LIVING WITH DIVERSITY – CHRISTIANS, JEWS AND MUSLIMS – IN A DARWINIAN WORLD

University of Gloucestershire. Dec 5^th 2008

 

Aim- to show that our divided world needs a deep conversation between the religions and especially between believers and secularists. 

I am well aware that I have taken on an enormous challenge! The title is over- ambitious and perhaps the problem is made worse by my admission that in this lecture I will be working out some thoughts that will continue well into next year. An illustration of the scale of the issue comes from the well known but true story of the UK ambassador to the US who, shortly before Christmas, was phoned by the Washington Post. He was asked what, in his role as Ambassador, did he most desired as a Christmas present. He answered honestly. He said that he would like a small tin of crystallised fruit. The following day the Washington Post said that the Russian Ambassador most desired peace with the Chechnyans; the Israel Ambassador wanted a solution to the Israel/Palestine problems, the American President most desired a compromise on the immigration issue – and the British Ambassador would like a small box of crystallised fruit!

My greatest fear that my ambition may be so large, that my gift to you may be of the same size as that unfortunate Ambassador. 

However, the burden of my lecture tonight is that we now live in such a divided and dangerous world, that the most urgent challenge facing us all is to build bridges of understanding and hope. The religions have a sturdy role to play in this regard but their contribution is being hindered, not only by deep misunderstanding between the faiths but, more worryingly, by a troubling polarisation between two intellectual worlds- faith and secularism or, if we prefer, faith and science. Central to this lecture is an appeal for a fresh conversation between these clashing worlds and ideologies.

Sept11th  2001, or 9/11 as we now call it, is a key date in modern history. It is usually taken to represent a watershed between West and Islam, and this is true. But, as we shall see later, it is also the date that symbolises a growing split between faith and reason, illustrated in the hostility to all religions by Richard Dawkins and others. We shall return to this date and this controversy in a short while but, in the meantime, let us look at the title of my address again. 

You will see three factors present in it: diversity, the Abrahamic faiths and the Darwinian world. It is the latter  - Charles Darwin’s world – that is the backcloth to the issues of diversity and faith that I want to explore with you now.

Next year we shall celebrate two Darwin anniversaries: it will be the 200^th anniversary of his birth in 1809, and the 150^th anniversary of his magnum opus ‘On the Origin of the Species’, which appeared in 1859.

Whatever we may think about Darwin’s theory, he is unquestionably one of England’s greatest sons, whose legacy to the intellectual world is stupendous. 

Let me remind you of Darwin’s story.  

Charles Darwin was fortunate enough to be born into a prosperous middle class family. His father was a country doctor who wanted his sons to follow him into that profession. Charles dabbled at this for a while, even attending medical lessons at Edinburgh University but he concluded that medicine was not for him. He did of course have a passion; from boyhood he was fascinated by nature and had amassed collections of shells, coins, minerals and many other things. As it did not seem conceivable that this interest could translate itself into a profession he had to look elsewhere. As he wavered at the age of 17 and 18 concerning his future, it seemed to those around him that the only one open to him was the Ordained ministry. He was not averse to this idea. It was a popular route for many upper class and middle class men who could easily combine the duties of the country parson with scholarly hobbies in many different avenues of learning. Indeed, Charles Darwin himself assumed that that was his destiny. He went up to Cambridge University with ministry very much in mind but while he was there he found little joy in studying the classics, theology or Greek and Hebrew – instead it was natural history that excited him and it was to the study of nature in its myriad forms that drew him again and again. Later in life Darwin would express his regret that he wasted so much time at Cambridge which concluded in a rather average degree. However, it was at Cambridge that his passion for natural history, and particularly entomology, were kindled to the extent that his reputation as an outstanding naturalist began. And then came the moment that was to change everything- in August 1831 Darwin received a letter from his friend Henslow to say that a Government ship would soon be sailing to South America to survey the coastline. A naturalist was needed. Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle would be interviewing soon- was he interested? He was, he was accepted and, at the age of 22 Charles Darwin set sail on a voyage that certainly changed his life – but of greater significance, it was to change the world.

