human Nature”, American Anthropologist: Vital Forum, Vol. 112, Issue 4, p.512. Mellars, P. (1989). “Major Issues in the Emergence of Modern Humans”. Current Anthropology 30, no.3. —. (1991). “Cognitive Changes and the Emergence of Modern Humans in Europe”. Cambridge Archeological Journal 1, no.1. Mithen, S. (1996). The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science. London: Thames and Hudson. —. (2009). The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Mühling, M. (2014). Resonances: Neurobiology, Evolution and Theology. Evolutionary Niche Construction, The Ecological Brain and Relational-Narrative Theology, Gottingen: Vandenhhoeck & Ruprecht, Noble, W., and Davidson, I. (1996). Human Evolution, Language and Mind: A Psychological and Archeological Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Olding-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N., Feldman, M. W. (2003). Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Potts, R. (1996). Humanity’s Descent. New York: Morrow. —. (2012). “Environmental and Behavioral Evidence Pertaining to the Evolution of Early Homo.” Current Anthropology 53, Supplement 6. Robinson, A. (2010). God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Pierce. Leiden/Boston: Brill Publishers. Ruse, M. (2012). The Philosophy of Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1990). The Roots of Thinking. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. —. (2008). The Roots of Morality. University Park: The Pennsylvania State Press. Stosis, R. (2009). “The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program,” in Journal of Cognition and Culture 9, 315-332. Tattersall, I. (1998). Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness. New York: Hartcourt Brace. —. (2002). The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of what Makes us Human. New Hork: Hartcourt. —. (2011). “Origins of the Human Sense of Self,” in In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood. Eds. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen and Erik P. Wiebe. Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (2006). Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. —. (2009). “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Origins and Religious Awareness,” in Colin Renfrew and Iain Morley (Eds.), Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2010). “What Makes us Human? The Interdisciplinary Challenge to Theological Anthropology and Christology” in Toronto Journal of Theology 26/2, 143-160. —. (2010). “When Were We Persons? Why Hominid Evolution holds the Key to Embodied Personhood”, in Neue Zeitschrift for Systematische Theology 52, 329-349. —. (2010). “Coding the Nonvisible: Epistemic Limitations and Understanding Symbolic Behavior at Çatalhöyük”, in Ian Hodder (Ed.), “Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 99-121).

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—. (2011). “Post-Foundationalism and Human Uniqueness: A Reply to Responses” in Toronto Journal of Theology 27/1, 73-86. —. (2013). “The Historical Self: Memory and Religion at Çatalhöyük,” in Ian Hodder (ed.), Vital Matters: Religion and Change at Çatalhöyük. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. —. (2014). “From Empathy to Embodied Faith: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Evolution of Religion,” in Watts, Fraser, and Turner, Léon, Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science: Critical and Constructive Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wildman, W. (2009). Science and Religious Anthropology. Farnham: Ashgate Press. Wuketits, F. M. (1990). Evolutionary Epistemology and its Implications for Humankind. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

CHAPTER NINE A NEW DUALISM NOREEN HERZFELD

In 1994, molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick put forward what he called an astonishing hypothesis: “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules ... You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” The ‘you’ Crick refers to is our self, located in memories, hopes, and feelings, a self that is purely material, an assemblage of neurons. However, it is the behavior of those neurons–the messages they pass back and forth through their associated molecules that actually makes you ‘you.’ In other words, ‘you’ are not the hardware of your brain but the software that organizes it and keeps it running. From this viewpoint, you are information. This vision of the human person as information is especially appealing in our so called ‘information age.’ It allows for a simple understanding of human individuality. Even more, since information is reproducible, it suggests a new form of immortality, in which the information that is me could potentially be ported to another body, or better yet, a less fallible platform, such as a computer. Computer scientist Ray Kurzweil (1999) envisions such an immortality thus: Up until now, our mortality was tied to the longevity of our hardware. When the hardware crashed, that was it. For many of our forebears, the hardware gradually deteriorated before it disintegrated . . . As we cross the divide to instantiate ourselves into our computational technology, our identity will be based on our evolving mind file. We will be software, not hardware . . . As software, our mortality will no longer be dependent on the survival of the computing circuitry . . . [as] we periodically port ourselves to the latest, evermore capable "personal" computer . . . Our immortality

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Dreams of moving from a mortal body to a quasi-immortal existence in cyberspace form one of the main platforms of ‘Post’ or ‘Transhumanism.’ Kurzweil (2005) suggests we might achieve this by 2045. He believes that we will approach what he has coined ‘the Singularity’ around this date, a time when computers will not only be sophisticated enough to model the human brain, but will outstrip human understanding and begin to evolve on their own. He writes: “The Singularity will allow us to transcend [the] limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. We will be able to live as long as we want. ... We will fully understand human thinking and … the non-biological portion of our intelligence will be trillions and trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence” (Kurzweil, 2005, 9). Kurzweil is not alone in entertaining these dreams. MIT’s Rodney Brooks envisions a more gradual transformation from human to machine as we replace more and more of our biological parts, including parts of our brains, with mechanics till we become all mechanical. Dr. Sebastian Seung, who is working on reverse engineering a human brain, has suggested that a map of all the synapses of the brain could be stored as information and at some future date be instantiated in either a clone or a computer (Kaku, 2014). How close are we to the fulfillment of any of these projects? While the Human Genome project was big, reverse engineering the human brain is vastly more difficult. The brain contains roughly 80-90 billion neurons, each of which can be connected to thousands of other neurons. These connections are not permanent, but continually changing as we experience new things, forget others, age, or kill a few neurons off with a beer or two. To make matters even more complicated, electrical impulses move from neuron to neuron enhanced or impeded by a continuous bath of chemical neurotransmitters, such as dopamine or serotonin. The effect of these chemicals would need to be taken into account in any reproduction of the brain. Despite the daunting nature of the task, in 2013 President Barack Obama announced a 3 billion dollar, fifteen-year research program to map the neural pathways of the brain. At the same time, the European Commission announced its own ten-year Human Brain Project devoted to creating a computer simulation of the brain. It is unlikely that either project will meet its goal. While we understand the functioning of a single neuron or small group of neurons, and can use fMRI machines and PET

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scans to map blood flow to large regions of the brain, we do not understand the middle ground, the functioning of large chains of neurons, nor do we have any idea how these chains represent a thought or a memory. And this does not even consider an underlying ontological question of whether a copy of the brain’s structure would retain its operativity.

The Return of the Soul However, let us assume that eventually we are able to fully understand the workings of the human brain and mimic them in either another brain or a computer. While proponents tend to be strict materialists who staunchly deny the existence of a soul, there is something oddly Cartesian going on here. If we are information, then the self is ultimately separable from the body. The very goal of these projects is precisely such a separation. While not pre-existent, as in religious formulations of the soul, one could say that the informational pattern we develop becomes a soul-- an emergent nonmaterial entity that captures and continues the essence of the self. This provides a way to maintain belief in ontological materialism without giving up the hope of a quasi-immortality. As Daniel Hill notes, “I’m as fond of my body as anyone, but if I can be 200 in a body of silicon, I’ll take it” (Kaku, 2014, 250). The soul as information also avoids several critiques traditionally leveled against Cartesian dualism. As an emergent property of the brain, this sort of soul violates none of the tenets of biological or neurological development, nor need we look for any explanation of how it interacts with the physical brain, since it is the physical brain, or at least its blueprint. But the whole idea of a self in a silicon body seems oddly dissatisfying. Michio Kaku (2014, 276) notes that when given the choice between the ‘high-tech or high-touch’ we invariably choose high-touch. Do you prefer Skype to a real meeting with someone you love? If given a choice between going to the Taj Mahal or seeing a perfect model of it, which would you choose? More to the point, imagine the process of porting your brain. You go into the lab, spend some time attached to various machines, then are told, “Ok, we’ve got you. You can go now.” You would still be in your body. Within the computer would be at best a strange Doppelganger or imposter with your memories and tastes. Moreover, those memories and tastes would begin to diverge from that moment on, as both you and it have different experiences. Further, when does one port one’s soul? At 15

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when we know everything? At 25 when we are at the height of our abilities in terms of memory or calculation? At 65 when we have a lifetime of experience behind us? And if we ported ourselves at each of these times, would each copy be the same person or would they be quite different from one another? Which one is the real you?

Bodies Matter What is missing from this version of a soul that gives rise to such questions? The same thing that is missing from standard Cartesian dualism and that has led Christianity to posit a resurrection of the body rather simple immortality of the soul—bodies matter. Without a body we do not have a self. Our bodies are necessary for a fully human intelligence. They play a crucial part in our ability to feel, and, therefore, to love. The Biblical tradition is clear that the human being is an integrated whole, one that is human precisely in being both body and spirit. In Genesis 1, humans are said to be created in the image of God. This image has been interpreted by theologians variously, but has generally been understood in one of three ways. While the earliest Christian theologians saw this image in our mental abilities or rational intellect, the one property we did not share with other animals, this view has been supplanted in more recent scholarship, which has moved from a static, trait-based interpretation toward one that is dynamic and agency based. Gerhard von Rad (1964, 391) notes that the divine likeness is not found in our personality alone but in our physical being, precisely because it is only through our bodies that we have agency in the world. “The divine likeness consists in the fact that man was invested with might at creation. . .. [I]n Genesis 1:26 we are told that man is to be created in the divine image that he may control the whole of creation.” Human beings image God when they do God’s work, as God’s representatives on earth. Our bodies also provide the locus for relationship. According to Biblical scholar Claus Westermann (1984, 157) in our creation, “the creator created a creature that corresponds to him, to whom he can speak, and who listens to him.” Karl Barth (1958) took this interpretation further, finding evidence for the primacy of relationship in two portions of the Genesis text: “Let us make man in our image” (1:26) and “male and female he created them” (1:27). Barth interprets the use of the plural in the first text as referring, not to a heavenly court, but to the triune nature of God’s self, positing a godhead that consists of several persons in eternal relationship.

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The image of such a God must, therefore, be in our relationships with one another. Intelligence, agency, and relationship–our sense of self is incomplete without all of them. We are neither just a mind nor just a body, but a mind that is both part and product of our human body, which exists embedded within the larger environments of our physical and cultural worlds. This has become clear to the artificial intelligence (AI) community as well. While early attempts to create an AI focused on purely mental activities, ‘embodiment’ has become the current buzzword in the AI community. The very concept of intelligence is meaningless outside of the context of an environment in which it is to operate. Cognition is structured through feedback from the environment. Think of how much a young child learns from playing in a sandbox or with a set of blocks. There is pure physical mastery of shape, size, gravity, fluid dynamics, and the properties of various materials. The child registers these things mentally while at the same time gaining physical dexterity, a dexterity that is retained not just in the mind but in the very muscles themselves. This bodes poorly for the continued growth of a brain uploaded to a silicon platform. From the moment a brain is uploaded to a computer it will lose the primary mode it previously has had of apprehending the world.

