July 27, 2022 • 22 mins
Can science and religion truly coexist, or are they forever locked in conflict? Kenneth Miller approaches this question from a unique perspective. In focusing on a few of today's most contentious issues, he explores if science can be understood in a religious context, or have we finally reached the end of faith?
Modern science has its roots in western religious thought, was nurtured in universities established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries to scientists who themselves were people of faith. Nonetheless, on one issue after another, from evolution to the "big bang" to the age of the Earth itself, religion is often on a collision course with scientific thought.
On one side, religious believers have constructed pseudosciences to justify narrow interpretations of scripture or to support specific religious claims. On the other, non-believers have used scientific authority to label faith a "delusion" to be set aside.
Kenneth Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University. He has received six major teaching awards at Brown, the Presidential Citation of the American Institute for Biological Science, and the Public Service Award of the American Society for Cell Biology. In 2009 he was honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for Advancing the Public Understanding of Science, and also received the Gregor Mendel Medal from Villanova University. In 2011 he was presented with the Stephen Jay Gould Prize by the Society for the Study of Evolution.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A warm Miami one Day. You welcome for Professor Kenneth Miller.
The Science of Happy Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern Medicine,
Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War, The artistic genius Michel Angeli,
when Intuition fa Turning points that changed American mystic psychology
(00:21):
of Religious One Day University. The most acclaimed and popular
professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi,
I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. Thank you very much. I'm
(00:45):
a cell biologist. I do a lot of my work
with the electron microscope. But one of the reasons I'm
here is because a number of years ago, a former
student of mine drew me into the public sphere by
a very provocative question, how did like to help me
write a high school biology book? My name is Ken
Miller and professor of biology at Brown University in Providence,
(01:07):
Rhode Island. One of the first things I discovered when
I started to write biology textbooks is that they were attacked,
and they were attacked because they dare to include a
topic called evolution, which I, as a biologist, regard as
the absolute centerpiece of the biological sciences. So let me
ask you first about the basic premise behind your lecture,
(01:29):
which is science versus faith, addressing history's oldest debate. Can
science and religion coexist or are they inevitably locked in conflict.
I think it's pretty obvious that anybody looks around that
science of religion do coexist and in fact, and this
is something that that has always struck me. Science as
(01:51):
we know it today developed in Christian Western Europe. And
that's not necessarily because Western Europe was more advanced than
other civilizations. You can make a very good argument that
the Chinese civilization of what we call the Middle Ages
was far advanced over anything in Europe. But when you
look at the Chinese philosophical and religious traditions, they tend
(02:14):
to emphasize the unity of human beings with nature. The
Christian tradition taught basically that humans are set apart from nature,
that we stand apart. Now, as a biologist, i'd go
more with the Eastern style. But the interesting thing is
the idea of setting oneself apart as an objective observer
is actually the very basis for Western science, and in fact,
(02:37):
um what we called for a long time natural philosophy
and what we now call science was practiced by many
in the Renaissance and post Renaissance as a way of
affirming the glory of God. The modern science of genetics
as we know today was invented by Gregor Mendel, who
in fact was a priest, was a religious person, and
(02:58):
I've often heard some of my colleagues say, well, that's
because he grew up poor and the only way to
get decent education was to go into the ministry. But
the fact of the matter is that when father Mendel
had finished the scientific work which really did found the
modern science of genetics um, he didn't leave the priesthood.
He actually continued and became the abbey of the monastery St.
(03:18):
Thomas and bruin Um, and therefore he continued his religious life.
So this is a person in a deep religious commitment
and made a major scientific contribution. So not only can
religion science coexist in many ways. Religious faith and the
faith in meaning, order, purpose, and value is what gave
rise to the scientific tradition as we know it. Is
(03:40):
there a problem here that we tend to see everything
in modern society is either or Either you're in favor
of science, or you're in favor of religion. Well, I
think so, and I think that tendency to see things
as an either or or also infects the scientific community. Uh.
