Theology and its mojo

I noted previously that the great materialist project that dominated thinking about who we are as persons (and much else) may be, in Mary Midgely’s word, “fraying”(Midgley 2014, 14). This is seen specifically in avowedly materialist attempts, emanating from the neurosciences, to give a rigorously physical/material account of our conscious, internal, subjective, first-person states (i.e. mental states), within a materialist metaphysical framework that claims that not only is this doable, but once done there will be nothing left to say about who/what we are. The problem is, the science is basically confused and the metaphysical claims seem suffused with overreach (for reasons discussed here). But might theology (leaving to one side for the moment what is meant by theology) have something to offer in this space?

First, a step back to what seems like a different time (i.e. the last quarter of the twentieth century). Within the broadly evangelical camp, some, like theologian Joel Green and philosopher Nancy Murphy (both influential voices from Fuller Seminary), viewed science, specifically neuroscience (and explicitly in Green’s case Churchlandian neurophilosophy) as having a role in framing their views of human ontology, requiring a degree of reinterpretation of classic theological texts and teaching (Green 2008, 16). Now it is clearly true that neuroscience has an important contribution to make to our self-understanding (particularly with regard to our present embodied state), but they appeared to hand to neuroscience (or particular implications that were argued to flow from it) an overarching authority, allowing it to be an arbiter of what can, and what cannot, be said. This seems to be complimentary to the approach of other materialists/physicalists who went much further and argued that science in general, and with regards to human human ontology that neuroscience in particular, were able to provide, by themselves, a full understanding of who we are, what the universe is, and what our place in it is. Outside theology, there was a reaction to such claims, which were criticised in the general case as scientism, and in the specific case of neuroscience as “neurohype” and “neuromania” (Midgley 1994, 108; 2014, 5; Tallis 2011; Lilienfeld et al. 2017). Another aspect of the reaction is the claim that in the twenty-first century “[w]e are witnessing a resurgence in substance dualism” partly because “promissory materialism” has not delivered an explanation of everything, including consciousness (Rickabaugh and Moreland 2024, 5–6). Given these observations and the “fraying” described by Midgley, might it be that far from being irrelevant and to be eliminated by the materialist project (claims that emanated from scientists like Crick on one hand, and philosophers like the Churchlands on the other), theology is in a position to make a positive contribution?

If theology is to make such a contribution then “it cannot allow its agenda and suppositions to be determined by current theories of mind or brain any more than than by the prevalent sociological, philosophical, or cultural analyses of personhood”; there needs to be clarity “about what is proper to the theological and scientific fields of enquiry respectively” (Torrance 2004, 213,214). This is a view obviously at odds with, among others, Crick, summarised in the final chapter of “The Astonishing Hypothesis” which had the intriguing title of “Dr Crick’s Sunday Morning Service” (Crick 1994, 255–63). Writing of religious beliefs, rather than theology (but in Crick’s view they surely amounted to the same thing), he asserted that “by scientific standards, they are based on evidence so flimsy that only an act of blind faith can make them acceptable”; “true answers are usually far from those of conventional religions. If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong” (Crick 1994, 258). Hardly a recipe for a fruitful dialogue. But some thirty plus years after this was written neither should it be assumed to be representative (e.g. see Rodzeń and Polak 2025 and the various contributions in the Special Issue they introduce).

Theological anthropology developed in a number of ways during the twentieth century and in one interesting respect it is Karl Barth who figures predominantly and whose influence continues to be important (Anderson 1982, 18; Torrance 2004, 207). Barth grounded his anthropology in christology, a move he characterised himself as “deviating from tradition” (see Skaff 2019, 186). Cortez, who examined the mind/brain debate (including Murphy’s non-reductive physicalism) in detail, claimed that “the significance of this christological shift … cannot be overstated. Indeed a growing number of Christian theologians locate modernity’s inability to understand human nature in the fundamentally misguided attempt to derive a complete picture of the human person independently of the perspective provided by the person of Jesus Christ” (Cortez 2008, 4). With regard to Murphy, Cortez notes that there was a movement in the opposite direction, explicitly working from the implications of the mind/brain debate (configured within a framework provided by neuroscience) to christology, with no consideration of movement from christology to anthropology (Cortez 2008, 5; quoting from Murphy 1998, 23).

Christology is, of course, a theological construct, not a scientific or neuroscientific one. It is examined and developed using theological tools and methods. It can of course all become very technical. But this is just as true of modern science. The relative inaccessibility of the cutting edge of where science is at any one time is not taken to provide a reason for it to be dismissed as untrue or unbelievable just because it is only truly accessible to professional practitioners. For those whose expertise is not theological to make claims about theological constructs being intrinsically unbelievable or irrelevant (essentially claims like Crick’s) out of ignorance about appropriate tools, methods, data, history and so on, would be just as ridiculous. But this is what has been going on for a while and has had far more credibility as an approach than it ever deserved.

For those wedded to the conflict metaphor for the interaction between science and theology, as representing inevitably conflicting ways of looking at reality, such developments within theology (like christological anthropology) will simply be taken to indicate the continuation of the conflict. But the conflict metaphor has long been acknowledged by historians of science as a polemical Victorian myth, albeit with some recent popular proponents (Russell 1985; Harrison 2017). Precisely because christological anthropologies spring from theology doing a theological task using appropriate theological methods, the categories involved are distinct from those of neuroscience. But this also means that they can be related to contemporary debates which are usually configured exclusively in terms of neuroscience and brain functions in interesting ways. It is significant that the incarnation (a thoroughly theological concept) has been argued to be compatible with both physicalism and dualism (two very different approaches to the mind/brain problem) by different proponents in the mind/brain debate (Cortez 2008, 5; see footnote 12). But it takes careful work and thought to relate the incarnational and the neural, and much of this work remains to be done. There are other intriguing convergences between christologcial anthropology and developments in neuroscience. In his discussion of “personhood”, Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas argued for the fundamental ontological importance of “a movement of communion”, where ontological identity is to be found “only in a being which is free from the boundaries of the ‘self’”(Zizioulas 1975). This strongly relational view, which both looks back to Barth and is consistent with the work of a long list of key figures in recent theological anthropology, parallels and potentially compliments developments in neuroscience represented by research into “theory of mind” and social cognition both of which stress the relational (Torrance 2004, 208; Brüne and Brüne-Cohrs 2006; Frith 2008). How deep this convergence goes, also requires work and thought.

