God's Universe

Owen Gingerich. God's Universe, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

Owen Gingerich is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and the History of Science at Harvard. Not too bad a place to be from, if you're a scientist. He is also a professing Christian, of Mennonite extraction. In a brief and yet lucidly written book, Gingerich opines on the relationship of faith and science. The book, which carries a foreword by Harvard UniversityPastor, Peter Gomes, is a compilation of three lectures given as part of Harvard's prestigious William Belden Noble Lectureship.

I must confess that I just started reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and the difference between the books are like night and day. Where Gingerich speaks with humility and reason, Dawkins blurts out ridicule and sarcasm. The book is composed of three lectures: "Is Mediocrity a Good Idea?" "Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?" Finally, he speaks of "Questions Without Answers."

In the first lecture he speaks of the principle of mediocrity, that is the Copernican Principle, which asserts that scientific progress rests on the idea that "everything around us is commonplace in the universe, that we are average beings in a run-of the-mill planetary system in an average galaxy probably populated by scores of other mediocrities" (pp. 14-15). If I understand him correctly, it's no wonder that the Star Ship Enterprise continually found worlds just like ours. The problem with the theory, Gingerich points out, is that it never quite works as an explanation of why things are the way they are. There are a lot of unique things in our own world.

As Gingerich, who affirms the theory of evolution, human evolution is suggestive of something more than simply an accident. And so, in lecture two, he asks the question of design, but with a small d. This is not Intelligent Design the political ideology masquerading as science, but the reasoned enquiry of the wonder of the universe. When you look at the whole picture, everything seems to work just the way they're supposed to work. If things were off, just a bit none of this would have happened. So, maybe it's possible to posit a designer, an intellect who fashioned things. Borrowing from Aristotle, Gingerich makes the helpful distinction between final and effective causes. Science, exploring the how question, focuses on effective causes. Religion and philosophy is a metaphysic, and it is concerned with final causes -- meaning and purpose. Whereas Dawkins suggests a meaningless universe, Gingerich seems to think that things are working in ways that suggest something more, indeed that there is purpose and that at least for this world, things lead to humanity as the crown jewel of creation/evolution. He concludes his lecture saying with Galileo: "So just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, I also believe that the Book of Nature, in all its astonishing detail -- the blade of grass, the missing mass five, or the incredible intricacy of DNA -- suggests a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist" (p. 79).

Finally, in the third lecture he addresses "Questions without Answers." Science, he says likes questions with probably answers. Faith, is more comfortable with questions without answers. It is good that science is always looking for answers to questions, that is it's role. Religion, on the other hand, can be more comfortable with answerless questions, for we take our understandings humbly by faith (or at least we should). Ultimately, this is a chapter about what it means to be human. What we know as homo sapiens sapiens was anatomically human before it was human as we are. It is language that makes the difference. Language makes culture possible. Again, everything seems to be pointing in this direction. Oh, of course there are difficulties, but it is suggestive and that's what's important. We live in a dappled universe, one that's a mixture of divine design and complete freedom. And that's a good thing, really.

This is a book worth reading. It never claims absolute proof. It never ridicules. It is gracious and enlightening. Does it answer all the questions we might have? No, for there are questions without answers, and we must be content with the mysteries. Science and faith are not enemies, they're just different.

Comments

beepbeepitsme said…
RE: the universe
Do Atheists Deny The Existence Of The Divine?
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2007/01/do-atheists-deny-existence-of-divine.html

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