How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2000 by Ted Peters

How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science.

By Michael Shermer. W. H. Freeman, 302 pp., $24.95.

HOW DO WE believe, especially believe in God? Do we believe for rational reasons? Is a leap of faith rational or irrational? If science has a patent on reasoning, and if religious faith is denied a license to use reason, then faith gets stuck with what is not rational. Because many skeptics assume that religion has nothing to do with reason, for them faith or lack of faith is the product of a choice based on emotions.

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, argues that some people believe in God "because they `see' a pattern of God's presence in the world [that is, for intellectual or `empirical' reasons] ... and ... because such belief brings comfort [that is, for emotional reasons]." He finds these reasons insufficient. Shermer believes in science, he says, and this belief liberates him from religion. "Finding science and discovering glorious contingency was remarkably empowering and liberating. It gave me a sense of joy and freedom."

We have many options for picturing the relationship between religion and science these days. In the popular mind, the warfare model dominates. Science is pictured as the young and vibrant champion of intellectual honesty, fighting valiantly for the sake of the truth. Religion is pictured as old-fashioned, atavistic and dogmatic, defending superstition by burning scientific martyrs at the stake.

A different model has dominated the academy since the middle of the 20th century. It is what I call the two-language view. Science is said to speak the language of fact, while religion speaks the language of value. Science deals with natural truths, and religion deals with personal meaning. Science employs empirical evidence, and religion relies upon intuitive faith. The two-language view is championed by both scientists and theologians, by both Albert Einstein and Karl Barth. Stephen Jay Gould, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, describes the science-religion relationship in terms of NOMA, "non-overlapping magisterial authorities."

Shermer appears to agree with this view, calling it the "separate worlds model." Science and religion are "separate spheres of knowledge," he writes, "divided by, more than anything else, a difference in methodologies.... Because we live in an Age of Science and no longer in an Age of Faith, temptations abound to use science to bolster faith. Such attempts at reconciling science and religion always fail for the fundamental reason that religion ultimately depends on faith. The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science." But a closer look at Schermer shows that he operates with a model different from the separate-worlds view. I call this the scientific imperialist model.

Scientific imperialism is a variant of the warfare model, in which science wins the war by providing the explanation for religion. Rather than letting religion explain its own foundations, science steps in to explain them better. Shermer's plan is to use the various sciences to explain "why religion and belief in God evolved in human societies." By appeal to evolutionary biology (actually sociobiology) he tries to provide what he calls "ultimate causes" to explain why religion exists.

If he were operating with the two-language model in which science respects the language of religion and vice versa, then he would allow religious reflection--that is, theology--to provide its own ultimate explanation. Shermer argues that religion is a social institution resulting from evolutionary development for the purpose of promoting myths and encouraging altruism. Religion functions to enforce social rules such as kin altruism in the service of genetic adaptation according to the principle of evolutionary fitness. It makes its adherents more fit to survive.

Why does religion take the form it does, and why do religious people believe in God? Shermer's answer is that the human impulse to interpret our lives meaningfully leads to identifying patterns of divine activity in nature that do not in fact exist. He begins with an anthropological presupposition: human beings seek patterns. Then he defines divinity: "God is a pattern, an explanation for our universe, our world, and ourselves." Clearly, Shermer is trying to provide a scientific explanation for the religious explanation of our universe, our world and ourselves. Like religion, Shermer is in the business of offering explanations, but he is one up because he can explain religious belief in God in terms of evolution.

Is Shermer's presupposition right? Do we human beings chase down patterns? Yes, it seems we do. In fact, pattern-seeking could be judged as essential to all that humans do--in science as well as religion. "Science has been one long struggle to tame the contingent beast by finding necessitating laws that govern nature," Shermer declares. We could therefore define science as the search for patterns--what Cambridge cosmologist John Barrow calls "compressions." And the patterns it discovers provide predictability. Laws of nature can be formulated and united with one another by the presumed pattern of all patterns, a universal mathematical structure. Science is the preeminent example of human pattern-seeking.