Science and Nonbelief

Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, June, 2007 by Charles E. Chaffey

SCIENCE AND NONBELIEF by Taner Edis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. xxii + 287 pages, bibliography, index. Hardcover; $65.00. ISBN: 9780313330780.

Nonbelief, the belief that there is no God, is under attack from believers in God; they use arguments that include some based on science. To defend nonbelief, this book has been written by theoretical physicist Taner Edis, associate professor of physics at Truman State University (Kirksville, MO), whose extensive prior publications on the secularist tradition in science contrast it especially with ideas from Islam and Christianity.

This book, in the series Greenwood Guides to Science and Religion, opens with the series editor, Richard Olson, stating a goal: to explore interactions between the scientific and the religious across space, time and culture, in volumes, each with three supplements. The first supplement is a chronology of events, which includes the names or writings of prominent scholars, but not those of Jesus and Mohammed. The second is a set of primary documents, for which Edis has chosen six, which generally argue that in the light of modern science, belief in religion or the paranormal is mistaken or harmful. The third is an extensive annotated bibliography, which includes 236 works, each with one or two sometimes critical sentences summing up their content. Many of the works support nonbelief or liberal theology; others by Christians or Muslims oppose evolution or advocate creationism or intelligent design. However, a formidable challenge to nonbelief is ignored, by the exclusion of writers such as Darrell R. Falk, George L. Murphy, or Richard T. Wright, who integrate sound science and Christian faith.

The seven chapters, illustrated by eleven photographs, ten diagrams, and four cartoons, begin with the history of "Science, philosophy and religious doubt," from antiquity through medieval times to today. Edis asserts that the top-down view of nature being controlled by a deity has been replaced by a bottom-up description in which physical processes determine biological ones, which in turn are a sufficient cause for human thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Three chapters follow, focusing on physics, biology, and science of the human mind. The Big Bang is not regarded as the moment when the universe began but as a point in continuous spacetime. Law and randomness interact to make apparent anthropic coincidences not remarkable. In biological evolution, order forms spontaneously in the universe, a system far from equilibrium; its maximum possible entropy grows, an idea in conflict with a fixed maximum in entropy for an isolated system attaining equilibrium. Likewise, to explain thought and activity of the human mind without invoking anything spiritual like a soul, an analogy with a computer is useful, but in it, the distinction between hardware and software blurs for a mainframe compared to a microcomputer, and algorithms for artificial neural networks differ greatly from people learning.

Three final chapters relate broadly to the social sciences. "The fringes of science" criticizes beliefs in scriptural miracles, parapsychology, and unidentified flying objects. Next, materialistic explanations of religion are offered, but none is satisfactory for why "humans seem to be predisposed to believe in powerful supernatural agents." To close, Edis shows how nonbelievers' understanding of science should influence their actions, both individually in morality, and collectively in politics; neither science nor religion leads to a definite set of moral principles, moral rules of the religions being different. "Separate spheres" for science and religion (non-overlapping magisteria) is indefensible intellectually, but useful politically to ally secularists and liberal believers against the undermining of integrity of science education or freedom in research, by religious conservatives.

This book, which defends nonbelief effectively from some attacks based on science (particularly those using intelligent design, anthropic principles or paranormal phenomena), could influence an inquirer to think that the claims of Christianity are false. Edis seeks to protect the scientific community's ability to benefit society, both against restrictions coming from religious conservatives, and against recognition of pseudoscientific ideas. The committed Christian reader could be helped to identify arguments to avoid in apologetics, and unresolved conflicts between science and faith.

Reviewed by Charles E. Chaffey, Adjunct Professor of Natural Science, Tyndale University College, Toronto, ON, Canada M2M 4B3.