What about Love? The importance of a body extends beyond the difficulty of gaining intelligence without one. As Christians, we believe that love is ultimately more important than intelligence. Does love require a body? Certain expressions of it seem to. In an old Star Trek episode, the crew of the Enterprise comes across a race that has evolved beyond the necessity for a physical body, becoming pure intelligence. Several of these entities hijack the bodies of some of the Enterprise’s crew. Why? Well, for two of them, who love one another, they simply want the chance to express that love in a physical way. Anyone who has carried on a long distance relationship knows that love at its fullest involves more than information. Even love which is not eros but agape requires a body. Simon Baron-Cohen (2011, 16) defines empathy as “our ability to identify what someone else is thinking and feeling and to respond . . . with an appropriate emotion.” Genuine empathy requires recognition and response. A computer may use facial recognition to identify an emotion and can also exhibit an emotional

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response. However, hidden between these two movements is a third--we must respond with an appropriate emotion. To have true empathy a computer would need to experience emotions. Psychologist Jerome Kagan (2007) describes emotion as a four step process: 1) a change in brain activity due to a stimulus, 2) a perceived change in feeling that is sensory, 3) an appraisal of that feeling, and 4) a preparedness toward or display of a motor response. Clearly computers are capable of some degree of numbers 1, 3, and 4. They can note a stimulus, appraise that stimulus, and calculate an appropriate response. However, the second step, a change in feeling that is sensory, requires a body, and this is a step that Kagan considers ‘critical.’ Many emotions invoke a strong physical response, such as the rapid heartbeat, flushed face, and weak knees of anxiety, or the warm relaxation of love. This physical response precedes conscious recognition of the emotion. It comes unbidden. Consider, for example, how we involuntarily wince when we see pain being inflicted on another, or how our heart speeds up long before our consciousness tells us that we are afraid. Without a body the second stage of emotion is missing. While we can turn the existence of that stage into information, we cannot digitize the feeling itself. A computer does not feel an emotion, it fakes it. It observes and then calculates a response. What would it mean if a human being acted the same way? Any man or woman who did this would be labeled as deceptive, manipulative, or worse. According to Baron-Cohen (2007), the defining feature of a sociopath is just such an incomplete empathy circuit. The incompletion is not in the ability to see another or respond, but the inability to feel.

Resurrection of the Body Our Christian forbears instinctively recognized what science now shows, that both to think and to love requires bodily existence within an environment. An immortality that would continue anything like the life we have known and anything like the selves that we are must be instantiated in a body. The Apostle’s Creed states that we believe in “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1943) notes that such a life must occur outside of the bounds of material history. He writes: The Christian hope of the consummation of life and history is less absurd than alternate doctrines which seek to comprehend and to effect the completion of life by some power or capacity inherent in man and his

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history. … Both the meaning [of life] and its fulfillment are ascribed to a centre and source beyond ourselves. We can participate in the fulfillment of the meaning only if we do not seek too proudly to appropriate the meaning as our secure possession or to effect the fulfillment by our own power. (Niebuhr, 1943, 298)

Near the end of his life and failing in health, Niebuhr (1984, 1195) noted that our physical self is not an illness from which we can our should escape: “If we recognize that the human self is not to be equated with its mind, though the logical and analytic faculties of the mind are an instrument of its freedom over nature and history, and if we know that the self is intimately related to its body but cannot be equated with its physical functions, we then are confronted with the final mystery of its capacity of transcendence over nature, history and even its own self.” If the physical universe is all that exists, there is no immortality and we must simply accept this fact. Yet, as Niebuhr (1943, 321) writes, if we are “persuaded that neither death, nor life nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, it may dissuade [us] from the idolatrous pursuit of false securities and redemptions” of our own and give us grounds to hope for a resurrection that captures the fullness of our being.

References Baron-Cohen, S. N. (2011). The Science of Evil. New York: Basic Books. Crick, F. H. C. (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Scribner’s. Kagan, J. (2007). What are Emotions? New Haven: Yale. Kaku, M. (2014). The Future of the Mind. New York: Doubleday. Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Viking. —. (2005). The Singularity is Near: When Machines Transcend Human Biology. New York: Viking. —. (2012). How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. New York: Viking. Niebuhr, R. (1943). The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol.1: Human Nature. New York: Scribner’s. Niebuhr, R. (1984). “A View from the Sidelines,” Christian Century, December. von Rad, G. (1964). “The Divine Likeness in the OT.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel, trans. G. W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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Westermann, C. (1984). Genesis 1-11: a Commentary, trans. J. Scullion. Minneapolis: Augsburg.

CHAPTER TEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE ARE INDEPENDENT— BUT WHY? MICHAEL RUSE

Ian Barbour’s fourfold way Any serious discussion of the relationship between religion and science has to start with Ian Barbour’s (1997) fourfold classification. First there the position much favored by the New Atheists, one of conflict or warfare. Religion and science make claims that clash. Religion claims there was a worldwide flood about five thousand years ago, and all animals got drowned, with the exception of a very small number who floated free. Science says that this is impossible. Second there is the position associated with Karl Barth and his followers, namely independence. Religion and science cannot conflict because they talk of different things. When for instance Catholics endorse transubstantiation, the turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, it is silly to cut up the bread and expect to find flesh. The claim is not one open to empirical investigation. The same is true of other such claims, for instance about the Trinity or about eternal life. It is not exactly true, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (1999), that science is about facts and religion is about values, but this is not entirely false either. Third we have the position much favored by the Catholic Church, one of dialogue. It is true that transubstantiation is not empirically verifiable, but science and religion are not so far apart that they cannot be in a kind of conversation. The argument from design would be a paradigmatic example of such a conversation. We start in the empirical world, looking especially at the intricate adaptations of organisms, and then from these we argue that they cannot have been caused naturally and so there must be a designercreator who is responsible. God! A recent variant is based on the so-called

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anthropic principle. The laws of nature are ‘fine-tuned,’ and if they were not so then life would be impossible. Since life is not just possible but actual, again this points to a designer-creator. Fourth and finally we have integration. This is favored by followers of Alfred North Whitehead (1929), process philosophers and theologians. Religion and science are seen as part of an indivisible whole. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s (1955) world picture is thought an exemplar. It makes empirical claims about the nature of the fossil record–progressive, leading up to humans. At the same time, it sees in history God’s working his purpose out, as evolution leads up to the Omega Point, something to be recognized as Jesus Christ. Religion and science are as one. Everyone today recognizes that there are problems with this division (Ruse, 2010). For a start, rarely if ever does anyone subscribe to just one position. One can be firmly committed (as am I through the independence model) to the prospect of science and religion working it out and yet recognize that some religions make claims–like the authenticity of Noah’s Flood–that flatly contradict modern science. But by and large, these sorts of issues, while perhaps requiring much hard work, are generally not thought insurmountable. In the case of the Flood, for instance, many very sincere Christians–people who believe that Jesus died on the Cross for their sins–doubt that there was a flood at all, or at least that there was anything that was worldwide. The story is not considered to be false outright, but more one of metaphor or allegory, discussing human nature and its relationship to God. Most obviously it warns against simplistic solutions–like the Second Iraq War–for they never solve anything. God sent the Flood because humankind were sinners. But what happens when it is all over? Noah gets blind drunk and one of his kids comes into the tent and laughs at him in his nakedness. Sin is right back on page one! As apparently we still are in Iraq. I am a non-believer, so in a way only the first or second options are open to me. I can hardly argue for dialogue or integration–nor would I want to. However, if I were a believer, while I could hardly opt for the first option– truth cannot be opposed to truth–any of the other options would be viable. It would all very much depend on the kind of theology I accept and much more. Barth, for instance, disliked natural theology–in a strong Protestant tradition he though faith devalued if we try to prove its conclusions– whereas others obviously are happy to accept the gifts of such theology. Process theologians make much of the notion of kenosis, where God

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voluntarily gives up His powers and joins with us in the process of creation. For them, the integration position is highly attractive and it is no surprise that Teilhard’s world picture is much appreciated.

Defending independence Issues like these I put on one side in this discussion and turn to a matter of some interest to me. I am what is known, somewhat scornfully by the New Atheists, as an ‘accommodationist’–a term I am happy to use, just as members of the Religious Society of Friends are happy to call themselves Quakers, even though it was first used as a term of opprobrium (Ruse, 2015). Although a non-believer, I want to argue that if religious people want to be religious then they have a perfect right to be so. Or rather more circumspectly, if religious people want to be religious then– acknowledging the fact that the religion must be cleaned out so it does not conflict with science–science cannot stop them. I see no reason why philosophy or comparative religious studies and the like should not still be effective against religion. In my own case, I do not see how to reconcile religion with the problem of evil–at least I do not see how to reconcile Western religion and a good Creator God with the problem of evil. Indeed, I don’t very much want a way of reconciling such a God with the deaths of Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen or of Sophie Scholl under the guillotine for her role in the anti-Hitler, White Rose group. On top of this, the multiplicity of religions makes me very dubious about the truth value of any of them. Am I to suppose that the Dalai Lama will go to hell because he does not accept Jesus as his savior? My question, one that I do not see answered by others, is why science and religion do not (necessarily) clash. If they are both about reality, why don’t they run afoul of each other–recognizing that the boundaries may move and what does not clash today might clash tomorrow? But recognizing that however much boundary moving may occur, there will always be places that science does not reach that religion can legitimately attempt to occupy? If Gould were right, and if science is about fact and religion is about value, then the answer would be obvious. At least it would be if you follow David Hume and think that ‘is’ statements and ‘ought’ statements are claims of radically different kinds. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations

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concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Hume, 1739-40, 302) However, as I have said, while I am not entirely opposed to Gould, it cannot be the whole story. Science is about facts. Humans evolved from monkeys. Religion is about values. Love your neighbor as yourself. But religion–even purified religion (religion, that is, that does not conflict with science)–is also about facts. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because a necessary being created things (I take it that this is not a scientific claim such as the Big Bang theory. We are not asking to go back in time to see what started things off, but rather what lies behind the very fact of existence, in the past, in the present, in the future). You may think it a good thing that a necessary being created things. You may think it a bad thing. But it is not just a value thing. It is, to use the lingo of philosophers, an ontological thing.