An awful lot of my colleague are profoundly hostile to religion. Now,
(04:03):
they might say they have darned good reason for it,
because when they see popular movements against the teaching of
certain scientific ideas in schools, inevitably those are led by
religious people. So many of my colleagues say, well, I'm
anti religious, largely as a matter of self defense, and
to some extent um, I can certainly understand that. Many
(04:24):
times people who insist that science and faith can coexist
are slurred by being called compatible lists, as if you
have to water down science to make it amenable to
religious faith. I don't think you do, and an awful
lot of other scientists don't think so either. Are we
really talking not about a clash between science or the
(04:45):
theory of evolution and religion, but a clash between fundamentalists
of both sides, fundamentalists who refuse to accept UH evolution
and fundamentalists atheists who refuse to accept the idea that
religious people can be intelligent. The first thing is yes,
in many cases, in many debates on various subjects, and
(05:08):
this is one the two extremes basically tend to validate
each other, which is the scientific materialistic extremists say, look
at those idiots on the other side and what they believe.
And and then the religious fundamentalists who are extremists on
the other side point to them and say, look at
what they want to do. They want to tell us
the teaching our children about faith is a form of
(05:29):
child abuse. Um. They want to close the churches and
do all these other sorts of things. Um. So yes,
they do validate each other. I want to give you
another statement from a religious person. This is now retired
Pope Benedict sixteen. When he was still pope, he was
quartered by a group of Italian journalists and he was asked,
is it possible for someone to be a Christian and
(05:51):
also to accept evolution? And he replied, and here's here's
the essence of his quote. Now he speaks in sort
of a popish style. The contray asked here is an
absurdity because there are many scientific tests in favor of evolution,
which appears as a reality that we must see and
enriches our understanding of life and being. That's a little complex.
(06:11):
So if you want to sort it out for you,
do what I do. Go to that publication that always
takes complex issues and makes them simple. You know what
I mean. It's the New York Post Evolution and God
do mix Pope. End of story. During your lecture, you
talk quite a bit about evolution and the debate over evolution.
(06:31):
Why well I do that for? I guess two or
three reasons. One is, I'm a biologist, so this is
an area of science that's near and dear to me.
A second one is um I write textbooks, and I'm
the co author of the most widely used high school
biology textbook in the country. It's used in all fifty
states and around the United States. When there have been movements,
(06:53):
as there have been in many states in school districts
to strike the teaching of evolution from the curriculum, to
put warning labels on textbooks telling students evolution is just
a theory, or in one school district, even to glue
the pages of the textbook together in the evolution section
so that students would not have to read them. It's
(07:14):
very often been my own textbook, so therefore I have
a lot of experience in pushing back against these issues.
And finally, um, one of the major battles, legal battles
we had about evolution in this country was a court
case in two thousand five that attracted an enormous amount
of attention. It was called Kids Miller versus Dover, and
I was uh the lead witness in that trial. In
(07:40):
the year two thousand four, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania,
small town in eastern Pennsylvania, voted to adopt an intelligent
design curriculum as part of their biology classes. Intelligent design
is sort of a refashioned creationism that argues that some
force outside of nature was responsible for the complexity of
(08:03):
living things and what happened. They asked the teachers to
prepare an intelligent design curriculum. The four science teachers Dover
is a small town, at the risk of losing their jobs.
The four science teachers at Dover High School said, we
will not do this. This is not science. So the
school board think of the horror of a board doing this.
The school board wrote their own lesson on intelligent design.
(08:25):
They gave it to the teachers. They said, well, at
least read it to the kids. And once again the
teacher said no. So on a certain day in two
thousand four, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent had to
go into the classroom and teach all the biology lessons
that day on intelligent design, while the teachers literally stood
outside in the hallway wanting to take no part of that. Well,
(08:46):
what happened was the next day, eleven parents of students
in those classes went to federal court in Harrisburg and
they swore out a First Amendment lawsuit against the Dover
Area Board, arguing that their First Amendment rights had been
by elated by having an institution of the state. That's
what a school board is impose a particular religious point
of view in a publicly funded school um. The trial
(09:10):
lasted for seven weeks. It was extensively covered in the press.
My cross examination went on for nine and a half hours.
So I had to do something that I had never
done in my career as a college professor, which is
to cancel the scheduled lecture. But something interesting happened when
I finally did fly back. It was late in the afternoon,
(09:30):
hopped in my car and I switched on National Public radio,
and to my surprise, the first thing that came on
was the trial, and they had a report on it,
and the lead line was it's God versus Science in
a Pennsylvania courtroom. And the reason I found that surprising
was because of the expert witnesses. Three of the five
were people of faith. Of the eleven plaintiffs, all but
(09:54):
two were Christians, and two of them actually ran a
summer Bible camp. So these were the plaintiffs, and they
were not anti God. They were anti having a particular
view of God dressed up and pretended to be science.
