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

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2000 by Ted Peters

Though his subtitle indicates that his book belongs in the field of science and religion, Shermer fails to include footnotes or index references to the leading scholars in this field over the past 30-some years: Carol Albright, Ian Barbour, Wire Drees, John Haught, Philip Hefner, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Huston Smith and the like. He grants one passing allusion to Nancey Murphy and Robert John Russell, citing not their published books but a newspaper article quoting them. He reports no reading of journals such as Zygon, CTNS Bulletin or even Science and Spirit. How could an author possibly feel justified in publishing a book with the subtitle "The Search for God in an Age of Science" without consulting the world's experts on his topic?

Today's scholars in the emerging field of science and religion grapple theologically with the religious consequences of the new understandings of nature coming from scientific research. The field of theology, understood in Anselm's terms as "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum), has always sought dear justification for belief rather than relying upon emotion, magic or superstition. Shermer lumps superstition, cargo cults, UFO suicide cults, messianism and millennialism with historical religion without making any distinctions between them. But he would have to distinguish them had he read even minimally in the field in which he is writing. Why did he avoid this?

Perhaps the answer can be found in an aspect of the agnosticism to which he claims adherence. Agnosticism is an intellectually respectable position. It can indicate intellectual honesty in the face of very perplexing questions regarding the nature of reality. Shermer cites Thomas Huxley on agnosticism, saying "it is not a creed but a method" that follows reason as far as it can carry one without other considerations. Agnosticism as a method says that we should withhold certainty when we lack what "logically justifies" certainty. So far, so good. Yet the word itself literally means "without knowledge." It shares the root of the words "ignorance" and "ignoring"--the terms that best describe Shermer's book.

Reviewed by Ted Peters, who teaches systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.