Metaphor So, this is my question: what is it about science that means it cannot answer everything? And why is it that religion can move in and try to answer that which science does not answer? A perhaps-related question to make my answer seem legitimate is about why it is that I am able to answer this question when others have failed to do so. Actually, starting with this end of the discussion, the reason is fairly obvious. Most of the people in recent years who have worked intensely on the science-religion relationship have come from the world of science. That means that they know a lot about science but they don’t necessarily know a lot about the philosophy of science–nor about the history of science for that matter. In particular, they are not really aware of the extent to which in the postKuhnian era–I take this to be from around 1960 (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962)–we have become aware of the extent to which science is driven by metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). There is something of a feeling–particularly to those who revere the scientists’ philosopher Karl Popper–that science tells it like it is. Just the

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straight unadorned truth. Or, if it doesn’t quite tell it, then it is on the way to doing so. But thanks to Kuhn and others we now realize that things are not quite this simple. It is true that science is an attempt to find out about physical reality and that it is governed by the facts, but there is more. Metaphor! Trying to see one thing through the lens of another thing, something literally contradictory, for insight and for a fresh perspective. All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances …

Literally speaking the world is not (as Shakespeare says in As You Like It) a stage, but thinking of it as such puts us in mind of actors coming and then leaving, and this pushes us to think of ourselves as having a time here on earth, but only a limited time with birth as entrance and death as exit. Of course, you could just say that we are here for a limited time, but that does not quite capture the idea of coming on, performing, and then necessarily going off. In the Marriage of Figaro, the countess does not appear until the second act. In Julius Caesar, after the Ides of March, that’s it for the title character. Both the countess and Caesar are important, but the metaphor suggests that however significant and accomplished some person may be–Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Michael Ruse–things went on before they arrived, things went on after they left, and that just tells you that no one is that overwhelmingly important or essential. Many people assume that science has to be apart from all of this. Metaphors are for playwrights and novelists and poets–perhaps also for politicians and preachers and even philosophers–but not for scientists. You could not be more wrong. Science is deeply metaphorical and in important respects always will be and would not want things otherwise. Force, attraction, work, affinity, struggle for existence, natural selection, continental drift, Oedipus complex, and much, much more. Of course you may say that these are just crutches to be used in the development of science and then thrown away, but apart from why you would ever want to throw them away–what’s wrong with saying that two continents drifted apart?–the throwing may not be that easy. Immanuel Kant realized this when in his Third Critique–the Critique of Judgement–he discussed the possibility of doing away with metaphors of design in the biological sciences. The eye has the complex lens system that it has in order to see. The butterfly has its distinctive markings in order to

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escape the attention of predators. The flower has sweet nectar in order to attract the bee. If you drop the metaphor you are just left with brute description and science is impossible. You cannot say anything about why the eye is as it is. Or the butterfly, or the flower. Kant is typically insightful and as typically convoluted. “The system of causality that is ascribed to Epicurus or Democritus is, taken literally, so plainly absurd that it need not detain us.” Why? The systems which defend the Idealism of final causes in nature grant, it is true, on the one hand to their principle a causality in accordance with the laws of motion (through which [causality] natural things exist purposively); but they deny to it intentionality, i.e. that it designedly determines itself to this its purposive production; in other words, they deny that the cause is a purpose. This is Epicurus’s method of explanation, according to which the distinction between a Technic of nature and mere mechanism is altogether denied. Blind chance is taken as the explanatory ground not only of the agreement of the developed products with our concepts of the purpose, and consequently of [nature’s] Technic; but also of the determination of the causes of this production in accordance with the laws of motion, and consequently of their mechanism. Thus nothing is explained, not even the illusion in our teleological judgements, and consequently, the would-be Idealism of these in no way established. (Kant, 1790)

What Kant is saying simply is that without a notion of purpose, we have no explanations at all. The eye exists and that is all. Nothing about sight. Or about butterflies and their camouflage. Or flowers and their need of pollination.

From organism to machine Grant the philosophical point about metaphor in science. Now pick up on the history. As with the philosophy, I don’t want to suggest anything radical, basing my argument on contentious foundations or premises. All historians of Western science agree on one thing. The big change came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the appropriately called Scientific Revolution–from Copernicus to Newton (Ruse, 2010). But this wasn’t just the move to a heliocentric universe, although obviously that was major and an important part of the revolution. It wasn’t just the move to a universal force, Newtonian gravitation, although equally obviously that was a major and important part of the revolution. It wasn’t the triumph of religion over science, because that simply wasn’t true. From Copernicus

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to Newton, before and beyond, everyone was religious. Rather it was a change of what are known as root metaphors–those underlying basic metaphors that make sense of everything–as with up is good and down is bad. He was an upstanding young man. I’m feeling a bit down today. And the Shriner’s motto–“a man never stands so tall as when he kneels to help a child.” I can forgive a lot of silly hats for that one. The root metaphor from antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages was that of an organism. Plato in the Timaeus said that the Earth really is an organism. Aristotle never went that far but he did believe that organic thinking is appropriate for everything, but especially (hardly surprising) in the organic world. In particular, along with efficient causes–I heard a bang because the hammer hit the nail–we must appeal to final causes–I was hammering in the nail in order to hang the picture. The end of my activities is picture hanging. Likewise, the ball fell to the ground in order to find its right place in the universe. The plates on the back of Stegosaurus exist in order to heat up and cool down the essentially coldblooded brute. Then came the Scientific Revolution and scientists switched to another root metaphor–the machine. No Christian could ultimately escape the implications of the fact that Aristotle’s cosmos knew no Jehovah. Christianity taught him to see it as a divine artifact, rather than as a selfcontained organism. The universe was subject to God’s laws; its regularities and harmonies were divinely planned; its uniformity was a result of providential design. The ultimate mystery resided in God rather than in Nature, which could thus, by successive steps, be seen not as a selfsufficient Whole, but as a divinely organized machine in which was transacted the unique drama of the Fall and Redemption. If an omnipresent God was all spirit, it was the more easy to think of the physical universe as all matter; the intelligences, spirits and Forms of Aristotle were first debased, and then abandoned as unnecessary in a universe which contained nothing but God, human souls and matter. (Hall, 1954, xvi-xvii)

That is of course the point. Obviously you can think of machines in final cause terms. The hands of the watch exist in order to tell time. The wings of the plane exist in order to lift it off the ground. But quickly it became apparent that that part of the metaphor wasn’t helpful to science. Focus rather on unbroken laws simply churning along endlessly. So final cause questions were dropped. In the words of one of the greatest historians of the Scientific Revolution, God became a retired engineer.

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Natural selection Actually, as we all know, things weren’t quite that simple. You could get rid of final causes in the physical world, but they persisted in the organic world. That was the point that Kant was making, one hundred years after the Scientific Revolution came to an end. It took Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species, published in 1859, to get us over that hump (Ruse, 1979). He didn’t deny final causes–the eye is still for seeing–but he gave them an entirely mechanical explanation–evolution through natural selection. First, the struggle for existence. A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. (Darwin, 1859, 6364)

Then, natural selection. Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. (Ibid. 80-81)

The whole point is that we don’t just have change but we have change in the direction of design-like features. Those features that are more designlike will do better in the struggle for existence (and reproduction) than those are less design-like.

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Metaphors–strengths and limits Modern science–inorganic and organic–is based on the root metaphor of a machine. The world is just an endless clockwork, going through the motions. Now start to pull the argument together. The one thing stressed by everyone who writes on metaphor–as by Kuhn when talking of paradigms which he identified as metaphors–is that they have two sides. On the one hand, they are incredibly powerful for explanation and even more heuristically, driving you forward to ask new questions and find new answers. Thinking in terms of plate tectonics and continental drift, for instance, you are pushed to look for fossil evidence of past land connections not to mention rifts in the Earth’s surface where the plates appear and where they disappear. On the other hand, they focus you and push you away from asking certain questions. They are just not relevant to the metaphor. My love is a rose, for instance, tells you about her beauty. If you are joking, it may tell you a little bit about her being prickly. It doesn’t tell you about her mathematical abilities or her religious convictions. It isn’t that she doesn’t have them. It is just that the metaphor is not about them, and asking about them is just a waste of time and detracts from the work at hand, for instance if my love’s beauty is bound up with her coloring or some such thing. Is it a function of age and the freshness of a flower? I know many women in their fifties, starting with my own wife, whom I would describe as very beautiful but I wouldn’t describe them as rose-like, as my wife was when I first met her when she was nineteen. (I am not implying that my wife is now better described as a sturdy oak!) So, with plate tectonics, I don’t think I would waste my time doing a search on articles about microeconomics, for instance.

Four unanswered questions Which brings us to the heart of my argument. What questions would I suggest that the root metaphor of modern science, the machine metaphor or mechanism, simply doesn’t ask? It is not that they are not meaningful questions. It is rather that the metaphor ignores them. Let me suggest four, starting with the question posed above: Why is there something rather than nothing? Machines like recipes, take the ingredients for granted–first take your hare. In studying machines, you don’t ask ultimate questions. Building an automobile, you may want to know where you can get your plastics, but you don’t ask questions about why there are carbon atoms in

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the first place. Second, again something that has come up already, the matter of morality. I agree fully that science can explain why we are moral and the form it takes. In the world of philosophy, I have been at the forefront in arguing this. But it doesn’t justify morality. I am with Hume on the is/ought distinction. Whether there can be any justification or whether there is need of justification are other matters, and basically I would argue outside the domain of science. I think science can show why we don’t feel the need of justification but that is not quite the same thing. Third more contentiously there is sentience. I am with Leibniz on this. Machines don’t think. He invited people to join with him in entering a mill–basically a piece of machinery so large that we could get inside it. It must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. (Leibniz, 1714, 17)

Today this is known as the ‘hard problem of consciousness.’ Back then it was known as ‘Leibniz’s gap’ and you can easily see why. You can look at all of the machinery you like and study its workings for ages and still that is all you will have: material things in motion. Thinking or consciousness is just not there, or if it is there you don’t see it or explain it. Some people disagree with Leibniz on this. Paul and Patricia Churchland famously think that it is all a matter of time before machines, specifically computers, can be used to explain sentience (P. M. Churchland, 1995). Others to the contrary–Brian McGinn (2000), for instance–think we will never explain sentience. My inclinations are towards the second option, but that is not really the point here. Overall, my philosophy is historicist and naturalistic in the sense that I think new discoveries may change things–move boundaries in particular. Perhaps a new root metaphor will do the trick. I don’t know. At the moment, though, I think the problem of sentience is truly not tackled at all by the machine metaphor–for all that it can throw a great deal of light on the nature of thinking–and so is another unanswered question. (I am inclined to think that sentience in this respect is perhaps a little different from other unanswered questions. I just don’t see how empirically one can answer why there is something rather than nothing. Those who think you can, are just wrong. They don’t understand the nature of the question.)

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Finally, and this picks up on God being a retired engineer, I don’t see that modern mechanical science says or can say anything about ultimate purposes. Given the way that the metaphor is applied, that is ruled out from the beginning. The Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg (1992) is on record as saying that the more he studies the universe, the less meaning it has. Why am I not surprised? Before he started he ruled out finding meaning. If you decide to join a Trappist monastery rather than a singles’ club, don’t be surprised if your opportunities for heterosexual activity are somewhat limited.