This debate about science versus faith? Has it been made
worse by media coverage? Has it been sensationalized? I'd like
(10:17):
to say that almost every debate is made worse by
media coverage, and the reason for that is there is
a tendency in journalism schools to train people to establish
the fairness of their own reporting by doing point counterpoint,
by saying, here's one side, here's the other side, and
this discussion will go on. That's a very very typical
(10:39):
kind of reporting. What that does. And I'll take the
part of this debate I've been most involved in, which
is the evolution versus so called creationism debate. What that
does is it takes an idea that has virtually no
standing within the scientific community, creationism or intelligent design, and
it lifts it up as co equal point of view
(11:01):
with the overwhelming scientific consensus behind evolution. So when you
say here are the two sides, make up your own mind,
you're really not being fair. Um, you really should be said,
And I'll give you a quick example of this. The
Ohio Board of Education UH I think the year was
two thousand and two was involved in trying to decide
whether to adopt curriculum standards for science that included some
(11:25):
lessons on what's something called intelligent design, which I would
identify as a kind of creationism. So they decided to
have a debate public debate at the board meeting, to
which about a thousand people came in an auditory and Columbus,
Ohio UM. And there were two people speaking on behalf
of evolution, myself and a well known physicist named Lawrence Krauss,
and it is an author as well, And there were
(11:47):
two people from the pro intelligent design think tank in
Seattle called the Discovery Institute, So it was two onto.
The best line of the debate was from Lawrence and
he got up there to begin his brief present, and
he said, the audience is getting a false idea of
the nature of this debate because we have two scientists
up here against two people from the Discovery Institute. We
(12:11):
should really have one person from the Discovery Institute on
that side and ten thousand scientists over here, and that
would give them a realistic view of the division of
opinion within the scientific community. So this point counterpoint thing,
it's a nice device. It establishes you as a fair journalism,
but very often it takes ideas that have no legitimate
scientific standing and elevates them and gives them a status
(12:34):
they don't deserve. What do you say to people who
may be tempted to come and see you speak at
one day university, but are people of faith? Well? What
I tell them, And I try not to put my
own religious police front and center. Um, But the fact
of the matter is that I'm a practicing Roman Catholic,
(12:54):
and in terms of faith and science, I think this
is something that people of faith and people who reject
religious faith can agree upon, and that is it's important
for religious people to embrace and accept science as a
way of thinking and as a way of understanding the universe,
and it's important for people within the scientific enterprise to
(13:15):
respect people of faith. So I want to take a
very very provocative quote from a colleague and friend of mine,
and Richard Dawkins really is a friend of mine. We
agree on so many things about evolutionary biology, but we
completely disagree, of course, about religious faith. He's come up
(13:35):
with this quote. He's actually used in two different books,
so he really likes it. The universe we know about
from evolution has precisely the properties we should expect if
there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil,
and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And I
remember the first time I met Richard in person. I
(13:56):
read that quote out to him and I said, how
do you adage to get up in the morning if
that's what you think the universe is like. Richard looked
at me and said, the universe may not have a purpose,
but I do. The reason he says this is very simple,
and that is he regards the physical universe as cold, indifferent,
(14:16):
and maybe even hostile to life. If you doubt that,
go to Mars or go to the moon and you
will see this cold in different universe. But this puzzles me.
How does he know the universe lacks of purpose? Can
you imagine whether it would be like if I started
off my talk by saying, experiments I have done in
my laboratory have revealed to me the purpose of life.
(14:38):
We all know science doesn't tell us about purpose. How
then can science tell us about the absence of a purpose?
And that's the problem basically with Dawkins Lodging. Where we
get in trouble is when people use science as a
cudgel with which to beat back the idea of faith,
or when religious people go around tell scientists what they
(15:00):
ought to discover or what they ought not to discover.
We should recognize that there are certain questions that science
alone can answer, and religious faith should respect that. Do
you find when you speak to a group at one
day university that you start with a skeptical audience that
you have to win over? From my own experience that
(15:22):
I've done quite a few of these, now I start
with a confused audience. And what I mean by that
is they're not quite sure what tack this guy is
going to take. Um he seems to be a scientist,
so is he going to tell us that science proves God.
On the other hand, he's a religious person, so is
he going to say, well, uh, there are these fuzzy
areas where this spirit might reveal itself and so forth.