In gaining a rounded understanding of ourselves, there is clearly an important role for neuroscience to play. It is able provide information from a third-person perspective about the physical brain mechanisms involved in the generation of human experience (now explicitly including conscious experience), how these mechanisms develop, the ways in which they change as we age and about aspects of what happens when eventually our embodied existence fades. But this information is partial not exhaustive, it generates a particular kind of map guiding our self-understanding. Theology has the role of providing another kind of map for some of the same terrain. The challenge is in aligning the different maps, not assuming a priori that one is right and one is wrong (Midgley 2005).

Materialism is fraying, theology is perhaps getting its mojo back. Just as well. There’s work to do.

Anderson, Ray S. 1982. On Being Human: Essays in Theological Anthropology. Eerdmans.

Brüne, Martin, and Ute Brüne-Cohrs. 2006. “Theory of Mind—Evolution, Ontogeny, Brain Mechanisms and Psychopathology.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 30 (4): 437–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.08.001.

Cortez, Marc. 2008. Embodies Souls, Ensouled Bodies. T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology. T &T Clark.

Crick, F. H. C. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Macmillan.

Frith, Chris D. 2008. “Social Cognition.” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363: 2033–39.

Harrison, Peter. 2017. The Territories of Science and Religion. Paperback edition. University of Chicago Press.

Lilienfeld, Scott O, Elizabeth Aslinger, Julia Marshall, and Sally Satel. 2017. “Neurohype: A Field Guide to Exaggerated Brain-Based Claims.” In The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics. Routledge.

Midgley, M. 2014. Are You an Illusion? Heretics (Durham, England). Acumen. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6hHtnQEACAAJ.

Midgley, Mary. 1994. Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and It Meaning. Paperback edition. Routledge.

Midgley, Mary. 2005. “Mapping Science: In Memory of John Ziman.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30 (3): 195–97.

Murphy, Nancey. 1998. “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues.” In Whatever Happened to the Soul. Fortress Press.

Rickabaugh, Brandon, and J.P. Moreland. 2024. The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contrmporary Substance Dualism. John Wiley and Sons.

Rodzeń, Jacek, and Paweł Polak. 2025. “Introduction to This Religions Special Issue: Natural Sciences as a Contemporary Locus Theologicus.” Religions 16 (8). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081020.

Russell, Colin R. 1985. Crosscurrents: Interactions Between Science and Faith. IVP.

Skaff, Jeffrey. 2019. “Barth on Theological Anthropology.” The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth: Barth and Dogmatics, 185–96.

Tallis, Raymond. 2011. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Acumen Publishing.

Torrance, Alan J. 2004. “What Is a Person?” In From Cells to Souls and Beyond. Eerdmans.

Zizioulas, John D. 1975. “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood.” Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (5): 401–47

The fall and rise (ups and downs) and rise…….

While it is not inevitable, life can be a bit of a downer. And no matter how far we rise, what is inevitable for each and every one of us is our eventual mortal demise. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Which is why, by and large, we don’t. In this culture we usually neither think nor talk about death. And when it arrives, increasingly ways are found to avoid, or at least distract us, from “it”. More than a few daytime TV ads offer alternatives to “trad” funerals. Funded (probably) by your over-50’s life insurance policy (so you needn’t worry about being a “burden”), one can now opt for a “direct cremation”, and your loved ones can remember you howsoever they wish (or not), without any “fuss”, and certainly without reminding themselves of their (or your) mortality.

But on my morning walk this morning (nothing excessive, just to the paper shop), I happened to get thinking about a number of folk that are no longer with us. Some were people that I didn’t know personally. This was prompted in part because I watched the “Concert for George” recently. Organised by friends and colleagues of George Harrison, former Beatle and devotee of eastern mysticism, Harrison grew up about a mile from where I’m typing. Despite prodigious talent, worldwide fame, a considerable fortune (his estate was worth about £100M when he died), and the love and affection of his family and many friends, it’s not clear he was a man who really found what he was looking for. He died in 2001, in a house belonging to someone else, albeit surrounded by his family and Hare Krishna chants. After his death his family released his final “message to the world”: “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another”. It was to George’s credit that at least he had been looking.

Another recent reminder of life’s biggest reality has been the sudden death of Alex Salmond. This is a name known to everyone in Scotland, most people in England, and not a few beyond. He was a former First Minister of Scotland, leader of the Scottish National Party (and beyond that Scottish nationalists in general), and general pest and thorn in the side of UK governments of every political stripe. He died last Saturday from heart attack, having made a speech, far from home, at a conference in North Macedonia. While a man with many political opponents, the subsequent tributes have shown that he was much respected and had many friends across the political spectrum. I have no idea what his opinions were on religious matters. Interestingly, he one described himself as a “Church of Scotland adherent”. So, not a believer, not a Christian, not even a Presbyterian, simply an “adherent” of one of Scotland’s mainline, and declining, protestant denominations. I’m not sure I really know what that means. Maybe that was the idea. He famously fell out with fellow nationalists in the Scottish Government, was subject of various inquiries, and was cleared of criminal charges (including charges of rape and sexual assault). While found not guilty (and “not proven” on one of the charges) by a jury after only six hours of deliberation, the trial did reveal patterns of behaviour that even his own defence counsel accepted might be construed as “inappropriate” (while falling short of criminality). But the trial, and the political and governmental machinations that surrounded it, revealed an unpleasant side to Scottish political life at the highest level. This has probably contributed to the demise of Salmond’s former party, the SNP. And while he was, and obviously felt, vindicated by his criminal trial, he was still seeking legal redress at the time of his death.