And what was that change? What did he discover on that voyage that amounted to a ‘Copernican’ revolution in natural history?  I think it is proper to say that Darwin himself was not truly aware of what it was during that voyage. I guess that some intimations of it may have flickered across his mind at times, but it was only during the two decades that followed did the thesis of natural selection emerge as an idea. For five years the young Charles Darwin sent hundreds of boxes of shells, bones, flowers and remains of many kinds back to England where excited scholars got to work in identifying them and classifying them. During his voyage Darwin became confirmed in his view that the ordained ministry was not for him, his uncertain faith had now hardened into a mild agnosticism, and he was quite clear that he had found his life’s work. His first love was of nature and he literally wanted to get to the bottom of things: why are things as they are, and what caused them? 

On returning to England he found that his reputation was now well established and he set about re-reading his many notebooks, reflecting on his discoveries, arguing with other naturalists and scientists about them, and preparing for publication learned articles. In 1859, the book that would astound the world was published under the title ‘On the Origin of the Species’. The reaction to it ranged from joy to deep dismay; anger and revulsion in equal measure to excitement and amazement.

His thesis, in short, questioned the idea of immutability that was everyone accepted as orthodox science; that is to say, that mankind did not change and neither did the world. The world, it was thought, was at rest within the eternal concern of its Creator. Darwin challenged this worldview. He argues that the world, and by implication, the universe itself, was the result of forces that were never at rest and which over many millennia brought into being a myriad of life forms. His central idea he termed ‘natural selection’ by which was meant that scarcities of sustenance, or the violence of adverse conditions, were constantly at work in the natural world. The result was that the weakest, or the worst-adapted, were not able to survive these environmental assaults. The strongest of a species overcame them and, in time, passed on to their offspring those qualities that suited the new conditions. When members of a species were isolated by land or sea from their fellows, this process of natural selection ensured that they would pass on such adaptations to their successors. Eventually, these changes would be so marked that they could amount to a new species. These ideas were the result of the five years incarcerated on the Beagle; the voyage changed him from being an enthusiastic amateur to that of a dedicated and professional scientist. He worked on these theories for another 20 years before he launched his work on an unsuspecting public. Once published, his book began a controversy that has never entirely died away. His theory of evolution challenged conventional science as well as questioning the deepest beliefs of human beings. It challenged the concept of God – or, at least, what kind of God, could be behind such a world as this. Nearly one hundred and fifty years on, the main structure of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is largely accepted as orthodoxy in scientific and philosophic circles. Many of us accept it, and speaking personally, I have always believed it as a well established explanation of the world we live in.

Why did it cause such an uproar in the mid-eighteeenth century and still does in some parts of the world? From a Christian point of view it has to do with our understanding of the bible. If one accepts it as literal truth on matters of science as well as religion; then Darwinism will shatter that faith. In Charles Darwin’s day, even great scientists like Sir Charles Lyell whose writings on geology had so influenced the young Darwin, accepted the Genesis account of the creation of man as literally true. Indeed, Lyell’s geology assumed a static view of the universe. Until Darwin’s work appeared, Lyell also believed that the account of the flood in Genesis was an established geological fact.

However, it is necessary to challenge the widely held view that Darwin’s thesis, in his own day, opened an unbridgeable gap between science and religion, reason and faith. We must see Darwin in his own day as one who emerged from a Christian background, who was intended for the church, who married a wife, Emma, who never did come to terms with his views but remained in affection dialogue with him until he passed away.[1]   Darwin remained a quiet agnostic to the end of his life, preferring to get on with his intellectual studies and wanting to live at peace with all.

My argument then is that we do indeed live in a Darwinian world, which is more mysterious than we can ever think, and more incomprehensible that we can ever know. All of us have to come to terms with it and are challenged by it.

How, then, is the debate between science and religion proceeding today and, by the same token, how are the religions – and the Abrahamic faiths in particular – reacting to an intellectual world that is so clearly shaped by that shy and reserved man from Shrewsbury who has changed the way we think?

I need now to go back to the other date I mentioned at the start of this lecture – Sept 11^th 2001. The attacks on the World Trade Centre, Pentagon and the White House woke us all up to a resurgent and militant Islam which remains an active presence seven years on. Last week’s attacks in Mumbai sadly will not be the last such atrocity. For some writers such events are illustrations of the evils of religion – all religions. I have no doubt, that one can trace a direct link from 9/11 to the aggressive and strident tones of such writers as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others. The result is a widening gap between religion and science; an unwillingness to engage, concluding in a dialogue of the deaf. The  purpose of such writers is to pour scorn on religious belief - they want it eradicated (although they differ as to the chances of achieving that).  Hitchens , perhaps the most polemical, believes that monotheism is "a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few non-events". Someone wrote recently that he takes the verbal equivalent of an AK47 to shoot down hallowed religious figures, questioning whether Muhammad was an epileptic, declaring Mahatma Gandhi an "obscurantist" who distorted and retarded Indian independence, and Martin Luther King a "plagiarist and an orgiast" and in no real sense a Christian, while the Dalai Lama is a "medieval princeling" who is the continuation of a "parasitic monastic elite". 