Religion can have a go! One final move and my argument is made. We have four unanswered questions–unanswered by science, that is. If you changed root metaphors would you do any better? Perhaps, although then you could well have other questions unanswered but answered by mechanism. I am not sure that the organic metaphor does any better on these questions. Perhaps in the realm of morality you might argue that organisms are inherently of value so Hume’s law does not apply, but then it still seems that you have the unanswered question of why organisms are of any value. So let us agree, if only for the sake of argument, that science leaves some questions unasked and hence unanswered. I see no reason why the religious person should not attempt to give answers, which of course they do. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because a good God, a necessary being and hence in no need of creation, made the world. Why be moral? Because that is God’s will. What is sentience? That which makes us in the image of God. What is the point of it all? To so please God that He gives to us eternal life, in bliss. Understand that I am not saying that these answers are satisfactory. I for one have trouble with the notion of necessary being. Mathematical propositions are necessary, but I am not sure that the same could ever be true of things (Ruse, 2015). The Euthyphro Problem–is that which is good God’s will, or is God’s will that which is good?–always looms when you bring in deity to explain morality. Being made in God’s image still leaves me feeling pretty mystified about sentience and I am not much helped by being told that mystery is the essence of religion. Finally, I am not at all sure about eternal bliss, quite apart from conceptual issues. Is the Michael Ruse who dies today from a surfeit of lampreys the same Michael Ruse who faces the Almighty on Judgment Day, twenty million years hence?

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But these are different issues. I have made my case. Science and religion (properly understood) are independent and we have now seen the reason why.

References Barbour, I. (1997). Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. San Francisco: Harper. Churchland, P. M. (1995). The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. Gould, S. J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine. Hall, A. R. (1954). The Scientific Revolution 1500-1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude. London: Longman, Green and Company. Hume, D. ([1739-1740] 2000). A Treatise of Human Nature. Editors D. F. Norton, and M. J. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. ([1791] 1951). Critique of Judgement. New York: Haffner. Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., and Johnson M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leibniz, G. F. W. (1714). Monadology and other Philosophical Essays. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. McGinn, C. (2000). The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds In A Material World. New York: Basic Books. Ruse, M. (1979). The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. 2010. Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 2015. Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1955). Le Phénomène Humain. Paris: Editions de Seuil. Weinberg, S. (1992). Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. New York, N.Y.: Pantheon. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Macmillan.

CHAPTER ELEVEN SCIENCE AND/OR RELIGION ABDOLRAHIM GAVAHI

Introduction In this paper I will present an Eastern (Iranian/Islamic) view on science and religion and their possible relations. The aim here is not to challenge anybody’s beliefs and ideas or enter into any sort of polemics. To the contrary, I wish to argue for a dialogical relationship, one that may help us to understand each other better. Based on such mutual understanding, the hope is to try to provide a bridge between the West and the East, between Islam and Christianity, between tradition and modernity, and finally, between science and religion. I would like to state that my own point of view on the proper relation between science and religion is that of mutual recognition and cooperation. It is a view that I have also found upheld by many Western scholars such as Annemarie Schimmel, Alfred North Whitehead, Mary Midgely, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Jean Guittan, Rene Guenon, and many other scholars. Let us not assume that the large community of theist men of science are against scientific or technological progress, modernity, or any other sort of modern concept or idea. Rather, they are concerned with an inflated and illusioned picture of science and technology in modern time, and with the false assumption that science can address all man’s ambitions, including salvation.

Science To start with, we have to give a clear definition of what science means in the modern western and eastern traditions. While, in the West, science is

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apparently a collection of experimental observations apprehended through diverse human experiences and supported and categorized by experimental evidence, like the existence of anti-matter, Muslims tend to believe that “Science is a light that God illuminates in the heart of His ˷ ˵ϑά˶ Ϙ˸ ˴ϳ έ˲ Ϯ˵ϧ Ϣ˵ Ϡ˸ ό˶ ϟ˸ ˴΃). Also, in our view, science servants” (ϩΩΎΒϋ Ϧϣ ˯˵ ΂θ˴ϳ Ϧ˸ ϣ˴ ΐ ˶ Ϡ˸ ˴ϗ ϰ˶ϓ ˵ଉ ௌ has two main categories: physical science (‘ϥ΍ΪΑϷ΍ ϢϠϋ’) and religious or spiritual science (‘ϥΎϳΩϷ΍ ϢϠϋ’). In other words, one part or category of science is to do with material beings or bodies, physical entities, inanimate or lifeless nature, etc.; while and the other part or category represents the science of spirits, souls, supernatural beings, spirituality, metaphysics, the human heart, and religions. Thus, it should be quite obvious that the camp of believers does not deny the existence and importance of the material/physical sciences, at the same time (as we will explain later), they do not limit the whole of science to that physical/material segment–hence concluding that there are different types, levels, and categories of science. Needless to say, material/physical science is quite necessary and wellsuited for easing one side of human life. And, the non-physical (though not non-experimental, because no one claims that the religious/spiritual matters are not experimental) science is quite necessary and well-suited for easing the other side of human life. In our (Islamic) belief, the source of physical science is man’s intellectual endeavor, while the source of non-physical (spiritual, religious, and otherwise) science is the Supreme God. This is the kind of science which in our blessed holy book is called “̶ϧΪϟ ϢϠϋ” or “knowledge from God’s presence” (Kor’an, 18/65), and those who possess it are considered to be superior to others (Kor’an, 39/9). Also, we believe that the scope of presence and understanding of physical science is rather limited and narrow (Kor’an, 17/85), and that it can cover only part of the apparent side of the material life (Kor’an, 30/7)–not even the whole of the exterior or external side of the material life (not to mention the spiritual life, the afterlife, etc.). In the workshop we ran here early spring, one of the SFU professors made a surprising comment that science (by which she meant experimental science), is gradually solving all problems of human beings, and addressing all of their unknowns or ambiguities. But this neglects the fact

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that, almost without any exception, each scientific discovery is accompanied with many new unknowns. As Mehdi Cheheltani, a renowned Iranian scholar, has rightly said, experimental sciences are like a set of mountains that, as soon as you reach a mountaintop, immediately other mountains which have to be conquered will appear. As many scholars agree, physics is today one of the most accurate and exact sciences, yet even here there is no theory which is not surrounded by one or more unknowns. And here we are talking about physics, as a science, which deals with solid particles or bodies, inert matter without life, which always shows the same foreseeable reaction against similar stimuli. The situation with sciences such as biology, sociology, psychology which deal with living bodies who probably show different reactions against a single stimulus, is even more uncertain, and raises ever more questions with each discovery. On the limitations of experimental sciences, we may add that these sciences are exposed to some inherent limitations, or solid barriers, which by their nature have nothing to do with scientific advancement or development. To give one illustration, one of the verifying conditions of such experiences is their repeatability. For example, when water is heated up to 100 degrees, under one atmospheric pressure, it should start boiling, an experience which can be repeated anytime and anywhere. But any theory about the experience of the creation of universe can never be verified, because that experience is not repeatable at all. Another limitation of experimental (physical) sciences is any sort of speculation about the other world (hereafter) and the period after death, which belongs to the sphere of metaphysics and is not verifiable in the physical realm. Thus the truth of such phenomena should be heard from the holy prophets and saints, who got their knowledge through direct inspiration and revelation. One other limitation, or rather, one characteristic of physical/material science is that it is constantly changing, shifting and correcting its bases and foundations. In other words, in the light of our vast and quite long experience in such (physical) sciences, we are quite sure that no scientist, however exact and accurate his or her investigative methodologies, can ever experience what may be the final reality or truth through

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experimentation, based on which he or she could develop a theory beyond any doubt or supposition, or not replicable by any other similar or opposite theory. Everybody knows that attaining such a level of absolute/final experience and theorizing about it is far beyond our present scientific capabilities. The history of science is the best evidence that prevailing experiences have constantly been replaced by new and more complete ones, in the same way that theories are regularly changed by new ones. Let us give some examples. Before the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, almost all scientists thought that Newtonian mechanics, with its very accurate and innovative mathematical formulations and theories, was the best, the most complete, and the most solid formulation for describing the terrestrial and heavenly bodies. But the theory of relativity, on one hand, and quantum theory on the other hand, make possible yet more accurate observation of planets. This showed us that Newton and his theories could not account for many facts. Also, for a long time, scientists assumed that the speed of sound in water is more than its speed in air. If this were true, the speed of light in water should be more than its speed through the air. Consequent tests proved that this is wrong and that the assumption is not true. Another example: from 1905 up until 1956, almost all physicists researching or writing about ‘relativity’ assumed that the relative contraction of moving bodies and substances is visible to the observer. But in 1956, after 51 years, an American student proved that all scientists who assumed this, including Einstein himself, were wrong, and that accepting such conclusion is actually in direct opposition to the very principles of relativity themselves (George Gamov, 1961). However, it is right to observe the ignorance, superstitions and delusions that could be found in various religious beliefs, and the fact that such superstitions have gradually faded away in the light of new scientific discoveries. What I would like to add to this is the fact that early scientific beliefs and positions were, in many cases, at least as superstitious and ignorant than primitive religions. To give only one example, early men of science, along with the church, believed that the Earth is fixed and that the sun and stars are turn around it.

