In his book God’s Undertaker John Lennox notes the views of some top scientists who disparage religion. He cites Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, where Lennox himself is Professor in Mathematics, while also being Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. Atkins states:
Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As science discarded its chrysalis to become its present butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence. Only the religious – among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the underinformed – hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or of the universe of experience, that science can never hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered a barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that reductionism will fail are pessimism on the part of scientists and fear in the minds of the religious.
Lennox also cites Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg:
The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion… Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.
Richard Dawkins’ contempt for religion is familiar:
I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.
Noting that some religious people are scientists who have won the Nobel Prize, Lennox rightly questions whether it is true that all religious people can be written off as prejudiced and underinformed. Rhetorically, he asks, “Are they really pinning their hopes on finding a dark corner of the universe that science can never hope to illuminate?”
Certainly the view that nature is all that there is, that there is no transcendence, is being vigorously promoted in our day. But Lennox rejoins,
So is naturalism actually demanded by science? Or is it just conceivable that naturalism is a philosophy that is brought to science, more than something that is entailed by science? Could it even be, dare one ask, more like an expression of faith, akin to religious faith? One might at least be forgiven for thinking that from the way in which those who dare ask such questions are sometimes treated. Like religious heretics of a former age they may suffer a form of martyrdom by the cutting off of their grants (9).
Posted July 6, 2010
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