Not “vs” but “and” (so get over it).

I still occasionally come across talks entitled (to give but one example) “Religion vs Science: Can the two coexist?”; as of writing, the YouTube snippet of this lecture I stumbled upon had racked up 1.2M views. This title is fairly typical of a way of talking about science (somehow defined) and religion (somehow defined) that sees them as typically and inevitably in conflict. In its strongest form this conflict thesis is ahistorical (and in some cases anti-historical) taking this to be a steady state. It is the way things are now, and essentially the way they have always been, and it is the way they must always be. In its weaker forms there is often some acceptance that while this may not have been the way things were at some time in the past, the relationship inevitably developed into one of conflict and conflict is now the only possible way to describe the interaction of science and religion (or faith) by anyone who is in any sense mature in their thinking. This is so misconceived that it is difficult to know where to begin in refuting it. But let’s begin at an obvious place which will come as no surprise to any regular reader of these posts (you know who you are!).

The idea of an inevitable clash has been constantly undermined by the large numbers of serious people who, both now and in the past, have happily combined both a commitment to science (some at very exalted levels) and religion, specifically Christianity. My suspicion is that if you were familiar with Indian science you would find devout Hindus who were scientists, and in other parts of the world devout Muslims, similarly active in science. But I will stick with what I know best, and that form of religion that arguably played a vital role in the emergence of what we might call the experimental sciences. Because, as it happens, I am one such example.

I confess that during my career I was never particularly publicly prominent, I never chaired august scientific institutions, I influenced not one decision of national or international scientific public policy. But I was clearly a professional scientist, trained the way scientists are trained (a first degree in Physiology, PhD in Neurobiology, various postdoctoral jobs in other people’s labs), did all the things scientists do (as evidenced by the expected publications, many of which can be search for on the web and are open access), progressing as scientists progresses (I won a Welcome Trust Vision Research Fellowship earlyish in my career, set up my own lab, subsequently obtained substantive University posts, was a trainer of other doctoral scientists, etc). Yet I am also a Christian, and of kind some find to be most objectionable, variously labelled fundamentalist, evangelical, Bible-bashing and so on. It is true that occasionally a few other scientists tried to convince me of some basic contradiction between the two designations “scientist” and “Christian”. But a moment’s pause always demonstrated that the problem was with their definitions and modes of thought. Usually either their understanding of what science is and how it works was lacking (a surprisingly frequent occurrence even among scientists), or their familiarity with Biblical Christianity was low or non-existent. Caricatures of both science and Christianity are not hard to find and with them apparent contradictions and conflicts. But on closer inspection these turn out to be more apparent than real.

Note that I am not making the reverse mistake of claiming that it is impossible to find some who say that they personally find that there is a conflict between science and Christianity (like the lecturer mentioned at the outset), or that there are no examples of those who were “keen Christians” who report “losing their faith” because of science. What I am claiming is that there is ample evidence that this is neither necessary nor inevitable, and that I, with others, constitute that evidence. Because I have always worked in universities, I have always lived in University towns, and worshipped in churches found in such places. So it is perhaps not a surprise that there were always others around, who were educated to a similar level in science (although not always working as professional scientists) who like me found no obvious conflict in our personal thinking. There might be parts of the country where such creatures are thin on the ground. But I am neither rare or special. In my current church (which is admittedly large by UK standards, and is in a city with several universities) I can think of several science PhDs, across disciplines. Such is the contemporary scene I survey. But the reality is there have always been those who quite happily combine science and faith, without compromising either.

The historical situation is perhaps even clearer than either my personal case or the more general contemporary picture. This is slightly more contested ground, but those doing most of the contesting are often ignorant (sometimes wilfully so) of the actual history. Professional science as we know it today is a 19^th century development, but it emerged from 17^th century political, religious and philosophical ferments. Of particular interest are some of the key early players, particularly those who championed “experimental”, as opposed to “rational”, science. Experimental science in England (often called natural philosophy at the time) was actively promoted by such figures as Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), leading (at the time of the restoration of the Monarchy) to the establishment of The Royal Society of London in 1662. What is interesting about Bacon, and some of his acolytes like Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600-1662), is not merely their Christian sympathies, but the distinctly Puritan and Calvinistic framework that they operated within. This was even detectable in later characters like Robert Boyle, John Locke and even Isaac Newton (although Newton was famously heterodox in his theology). It was not merely that many of these men were shaped and educated in a world dominated by Protestant Christianity; many were themselves ardent believers (although by no means always Puritans), who saw in science as much as a theological exercise as anything else. Those named are not isolated examples; they could be multiplied. No conflict here then, at this early stage (at least not between science and religious belief).

There is another interesting historical example of peaceful coexistence worth noting: “The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences”, 1864/5. The date is significant. Signed by 717, including 66 Fellows of the Royal Society, this was a response to the furore that had raged following the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” in 1859. The Declaration made clear that the signatories regretted “..that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into … casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures”. This made no sense, because “physical science is not complete” (nor it might be added is our understanding of God’s revealed truth). Contradictions between science and the Bible should be left “side by side”, and ultimately would be reconcilable because there is only one world, and ultimately one source of truth (ie God). If (or when) we find contradictions between scientific and Biblical views, the problem is likely to be in either the evidence (which is only ever partial) or our interpretation of the evidence (which can be no more perfect than we are). But the wider point to be made here is that at a key juncture in the 19^th century, the notion that there was a necessary conflict between the two, was by no means the only, or perhaps even a majority view among scientists.