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Early observations confirmed this assumption and the astronomical calculations of that time predicted the time of lunar and solar eclipse with high accuracy. Needless to say, nowadays everybody knows that the earth is turning around the sun, and that those calculations and their relevant theories and principles were neither right nor sound. In exactly the same way that, before Einstein’s theory of relativity, all scholars of the experimental sciences held that ‘time’ is a fixed and permanent reality in which all events occur within, now all scientists regard time as a relative matter–the quantity of which depends upon the relative position of the observer. One last example: up until 1905, all men and women of science had accepted the theory of ether and considered it a necessary requirement for the movement of waves. But since then, by accepting the theory of relativity, everybody has abandoned the theory of the existence of ether. In brief then, the history of science is full of theories that were considered sound and valid at one time, and regarded as old and invalid at another time; or as based upon experiences which have been defective, or using analogies which have been incomplete. Nowadays too, neither logical judgment nor the nature of the experimental sciences themselves, give any guarantee that this shifting quality will be any different in the future either. Earlier we said that some scientists of experimental sciences, in the light of new developments in science and technology, and in light of the evident progress in mankind’s scientific achievements, have in their own opinion, assumed the world to be without a creator, organizing power, spinning agent, architect and builder, or a supreme God. Some of them have even declared the death of God theory! While some other scholars and persons of science, noticing the wonders of creation, both at macro and micro levels, have seen the hand of God, the creator and architect of the universe, behind the very finely-tuned and well-designed order of nature and the universe. Yet, these two groups of scientists and scholars, believers and non-believers alike, have mostly been faced with the same kinds of scientific experiences. Amongst this second (theistic) group, in the area of physics and astronomy, one may recall such renowned named as Einstein, Max Planck, Heisenberg,

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Bugdanofs, and all other theist physicians of our time (Mehdi Golshani, 1995). A point to be considered here is that scientific theories and doctrines are not necessarily the mere product of scientific data and experiences. Rather, they tend to be based more on the scientific/doctrinal presuppositions and a priori mental constituents/components of the observer/experiencer. This is a subject that leads us to the acceptance or rejection of religious science which, in its turn, is a very delicate subject matter. In the light of what has so far been said, let us conclude that, in our view (and the view of all believers in the area of science and technology, the humanities, and other disciplines), it is an undeniable fact that behind the scientific observations of our material world there is no lack of wisdom or foolishness, chaos, or blind chance. Instead, all the evidence points out a supreme wisdom, a very fine and sophisticated design and engineering which manifests itself in the whole creation. This is a fact that, unfortunately, some scholars simply attribute to blind nature, history, or evolution, and some others to mere luck or chance. Obviously, these people have assumed that nature, history, and evolution are themselves intelligent subjects–so intelligent that each of them can substitute for the supreme God of the various religions. Yet, from the Eastern scientific perspective, the role of science is to observe, discover, and record this higher order, astonishing design, and profound intellect behind the affairs and events of the cosmos. In this sense, the progress and development of experimental science will not move us away from, nor make us no longer need God, but, quite to the contrary, will make us closer to God and Supreme Reality. Earlier we said that experimental science is the product of human intellect, which in turn, is divinely placed in human beings, without which nothing, including faith, will not be well established. The holy prophet of Islam (p.b.u.h.) is quoted as saying: “there is no religion for one who has no intellect.” In this view, terms such as ‘intellect’ (‘aql) or ‘science’ (‘ilm) are common notions, or denominations, which have many different types and meanings for different groups of people, especially sages and theosophists. Let us go deeper into this point, starting with the intellect. Usually, we divide people into those having intellect (wise), and those not having

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intellect (unwise or mad), but we never pay attention to what kind of intellect, or rationality, persons possess. For sages and Sufi-mystics, the so-called intellect is divided into different types, such as perfect, imperfect, material, animal-like, childish, immature, captive (by human lusts and desires), free, and (most important than all) connected with, or disconnected from, divine revelation. The last of these represents an intellect which is illuminated by the light or revelation, or an intellect which is not so illuminated, and which is left alone to its own perceptions. In this respect, for those who believe in God and the (divine) Intellect, and the prophets of God and their respective guidance, our human body is under the guidance of our intellect–and our intellect is, in turn, under the illuminating guidance of the divine intellect of God’s Messengers. As the great Iranian mystic-poet Mawlana Jalal-uddin Mohammad-e Balkhi says: The light of God will override the light of sensation And then the soul yearns after God (Mathnawi, Reynold Nicholson, Book II, 1290). Also: The Light of God is an ornament to the light of sense: this is the meaning of “light upon fight” (Ibid. 1293).

Similarly, one can argue that science too, with respect to its experimental (physical) type is the product of human intellectual endeavor, has different types, levels and degrees, from material, physical, secular science, to fanciful sciences based on delusions and superstitions, divine science based on intuitive knowledge and certitude, little and excessive science, evident or outward science viz. hidden or inward science, imperfect science (human beings) vs. perfect science (God), science as instrumental, as opposed to the science of universalists, science of common people vs. that of special people (saints, sages, etc.), acquisitive science vs. Godgiven science, and finally, just as we said about ‘intellect,’ science associated or connected with (divine) revelation, and science dissociated or disconnected from such revelation. As Mawlana says: The sciences of the followers of (external) sense become a muzzle, so that he (the believer in sense-perception) might not receive milk from that sublime knowledge (Nicholson, Ibid. book I, 1016).

Also:

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There is no doubt that, as the Kor’an, the holy Book of Muslims, says: “Man has been created on the face of God and hence is the vicegerent of God on earth” (Kor’an, 2/30), possessing a high level of scientific power. But this does not mean that science can replace religion and claim salvation for human kind (Midgley, 1992), nor should it misdirect us away from recognizing some of the very negative results of one-sided scientific progress either. The devastation of the environment, the spoiling of nature, squandering resources, etc., (as Konrad Lorenz says: “Eight great sins of civilized man”) have to be taken account of too. Indeed, when this Austrian scholar was writing his small book some 70-80 years ago, there was no news of cyber-crimes, internet stealing, electronic eavesdropping, laser weapons, neutron bombs, biological weapons of mass destruction, and similar human scientific products designed for killing and genocide. Because, as Milan Kondra the renowned Czech author says, by the early twentieth century, humanity was not still so much drowned in the whirlpool of physical intellect and intellectuality (Blumenfeld, 1999). There is no doubt that if all the scientific achievements of modern man were good and useful, then no one like Michel Foucault would write about ‘The End of the World,’ or Samuel Huntington could write about ‘Clash of Civilizations,’ nor would a philosopher/theologian like Rene Guenon have written about “La regne de la quantite et les signes des temps” (Guenon, 1945); nor Anthony Arblaster, would talked about the Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Blackwell, 1985). Let us reiterate that what we have said so far should not be taken as a sort of negation of science per se nor of scientific experience. Science is the fine product of humanity’s intellectual effort and, in its turn, is something noble, valuable, and necessary (albeit within its own limitations, and as long as a scientific theory or principle is not replaced by a more applicable and useful one). Furthermore, we are all living under the aegis and protection of these same useful scientific achievements. That is why, what science says is partly true–but it is not the whole truth, and is only a part of it. Needless to say, some people are not even committed to their own scientific convictions! Is there anybody who does not (scientifically) know that smoking or drinking alcohol is harmful to a person’s health? Yet, we

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know that billions of people are addicted to alcohol and tobacco, in spite of the indisputable fact of their being harmful and damaging. Obviously, ethical injunctions and value judgments are not the direct product of science, and so their sources should be looked for in some other place. But what can forestall the possible mistakes of pure reasoning (intellect), and imperfect, illusionary, and partial sciences? Is there anything other than religion? Or, anybody except the holy prophets, saints, and sages: the men of God? We will not touch upon the delicate subject of the relation between the intellect, thinking and science with the recollection (of God), and would only recall the sublime verses of Mawlana which says: We have said so much: think of the remainder, (or) if thought be frozen (unable to move), practice recollection (of God). Recollection (of God) brings thought into movement: Make recollection to be the sun for this congealed (thought). (Mathnawi, book VI, 1475-6).

Religion Let us now discuss that at length, so that we can soon address our main issue which is the relation between science and religion. Earlier we said that religion, in its totality, is not comprehendible by the (material/physical) intellect, while material science originates from human intellect alone. In other words, the origin of science is from the human intellect and from within the human body, while the origin of religion is from (divine) revelation and so from without the human body and mind. In the words of Max Planck (Max Planck, 1968), religion belongs to a territory which is not conquerable by the law of causality, and so there is no road from science to it (quoted by Ja’fari, 1956). Furthermore, we said that the domain of such science is the physical/material world, nature, and the physical body of human beings, while the realm of religion is the soul of human beings, the spiritual world, metaphysics, and finally the non-material and non-physical aspect of human beings. Thus, science and religion, of which the former is the product of human intelligence and comprehension, and the latter is a gift from God to guide human life towards salvation, are not on the same level or rank at all, so

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that one may compare them with each other, or choose one against the other. We also said that to comment about the other world, and supernatural or metaphysical matters, is not the task of experimental science as such, but is rather appropriate to the prophets and saints who are in direct touch with the source of Revelation. That is because, according to the judgment of intellect and rationality, God Almighty knows better the ways of the salvation of His creation than the men of imperfect, unstable and transient physical/experimental science–or, as the holy Kor’an puts it: “The ignorant and unjust (unfair) human beings” (Kor’an 33/72). Since, according to the judgment of reason and tradition, mankind’s limited knowledge and science has no access to Divine essence, it is said: If the straw can ever reach the depth of the ocean, Then man’s knowledge can grasp the depth of God’s essence.

Previously, we said that intellect and/or science are common terms which each have different types, levels and grades or degrees. We also provided some examples of various kinds of science and intellect. Now we would like to add that ‘religion’ too has different types and categories such as Western/Eastern religions; living/dead religions; monotheistic/polytheistic religions; divine (Abrahamic)/non-divine or human (such as Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) religions; old/new religions (such as Church of Satan, Church of Science, etc.); and new readings of old traditions, although seemingly contrary to the basic teachings of those genuine traditions (movements such as Taliban, Da’ish, Boku Haram, Al-Shabab, etc.). On this last point Rumi says: Since the qibla (the true object) of the soul has been hidden, Everyone has turned his face to a different direction. (Mathnawi, Book V, 328).

Also, some of the injunctions and commandments of religion are not the goals or desired objects of it, but rather means and tools to reach its ultimate goal, which is true worship and, as a consequence, attaining divine wisdom, and finally returning to God the Almighty. Nevertheless, as one of the holy Imams of Shi’ite says: religion is nothing but love and compassion, which is of course something totally apart from physical/material/experimental science per se.

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Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, experimental science has never had a discovery flatly opposing religion or religiosity of the men. Certainly, any such claim, without strong support and evidence, is not acceptable. Lastly, the science can never replace religion out of ignorance or impudence, nor one can expect salvation from it. In the words of Mathnawi: You are a favorite (of God), but within your (due) bounds. (Fear) God, (Fear) God, do not set foot beyond (those) bounds. (Book I, 3305).

Science and Religion In the light of all we have said about science and religion, it is time to propose the following brief conclusions about their possible relations: science and religion are different from the point of view of goals, means and ends. They are not basically similar, nor of the same stature or origin that they can be easily compared, or replace each other. The issue of the kind of relation between science and religion, or physics and metaphysics, has long been analyzed and discussed, and is not something which has jumped out recently, or due to modern progress in science and technology. Although, in our rich Islamic heritage, and generally speaking, in man’s vast religious cultural heritage, both intellect (reason) and science occupy a very high and valuable position, this does not imply their unlimited reach, nor their undisputed dominance all over human affairs, since both (intellect and science) have their own limitations, presuppositions, requirements, and of course types and levels which should not be overlooked. In such a Muslim view, science and religion have a vertical and not a horizontal relation, and in a sense science comes under the domain of religion, in the broadest meaning of the term. Furthermore, we believe that while one can compare religions and sects, or sciences and schools of thought with each other, yet to compare religion with science and choose between them has no rational basis.