(15:47):
So when people ask me, how do you find room
for God in the evolutionary process, my answer is you
don't have to. And the reason for that is because
if God exists, then everything happens in nature, including the
evolutionary process, is part of a world of his own making,
So we don't have to find a way in which
(16:08):
a divine can can come in and make things come
out in a particular way. Now you might ask rhetorically,
what kind of God could exist in a scientific world
in which nature acts according to orderly and predictable rules
that we in science study, describe and understand. That's a
good question, and the answer to that is a God
that fashioned a world that is rational and intelligible. And
(16:31):
as scientists we take it almost as an article of
faith that the world is understandable, and if we didn't
think that, we wouldn't be scientists, would be doing something else.
So I would argue that two people of faith, God
shouldn't be seen as the antithesis of scientific reason. It
can be understood as the reason why science works in
the first place. How did the crowd or the audience
(16:54):
at One Day University differ from the experience of teaching
students that Brown University. Well, nobody at One Day University
ever asked me is that going to be covered on
the test? Um? So that's so. So that's really the
first question, okay. Um. The other thing that that's interesting,
and I find this important, um is um. I teach
(17:14):
very large classes in introductory biology at my university, and
I teach uh much smaller seminar type classes in uh
selling molecular biology, which is my field. And one of
the things that I find is that the my college students,
if they don't quite get something that I've gone over,
they'll figure, well, I'll get that later. I'll find it
(17:36):
in the textbook. I'll ask him a question. The difference
with the One day University crowd, and I'm really quite
serious about this, is there in the moment they want
to get it all right away, because they're moving from
a talk on a different subject, very different subject that
preceded me, to a talk on a very different subject
that's gonna follow me. So they're gonna hear about science
(17:58):
and religion. But then they're gonna hear about psychology, or
they're going to hear about how to make better decisions
in your business, or they're going to hear about films
that changed American history, um intellectually in many respects. One
day university requires them to be more agile than a
student who's hearing a series of lectures on chemistry, biochemistry, physics,
and computer science. And that makes them, uh in a
(18:22):
way interesting and challenging. And the other thing, of course,
is they bring a far greater diversity of experience to
these events, and the questions I get afterwards are absolutely marvels. Yeah,
I was gonna ask you about the questions that you
get afterwards. What are a couple of the best questions
you've had from a one day university. Well, a couple
of them are that you're practicing scientists, you you go
(18:44):
to scientific meetings, you're off certain scientific societies. When you
came out of the closet as a person of faith,
that this effect your reputation the scientific community. And the
quick answer to that is no. Lots of other people
came up to me within the scientific community and said,
either I share your your beliefs, or I don't share
your beliefs. I'm an agnostic, or I'm an atheist, but
(19:06):
I really appreciate your message that people of faith should
embrace and support science. Um. Other questions basically involve things like, um,
you seem like a reasonable person. How can any smart
guy be a person of faith? I mean, you know,
And so there are a lot of people who come
there basically wanting to hear a talk based on science
(19:27):
against religious faith. And then there are other people. Well,
how do you answer that question? Oh? Well, the answer
is the science is by far the best tool we
have for asking questions about the material world. It's worked great,
It's given us the civilization we have. It's open to
window on the cosmos, broadly construed that that no other
(19:47):
way of thinking, UM has ever given us. If I
thought science could answer all questions that matter, then um,
I wouldn't think there'd be any any room for religious faith.
But science can't ask a lot of the most basic
questions that you see mold over in the writings of
Aristotle and Plato. Just to take a couple of examples,
(20:08):
what is the good life? What is the life worth lived?
What is right? What is moral what is incumbent upon
me in terms of my obligation towards my fellow human being.
I think we can get better answers to those questions
that are informed by science, but I don't think science
answers those questions, and that's why I think other ways
of thinking, including philosophy and even theology, are necessary. Do
(20:30):
you find that there's a difference in the way you're
received according to where you speak, especially when it comes
to evolution, which is a more charged issue in some
parts of the country than in others. Well, I have
to tell you something, um, and that is in the
one day university crowd, no. And the reason for that,
quite frankly, is one day university tends to draw literate,
(20:54):
highly educated, engage people, and I don't see a regional difference. Now.
One of the things I can tell you is a
lot of my university speaking, which goes around all over
the country, will occasionally go um into universities that draw
students predominantly from fundamentalists and religious backgrounds, and in those
(21:16):
cases it is a challenge to defuse um sort of
the anxiety, if you want to call it, or perhaps
even the hostility with which they might come to a
special lecture. Uh, let them know. I don't wear horns.
