Science and Religion and the Science of Religion

Readers of this blog may be interested in some recent online essays pertaining to the scientific study of religion and its significance. The Guardian's online blog, Comment is Free, has launched a new series of essays on the question, "Is there a God instinct?", and the inaugural post in the series is by atheist psychologist Jesse Bering--who articulates a variant of the atheist argument (promulgated in different ways by Dawkins and Dennett) that belief in God can be explained away by the evolutionary adaptiveness of a propensity to believe in supernatural agency.

In an essay replying to Bering in the Guardian, evolutionary biologist Denis Alexander offers a concise response from the standpoint of his own discipline, while Arni Zachariassen, at I Think I Believe, provides a thoughtful theological response in which, among other things, he makes the following points:

(Bering) says that there are "simply no good scientific reason[s]" for theism. Well, of course there aren't! Science brackets out the question of God as a matter of principle and method, and so plainly and simply doesn't address the question, this way or the other...(T)he simple fact that we have evolved certain biases towards seeing reality as being a certain way does not necessarily mean that reality is not that way. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Science will not settle that question for us. Bering's research, as interesting as it is (and it is! Very!), says something about human brains, not God's existence or the validity of religious truth claims.

Arni's response reminds me of my interest in writing a review of the bestseller by journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God: What Science Is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience. Hagerty's book offers a wonderful catalogue of diverse religious and spiritual experiences, as well as an engaging lay person's summary of the range of scientific research being done on human spirituality (I leave assessments of the accuracy of her summaries to those more versed in the relevant disciplines). 

But what I like best about the book is its potential to help defuse the reflexive suspicion and animosity that religious believers so often direct towards the scientific study of religion (and science in general). It has this potential precisely because Hagerty embodies in her journalistic inquiry the same perspective that Arni so nicely articulates in his recent post. Whatever might be said about the defensibility of this perspective (and I know there are regular followers of this blog who are inclined to challenge it), I think that from a purely sociological standpoint it is a pragmatically fruitful one: It inculcates an openness among religious believers to taking science seriously rather than treating it as an enemy to be rejected.

While new atheists like Dawkins and Victor Stenger (author of God: The Failed Hypothesis) have gotten considerable personal mileage out of promulgating the message that (a) science and religion are essentially opposed and (b) so much the worse for religion, the social reality (as far as I can tell) is that this message has not substantially reduced the number of religious believers. Rather, it has succeeded mostly in reinforcing their belief in (a)--to which they then add, "So much the worse for science."

While my own view is that (a) is false, I know there are those who take it to be true. What I want to say to them at this point is this: At best, surely, (a) is a contentious philosophical position. And given its controversial character, it may be worth treating it with caution when it can have such damaging pragmatic effects for the advancement of science. By treating it with caution, I don't mean refusing to express (a) even if it happens to be your view. I don't mean refusing to share your reasons for this view, or what you find lacking in the arguments of those with a different position. Rather, I mean adopting the kind of fallibilism that is appropriate when the costs of being wrong are high.

Suppose you catch a glimpse from a passing car of someone who, at a quick glance from a distance, you take to be your friend Joe leaving an apartment building in which you know Mary lives. It is one thing to say without qualification, "I saw Joe leaving Mary's apartment yesterday afternoon," when gossiping with friends. It is something else again to say this on the witness stand when Joe has been accused of murdering Mary. High stakes call for humility, an awareness of our fallibility. And the stakes are pretty high when it comes to the idea that science and religion are essentially opposed.

Beliefs can be "innocent" or not, and whether they are innocent or not can be a matter of context. The less innocent a belief is, the more significant our epistemic duties become.

Let me be clear about something here. I don't think that scientists should pander to religious audiences or downplay the implications of their research when that research directly challenges specific beliefs held by religious communities--such as the belief in a "Young Earth" or the doctrine of special creation (the idea that diverse species were created individually rather than evolving from common ancestors). But if one treats the new atheists' controversial and polarizing philosophical view on science and religion as if it were a matter of certainty, then one will pre-emptively alienate the great mass of religious believers, so that when scientific research does challenge their specific beliefs you can be sure they won't be listening.