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In view of the essential difference between science and religion, it is not at all appropriate to talk about their mutual contradiction/opposition, nor even of such a contradiction between tradition and modernity. Those adhering to such contrasts certainly have no correct understanding of either science or religion. In our opinion, amongst the four kinds of possible relations between science and religion, the one being most logical and understandable is that of mutual understanding, support and cooperation. In other words, since religion is the revelation of the supreme God the Creator through holy prophets, and on the other hand the virtue and ability of both intellect and science is a gift of God to His human creations too, therefore, basically no intellectual or scientific product of man can be against Divine teachings. That being so, we are still far away from that kind of science or scientific achievement which is absolutely truthful and in accordance with the sheer facts of reality, and in thus obtaining its firm place in man’s endeavor to reach absolute Truth (Reality). Again, just compare the Newtonian mechanics with later developments of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity to see how these latter theories have shattered the foundations of the previous one. Since we have already touched upon the issue of different levels, kinds, and grades of intellect, science and religion, we will refrain from repeating any of that material here and will limit ourselves to quoting one more line from Mawlana who says: As the worth of body is (derived) from the soul, So the worth of the soul is (derived) from the radiance of the soul of souls (Mathnawi, Nicholson, III/2535).

Those who speak about the superstitions of the primitive religions are certainly not aware of the situation of man’s early sciences. Replacing the ‘religion’ of primitive religions is as groundless as replacing the ‘science’ of early sciences. Another point raised in an Islamic approach to the subject matter is the three stages or grades of certitude–the so-called ‘ilm al-yagin,’ ‘ain alyagin,’ and ‘haq al-yagin.’ That is, certitude by knowledge, certitude by seeing or observation, and certitude by realization, which is the last or ultimate stage of religious knowledge and religious science, or even absolute science per se.

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According to this gradation, the highest level of man’s scientific achievement, which is the product of human being’s mental/intellectual endeavor, can only be some kind of scientific certitude, a relative certitude sustained through material/physical contact of humanity with its surrounding world. While the other two kinds of certitude, spiritual observation and certainty, and, even more important than that, the realization of this certainly within one’s soul and inner self–the ultimate stage of union with the unique and universal truth of the whole universe (cosmos)–which is obviously related to the man’s illumination of heart rather than that of his intellect or his scientific achievement, represents a huge task which has to be pursued through the path of religion and mysticism. Finally, it may be said that science and religion are like two wings of mankind’s flying towards material as well as spiritual progress, welfare, perfection and salvation, flying towards divine Supreme Being, the source of all goodness and virtues, and so they are both useful and necessary in their own respective places. Nevertheless, this perfection and elevation of man can only be achieved through the close affinity of science and religion and not the negation of each by the other, or their mutual contradiction and opposition. This is because, as we said before, science can never replace man’s need and desire for religion, nor satisfy his spiritual desires. We may even take one step forward and state that science without religion, or religion without science, are both imperfect and even harmful, just like a bird with only one wing.

Summary and Conclusion Since science, and especially the experimental sciences, are under constant change and development, they do not represent a fixed and permanent truth acting as the only light to lead man towards perfection and salvation. This is a very significant and unavoidable limitation of such science, which is not at all to be ignored. The world has an order (and hence an orderer or regulator) and the men of science are trying to grasp this order. Thus, one should not assume that behind the scenes of the world there is some kind of confusion, chaos, or

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blind chance. With every whirl or spin there is a whirl-driver or spinner who turns it around. Also, the whole universe is so interconnected that: If you move one single particle of it away, The whole universe will be damaged accordingly. Furthermore, according to all scientists, philosophers, and scholars believing in God the Almighty, no human being is limited to his or her physical/material body, nor is the world around us is limited to physical nature. In other words, just as mankind has a spiritual dimension, nature has a metaphysical side too. That being the case, science cannot be limited to addressing the physical objects only through exact or experimental science. Rather, the scope of human science and knowledge is much wider than that of lifeless matter or blind nature. This is exactly what science means in the Abrahamic religions. Along the same lines, one may say that both science and religion are useful and beneficial, and the only thing which is not so useful or which cannot benefit humanity is a science totally disconnected from revelation, or a religion disconnected from science and technology. In other words, science and religion are also two complementary wings of humanity’s flying towards heavenly perfection and the kingdom of God. Hafiz, the renounced Iranian mystic-poet says: The day I leave this ruined house, I will be so cheerful, that is the day I look for the comfort of my soul and go after the soul of the souls.

In this Muslim view, not only there is no logical or rational contradiction between science and religion, but, quite to the contrary, these two Godgiven virtues and gifts should logically be next to each other and assist each other. Thus, we should accept the very fine and sound theory of ‘mutual cooperation between science and religion,’ a view that in the Islamic world some seventy years ago was put forward by Allamah Mohammad Taqi Ja’fari (Ja’fari, 1956). It is one which, at about the same time in the Christian West, Max Planck, one of the greatest minds in physics of all time, made too. It is essential that we should try our best to bring together the men and women of both science and religion, so as to move forwards in the right direction, advancing their mutual recognition and cooperation.

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References Holy Kor'an, translated by G. Haddad Adel, Astan-e Qods-e Razavi publications, Iran, 2011. Nahj ul-Fisaha, (Saying of Prophet Muhammad), edited by M. Farid Tonekaboni, Daftar-e Nashar-e Farhang-e Islami publications, Tehran, 1995. Einstein, A. (1963). The World that I see. translated by Fereydoun Saleki, Pirooz publications. Nicholson, R.A. (2002). Mathnawi, Jalalu'ddin Rumi edited and translated by Reynold A., So'ad publisher, Tehran. Blumenfeld, Y. (1999). Scanning the Future: 20 eminent thinkers on the world of tomorrow, translated by G. R. Khawjeh-pour, Industrial Management Institute publications, Tehran, 2004. Bogdanov, I. and Bogdanov K. (2010). Image de Dieu. Translated by Abbas Vasiq, Tehran. Planck, M. (1968). Where is science going. with an introduction by Albert Einstein, transl. by Ahmad Aram, Enteshar Publ.(S. A.). Jafari Tabrizi, M.T. (1956). Ta'avan al-Din va al-Ilm (Mutual cooperation of Science and Religion). Heiydari publ. —. (1969-1975). A Critical Commentary on Mathnawi (15 vol.). Heiydari Publ. Hassani, S. H. R. (2008). Religious Science. Tehran. Gamov, G. (1961/trans. 1966). Biography of Physics.Translated by Reza Aghsa, pocket-book publications, 1966. Golshani, M. (1995). Analytical Review of philosophical views of contemporary physicians. Mashrigh publications. —. (1998). From secular science to Religious Science, Tehran, 1998. Gue'non, R. (1945). Le re'gre de la quantite' et les signes des temps. Translated by A. M. Kardon, Nashr-e Daneshgahi publications, 1983. Guittan, J, Bogdanov, I. and Bogdanov, G. (1991). Dieu et la Science: Vers le Materialism. Translated by Abbas Vasiq, Hamadaan, Iran, 2002. Lorenz, K. (1980). Eight Great Sins of Civilized Man. Translated by Mahmoud and Faramarz Behzad, Zaman publications. Midgley, M. (1992). Science as salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning. Translated by Abdolrahim Gavahi, Tebyan Publ., 2001. Heisenberg, W. (1994). Der Teil und das Ganze. Translated by H. NajafiZadeh.

CHAPTER TWELVE SCIENCE EDUCATION AND ETHICS EDUCATION IN FAITH-BASED SCHOOLS MICHAEL J. REISS

Context This chapter is rather different in its approach than the other chapters in this book. While it addresses the relationship between science and religion, as do the other chapters, it does so in the context of schooling and it uses the issue of ethics education to help illuminate some of the issues to do with the relationship between science and religion. Faith-based schooling remains controversial. On the one side those who support it often argue that to ban it is to trample on the rights of parents to frame their children’s education and, furthermore, that when faith-based schooling is banned, all that happens is that children are removed from schools and educated at home so that the last state is worse than the first (cf. Matthew 12:45). On the other side are those who argue that faith-based schooling inevitably entails at least a certain amount of indoctrination and, furthermore, that such schooling is socially divisive (see the discussions in Parker-Jenkins et al. 2005; Haydon, 2009; MacEoin 2009; Oldfield et al 2013). Faith-based schooling exists in a variety of forms. In some countries, the curriculum and ethos of every school occur within the presumptions of a religious faith. Indeed, one of the aims of schooling may be to maintain the religious faith of students. In other countries, there is a diversity of schools so that only some are faith-based. Such schools may be true alternatives to the schools that are not faith-based or may exist as supplemental schools to which students go, if their parents so wish, at times when ‘mainstream’ schools are not running, in addition to their attending a mainstream school. A somewhat separate issue is that of home schooling. Although I do not discuss home schooling here, my hope is that

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the principles for which I argue and the conclusions I reach hold for home schools too. In this chapter, I assume the existence of faith-based schooling–being well aware that faith-based schools do not exist in a number of countries–and then look at the consequences of this for two contrasting parts of the school curriculum, namely science education and ethics education. However, as I hope will become clear, nearly all of what I write is equally applicable to schools that are not faith-based. This is for two main reasons: first, even within faith-based schools, students differ (often considerably) in their religious beliefs and the centrality of those beliefs to their lives; secondly, this is true too of students in schools that are not faith-based. Given that teachers need to respect their students and help them to acquire powerful knowledge, to develop the ability to think for themselves and to flourish both at school and subsequently (Reiss and White, 2013), one of my conclusions is that whether or not a school is faith-based makes less difference to how science education and ethics education should be taught than is generally presumed.

Science education in faith-based schools For many science educators, whether or not they have any religious beliefs themselves, the relationships between science and religion, i.e. the ‘science/religion issue,’ appears somewhat outside the scope of science education. However, a range of factors, including a greater awareness of the benefits of dealing explicitly in the school classroom with the nature of science and the increasing influence of creationism and intelligent in schools in some countries, suggests that this perspective may be too narrow (Reiss, 2008). The function of school science education is principally to introduce learners to the methods that the sciences use and to the different forms of knowledge that the sciences have produced. While historians tell us that what scientists study changes over time, there are reasonable consistencies: (1)

(2)

Science is concerned with the natural world and with certain elements of the manufactured world–so that, for example, the laws of gravity apply as much to satellites as they do to apples and planets. Science is concerned with how things are rather than with how they should be. So there is a science of nuclear fission and genetic

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The argument in favor of including religion in science education is then a very specific one: aspects of religion should be included if they help learners better to learn science. (Precisely the same argument holds, I would argue, for teaching science students about history: this too should be done if it helps students better to learn science, for instance by helping them to appreciate the cultural presumptions of the time or the availability or non-availability of certain scientific instruments.) So, under what circumstances might the learning of science be helped by a consideration of religious issues? One classic instance is when teaching the topic of evolution to students who are creationists or, at any rate, have creationist sympathies (other examples including teaching about the nature of science).

