Anaxagoras, one of the very earliest figures in the history of Western science, came to Athens from Ionia in 462 B.C. and became prominent as a teacher there. In 448 B.C. he was accused of impiety and atheism in his teaching and he was brought to trial. He was sentenced to death. However, his influential friend, Pericles, challenged the court and he was reprieved. Evidently, the potential for conflict with religious authority has existed ever since science, as we understand it, began. In varying degrees this has continued until the present time although the consequences of conflict have not always been so severe. Obviously, not all scientists would have been opponents of religion. Well known scientists have proclaimed belief in God, from Pythagoras to Einstein. Beyond that, over the centuries, any conflict between theism and materialism would have been irrelevant, for much of the time, to what was taking place in the advancement of science, even when science was being advanced. Even so, the religious establishment as for long pre-eminent and a scientific hypothesis might well fail to gain currency without the stamp of religion and might indeed involve persecution if it clashed with the theological fashion of the age. Galileo, as everyone knows, was brought before the Inquisition, convicted of heresy and punished. (He has recently been absolved by the Church.) Prudent scientists avoided confrontation - Newton took care to blend his science with religious orthodoxy (‘‘... in the beginning God created the atoms and the void...’’) which probably helped to gain acceptance of his science.
It is unquestionable that the sharpest challenge to religious doctrine came with the publication (and promotion by Huxley) of Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, and The Descent of Man in 1871. Although at first strongly resisted and still occasionally attacked, Darwin’s work is generally accepted as having established evolutionary biology and making it a matter, not of speculation, but of observation. Today the boot is on the other foot and religion reconciled with biological science rather than vice-versa And that is not easy. Indeed, it has been said that the hard line modern materialists are biologists and bishops (the modern mystics being the cosmologists and particle physicists). The earlier proviso must be repeated - there are theists among prominent modern biologists but the materialists have the higher profile. Currently Dr Richard Dawkins has been described as leading ‘‘... the vanguard of those who believe God has no place in science’’. He has recently engaged in public debates on this issue (at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and later at the Royal Society where it is fair to note he was opposed on each occasion by at least one bishop). Dawkins (and many others) take the view that a Darwinian cannot hold religious beliefs, but this attitude is not shared by all Darwinians.
One eminent dissenter (from the materialistic view) was Sir Alister Hardy, sometime Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford who died in 1985. He was a declared Darwinian and a theist. He determined to apply his science to theism, ‘‘to ... a theism derived empirically from the study of nature and human history’’. In the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, between 1963 and 1965 Hardy described his outlook in some detail. It was based on research and thought extending over twenty years or more. He was unable to accept the whole of orthodox Christian doctrine and he urged ‘‘....a science of theology and an experimental faith.’’ To these ends he set up a Religious Experience Research Unit (later called the Alister Hardy Research Centre) to promote and prosecute his methods of approach to a ‘‘natural theology’’. The Centre is housed at Westminster College, Oxford, from which reports of its work emanate from time to time.
Do the issues raised here relate to the interests of members of the Galton Institute? Galton himself, a cousin of Darwin, was certainly a Darwinian, but if he were alive at the time he might well have joined Hardy as an empirical natural theologian. He did, after all, conduct an investigation into the efficacy of prayer.
H B Miles
References:
Dawkins, R. (1989). The Selfish Gene. O.U.P.
Dawkins, R. (1990). The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books.
Galton, F. (1872). Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer. Fortnightly Review.
Hardy, A.C. (1981). The Spiritual Nature of Man. O.U.P.
Hardy, A.C. (1984). Darwin and the Spirit of Man, London; Collins.
Religious Experimental Research Unit. (1970-75). Annual Progress Reports. Oxford; Manchester College.