I'm not out to rob them of a religious faith.
But what I am out to do is to convince
them that, um, that we have two gifts from God,
(21:40):
faith and reason. Religion is the child of faith. Science
is the child of reason. And if God is real,
those two things could be compatible. And if I can
get them thinking along those lines, I think that I've
won the day. Thank you very much my pleasure. I'm
(22:03):
Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign off on our website
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access over six hundred full length video lectures from the
world's finest professors.
A warm Miami one Day. You welcome for Professor Kenneth Miller.
The Science of Happy Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern Medicine,
Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War, The artistic genius Michel Angeli,
when Intuition fa Turning points that changed American mystic psychology
(00:21):
of Religious One Day University. The most acclaimed and popular
professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, fascinating conversations. Hi,
I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn. Thank you very much. I'm
(00:45):
a cell biologist. I do a lot of my work
with the electron microscope. But one of the reasons I'm
here is because a number of years ago, a former
student of mine drew me into the public sphere by
a very provocative question, how did like to help me
write a high school biology book? My name is Ken
Miller and professor of biology at Brown University in Providence,
(01:07):
Rhode Island. One of the first things I discovered when
I started to write biology textbooks is that they were attacked,
and they were attacked because they dare to include a
topic called evolution, which I, as a biologist, regard as
the absolute centerpiece of the biological sciences. So let me
ask you first about the basic premise behind your lecture,
(01:29):
which is science versus faith, addressing history's oldest debate. Can
science and religion coexist or are they inevitably locked in conflict.
I think it's pretty obvious that anybody looks around that
science of religion do coexist and in fact, and this
is something that that has always struck me. Science as
(01:51):
we know it today developed in Christian Western Europe. And
that's not necessarily because Western Europe was more advanced than
other civilizations. You can make a very good argument that
the Chinese civilization of what we call the Middle Ages
was far advanced over anything in Europe. But when you
look at the Chinese philosophical and religious traditions, they tend
(02:14):
to emphasize the unity of human beings with nature. The
Christian tradition taught basically that humans are set apart from nature,
that we stand apart. Now, as a biologist, i'd go
more with the Eastern style. But the interesting thing is
the idea of setting oneself apart as an objective observer
is actually the very basis for Western science, and in fact,
(02:37):
um what we called for a long time natural philosophy
and what we now call science was practiced by many
in the Renaissance and post Renaissance as a way of
affirming the glory of God. The modern science of genetics
as we know today was invented by Gregor Mendel, who
in fact was a priest, was a religious person, and
(02:58):
I've often heard some of my colleagues say, well, that's
because he grew up poor and the only way to
get decent education was to go into the ministry. But
the fact of the matter is that when father Mendel
had finished the scientific work which really did found the
modern science of genetics um, he didn't leave the priesthood.
He actually continued and became the abbey of the monastery St.
(03:18):
Thomas and bruin Um, and therefore he continued his religious life.
So this is a person in a deep religious commitment
and made a major scientific contribution. So not only can
religion science coexist in many ways. Religious faith and the
faith in meaning, order, purpose, and value is what gave
rise to the scientific tradition as we know it. Is
(03:40):
there a problem here that we tend to see everything
in modern society is either or Either you're in favor
of science, or you're in favor of religion. Well, I
think so, and I think that tendency to see things
as an either or or also infects the scientific community. Uh.
An awful lot of my colleague are profoundly hostile to religion. Now,
(04:03):
they might say they have darned good reason for it,
because when they see popular movements against the teaching of
certain scientific ideas in schools, inevitably those are led by
religious people. So many of my colleagues say, well, I'm
anti religious, largely as a matter of self defense, and
to some extent um, I can certainly understand that. Many
(04:24):
times people who insist that science and faith can coexist
are slurred by being called compatible lists, as if you
have to water down science to make it amenable to
religious faith. I don't think you do, and an awful
lot of other scientists don't think so either. Are we
really talking not about a clash between science or the
(04:45):
theory of evolution and religion, but a clash between fundamentalists
of both sides, fundamentalists who refuse to accept UH evolution
and fundamentalists atheists who refuse to accept the idea that
religious people can be intelligent. The first thing is yes,
in many cases, in many debates on various subjects, and
(05:08):
this is one the two extremes basically tend to validate
each other, which is the scientific materialistic extremists say, look
at those idiots on the other side and what they believe.