Perhaps more poignantly, he was speaking in Macedonia about democracy. But it was democracy that had delivered his most stinging defeat (while also bizarrely marking his biggest achievement). He successfully persuaded the Cameron UK government to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, and even got to choose the question on the ballot. And yet the people, by a convincing margin (much wider than in the Brexit referendum), rejected his view and voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. If all political careers end in failure (to misquote Enoch Powell), then you might have thought that to come relatively close to achieving a lifetime goal, see it dashed democratically by your own people (he was a nationalist after all), and then watch its likelihood recede even further because of the missteps and incompetence of your successors, would have been crushing. But by all accounts Salmond remained up for the struggle. Not “no” for him. He was ready to go again. But then he unexpectedly ran out of time. There are many who are shocked, and are left reflecting on the meaning of it all. One wonders how long it will be before their minds return to mundane and mortal matters, and they avert them once again from what is perhaps the most pressing of issues.

But I’ve known lots of others, not superstars or elite politicians, who have looked (or indeed not looked) and found the answer to our obvious mortality. And it is certainly not to ignore it. Over the years we’ve had various Bible study groups meeting in our home. And, over the years, some of the folk who we met with weekly, have died. In a number of cases I still walk past their former homes; I’m often reminded of them. All of them have left a gap of course, particularly for their immediate families, but also for that wider circle of which we were a part. And, along with their families we have grieved. The experience is inevitably difficult and challenging. And yet the folk I’m thinking of were Christian folk. I don’t mean that in the sense that they belonged to a certain culture, attended particular meetings, assented to particular religious propositions. What I mean is that they actually knew someone who had died (in a particularly gruesome manner), and yet returned shortly thereafter to life. When he eventually left our immediate vicinity he promised that he had not merely escaped death, but had overcome it. His claim was that those of us who knew him would be beneficiaries of what he had accomplished and share in this victory. Because of the culture that we are now all embedded in, this all reads like bizarre nonsense. Mystical and mysterious at best, deceptive and dangerous at the worst. But that is more apparent than real. What I have seen is the transformative power of the life and death of Jesus Christ time after time, in part if not yet completely.

Thinking about the moment of death is, I think, no more attractive to the Christian (the “Christ follower”) than it is for anyone else. And yet, emptied of its power to terrify and paralyse, death and its aftermath do bear thinking about. Because after the inevitable fall (if fall it is), there is now for those in Christ an equally inevitable, but much more comforting, rise in prospect. Thinking about life and death needn’t be any kind of a downer.

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. 

 

Faith, at least in some quarters, had almost become a dirty word, such that to call someone a “person of faith” was to question their intellectual adequacy and to suggest an unreasonable commitment to the implausible and non-empirical. This attitude was typical of that particular element of the “anti-faith” brigade that held that science was the all-conquering, all-sufficient means of answering any and all allowable questions. They of course claimed for themselves the authority to decide which were the “allowable” questions. They had a habit of ruling as unallowable those questions that they didn’t like or which their methods of choice couldn’t cope with. Theirs was always a highly questionable (and questioned) approach and it has not aged well. At least in its “New Atheist” form, its influence does seem to have ebbed somewhat.

Perhaps this was the inevitable consequence of the post-modern fashion of arguing that as nothing was true, anything might be. Truth became merely a personal perspective with no interpersonal authority. Therefore even “faith” could not be criticised too harshly, particularly when held, practised and discussed privately, away from the tricky and pressing issues that are the focus of public dialogue. But although largely relegated to the private sphere, faith began to become at least semi-respectable. Mind you, this kind of faith was an odd, unattractive, sort of beast. It had no purchase on, or relevance to, anything that apparently mattered.

More recently there has been another development of note, for the post-modern tide has also receded  (mainly because in its strongest forms it was self-refuting). Some commentators, particularly, but not exclusively, on the political right, have begun to argue that in the West faith (specifically in its Christian form) had bequeathed us all certain cherished values and views. They traced back to a faith-based heritage important concepts like human dignity and equality, tolerance, pluralism and more. But because for the best part of a couple of centuries these very foundations had not just been rejected but thoroughly trashed, they had noticed that some of these concepts and values themselves, not merely the soil from which they sprang, have begun to be questioned. First in the academy, then in institutions and finally in the culture, values like equality before the law and human rights were seen as being in danger to everyone’s detriment. Consider the value of truth and speaking the truth. Once, both in the UK and the US, it was a basic assumption that in public as well as private life being honest and speaking the truth was a “good thing”. This came directly from the ninth (of ten) commandments, and commitments flowing from it. Why were such directives worth paying attention to? Because they were an aspect of health creaturely living and came backed by the authority of the Creator of the created. But having relegated said Creator to the role of remote first mover and tinkerer with watches, and then having spent a long time denying His existence at all, this scheme loses much of its force. Maybe such notions are not as “true” or as useful as was once supposed. They can be dispensed with at no real cost.

Currently, on both sides of the Atlantic we appear to be testing this to destruction. So we find ourselves mired in untruth but have discovered some of the costs. Scepticism quickly turns to cynicism, and trust is rapidly eroded. At least in the UK our political system managed to remove one of our most-noted untruth tellers of recent years. Boris is, at least for the political moment, no more. He is playing no obvious role in our current general election campaign. What did for him was his propensity for being less than honest, presumably on the basis that the rest of us either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care. However, it is worth noting that as well as having a semi-detached relationship with truth and integrity, he also turned out to lack basic competence when it came to running a government. Perhaps if he had done his day job better he would have got away with his truth problem. But the Boris episode, has tended to reinforce the old joke about how you tell when a politician is lying – his lips move. While funny, this used not to be particularly true. There were always exceptions, and there was a degree of obfuscation and hypocrisy involved. But by and large politicians knew that while they might get away with claiming grey that was either black or white they had to avoid insulting our intelligence by claiming that white was black (or vice versa).

On the other side of the Atlantic, even the small crumb of comfort one might take from Boris’ demise is striking in its absence. Trump has largely been exposed as suffering from the same disease that afflicted Boris (or possibly it’s the other way round) and yet he is very much still around. A large slice of his electorate, including a lot of “evangelicals”, seem to prefer myths to truth. Reasons keep being found for why what once would have made him unelectable (his flat out lies, his abuse of the law not to mention his legally established abuse of women) turn out not to be that big a problem. Truth has become tainted while rank mistrust (occasionally accompanied by politically inspired violence) are all too observable. All this in what once had been thought of as a stable and (largely) prosperous democracy one that could be depended upon to uphold commonly accepted values of decency and integrity. Now even that hallmark of a democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, has been attacked and is under attack.