The importance of creationism for science education Creationism exists in a number of different versions, but something like between 5 and 50%+ of adults (depending on the country) reject the theory of evolution, believing that the Earth came into existence as described by a literal reading of the early parts of the Bible, the Qu’ran or other scriptures and that the most that evolution has done is to change species into closely related species (Miller et al., 2006). For a creationist it is possible, for example, that the various species of mice had a common ancestor but not that this is also the case for mice, squirrels and horses–still less for monkeys and humans, for birds and reptiles or for turtles and tobacco plants. Until recently, relatively little attention has been paid in the science classroom to creationism or to intelligent design (in which natural selection is held to be an inadequate explanation for the workings of living organisms and for the diversity of life that we see, but where no explicit reference is made to a deity). However, creationism and intelligent design appear to be on the increase, and there are indications that there are more countries in which schools are becoming battlegrounds for the issue. For example, while the USA has had several decades of legal battles about the place of creationism and (more recently) intelligent design in schools (Moore, 2007), school-based conflicts over these issues are becoming more frequent in a range of other countries (e.g., Blancke et al., 2014).

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As a result, there has been a growth in the science education literature examining creationism (e.g., Jones and Reiss, 2007; Reiss, 2011). Most of the literature on creationism (and/or intelligent design) and evolutionary theory puts them in stark opposition. Evolution is consistently presented in creationist books and articles as illogical (e.g., natural selection cannot, on account of the second law of thermodynamics, create order out of disorder; mutations are always deleterious and so cannot lead to improvements), contradicted by scientific evidence (e.g., the fossil record shows human footprints alongside animals supposed by evolutionists to be long extinct; the fossil record does not provide evidence for transitional forms) and the product of non-scientific reasoning (e.g., the early history of life would require life to arise from inorganic matter–a form of spontaneous generation rejected by science in the 19th Century. Radioactive dating is said to make assumptions about the constancy of natural processes over aeons of time whereas we increasingly know of natural processes that affect the rate of radioactive decay), and evolution in general is portrayed as the product of those who ridicule the word of God, and a cause of a whole range of social evils–from eugenics, Marxism, Nazism and racism to juvenile delinquency, illicit drug use and prostitution (e.g., Watson [1975], Baker [2003], Parker [2006] and countless articles in the publications of such organizations as Answers in Genesis, the Biblical Creation Society, the Creation Science Movement and the Institute for Creation Research). By and large, creationism has received similarly short shrift from those who accept the theory of evolution. In an early study the philosopher of science Philip Kitcher argued that “… in attacking the methods of evolutionary biology, Creationists are actually criticizing methods that are used throughout science” (Kitcher, 1982, 4-5). Kitcher concluded that the flat-earth theory, the chemistry of the four elements and mediaeval astrology “… have just as much claim to rival current scientific views as Creationism does to challenge evolutionary biology” (Kitcher, 1982, 5). An even more trenchant attack on creationism is provided by geologist Ian Plimmer, whose book title Telling lies for God: Reason vs creationism (Plimmer, 1994) indicates the line he takes. The scientific worldview is materialistic in the sense that it is neither idealistic nor admits of non-physical explanations (here, ‘physical’ includes, as well as matter, such ‘things’ as energy and the curvature of space). There is much that remains unknown about evolution. How did the earliest self-replicating molecules arise? What caused membranes to exist?

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How key were the earliest physical conditions–temperature, the occurrence of water and so forth? But the scientific presumption is either that these questions will be answered by science or that they will remain unknown. Although some scientists might (sometimes grudgingly) admit that science cannot disprove supernatural explanations, scientists do not employ such explanations in their work (the tiny handful of seeming exceptions only attest to the strength of the general rule). Whereas there is only one mainstream scientific understanding of today’s biodiversity, there are a considerable number of religious ones. Many religious believers are perfectly comfortable with the scientific understanding, either on its own or accompanied by a belief that evolution in some sense takes place within God’s ‘holding,’ whether or not God is presumed to have intervened or acted providentially at certain key points (e.g., the origin of life or the evolution of humans). But many other religious believers adopt a more creationist perspective or that of intelligent design.

The response of science education to creationism Given all this, how might raising the issue of religion in science lessons help? Might it not be counter-productive, making the situation worse? The response by science education to the range of positions held about evolution needs, I believe, to take account of the following (Reiss, 2013): (1) (2)

(3)

Among scientists, the theory of evolution is held to be a robust, well established and, at its core, a scientifically uncontroversial theory. Within biology, evolution occupies a central place. There is much in biology that has been discovered and can be studied without accepting the theory of evolution but an evolutionary framework is what enables biologists to provide coherence to the diversity of life that we see around us and to situate today’s life in an historical context. In common with many scientific theories, evolution is not easy to understand. It has contra-intuitive elements and, in addition, is actively rejected by many people for religious reasons.

Few countries have produced explicit guidance as to how schools might deal with the issues of creationism or intelligent design in the science classroom. One country that has is England. In the summer of 2007, after months of behind-the-scenes meetings and discussions, the then DCSF (Department of Children, Schools and Families) Guidance on Creationism and Intelligent Design received Ministerial approval and was published (DCSF, 2007). The Guidance points out that the use of the word ‘theory’

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in science (as in ‘the theory of evolution’) can mislead those not familiar with science as a subject discipline because it is different from the everyday meaning, when it is used to mean little more than an idea. In science the word indicates that there is a substantial amount of supporting evidence, underpinned by principles and explanations accepted by the international scientific community. The DCSF Guidance goes on to say: “Creationism and intelligent design are sometimes claimed to be scientific theories. This is not the case as they have no underpinning scientific principles, or explanations, and are not accepted by the science community as a whole” (DCSF, 2007) and then states: Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science. However, there is a real difference between teaching ‘x’ and teaching about ‘x.’ Any questions about creationism and intelligent design which arise in science lessons, for example as a result of media coverage, could provide the opportunity to explain or explore why they are not considered to be scientific theories and, in the right context, why evolution is considered to be a scientific theory. (DCSF, 2007)

This seems to me a key point and one that is true for all countries, whether a country permits the teaching of religion (as in the UK) or does not (as in France, Turkey and the USA). Many scientists, and some science educators, fear that consideration of creationism or intelligent design in a science classroom legitimizes them. For example, the excellent book Science, evolution, and creationism, published by the US National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, asserts “The ideas offered by intelligent design creationists are not the products of scientific reasoning. Discussing these ideas in science classes would not be appropriate given their lack of scientific support” (National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, 2008, 52). As I have argued elsewhere (Reiss, 2008), I agree with the first sentence of this quotation but disagree with the second. Just because something lacks scientific support does not seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson. Indeed, good science teaching typically requires consideration of students’ ideas when these do not agree with scientific knowledge. Nancy Brickhouse and Will Letts (1998) have argued that one of the central problems in science education is that science is often taught ‘dogmatically.’ With particular reference to creationism they write:

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Chapter Twelve Should student beliefs about creationism be addressed in the science curriculum? Is the dictum stated in the California’s Science Frameworks (California Department of Education, 1990) that any student who brings up the matter of creationism is to be referred to a family member or member of the clergy a reasonable policy? We think not. Although we do not believe that what people call ‘creationist science’ is good science (nor do scientists), to place a gag order on teachers about the subject entirely seems counterproductive. Particularly in parts of the country where there are significant numbers of conservative religious people, ignoring students’ views about creationism because they do not qualify as good science is insensitive at best. (Brickhouse and Letts, 1998, 227)

It seems to me that school science lessons should present students with the scientific consensus about evolution and that parents should not have the right to withdraw their children from such lessons. Part of the purpose of school science lessons is to introduce students to the main conclusions of science–and the theory of evolution is one of science’s main conclusions. At the same time, science teachers should be respectful of any students who do not accept the theory of evolution for religious (or any other) reasons. Indeed, nothing pedagogically is to be gained by denigrating or ridiculing students who do not accept the theory of evolution. My own experience of teaching the theory of evolution for some thirty five years to school students, undergraduate biologists, trainee science teachers, members of the general public and others is that people who do not accept the theory of evolution for religious reasons are most unlikely to change their views as a result of one or two lessons on the topic, and others have concluded similarly (e.g., Long, 2011). However, that is no reason not to teach the theory of evolution to such people. One can gain a better understanding of something without necessarily accepting it. Furthermore, recent work suggests that careful and respectful teaching about evolution can indeed make students considerably more likely to accept at least some aspects of the theory of evolution (Winslow et al., 2011).

Ethics education in faith-based schools Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with how we should decide what is morally wrong and what is morally right. Bioethics is specifically concerned with the application of ethics to the whole of nature, not just to humans (as in medical ethics and much traditional ethics). Ethics is a branch of knowledge just as other intellectual disciplines, such as science,

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mathematics and history, are. Ethical thinking is not wholly distinct from thinking in other disciplines but it cannot simply be reduced to them. In particular, ethical conclusions cannot be unambiguously proved in the way that mathematical theorems can. However, this does not mean that all ethical conclusions are equally valid. After all, most philosophers of science would hold that scientific conclusions cannot be unambiguously proved, instead remaining as provisional truths, but this does not mean that my thoughts about black holes are as valid as Stephen Hawking’s are. Some conclusions–whether in ethics, science or any other discipline–are more likely to be valid than others. One can be most confident about the validity and worth of an ethical conclusion if three criteria are met (Reiss, 1999). First, if the arguments that lead to the particular conclusion are convincingly supported by reason. Secondly, if the arguments are conducted within a well-established ethical framework. Thirdly, if a considerable degree of consensus exists about the validity of the conclusions, arising from a process of genuine debate. It might be supposed that reason alone is sufficient for one to be confident about an ethical conclusion. However, there are problems in relying on reason alone when thinking ethically. In particular, there still does not exist a single universally accepted framework within which ethical questions can be decided by reason (O’Neill, 1996; Parfit, 2011). Indeed, it is unlikely that such a single universally accepted framework will exist in the foreseeable future, if ever. This is not to say that reason is unnecessary but to acknowledge that reason alone is insufficient. For instance, reason cannot decide between an ethical system which looks only at the consequences of actions and one which considers whether certain actions are right or wrong in themselves, whatever their consequences. Then feminists in particular have cautioned against too great an emphasis upon reason. Much of ethics still boils done to views about right and wrong informed more about what seems ‘reasonable’ than what follows from formal reasoning. The insufficiency of reason is a strong argument for conducting debates within well-established ethical frameworks, when this is possible. Traditionally, the ethical frameworks most widely accepted in most cultures arose within systems of religious belief. Consider, for example, the questions ‘Is it wrong to lie? If so, why?’. There was a time when the majority of people in many countries would have accepted the answer

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‘Yes, because scripture forbids it.’ Nowadays, though, many people in many countries do not accept scripture(s) as a source of authority. Another problem, of particular relevance when considering the ethics of contemporary science and technology, is that while the various scriptures of the world’s religions have a great deal to say about such issues as theft, avarice, killing people and sexual behavior, they say rather less that can directly be applied to the debates that surround many of today’s ethical issues, for example those involving modern biotechnology (genetic engineering, cloning, stem cells, etc.). A further issue is that we are more conscious nowadays that we live in multicultural or pluralist societies. Within most countries there is no longer a single shared set of moral values. Nevertheless, there is still great value in taking seriously the various traditions–religious and otherwise–that have given rise to ethical conclusions. People do not live their lives in ethical isolation: they grow up within particular moral traditions and their subsequent ethical views are shaped by those whom they meet, read about or hear. Even if we end up departing somewhat from the values we received from our families and those around us as we grew up, none of us derives our moral beliefs from first principles, ex nihilo, as it were. In the particular case of moral questions concerning contemporary biology, a tradition of ethical reasoning is already beginning to accumulate. Many countries have official committees or other bodies looking into the ethical issues that surround at least some aspects of biotechnology. The tradition of ethical reasoning in this field is nothing like as long established as, for instance, the traditions surrounding such questions as war, abortion, euthanasia and trade protectionism. Nevertheless, there is the beginning of such a tradition and similar questions are being debated in many countries across the globe.