Common to all seems to be a loathing of an increasing religiosity in US politics, which has contributed to what is seen to be a disastrous presidency and undermined scientific understanding. Dennett excoriates the madness of a faith that looks forward to the end of the world and the return of the messiah. What Dawkins hates is that most Americans still haven't accepted evolution and support the teaching of intelligent design. According to one poll, 50% of the US electorate believe the story of Noah. Dawkins argues that "there is nothing to choose between the Afghan Taliban and the American Christian equivalent ... The genie of religious fanaticism is rampant in present-day America."

Harris, author of two bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, similarly draws an analogy between Muslims and the American Christian right: "Non-believers like myself stand beside you dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well - by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service of your religious myths and by your attachment to an imaginary God."

Harris is prepared to go further. He writes:"some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them’. This extraordinary statement is only slightly worse that Richard Dawkins’ opinion that labeling children by the religion of their parents is a form of child abuse As one New York commentator put it, ‘we're familiar with religious intolerance, now we have to recognise irreligious intolerance’.

It is not hard to conclude that ‘New Atheism’, if there is a genre such as that, is unpleasant and reactionary. The polemical and violent language is not an invitation to a calm debate but belongs to the worst excesses of Hyde Park Corner oratory.

Now, to some degree such writers have a point to their anger  and we can sympathise to a degree when they attack creationism. Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth. So, in some parts of the United States there is Young Earth Creationism , at the most literalist end of the scale, arguing that the account of creation in Genesis actually refers to seven 24-hour days. According to this view, the world is thousands of years old rather than billions, thus explaining away the fossil record, and the geology of the planet. Old earth creationists , on the other hand, accept geological ways of dating the earth by translating the days of creation into ages to square with the evidence. The battle in the United States has been visceral and long-running raising issues such as the constitutional separation of church and state, as well as the internal debate in the academic community between the respectable world of science and pseudo-science. Dr.Malcolm Brown, Director of the Department of Public Affairs of the Church of England, wrote recently: ‘At a University in Kansas, I asked a biology professor how he coped with Darwin’s theories with students whose churches insisted that evolution was heresy, and whose schools taught creationism: “No problem”, he replied, “the kids know that if they want a good job they need a degree, and if they want a degree they have to work with evolutionary theory. Creationism is for the church, as far as they are concerned. Here they’re Darwinists”’. Such dualism is greatly to be regretted and will only in the long run undermine the intellectual integrity of those churches.

The theory of 'intelligent design' has emerged as a more acceptable form of creationism in recent years partly to circumvent bans in the United States in some States of the teaching of creationism. Certainly it is more academically respectable, but criticised for its lack of scientific method; that is, its inability to test its hypotheses. Proponents of Intelligent Design look for evidence of an intelligent designer,  rejecting the materialism of contemporary science. Thus they seek for clues of a designer in the complexity of genetic biology in particular, arguing for patterns and relationships.  

The argument for intelligent design may have some appeal for many Christians but is ultimately a negation of what science is about which is to make a hypotheses from what is observable and then conduct experiments in a constant process of testing.

That is not to say however, that the case for intelligibility in the universe, suggesting the presence of a creator, cannot be made but care must be taken that the scientific method is not subverted, and faith itself brought into disrepute through a cavalier treatment of the evidence.  Just as science is in danger of assuming an arrogance in proposing that it can solve all of the universe's mysteries (when the more humble and realistic practitioner realises that science is not well-equipped to tackle the metaphysical) so theology aided and abetted by pseudo-science can get above itself.

As for the controversy over creationism in the United Kingdom, while some Academy schools are said to have taught creationism, this issue has not been a serious problem in Britain until very recently. In September the distinguished scientist Professor Michael Reiss suggested that 'creationism' should be debated in the classroom 'if the subject was raised by pupils'. Unlike some newspaper accounts he did not suggest that it should be taught in science classes. A lobby of high profile 'atheists' campaigned against his remarks and he was forced to resign as director of education of the Royal Society for bringing it into disrepute. This tawdry opening up of a rift between religion and science owed almost nothing to the facts, and indeed the way the Royal Society acted has brought it into disrepute. His observation was that banning all discussion of 'creationism' could backfire. In fact, his argument was that creationism was not a scientific theory but was an 'alternative world view'.