So can the two, science and religion (or faith, or belief) coexist? Personal, contemporary and historical considerations suggest that they have, they are, they can and they will. 

Friendship and its problems…

Arguably, like everyone else, I’ve been interested in friendship for as long as there has been a me. That’s why, at first blush, there’s not much of interest to be said about friendship. For most of us (there are exceptions, some of which are due to pathology) friendship just happens in childhood. We don’t particularly plan it or reflect on it, it’s just a part of life. But, as with much else, friendship soon becomes a bit more complicated. So complicated in fact that it has long been the subject of scholarly effort and debate, stretching all the way from Aristotle’s “Ethics”, to rather more recent brain scanning experiments. So on the one hand it would seem that friendship is a fairly basic and widespread aspect of human experience, but on the other that it’s more complicated than just a fact of our experience. And with complication comes a degree of controversy.

Writing in a column entitled “Why you don’t need friends” (Psychology Today, 2019), Daniel Marston argued that while “[S]ocial interactions are important” this was mainly so that we could meet our basic needs (by which he meant basic biological and practical needs). Beyond this is was “not essential that the social relationships move beyond that point” to what we might recognise as friendship. As it happens, Aristotle classified precisely this sort of utilitarian relationship as a form of friendship, although of a fairly inferior type. But Marston is not alone in thinking friendship might not be necessary, and even that it might not be helpful. It turns out that Christians, or at least the theologically minded among them, have historically had something of an ambivalent “relationship” with friendship. Strangely this is because of the importance of love.

Friendship in the ancient world, or at least the higher forms of friendship, always had an exclusive air. One could be real friends with only a relatively small and select (and ideally selected) group. There was considerable discussion of exactly how many friends it was wise to have. Aristotle thought that the highest form of friendship (the friendship of virtue) was very rare and would only be found a few times in one’s life. Actually, it was rarer than that because in Aristotle's world only educated (which meant rich), connected, virtuous men were capable of such friendships. Cicero (who mainly channelled Aristotle to the Roman world) agreed that real friends of the highest quality were rare. Plutarch, who wrote slightly later in time, noticed that in antiquity what stood out was friendship between pairs (of men) and that perhaps we should aim to have just one, true, friend (our “bestie” in modern parlance). More than this was likely to be tricky and would probably only serve to dilute the quality of friendship enjoyed. But all of this talk of exclusivity is in stark contrast (so it was argued) to the love for even enemies that was said to mark the Gospel. Hence the tension.

Much more recently Robin Dunbar argued that we can probably maintain some sort of friendly relationship with up to about 150 individuals. He arrived at this number just over 30 years ago while “pondering a graph of primate group sizes plotted against the size of their brains” and this has since become known as Dunbar’s Number. Again, how friendship is defined matters. Dunbar was talking about the number of individuals one might recognise well enough to pass 15 minutes with while sitting in a station waiting room. Within this larger number he reckoned that 3-5 was the number of close friendships that were maintainable. It turns out this does seem to be roughly how the numbers shake out in actual surveys. But what is really interesting is that Dunbar’s work implied that friendship was about more than culture or education. The patterns that he observed were argued to persist through time and across cultures. It’s was almost as though the need to have and the ability to form friendships was designed into to us.

Then again, I would argue that it is. More heat than light has been generated over the years over the meaning of the opening chapters of the Bible. My view (for what it’s worth) is that, as has long been taught, these chapters tell us in outline, and in the absence of the biological (or cosmological) nuts and bolts, how we came to be and what we are basically like. And interestingly we were created by a community, to be a community. We are created by an “us” to be a “them”. While it is true that such community is partly achieved by marriage and family (and beyond that clan, tribe and nation), we miss something if we don’t see friendship as playing a role in expressing this aspect of our constitution. A culture in which the importance of the individual is constantly elevated and stressed, and more collective expressions of our humanity are downplayed or even suppressed, is likely to be one in which cracks eventually appear.

Others have charted the rise of narcissistic individualism and diagnosed it as a current and acute problem (see Carl Truman's “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self”). But more recently A.N. Wilson lamented (in his column in the Times) the demise of male friendship in particular, and beyond that the absence of friendships from the lives of those who only really know relationship in the form of the nuclear family. Both the US and UK governments have expressed concern at the impact of loneliness on the health and flourishing of communities on their respective jurisdictions. And such concerns are manifest beyond the Anglo-Saxon sphere. Friendship is not the whole answer to the problems thus identified, but it is probably part of the answer. In general we need to reverse the remorseless focus on I and me, and rediscover we (in all its various forms), but particular in the form of friendships.

Perhaps the biggest problem we have with friendship is simply a lack of those we can truly call friends.