What then is the specific place for religion? In her book titled Dishonest to God: On keeping God out of politics, Mary Warnock (2010), despite having a certain affection and sympathy for the Church of England, lists many examples where religious arguments have in her view inappropriately been used in parliamentary debates in attempts, some successful, some unsuccessful, to influence national legislation. She concludes:

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The danger of religion, any religion, lies in its claim to absolute immutable moral knowledge which, if justified, would indeed give its adherents a special place in instructing others how to behave, perhaps even a right to do so. (Warnock, 2010, 165)

My position is not that far from that of Warnock’s but let me examine her argument. First of all, we do not need to determine whether or not any particular religion has access to ‘absolute immutable moral knowledge.’ As it happens, my understanding of both theology and the human condition is that no one has access to such knowledge. Our concern here is not so much with knowledge as to how one makes decisions that can usefully be implemented in a world with a multiplicity of values, religious and otherwise. And here religion has a place at the table. In just the same way as consequentialists have to learn to accept that many deontologists are not going to accept the consequentialist understanding of ethics as being decisive, and vice versa, so ethicists of no religious persuasion need to accept that significant numbers of people have religious beliefs and hold that these beliefs help shape what it is that is deemed morally right and morally wrong. In this sense, those of no religious persuasion need, I would argue, to take the same sort of account of religious believers as those who eat meat need to take account of vegetarians (Reiss, 2012). We would deem it unacceptable, nowadays, for the authorities in charge of a school, a prison, a hospital or any other residential establishment to fail to provide vegetarian food on the grounds that vegetarianism is unnecessary, a minority lifestyle choice or a fad. In the same way, a secular society that respects its citizens needs to take account of religious views. Of course, precisely the converse holds too. A theocracy that respects its citizens needs to take account of the views of those who have no religious faith or belong to a minority faith. This may sound rather neat and tidy–and somewhat distant from what all too often obtains in contemporary societies. How would it work out in practice? Well, in some countries it is pretty much working out in practice. In modern democracies we are used to the idea that the best approach to determining what to do when there are deep, genuine differences of opinion (whether in ethics or anything else) is to strive to obtain consensus (Moreno, 1995). It is true that consensus does not solve everything. For a start, what does one do when consensus cannot be arrived at? Nor can one be certain that consensus always arrives at the right answer–a consensus

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once existed that slavery was acceptable and that beating was good for recalcitrant children. Nonetheless, there are good reasons both in principle and in practice in searching for consensus. Such a consensus should be based on reason and genuine debate and take into account long established practices of ethical reasoning. At the same time, it should be open to criticism, refutation and the possibility of change. Furthermore, consensus should not be equated with majority voting. Consideration needs to be given to the interests of minorities, particularly if they are especially affected by the outcomes, and to those–such as young children, the mentally infirm and non-humans– unable to participate directly in the decision-making process. At the same time, it needs to be born in mind that while a consensus may eventually emerge, there is often an interim period when what is more important is simply to engage in valid debate in which the participants respect one another, so far as is possible, and seek for truth through dialogue (cf. Habermas, 1983; Martin, 1999). In the case of bioethics, many countries now have well respected bodies that seek to arrive at consensus with regards to contentious ethical issues. It seems to me perfectly appropriate that the degree of religious involvement in such bodies should vary from country to country (depending on the extent and depth of religious belief in the population) and from topic to topic (depending on the strength of the connections between religion and the topic in question). I am well aware that to many with a religious faith this may seem like ‘selling out.’ To this objection I would respond as follows. First, it may be as good as you are going to get nowadays in an increasing number of countries! Secondly, if a religious viewpoint has sufficient validity, it should be capable of holding its own in arguments with those who have no religious faith. For example, while Roman Catholic arguments about the unacceptability of contraception are very difficult to defend to those who are not Roman Catholics, more broad-based arguments about the sanctity of human life and therefore the unacceptability of euthanasia can receive a more sympathetic hearing among a secular audience so long as ‘the sanctity of human life’ is not seen as a deus ex machina but is translated into religiously neutral language about respect and the protection of the vulnerable. Thirdly, my own reading of the Christian scriptures is that God’s nature is such that there are rarely voices from heaven. Usually, determination of what is morally right and morally wrong, while

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influenced by the reading of scripture and an understanding of the traditions of the church, need supplanting by broader reflection and study and should be informed, in the case of bioethics, by on-going advances in the biosciences. A few closing points. One problem with religious viewpoints in ethics is that there are rather a lot of them! A practical consequence of the argument I have advanced is that it may not suffice to have a single religious expert on an ethics committee. I have occupied such a role more than once and while one can strive to represent the views of absent others, it is better not to have just the one voice. Of course, an ethics committee, as is the case for almost any committee, can become too large, so it may be necessary to have a system for ensuring that the views of others can feed in in other meaningful ways. But this is simply good practice for dealing with a plurality of viewpoints even if we weren’t considering the role of religion in ethics. And then there is the objection that the line I have been advancing is a relativistic one that depends on the specifics of history and geography. This is a common objection–and not just in theology and ethics but in other disciplines including science and aesthetics–and a standard response, and one that I hold, is to assert that to deny absolute immutable knowledge is not necessarily to slide inexorably into relativism. One can occupy a middle ground. Indeed, as Parfit (2011) concludes, there are considerable commonalities between the main secular ethical frameworks (Kantian deontology, consequentialism and contractualism) once one gets down to specifics. Finally, there will be some, who may or may not be atheists, who are not convinced that religion has any role to play in ethics and thus in ethics education. Religion, it might be maintained, rests on irrational beliefs in the supernatural and while notions of respect may require us to tolerate such views, nothing should be done that might allow them to influence public policy. It’s fine for people to have freedom of expression (e.g., freedom to attend worship) but that is entirely separate from granting religion a public role. If religion were to enjoy such privileges, we would have to extend them to other odd belief systems, such as those who believe they have been abducted by aliens (Clancy, 2005) or those who hold that Elvis Presley is still alive (e.g., Brewer-Giorgio, 1988, www.elvis-isalive.com/).

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There are several reasons why this line of argument does not work. First, the proportion of the population, even in more secular countries, who have some religious beliefs is considerably higher than the proportion of the population who believe in alien abductions or Elvis’ longevity. (I admit, though, that the proportion of people who believe in astrology, ghosts and elves is high in some countries and I would be reluctant to give too loud a voice in ethical decision making to those with such beliefs; perhaps fortunately such beliefs are, I presume, rather independent of one’s ethical arguments.) Secondly, religious faith has been around for all of human time whereas conspiracy theories and fads come and go. Thirdly, religious beliefs are often core to a person’s being in a way that alien abduction (however upsetting) and Presley mania are but rarely. Fourthly, there is a close connect between many ethical issues and religious faith which there isn’t between ethical issues and alien abduction or Elvis Presley.

Conclusion The role of religion is therefore, I would argue, somewhat different in science education and in ethics education. In science education, a teacher needs to be sensitive to religious views about aspects of the science curriculum for two reasons: first, out of respect for students; secondly, because not to be sensitive is to make learning in science less likely for some students. However, it is not the case that a science teacher should alter the science that is taught because of the religious views of students or anyone else. Scientific knowledge is independent of religious views. In the case of evolution, science teachers may decide not to try to persuade creationist students that they are mistaken but all students, including creationists ones, should be introduced to what science teaches about evolution. At the same time, well-designed examination material should be able to test student knowledge of science and its methods without expecting students to have to convert, or pretend that they have converted, to a materialistic set of beliefs. So, for example, it is appropriate to ask students to explain how the standard neo-Darwinian theory of evolution attempts to account for today’s biodiversity but it is not appropriate to ask students to explain how the geological sciences prove that the Earth is billions of years old. In ethics education, though, religious views, while they should not have the degree of authority that some religious believers would like, trumping the views of others, nevertheless can, indeed often should, be heard. This is because of the central importance of religious views for ethics. A well-

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argued religious viewpoint should neither be privileged nor disqualified in the public space, including the space in schools, simply by virtue of its being religious. The same point holds equally for agnostic and atheistic views. In a pluralist society we need to hear a diversity of well-argued viewpoints. Of course, in a faith-based school, there may be a degree of consensus as to the importance that religious values play–though even here unanimity should not be presumed. It is largely because of the diversity of individual student positions about religion that whether or not a school is faith-based makes less difference to how science and ethics should be taught than is generally presumed. All schools, faith-based or not, should prepare their students, in a way that respects human dignity and rights, for life in school and beyond school, a life that is perhaps increasingly characterized by a diversity of value standpoints.

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CONTRIBUTORS PHILIP CLAYTON Claremont School of Theology, USA ABDOLRAHIM GAVAHI World Religions Research Center, Iran WILLIAM GRASSIE Metanexus Institute, USA NOREEN HERZFELD St. John's University, USA SHIVA KHALILI Sigmund Freud Private University, Austria & University of Tehran, Iran NANCEY MURPHY Fuller Theological Seminary, USA ALFRED PRITZ Sigmund Freud Private University, Austria MICHAEL REISS ISSR and UCL Institute of Education, UK MICHAEL RUSE Florida State University, USA MIKAEL STENMARK Uppsala University, Sweden WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN University of Stellenbosch, South Africa FRASER WATTS Cambridge Institute for Applied Psychology and Religion, UK WESLEY J. WILDMAN Boston University, USA