And and then the religious fundamentalists who are extremists on
the other side point to them and say, look at
what they want to do. They want to tell us
the teaching our children about faith is a form of
(05:29):
child abuse. Um. They want to close the churches and
do all these other sorts of things. Um. So yes,
they do validate each other. I want to give you
another statement from a religious person. This is now retired
Pope Benedict sixteen. When he was still pope, he was
quartered by a group of Italian journalists and he was asked,
is it possible for someone to be a Christian and
(05:51):
also to accept evolution? And he replied, and here's here's
the essence of his quote. Now he speaks in sort
of a popish style. The contray asked here is an
absurdity because there are many scientific tests in favor of evolution,
which appears as a reality that we must see and
enriches our understanding of life and being. That's a little complex.
(06:11):
So if you want to sort it out for you,
do what I do. Go to that publication that always
takes complex issues and makes them simple. You know what
I mean. It's the New York Post Evolution and God
do mix Pope. End of story. During your lecture, you
talk quite a bit about evolution and the debate over evolution.
(06:31):
Why well I do that for? I guess two or
three reasons. One is, I'm a biologist, so this is
an area of science that's near and dear to me.
A second one is um I write textbooks, and I'm
the co author of the most widely used high school
biology textbook in the country. It's used in all fifty
states and around the United States. When there have been movements,
(06:53):
as there have been in many states in school districts
to strike the teaching of evolution from the curriculum, to
put warning labels on textbooks telling students evolution is just
a theory, or in one school district, even to glue
the pages of the textbook together in the evolution section
so that students would not have to read them. It's
(07:14):
very often been my own textbook, so therefore I have
a lot of experience in pushing back against these issues.
And finally, um, one of the major battles, legal battles
we had about evolution in this country was a court
case in two thousand five that attracted an enormous amount
of attention. It was called Kids Miller versus Dover, and
I was uh the lead witness in that trial. In
(07:40):
the year two thousand four, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania,
small town in eastern Pennsylvania, voted to adopt an intelligent
design curriculum as part of their biology classes. Intelligent design
is sort of a refashioned creationism that argues that some
force outside of nature was responsible for the complexity of
(08:03):
living things and what happened. They asked the teachers to
prepare an intelligent design curriculum. The four science teachers Dover
is a small town, at the risk of losing their jobs.
The four science teachers at Dover High School said, we
will not do this. This is not science. So the
school board think of the horror of a board doing this.
The school board wrote their own lesson on intelligent design.
(08:25):
They gave it to the teachers. They said, well, at
least read it to the kids. And once again the
teacher said no. So on a certain day in two
thousand four, the superintendent and the assistant superintendent had to
go into the classroom and teach all the biology lessons
that day on intelligent design, while the teachers literally stood
outside in the hallway wanting to take no part of that. Well,
(08:46):
what happened was the next day, eleven parents of students
in those classes went to federal court in Harrisburg and
they swore out a First Amendment lawsuit against the Dover
Area Board, arguing that their First Amendment rights had been
by elated by having an institution of the state. That's
what a school board is impose a particular religious point
of view in a publicly funded school um. The trial
(09:10):
lasted for seven weeks. It was extensively covered in the press.
My cross examination went on for nine and a half hours.
So I had to do something that I had never
done in my career as a college professor, which is
to cancel the scheduled lecture. But something interesting happened when
I finally did fly back. It was late in the afternoon,
(09:30):
hopped in my car and I switched on National Public radio,
and to my surprise, the first thing that came on
was the trial, and they had a report on it,
and the lead line was it's God versus Science in
a Pennsylvania courtroom. And the reason I found that surprising
was because of the expert witnesses. Three of the five
were people of faith. Of the eleven plaintiffs, all but
(09:54):
two were Christians, and two of them actually ran a
summer Bible camp. So these were the plaintiffs, and they
were not anti God. They were anti having a particular
view of God dressed up and pretended to be science.