Spend several centuries dismissing what underlies the values that have shaped our culture, specifically faith in the God who reveals Himself in Scripture, and prepare to loose those values. Perhaps other foundations can be found, but most of the replacements that have been tried do not appear to have worked. Some no doubt celebrate the prospect of the demise of values that might loosely be called Biblical. For them the values themselves, as well as the foundation one which they were built, may have been the problem all along. And some have argued that we are seeing the fruit of a concerted campaign to undermine what had been widely accepted as valuable. Maybe might is right after all and human beings have no inherent dignity simply by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. Maybe inequality is just how things are and beyond that it is how things should be. While I view this brave new world as being intolerable, maybe you don’t.

However, if you feel that something important and valuable (and true) is being lost, much of this argument can be turned on its head. Perhaps the faith that gave rise to what had been valued is worth another look. This kind of reasoning prompted Justin Brierley to discus, first in his podcast “Unbelievable” and more recently in his book “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God”, the proposition that faith is making a comeback (or at least its “ebb” has begun to reverse). It is worth pointing out that Brierley is a Christian, and his book is a work of apologetics; he writes to commend the Christian faith as being at the very least worth investigating. It could be he’s seeing a pattern where none actually exists. This is essentially the argument of Ralph Jones in his review of Brierley’s book in “The New Humanist” (but then, to be fair, it would be). But from Douglas Murray to Russell Brand something appears to be stirring.

At least “faith” is no longer a dirty word.

Methodological musings

Summer is nearly over, school exam results are in, and the traditional English pastime of agonizing over the education system is in full swing. As the days lengthen and the temperature (hopefully) drops, I have to return to thinking about my little part in the great educational adventure (the masters programme at Union Schoolof Theology). Having completed a bunch of modules last year covering a range of topics, this year I am about to embark on the research methods module and then my dissertation. There are those who insist that we’ve all moved on from the days when Theology was taken seriously as an academic subject. I suspect some lurk among my former scientific colleagues. Mind you, they would probably also hold the same view (although only ever very quietly articulate it) of sociology, political studies, poetry, swathes of psychology, and other oddities. In fact, if they but knew a little bit of history (another subject area with dubious credentials) they would know that this is a very 19^th/early 20^th century view of the academy in which only science provides truthful and therefore useful knowledge. Everything else is “nonsense”; useful only in so far as it is mildly entertaining.

Before coming back to the issue of theology specifically, it’s worth just making a few rejoinders to this sort of (admittedly minority) view (see also here). The first thing to note is that scientific approaches have only ever applied to a fantastically narrow sliver of life and experience. To claim that only those things which can be measured and weighed, parameterized and counted matter, leads to an extremely impoverished view of life that no one could, or ever really has, held. To dismiss the warmth of human relationships, the beauty of sunsets, the evocations of great music (whether Elgar or E.L.O), is to dismiss the sort of thing that makes life liveable. None of these things can finally be reduced to numbers without missing something both important and wonderful. The view that only the measurable is knowable is only held in seminar rooms, and while having arguments. Then its proponents return to spouses and children and talk of love and affection (presumably genuinely), or go out and enjoy a good meal, and do not feel in any way that these are nonsense experiences that are to be dismissed.

And the notion that science is somehow self-sufficient, never requiring insights from other disciplines, is a peculiar kind of intellectual arrogance not worthy of the first-year undergraduate flushed with A-level success, who has yet to learn of his true ignorance. Where this type of attitude (articulated or not) persists among professional scientists (and where it does true professionalism and rigour are undermined) trouble is usually not far behind. You might think that clear thinking is a hallmark of science, but the literature is replete with counter-examples that a mildly competent philosopher or historian of science would be able to supply. Confusion and conflict over no more than poorly defined categories and misnamed concepts is far from unknown.

It is the philosophers of science (rarely scientists themselves) who have had to tackle how scientists actually think when engaged in effective science. Most scientists find that doing stuff is complicated enough without thinking too hard about it. In my experience it is not uncommon to bumble about in mist before finding a sensible approach to a problem. Activity rather than cool, dispassionate thought is often the preferred approach. The highly sophisticated, specialized and technical nature of most contemporary, professional science has exacerbated rather than moderated such tendencies. And all of this is prior to the really big elephant now sitting right in the middle of science’s front room – integrity. “Ethics” is not science (like epistemology it is a sub-discipline of philosophy), but “ethics” are now one of science’s big problems. This is perhaps inevitable where things like careers, salaries, and economic exploitation of scientific results are to the fore. All research costs money, and the money is usually someone else’s. This brings inevitable pressures and temptations. Things are further complicated where science and political controversy become entwined as in current debates around vaccines and climate change. Science is far from the clean, cool, rational, straightforward, always successful enterprise that some would have the non-scientist believe.

So in the complicated and nuanced world we all have to inhabit, studies of other aspects of existence have their place and I assume require an appropriate toolkit, some knowledge of the past, and strenuous efforts to discover and apply new knowledge. There is a right way to go about science, or rather right ways – it’s not as methodologically monolithic as you might think. And I’m assuming the same applies in a discipline like theology. There is even an interesting overlap in methodology, in as much as reasoned argument has the same characteristics across disciplines (a philosopher could give me chapter and verse on this). Coherence will be good and contradiction bad. Claims will be testable and tested against evidence. Interestingly, while the main object of study in theological investigation is different to that which I studied previously, there is again an overlap between my former and future efforts. If the object of study in theology is God (the only real and true one I mean), then there is a problem because there is a sense in which He is unknowable. And yet He has revealed Himself in a number of ways. Of prime importance is Scripture, the book of His words, and His primary method of self-revelation. But then we have His created order (including ourselves) – the book of His works. And that’s what I’ve been studying for all these years. In studying them, I have been studying Him.