So, if you have followed my argument so far, and agree that a serious and sustained conversation is lacking today, largely inspired by different kinds of fundamentalism including that of the new atheists, what kind of conversation do we want to encourage in our universities, schools and workplaces? Let me offer some possibilities.

First, we need to encourage a positive, respectful and critical attitude towards good science. We have nothing to fear, although sometimes the results can be challenging. Darwin’ world does usher in much questioning which challenges insecure faith. We think of our universe and we simply cannot take it in. We are told that it is 14 billion years old and at least 93 billion light years across. It is only in the last few seconds of the evolutionary clock that humankind has appeared. Our place therefore in this amazing and, largely, incomprehensible universe, is miniscule and rebukes our hubris. How can we contemplate attempts to make man the measure of all things? At best the claims have a hollow ring about them.

When we turn out attention to the human body we find a similar mystery within. The human genome project has already mapped all the genes in the human body, incidentally directed by a practising Christian. Confronted by the incomprehensible size of the universe, out there as well as within, there is a baffling quality about who we are, what we are and where we are, that wonder and awe are the natural reactions. How puzzling then for some when religious people talk with such ease about the ways of the Almighty as if it is all self evident!

But a more troubling fact is the evil present in the world. We may be the grateful inhabitants of a remarkable world in a vast universe, noted for its beauty and order. But it is one where terrible things happen and where the helpless and innocent are most likely to suffer. We think of environmental disasters which can at a stroke wipe thousands off the map. Where were you when the Tsunami struck the Indian ocean on Boxing Day 2004, killing over 225,000 people? Darwin’s world seems to be a random world of chance, one of indifference to human suffering and one where all things lead to futility. At a more personal level which of us has not had the experience of deepest tragedy which defies logic and rationality? I once ministered to a dying young woman of 32, dying of cancer with three young children. What words about the love of God make sense in the cruelty of that moment?

So one part of this conversation I am suggesting is that we listen to this kind of painful story. Darwin’s world should not be trivialized or softened.

But there is another story too that has to be heeded although I doubt if some ‘new atheists’ will trouble themselves with it, either because they lack a philosophic awareness or, more likely, have already made up their minds. This approach asks the question: ‘how do we best account for the data all around us?’ That is to say, we live in a universe endowed with powers and laws when, apparently, none of this has to be.  How do we account for the capacity of the fundamental stuff of the universe to evolve not only life and consciousness but also mind, intelligence and personality? How do we best account for the fact of the apparent objectivity and claim on us of a moral law? How do we best account for the universe's capacity to come up with Dante, Shakespeare and Mozart? How do we best account for the universe's capacity to give us great thinkers, philosophers and saints? How do we account for the extraordinary ability of 'homo sapiens' compared with other animals? During the last 20 or so years a view called 'the anthropic principle' has become fashionable indicating that the conditions for intelligent life depends on a very narrow range of parameters thus suggesting that intelligence is part of the structure of the universe. In the most recent edition of Discover there is an interesting article by Tim Folger entitled "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator." The article begins by noting "an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life." As physicist Andrei Linde puts it, "We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible."

Too many "coincidences," however, imply a plot. Folger's article shows that if the numerical values of the universe, from the speed of light to the strength of gravity, were even slightly different, there would be no universe and no life. Recently scientists have discovered that most of the matter and energy in the universe is made up of so-called "dark" matter and "dark" energy. It turns out that the quantity of dark energy seems precisely calibrated to make possible not only our universe but observers like us who can comprehend that universe.

Even Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics and an outspoken atheist, remarks that "this is fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident." And physicist Freeman Dyson draws the appropriate conclusion from the scientific evidence to date: "The universe in some sense knew we were coming."

