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The Review Online
Science and Religion: The Continuing Debate...
2nd June 2009
Chris Copley-May’s contribution to the debate about Science and Religion is to be welcomed, even though other commitments kept him from attending the Bishop’s recent talk on this topic.
However, I understand Chris’ contribution was offered more in the spirit of widening the debate generally rather than seeking to challenge what he thinks the Bishop of Hereford said, simply on the basis of my article for The Review Online. That article sought only to be a brief and appreciative report of the Bishop’s welcome visit to College to speak on this subject, and it sought too to give space to the reactions of students who attended and heard his arguments. It made no attempt to give a definitive, detailed and verbatim report of the Bishop’s well-reasoned arguments in favour of the co-existence of science and religion. If that is a failing on my part, I hope it hasn’t encouraged Chris to attach to the Bishop’s rigorously argued views on science and religion his conclusions about my article.
Had Chris been present to hear the Bishop’s excellent talk he would have known it was followed by a lively question-and-answer and discussion session, which the Bishop relished and was disappointed when it came to an all-too-soon end when students had to return to classes (though a number, with ‘frees’, stayed to debate with him). He would have known too that, most certainly, he would not have heard from Bishop Anthony a case in support of ‘Intelligent Design’ or other Creationist theories.
Again, had Chris heard and appreciated the Bishop’s case he might not have written in such a stentorian way. He may not then have offended and “outraged” a number of students “both religious and non-religious” (on whose behalf one of their number subsequently wrote to the College). Our student correspondent, speaking for a group of friends, added: “Mr Copley-May talks about people being intellectual and that you cannot be religious and intellectual. The fact that religious people attend this College shows that they are intellectual... many religious friends are doing very difficult subjects and getting high grades” and, whilst readily recognising Chris’ entitlement to his view and his freedom to express it, expressed concern that “he is trying to make religious people look small and not intellectual”.
Those present to hear Bishop Anthony are, of course, aware that he barely mentioned Richard Dawkins – and, indeed, had no need to do so, until the issue was raised with a challenging question towards the end – a challenging question which got a direct response.
Chris’ apologia for Dawkins - offered to widen the debate - isn’t surprising, other than one needs to be clear that it doesn’t relate to the Bishop's talk. It is interesting that Chris’s case has all the hallmarks of a Dawkins argument itself and, if one may say so, seems sadly dismissive and rather unnecessarily extreme. One wants to cry “me think [he] doth protest too much”, as is so often the case after reading or hearing Dawkins. Why is it that someone so dismissive of religion spends so much time and energy, and so many words, arguing against it? Little wonder that many do question what Dawkins real (and perhaps sub-conscious?) agenda is.
As another biochemist (and one who, over a ten year period, worked on scrapie disease on sheep, and later undertook research in the field of rheumatoid arthritis) who later trained for ordination, it might surprise Chris that I have always endeavoured to bring the same intellectual rigour to my theology. It won’t perhaps surprise him that I happily share the Bishop’s views on science and religion, views which a good many far more eminent scientists also share, not least the likes of Rev’d Professor John Polkinghorne, KBE, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University from 1968 to 1979 and a Fellow of the Royal Society; Prof John Hedley Brooke, Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University from 1999 to 2006 at Oxford University from 1999 to 2006; Dr. Warren Brown, Director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute; Prof Mehdi Goldshani, the Iranian theoretical physicist and philosopher; the geneticist Dr. Francis Collins, lately leader of the Human Genome Project; Prof. Nancy Howell (author of A Feminist Cosmology: Ecology, Solidarity, and Metaphysics); Prof Brian Heap, lately Director of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research (Cambridge and Edinburgh); and of course many, many others.
Dawkins’ popular writing style, his robust and controversial approach, and the publicity these have attracted, have created space for his atheistic arguments to be heard, but that certainly does not give them a monopoly or indeed an over-riding validity. It is difficult to ignore the view of Terry Eagleton, eminent literary critic of The London Review of Books who said:“Imagine someone holding forth on Biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds,and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on Theology”.
The debate, I suspect, goes on!