But I take it that given the centrality of Scripture, this will be a prime focus of theological research, and therefore theological method. This raises a bit of a conundrum as far as research is concerned. The Bible has been an object of study for a long time. In my former existence a premium was placed upon revealing new things. Admittedly where I managed this, the things that were revealed were only of interest to me and a tiny handful of other people. Had they not been revealed the world would have continued spinning on its axis. But they were, in their way, novel. But is theological research about finding out new things about God in Scripture or do we know everything about Him we need and are able to know? Research would then become a matter of rediscovering the thoughts of others, a sort of history. I can see the value in this, but is it all there is? Or are there new things to be discovered, articulated and applied? I am already aware of two theological tribes which take two different, and opposing, positions on this - constructivists versus conservatives. No doubt there are others I’ve yet to encounter.

The inventiveness of humanity and the productivity of science and technology do occasionally throw up genuinely new issues which require theological reflection. One example would be nuclear weapons which placed the means of planetary destruction in human hands for the first time. A current example would be the current controversy over gender, what it is and whether it is fixed or fluid; such questions would simply never have occurred to previous generations. But is this fundamentally about generating new truth, or applying old truth to new issues? Novelty may not be as novel as it first  appears. And if some claim is made that a really novel theological truth has been discovered, is this a good thing or simply danger sign?

These are the questions to be batted about next week. Some hard thinking to do. It’s unlikely to be dull.

Life in the pandemic XXV The touching faith of atheists…….

Atheism, in its various forms, has a very old and in some quarters a cherished history. It’s a history that many modern-day atheists seem to be ignorant of, something I discussed a while ago. As you may have gathered, I am not an atheist. But I’m interested in the views of folk who are. I admit that this is partly out of curiosity. As the views and ideas of most atheists (at least the ones who have thought about it) are different to my way of thinking, it’s hardly surprising that they evoke curiosity. There’s also the possibility that there is something fundamental they’ve noticed that I’ve missed. And I suppose the writer of Ecclesiastes could have been wrong; something “new under the sun” could crop up that finally demonstrates, once and for all, that there can be no God. This seems unlikely (although I would say that), but for the sake of friendly interaction I’m prepared to accept this as a logical possibility.

It was in this spirit that I was interested to read an atheist writing about atheism. John Gray’s “Seven Types of Atheism” is readable, entertaining and short (only 150-odd pages in my 2019 Penguin paperback). I don’t suppose all atheists will agree with either his classification or his analysis, but neither do I think anyone will accuse him of rampant misrepresentation. In particular, he in no way writes as a theist critic. He remains quite content with his own atheist position, which he identifies as being closest to a couple of the categories he describes. It is worth noting a the outset that there is a close resemblance between what Grey writes and the thrust of Tom Holland’s “Dominion” (discussed  briefly here). It is terrifically hard to drive out the intellectual and cultural effects of 2000 years of Christian monotheism (and before that Jewish monotheism) and start thinking from (or to) a genuinely different position. It is a big task to find new concepts not dependant on the same foundations as the repudiated system, even if such a thing is possible. This was something that Nietzsche cottoned on to, but apparently not so many others before or since. In his early chapters Grey insists that this leads to a sort of lazy atheism that essentially maintains categories that actually need God, but simply swapping Him for someone or something else. Gray accuses secular humanists of doing this, swapping God for humanity, and then not noticing that the resulting system doesn’t work. Apart from anything else, Gray thinks that this is doomed to fail because humanity doesn’t exist as a single, functional entity; it is a myth inherited from monotheism: “’Humanity’ is not going to turn itself into God, because ‘humanity’ does not exist”. His point is that all we really see is lots of individual human beings with “intractable enmities and divisions”, not a single organism capable of fulfilling God’s role.

But time and again Gray also throws up interesting little insights into the sayings and doings of important atheist thinkers. Many of them seem to be stark examples of what is alluded to in a quotation often attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “ When men chose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.” For example, Grey calls Henry Sidgwick “one of the greatest 19^th century minds”. But having lost his faith, he hoped science would supply him with the meaning he now felt he lacked. Bizarrely, he eventually turned to psychical research, and Grey quotes him as telling a friend later in life  “As I look back …. I see little but wasted hours”. Nietzsche was prepared to put his faith in a few exception human beings, “supermen” who could “will into being the meaning God had once secured”. Grey’s main point is that even arguing that the redemption of humanity by such “supermen” was required or could be accomplished, demonstrated that Nietzsche continued to be held captive by Christian concepts he so deeply despised and had declared dead. But it’s been a while now since Nietzsche’s scheme. No sign of his “supermen”.

Grey is also fairly severe on the idea of the inevitable human progress so beloved of many scientifically minded atheists over the last couple of centuries. This appears to be one of their supreme acts of faith. But as he points out, no-one can really agree what constitutes progress or what it might mean in the future. And there is precious little evidence of overall net progress for the mass of humanity. You might think that this surely goes too far. After all, in technology hasn’t the invention and growth of the internet brought tremendous benefits? I can sit on my sofa and book my next holiday or order my dinner. I can find the answer (or at least an answer) to almost any question using my smartphone. But then this same technology has brought new problems and crises not conceived of previously, like the rise of  social media persecution (which has already cost lives) and the cyber world as a new venue for crime and warfare. But in medicine, haven’t we eradicated some of humanity’s most serious disease? The obvious retort is yes, but oh the irony. Here was are in a global pandemic in which the old scourges have been replaced by a new one, with more around the corner aided and abetted by modern human behaviour. Faith in the progress of humanity (even if you think “it” exists) is touching, but hardly evidenced based!

Grey assembles a bewildering cast of characters with no interest in the God of the Bible, and often resolutely dedicated to denigrating and disproving Christianity as anything more than a fable, and quite possibly a dangerous fable at that. Some were aggressive in their denunciations, some more muted and less evangelical. Many I suspect would be bemused by Christianity’s continuing ability to attract adherents, and its continuing ability to play any a role in thought and intellectual discourse.

Grey quotes Schopenhauer as writing in 1851: “A religion which has at its foundation a single event …. has so feeble a foundation that it cannot possibly survive.” Such faith. Touching. But sorry Arthur, misplaced.