This debate about science versus faith? Has it been made
worse by media coverage? Has it been sensationalized? I'd like
(10:17):
to say that almost every debate is made worse by
media coverage, and the reason for that is there is
a tendency in journalism schools to train people to establish
the fairness of their own reporting by doing point counterpoint,
by saying, here's one side, here's the other side, and
this discussion will go on. That's a very very typical
(10:39):
kind of reporting. What that does. And I'll take the
part of this debate I've been most involved in, which
is the evolution versus so called creationism debate. What that
does is it takes an idea that has virtually no
standing within the scientific community, creationism or intelligent design, and
it lifts it up as co equal point of view
(11:01):
with the overwhelming scientific consensus behind evolution. So when you
say here are the two sides, make up your own mind,
you're really not being fair. Um, you really should be said,
And I'll give you a quick example of this. The
Ohio Board of Education UH I think the year was
two thousand and two was involved in trying to decide
whether to adopt curriculum standards for science that included some
(11:25):
lessons on what's something called intelligent design, which I would
identify as a kind of creationism. So they decided to
have a debate public debate at the board meeting, to
which about a thousand people came in an auditory and Columbus,
Ohio UM. And there were two people speaking on behalf
of evolution, myself and a well known physicist named Lawrence Krauss,
and it is an author as well, And there were
(11:47):
two people from the pro intelligent design think tank in
Seattle called the Discovery Institute, So it was two onto.
The best line of the debate was from Lawrence and
he got up there to begin his brief present, and
he said, the audience is getting a false idea of
the nature of this debate because we have two scientists
up here against two people from the Discovery Institute. We
(12:11):
should really have one person from the Discovery Institute on
that side and ten thousand scientists over here, and that
would give them a realistic view of the division of
opinion within the scientific community. So this point counterpoint thing,
it's a nice device. It establishes you as a fair journalism,
but very often it takes ideas that have no legitimate
scientific standing and elevates them and gives them a status
(12:34):
they don't deserve. What do you say to people who
may be tempted to come and see you speak at
one day university, but are people of faith? Well? What
I tell them, And I try not to put my
own religious police front and center. Um, But the fact
of the matter is that I'm a practicing Roman Catholic,
(12:54):
and in terms of faith and science, I think this
is something that people of faith and people who reject
religious faith can agree upon, and that is it's important
for religious people to embrace and accept science as a
way of thinking and as a way of understanding the universe,
and it's important for people within the scientific enterprise to
(13:15):
respect people of faith. So I want to take a
very very provocative quote from a colleague and friend of mine,
and Richard Dawkins really is a friend of mine. We
agree on so many things about evolutionary biology, but we
completely disagree, of course, about religious faith. He's come up
(13:35):
with this quote. He's actually used in two different books,
so he really likes it. The universe we know about
from evolution has precisely the properties we should expect if
there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil,
and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And I
remember the first time I met Richard in person. I
(13:56):
read that quote out to him and I said, how
do you adage to get up in the morning if
that's what you think the universe is like. Richard looked
at me and said, the universe may not have a purpose,
but I do. The reason he says this is very simple,
and that is he regards the physical universe as cold, indifferent,
(14:16):
and maybe even hostile to life. If you doubt that,
go to Mars or go to the moon and you
will see this cold in different universe. But this puzzles me.
How does he know the universe lacks of purpose? Can
you imagine whether it would be like if I started
off my talk by saying, experiments I have done in
my laboratory have revealed to me the purpose of life.
(14:38):
We all know science doesn't tell us about purpose. How
then can science tell us about the absence of a purpose?
And that's the problem basically with Dawkins Lodging. Where we
get in trouble is when people use science as a
cudgel with which to beat back the idea of faith,
or when religious people go around tell scientists what they
(15:00):
ought to discover or what they ought not to discover.
We should recognize that there are certain questions that science
alone can answer, and religious faith should respect that. Do
you find when you speak to a group at one
day university that you start with a skeptical audience that
you have to win over? From my own experience that
(15:22):
I've done quite a few of these, now I start
with a confused audience. And what I mean by that
is they're not quite sure what tack this guy is
going to take. Um he seems to be a scientist,
so is he going to tell us that science proves God.
On the other hand, he's a religious person, so is
he going to say, well, uh, there are these fuzzy
areas where this spirit might reveal itself and so forth.
(15:47):
So when people ask me, how do you find room
for God in the evolutionary process, my answer is you
don't have to. And the reason for that is because
if God exists, then everything happens in nature, including the
evolutionary process, is part of a world of his own making,
So we don't have to find a way in which
(16:08):
a divine can can come in and make things come
out in a particular way. Now you might ask rhetorically,
what kind of God could exist in a scientific world
in which nature acts according to orderly and predictable rules
that we in science study, describe and understand. That's a
good question, and the answer to that is a God
that fashioned a world that is rational and intelligible. And
(16:31):
as scientists we take it almost as an article of
faith that the world is understandable, and if we didn't
think that, we wouldn't be scientists, would be doing something else.