Folger then admits that this line of reasoning makes a number of scientists very uncomfortable. "Physicists don't like coincidences." "They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea."[2]  So this is an argument worth taking seriously because it challenges the assumption that has been around for at least two centuries that man does not occupy a privileged position in the cosmos, and now, according to the anthropic principle, it seems he does. Believers will argue that it does seem to be a lot to swallow that from absolute chaos, confusion, chance and futility has emerged intelligence, moral awareness and beauty. But Keith Ward speaks for many believers when he writes in a recent book: ‘Evolution is wholly compatible with belief in Creation, even in a strictly neo-Darwinian form’.[3]

We need to open a second conversation concerning the role or usefulness of religion. We note from the press that shortly bill boards will appear from London to Washington saying ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. Another humanist group in America are mounting a similar campaign which states: ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good, for goodness sake’. The inference is that all religions are bad for human flourishing; they are diseased and atrophied vestiges of human life. They make us miserable and do little good. For Dawkins, Roman Catholicism is a virulent virus that should be eradicated as doing great harm to young people, and even Anglicanism, from which he emerged, is but a milder form of the same disease. Hitchens, as we have seen, has a more aggressive approach to religion which ranges from the very crude to the most opinionated. I have to say that the polemical language of such people remind me of the Chinese saying: ‘Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead!’

So a reasonable and careful conversation is needed for us to overcome the infantile and trivial way matters of ethical behavior are being discussed these days. To those who believe that religion is regressive, the question has to be put: ‘then why is religion so active socially in the world and in society and why is it that its contribution to social capital is so highly regarded?’ Roy Hattersley, former Deputy Prime Minister wrote in a Guardian article a few years ago that his view is that ‘most believers are better human beings than atheists’. Reluctantly he acknowledges that unbelievers are less likely to care for the poor and spend time with outcasts of society. He writes: ‘Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists’.

This candid admission is remarkable and should not detract from the fact that a large number of humanists, agnostics and atheists are also good people who seek to create a better world. My argument is not polemical – it is to say that those who wish to eradicate the world of faiths have to perceive them as they are, and to recognize the tremendous contribution they make to our world.

But does religion make a personal difference to people? Prof Keith Ward in his book ‘Is Religion Dangerous?’ emphatically says that it does. He cites a survey carried out in the States by the Pew Foundation that shows that ‘spiritually committed’ people are twice as likely to be ‘very happy’ than the ‘least religiously committed people’.[4]

We can take this even further. Church attendance improves health! On both sides of the Atlantic studies have shown that this is the case. The Graduate of Public Health at Pittsburgh University has established a Consortium on Faith and Health which concluded a study with the words: ‘People who regularly attend religious services have been found to have lower blood pressure, less heart disease, lower rates of depression and generally better health than those who don’t attend’[5]  When we move from personal health to the health of societies, a similar argument may be mounted.  Young people who are in church communities or church programmes are less sexually promiscuous, less involved in drug activities, engage in less binge drinking, less likely to be truant from school and are involved in less crime. This does not make them ‘goody-goodies’, they remain ordinary happy teen-agers but their life styles are healthier and their life-prospects more promising.  This too is part of the conversation we should have. If it is true that committed Christianity leads to sound and healthier life styles, this is something that should lead to a more positive view of religion in general. 

However, a final area for discussion takes up the third matter in my title – diversity; how may faith communities themselves open up deeper and more candid conversations where differences and similarities are explored?  I can report that this is work in progress but much remains to be done. Darwin’s world reveals a creation that is as diverse as it is mysterious. Different forms of life flourish and it is no different in human life. Those forms that fail to adapt, even intellectual aspects of social activity will wither and decay. Islam has to come to terms with modernity and face up to the serious intellectual challenges that will inevitably come its way. The shocking intellectual deficit in most Muslim countries is shown in a UN report that the scientific and intellectual output of the 300 billion population of the Arab League countries is far less than that the six million citizens of the State of Israel. I think I am able to say with confidence that Darwin’s great publication would not even be published in any Muslim country today.  But Islam is not alone in facing a challenge of modernity. Unless faiths are part of the public square and able to meet others on equal footing, and engage in vigorous debate, they too will be pushed to the edge and die out. For Christians, it may be a challenge to be more confident in its message, less church centred and more open to debate with reasonable humanists whom, I suspect, will be more open-minded than some Christians realise.

Does this mean that diversity equals settling for uncertainty, as well as accepting that all roads lead to the same end? I think not. A confident message will always respect others and seek to find common goals. It does not mean that we shall find agreement on all matters. That is less important than the fact that a conversation on ultimate matters that affect us all is continuing. 

Quite recently, reading a book written by two scientists, I came across this statement which they said was a scientist’s  worst nightmare: ‘He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted  by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries’. Well, I don’t know if that will ever be the case, but in my tweaking of that story I would like that scientist, as he pulls himself over the final rock, and sees that band of wise men, that he might see among them the familiar face of Charles Darwin, who has more right than most to be heralded as one of the greatest human beings of all time.[6] 

© George Carey 2008

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