Life in the Pandemic XIV: The fictional and the fake……

I freely admit it. I’m a fan of Sorkin snappy dialogue. Aaron Sorkin is the screenwriter behind films like “A Few Good Men”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Moneyball” and “The Social Network”. And I’ve just started re-watching his classic TV political drama “The West Wing”. This used to be my treat when I had to travel to conferences far away. Those were the days when we climbed into things called aeroplanes and flew thousands of miles just to give tiny little ten-minute talks and listen to lots of other little ten-minute talks. Those were the days when we felt blessed if our laptops had things called CD drives (or slightly later DVD drives) into which we placed discs containing films or TV series. While this meant that the laptop weighed about the same as a sack of potatoes, it provided a means of whiling away hours at airports, on flights or during evenings spent in mid-budget hotel rooms. So, spread over a couple of years I watched my way through the seven series of The West Wing in the mid to late naughties. 

It centred on the goings on in the West Wing of the Whitehouse during the two terms of the fictional Bartlet presidency. The main protagonists were the smart, witty, morally-superior and, of course, left-leaning senior staff that surrounded the President. President Bartlet himself was of course a Democrat, and was a (fairly conscientious) Roman Catholic and ex-academic economist turned Governor of New Hampshire. The interplay between the President and his communications directors (Toby), or between Josh and the press secretary CJ, or between the President’s “body man” Charlie and Sam the speech-writer, or between any and all of them was a rollercoaster ride of wit and apparent, knowing wisdom. It could be a bit preachy at times, but occasionally dealt with serious subjects and there was the odd tear-jerking moment.  Despite the fact that I had very little in common with any of these characters, and that even the political system they worked within was (by definition) foreign to me, I was hooked within an episode. And even although US evangelicals (and by extension all of us, because we’re obviously a single monolithic block) got a good kicking in about episode 3 of series 1, I stayed hooked right to the very end as the Bartlet presidency came to its natural and inescapable end with the transition to a new (Democratic) administration.

The contrast between Barlet’s  fictional Whitehouse and the current Trump Whitehouse is fairly stark. In the fictional version, there was frequently chaos, but you always new that the chaos was more apparent than real and that things would probably work out. Everyone on the team basically knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. So there was a basic competence that ran deep, even if on the surface there was just a lot of running around going on. And at the top, Bartlet always led in roughly the right direction. Even when he had to agonise over difficult choices, he would think it through, within a broadly recognisable moral framework, and provide the lead that everyone else needed. Occasionally, because he was a politician, he dissembled, and wasn’t entirely transparent. There were secrets that were kept, and others that eventually exploded. There were mistakes, but Bartlet (this being fiction) was big enough and self-assured enough to admit them. All the time these were people who were at least trying to be truthful and decent.

For the last four years even the friends of a real, rather than fictional, president of the United States would have to admit that basic decency, empathy and truth have been in short supply. To be fair, Trump has delivered on some of the big promises he made, promises that persuaded less than half of the US voting population to vote for him. High on the list would be a considerably more conservative Supreme Court and a big tax cut. Of course, who knows what the new shape of the court will produce in the long-term, and the tax cut was of little use to the massed ranks of many of his supporters (although it was a big boost to rich Americans and richer corporations). As the 2020 election campaign heads towards its climax, this allows his boosters to counsel that the population of the US should concentrate on what the Donald has done (or at least some of the things he’s done), not who he is. One odd thing is that so much of both what he’s done, and who he is, is so much stranger than fiction. While not a fictional politician, Trump has turned out to be a fake. Fake outsider, fake man of the people, fake deal-maker, fake wall-builder, fake man of faith and Bible lover. Had Sorkin written a script that was anything approaching the last four years and tried to get it made into a film or TV series, he would have been laughed out of town.

I know that the Bartlet Whitehouse was made up. But basic competence and decency really should not be too much to ask. We all understand that hard choices have to be made, often between bad and worse alternatives. This is probably even more the case in the pandemic. But such choices require accurate information, careful thought and broad, civilised discussion, and should be both intelligible and explained (at least in a democracy). Even when disputed, at least a dialogue can ensue, and perhaps things improved for the future. A lack of accurate information is not always the fault of politicians, but a lack of careful thought is unforgivable. We all understand that wrong choices are occasionally made, particularly against a background of incomplete information. Politicians should be able to change course as more information becomes available without the constant chorus of U-turn media political catastrophism. U-turns are sometimes necessary, and if explainable and explained, probably forgivable. But we’ve seen none of this from the Trump Whitehouse, who have scrapped with each other, have exulted in ignorance and even elevated it above competence, and then resorted to complete fantasy. Fantasy that isn’t nearly as compelling or attractive as The West Wing. Leading the charge has been the Donald himself and then he wonders why he’s not loved.

Commenting on the outcome of the 2020 election, Sorkin himself said “I would write the ending where everyone does the right thing. I don’t think Trump will do the right thing, except by accident.” We’ll see shortly.

Life in the Pandemic IV: Where should we place our faith?

There is a lot of faith about at the moment (something I noted previously). Some of it is obvious, some of it less so. But it’s there. Indeed it always is, because faith is indispensable to life. You might be tempted to respond to the question above by objecting that you have no faith to place. But such a response would naïve at best, and delusional at worst. Faith is woven into the fabric of our existence, as a moment’s reflection will demonstrate. Let’s start with something trivial.

You are probably sitting on a chair as you read this. How do you know that it will support your weight? You don’t. But you are trusting that it will, all the same. This is a (trivial) form of faith; a “trust in” something. Of course, you have no reason not to expect the chair to support you and you will feel that you have ample evidence from the past that it will support you. So reliable has this evidence always proved, that you would never think of weighing it carefully, or indeed of conducting a thorough investigation. If you were to take such an approach to something as straightforward as sitting in a chair, you would presumably feel it only appropriate to apply it to much else and life would quickly become intolerable. However, as David Hume, the arch sceptic and Scottish enlightenment philosopher pointed out: “It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future….”; the fact that the your chair has never collapsed under your weight before is a guarantee of precisely nothing. But you don’t care. And so you sit; serenely - or perhaps just a little less serenely that before?