So I would argue that two people of faith, God
shouldn't be seen as the antithesis of scientific reason. It
can be understood as the reason why science works in
the first place. How did the crowd or the audience
(16:54):
at One Day University differ from the experience of teaching
students that Brown University. Well, nobody at One Day University
ever asked me is that going to be covered on
the test? Um? So that's so. So that's really the
first question, okay. Um. The other thing that that's interesting,
and I find this important, um is um. I teach
(17:14):
very large classes in introductory biology at my university, and
I teach uh much smaller seminar type classes in uh
selling molecular biology, which is my field. And one of
the things that I find is that the my college students,
if they don't quite get something that I've gone over,
they'll figure, well, I'll get that later. I'll find it
(17:36):
in the textbook. I'll ask him a question. The difference
with the One day University crowd, and I'm really quite
serious about this, is there in the moment they want
to get it all right away, because they're moving from
a talk on a different subject, very different subject that
preceded me, to a talk on a very different subject
that's gonna follow me. So they're gonna hear about science
(17:58):
and religion. But then they're gonna hear about psychology, or
they're going to hear about how to make better decisions
in your business, or they're going to hear about films
that changed American history, um intellectually in many respects. One
day university requires them to be more agile than a
student who's hearing a series of lectures on chemistry, biochemistry, physics,
and computer science. And that makes them, uh in a
(18:22):
way interesting and challenging. And the other thing, of course,
is they bring a far greater diversity of experience to
these events, and the questions I get afterwards are absolutely marvels. Yeah,
I was gonna ask you about the questions that you
get afterwards. What are a couple of the best questions
you've had from a one day university. Well, a couple
of them are that you're practicing scientists, you you go
(18:44):
to scientific meetings, you're off certain scientific societies. When you
came out of the closet as a person of faith,
that this effect your reputation the scientific community. And the
quick answer to that is no. Lots of other people
came up to me within the scientific community and said,
either I share your your beliefs, or I don't share
your beliefs. I'm an agnostic, or I'm an atheist, but
(19:06):
I really appreciate your message that people of faith should
embrace and support science. Um. Other questions basically involve things like, um,
you seem like a reasonable person. How can any smart
guy be a person of faith? I mean, you know,
And so there are a lot of people who come
there basically wanting to hear a talk based on science
(19:27):
against religious faith. And then there are other people. Well,
how do you answer that question? Oh? Well, the answer
is the science is by far the best tool we
have for asking questions about the material world. It's worked great,
It's given us the civilization we have. It's open to
window on the cosmos, broadly construed that that no other
(19:47):
way of thinking, UM has ever given us. If I
thought science could answer all questions that matter, then um,
I wouldn't think there'd be any any room for religious faith.
But science can't ask a lot of the most basic
questions that you see mold over in the writings of
Aristotle and Plato. Just to take a couple of examples,
(20:08):
what is the good life? What is the life worth lived?
What is right? What is moral what is incumbent upon
me in terms of my obligation towards my fellow human being.
I think we can get better answers to those questions
that are informed by science, but I don't think science
answers those questions, and that's why I think other ways
of thinking, including philosophy and even theology, are necessary. Do
(20:30):
you find that there's a difference in the way you're
received according to where you speak, especially when it comes
to evolution, which is a more charged issue in some
parts of the country than in others. Well, I have
to tell you something, um, and that is in the
one day university crowd, no. And the reason for that,
quite frankly, is one day university tends to draw literate,
(20:54):
highly educated, engage people, and I don't see a regional difference. Now.
One of the things I can tell you is a
lot of my university speaking, which goes around all over
the country, will occasionally go um into universities that draw
students predominantly from fundamentalists and religious backgrounds, and in those
(21:16):
cases it is a challenge to defuse um sort of
the anxiety, if you want to call it, or perhaps
even the hostility with which they might come to a
special lecture. Uh, let them know. I don't wear horns.
I'm not out to rob them of a religious faith.
But what I am out to do is to convince
them that, um, that we have two gifts from God,
(21:40):
faith and reason. Religion is the child of faith. Science
is the child of reason. And if God is real,
those two things could be compatible. And if I can
get them thinking along those lines, I think that I've
won the day. Thank you very much my pleasure. I'm
(22:03):
Richard Davis. Thanks for listening. Sign off on our website
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