You could point out that the worst that could happen, even if the worst came to the worst, would be a rapid decent to the floor from not too high a height. The result would be minimal damage, and, if you’re alone, zero embarrassment. So on the one hand there is a realistic expectation of no problem arising, because you are confident in the object of your faith (the chair). On the other hand even if a problem does arise, nothing too troubling is going to happen. This is all true. It also tells us things that are generally true about faith. It’s not so much the faith that we exercise that’s particularly important, rather it’s the object we place it in (faith is always “in” something). And the context is key; what does placing our faith in that object do for us and what would happen if it let us down?

In the pandemic we’ve all been exercising faith is spades, and it has been a matter of life and death. In fact, we’ve been exercising our faith not in a single object, but a chain of objects. The politicians have been saying repeatedly that they have been exercising faith in the scientists advising them (“do x and our model shows that y people will die as opposed to y + another big number). This advice has been closed to the rest of us. Until recently, even the names of those sitting on the SAGE committee (who thought that one up?) were unknown to the UK population. Indeed it took a campaign to have the list released. We in turn placed our faith in the politicians (ie “do x because the scientists tell us if we do x….etc”). In fact the reason why we are probably prepared to trust the second lot, was precisely because they were claiming to trust the first lot. Surveys show that by and large scientists are trusted more than politicians. So, as a population we have “done x” and the result has (probably) been fewer deaths in the pandemic so far than would otherwise have been the case. But a lot us relying on this chain of faith do not, and probably cannot, understand the science underpinning what we’re being asked to do. Hence we are exercising faith, and when it really matters.

The observation that this exercise of faith is central to what we’ve been doing recently isn’t peculiar to me; others have made it too. Eve Willis, writing in Prospect magazine, also spotted the centrality of faith to what has been going on (“During coronavirus, eventrusting in science feels like a form of faith”). While she doesn’t provide a particularly penetrating analysis (maybe she didn’t intend to), it is revealing that a self-confessed non-believer is now willing to cut us believers the sort of slack that was probably absent previously. However, she doesn’t really get faith, because one of the things she tells us is that “I increasingly fear that this pandemic will make a believer out of me..”. But in fact she is a believer already. As she touchingly continues “We simply have to trust those with expertise…”.

Her conclusion though is interesting: “The grip of a crisis demands we surrender control—and quite rightly—to forces bigger than us: the long arm of a newly-paternalistic state, the unknowable complexities of science. Why not faith, too? Find comfort where you can; we’re in this for the long-haul.”. Her argument is that faith brings comfort. If it works for you that’s fine; in current circumstances, I might try it too. And here she means faith in organised religion. I’ve noted before the importance of expertise in the current crisis. Science, limited and uncertain as the information it provides inevitably is, does provide a guide to how we get through the pandemic. It is not the only kind of analysis we need, and it won’t help us with all of the decisions we have to make. But it will take us an important part of the way.

However, any comfort you obtain from placing your faith in what cannot support it, will be temporary, unsatisfying and futile. So for the really big issues, your really should ask what, or who, are you putting your faith in. What can it (or He) really deliver? What is the evidence that as an object of faith it (or He) has delivered in the past, or is delivering in the present. My contention is that for the biggest of big issues, the answer is not to be found in a system, code or ritual. And certainly not in some blind general adherence to “religion”. Faith can save, but only if its object is the correct one.

Life in the pandemic I: The return of the experts….

It wasn’t that long ago that some were lamenting the death of reason and the revolt against experts. TV studios were filled with serious looking people trying to work out how it was possible for on the one hand Donald Trump to be elected in the United States and on the other the UK voting to leave the EU. Clearly, they intoned, the populus of both countries had taken leave of their senses. Expertise was under attack and ignorance was being encouraged, commended and rewarded. There was perhaps some truth in this.

Both experts and expertise came in for a bit of a kicking, particularly in the US. Experts formed a convenient target of course. This was partly because the terms were rarely clearly defined. Blame was attributed to an amorphous group, without examining too carefully if it was experts who were the problem, or the political decision makers. Many of the latter seemed unwilling to engage properly with a whole range of issues, inform themselves using appropriate expert input, and take and be accountable for the decisions that people elected them to take. In the UK we got into the Brexit mess (remember that?) partly because of this sort of political cowardice. A host of complex issues, requiring a range of expertise to unpack them, was boiled down to a binary choice and forced on a population that consistently claimed that it was generally ill-informed, and in some cases actively deceived. A proportion of the population appeared to be delighted with this general approach. On both sides of the Atlantic the notion gained traction that the experts had done too many of us no good at all. They were therefore of little value and could happily be dispensed with. How things have changed.

As I have pointed out before, there are many situations in life where we are happy and indeed obliged to depend on the expertise of others. I do not have the first notion about how to fly an aeroplane, but (until recently) I needed to use them from time to time. What to do? Well, fortunately for me there are experts in flying aeroplanes; they are called airline pilots. There used to be quite a lot of them flying aeroplanes with skill, and able to fly me safely from point A to point B. I was really glad to avail myself of their expertise. And not just theirs. It turns out that while they were using their expertise for my benefit, they in turn were depending on the expertise of lots of other people, like air traffic controllers, aircraft maintenance engineers, and a whole host of others. Together, all this expertise could safely transport me thousands of miles at a time. I was happy to trust them to do so. Clearly some experts have their uses.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where expertise turns out to be a matter of life and death, potentially for thousands. The centrality accorded to expertise in these pandemic days has been clear for all to see. At least in the UK great stress has been put on policy being informed by scientific and medical experts. Day after day the Prime Minister or other senior ministers have appeared flanked by experts to whom they constantly defer. Of course there could be a deep cynicism at work. It could be, and no doubt some will argue it is, simply the politicians using the claimed expertise of others as cover for them taking very unpopular decisions. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think that in life-critical situations, it turns out we have no problem taking experts and expertise seriously. This is our attitude in aeroplanes, and it appears to be our attitude in the pandemic. At least for the most part.

Perhaps the consistent undermining and downplaying of expertise is recent times explains why governments are finding that advice, sound advice based on science, is frequently being ignored. Just this week, it has been stressed just how important it is that in the current pandemic we socially isolate ourselves and not meet with others unless it is necessary. Other experts have told us that there is no necessity to panic buy and hoard foodstuffs and other thing (like toilet rolls - for reasons no-one seems able to fathom). And yet the flagrant disregarding of “advice” now means the state taking powers to enforce what the science says should be done. All over Europe, and now in the UK, there will be police (and in some places military) enforcement of the advice. Expertise is back, and with teeth.

It is still the case that not all expertise is the same and we need to understand some important distinctions.  For the appropriate expert, flying an aeroplane is a well constrained and defined task. While it is not true to say that there are no unknowables, there are relatively few. Do things in a certain way, in a certain order, and a safe flight will result – usually. “Usually” in this context means almost always; in 2018 there were only 0.36 fatal accidents per million flights. However, the expertise we’re depending on in the pandemic is different, although it is no less expertise. Here there are very many unknowns. We are dealing with a new virus and while information about it is accumulating, no one has anything like the full picture. So the scientific advice that decision-makers are relying upon is a best effort, based on the information to hand. And sometimes, experts looking at the same evidence may well interpret it in different ways. There are different models of how the virus is spreading, leading to different projections of how the pandemic may develop, and potentially different recommendations about the actions that should be taken to improve the situation. Then factor in that any advice issued has to be heard, understood and acted upon by millions of citizens. You can see how the unknowns in this situation rapidly multiply. But the experts and (in this case) their scientific methods are all we’ve got, and a lot better than the alternative - either doing nothing, or doing anything.

The experts have returned. Time to exercise a bit of faith; although let’s be clear – that’s what we’re doing. Putting our faith in experts and their expertise (again). And on a planetary scale.

Faith in aliens….

I am not a famous ex-anything.  I’m not an ex-premier league footballer making even more of my millions. I’m not an ex-MP or ex-minister of Her Majesty, who makes TV documentaries about trains wearing brightly coloured clothes. In particular, I am not an ex-astronaut. I don’t regret not having played professional football (being fairly uninterested in the amateur variety). And, although sometimes it has had its attractions to my argumentative side, I don’t regret not being involved in professional politics (a tricky thing for a Christian – just ask Tim Farron). But who would not want to sit atop one of the most powerful machines ever invented, and then be blasted into orbit at unimaginable speeds, to look down on this blue jewel we all call home, or to look outward with unimpeded clarity at the stars? Too much? Anyway, the point is, I’m not an ex-astronaut. But some people are.

Helen Sharman is. She belongs to a select club that numbers just over 550. And, of course, she also has the additional distinction of being one a very few female ex-astronauts. In May 1991, after 18 months of intensive training, she blasted off in a Russian rocket, to conduct an 8-day mission on the Soviet Mir space station. Most of her time was spent running experiments. I have always assumed that astronauts are quite bright (this is partly about rocket science after all). As well expertise in science or engineering (Sharman’s background is in chemistry), there are all the other things you have to master connected to flying into, and then operating, in space. It’s a complex, difficult and dangerous environment. Since her return, she has busied herself as a science communicator and populariser, has received several honours from the Queen and the Royal Society of Chemistry and a host of honorary degrees from a list of universities. And she does occasional media interviews.

One of these interviews was published in the Guardian earlier this month. It was notable because it generated relatively little comment about one particular aspect of what she was quoted as having said. 

On the subject of aliens:

“Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it. There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life. Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re here right now and we simply can’t see them.”

(published in The Guardian, Jan 5th, 2020)

I have no reason to believe that this was said “tongue-in-cheek”, or was a random, throwaway statement. It is a view, an opinion, and a statement of faith. It is not stated as a hypothesis - a provisional statement of affairs, waiting to be tested and supported (or refuted) by evidence. That would make it a kind of scientific statement, with the weight and authority that such statements have (or at least should have). Helen is clear and emphatic: aliens exist. Indeed they “must” exist. She is basing this on a statistical argument (not evidence), that has been around for a while. But it’s an argument, based on an intuition, not an observation. The intuition is that we are not alone; it is widely shared. Is there any evidence that this intuition will be satisfied by the discovery of alien life? No. This is an exercise in faith. There is no evidence to support either the substantive assertion or the possibility that is alluded to. And it’s not that the evidence is lacking for want of effort.

The “search for extra-terrestrial intelligence” has gone on in one sense probably since the first human looked to the sky. In its modern form it began in earnest with the discovery of radio. Apparently Tesla suggested that his newly invented wireless could be used to contact beings on Mars. New technology brought new suggestions and opportunities. In the 1950’s it was searches in the microwave range. In the 1960’s it was searches in other frequency bands with radio telescopes. Then in the 1970’s NASA took up the reigns, spending large sums on various projects designed to search for signs of life out in the further reaches of space. Eventually NASA’s funding for SETI projects was cut (although efforts come and go to restore it), and the SETI institute carried on projects with private funding. There have been sizeable donations to the effort. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, notably donated a sum in the region of $25M to support SETI. So a cumulatively large sum, running into tens of, if not hundreds of millions of US$, have been spent on this search. Some of the science along the way may well have been impressive. But (so far) the search has turned up nothing coming close to the evidence being searched for.

But who needs evidence. Aliens are real and probably among us, right? There is a bit of a double standard going on here. There are things that I claim that are clearly statements of faith. I’m apt to claim that the life of Jesus of Nazareth has significance beyond the historical and sociological. But this is based not on faith, but on facts. The faith bit is about the response, not the foundation. There are a number of well-attested and constantly investigated facts that lead me to believe certain things about Jesus (facts about what he said and did). The facts are of course contested, and even the concept of “fact” can be a bit slippery. But there is an evidence base to be engaged with. The facts are of a specific type of course. They are historical facts, and therefore the kind of investigation and validation that is necessary belongs to the discipline of history, not science. Other disciplines also have a role, because these facts are attested to by documents – in the main the Bible. But facts there are, none-the-less.

Evidence, disputed and debated as it is, is available to be disputed and debated, probed and weighted. Potentially, an awful lot hangs on the outcome of such investigations into the claims, work, death and (claimed) resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Much more than is the case for the non-evidenced claim that aliens exist.