Rebuilding the Matrix: Science and Faith in the 21st Century (Lion Publishing, Hardback, 512pp, ISBN 0 7459 1233 3) is book about the middle way in the science religion arena. The author, Denis Alexander is Chairman of the Program of Molecular Immunology at The Babraham Institute and a fellow of St Edmund's college, Cambridge. He is editor of the journal Science and Christian Belief and serves on the National Committee of Christians in Science in the UK.
Alexander expressly indicates that he is writing for the 'silent majority.’ This is the group treading the middle way - those who neither use science as a weapon for attacking religious belief nor religion to campaign against science. And Rebuilding is a fat satisfying book. Some 500 pages and 14 chapters in length it covers all the expected topics at a level of detail that could make it an excellent reference text.
Chapters one through three open the book with accounts of how science and religion arise as paradigmatic visions, the ideological misuse of science and the book centerpiece, 'Are science and religion in conflict?'
Chapters four through seven are a book in themselves. They map the science / religion interaction from the early Greeks to a nineteenth century group of scientists (like Darwin) that Alexander thematically calls 'the warfare merchants.'
Chapter eight is a twentieth century review of the broad philosophic issues. Nicely revealing the symbiosis of religious and antireligious writers, it is titled, 'Reweaving the Rainbow.’ It is an explicit reference to, and includes a discussion of Richard Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow.
Chapters nine through eleven are a mini text account of evolution's relation to religion, twelve and thirteen cover cosmology and miracles and fourteen rounds the book off with a view of how religion humanizes science.
A 'middle way' book about science and religion is not going to have a surprising overall perspective. No unexpected movie thriller twist is going to be revealed on the last page. This is a workmanlike text which from the outset assumes completely mainstream accounts of science and Christianity. The book is important for its scholarship and for the clarity of many important insights over an enormous range of issues rather than for any philosophic novelty.
The remarks that follow pick up on what are considered the book's particular strengths and weaknesses at the margins of what is a major intellectual work worthy of being read by all who are concerned with the field.
Alexander has knack for very nicely capturing features of our psychological landscape in a single sentence. "Death is placed along with troublesome minorities and faraway injustices in the wasteland of the unmentionable.” He gives a convincing account of the early childhood origins of our beliefs and of their lifelong unconscious power. He suggests incisively that they are most potent when they are not being loudly proclaimed, in fact when they are not being proclaimed at all and we are hardly conscious of them.
He readily understands the problem for religion in this view (and any other views of course) and goes on to suggest that in spite of this we have the objectivity to stand back and change our minds - that we do choose freely. The premises are convincing but the conclusion problematic simply because of the underlying statistics. The religious and other views of one's parents and to a lesser extent the culture of childhood is a very strong predictor of later life views. The exceptions which he quotes are remarkable simply because of the strength of the underlying rule.
We usually hold strong incompatible views on this question - our beliefs are simply grafted on to us but we objectively evaluate and choose our beliefs. The data says that either this is not true or by the most extraordinary coincidence we end up convinced by the evidence of the beliefs of our fathers. Something is wrong with this picture and Alexander's response is wishful rather than providing any mechanism to support his conclusion.
One of the best chapters in the book considers the use of science to support ideology and he chooses as his example the history of racism. There are two important messages. Ideology is very often unconscious and the tendency for scientists to unconsciously lend support in science to ideology is as strong as ever. The history of science in the issue of racism has a particularly strong cringe factor. This almost reflexive cringe leads us to avoid confronting the deep question. The men (and it was mostly men he admitted with even further cringe) who generated and supported the scientific vision of racism were intelligent and honest - and plain wrong. With the supreme advantage of hindsight and a completely different intellectual milieu we fail to realize that we too almost certainly would have shared the vision of the time. Stepping out of the stream is an extreme cultural rarity. One of the most powerful psychological features that keeps us locked into the vision of our group's status quo is the self protective superiority felt when viewing history. And thus we repeat exactly the same mistakes. The lower key lesson, the question at issue, is that the same relationship shapes the science religion discussion. Alexander is really to be commended for this contribution.
In chapter eight, Alexander directly addresses what for many in this area is the issue that troubles most in the "wee small hours."
"If atheism is correct, our own existence in this amazing universe must be a bizarre accident, with no more ultimate meaning than the blowing of the wind in the trees... the most brilliant Nobel prize winner, the greatest works of art, the best music, the noblest acts of self sacrifice, the pinnacles of political success, the deepest human relationships - all these will soon be lost in the unthinking void, events destroyed forever by the inevitable march of the second law of thermodynamics... if atheism is correct the struggle must be futile in any ultimate sense because the oppressors and the oppressed will likewise be swallowed up and forgotten by the inevitable passage of time... It is for this reason, I would suggest that atheism fails to convince."
It is worth spending a little time on this point since Alexander is again capturing the essence of the issue for many, and the question is axial to his book.
The obvious rejoinder is too trite by far. Desiring something comforting doesn't necessarily make it so.
Desiring a kind of ultimate ethical accounting is a desire for what? Revenge, justification, triumph? Rewarding the good and punishing the wicked is an all too human sensibility and may have more in common with childhood simplicities than anything to do with the larger scheme of things.
I'm reminded of renowned cosmologist/writer Paul Davies' response to the view that the idea of gravity in the new physics is counterintuitive. He nicely suggested we readdress the belief that the conception of gravity in Newtonian physics was any more intuitive. It had just been around for a few hundred years and we had merely gotten used to an idea which was in fact as unintuitive as any in the replacement physics.
In a similar manner, I think it worth asking the question about the benefits that actually flow from theism as a counter to existential angst. Firstly how much of the issue is just a consequence of our scale in time and space whether or not one conceives of a God. Time on our human scale means events are lost to us forever. Preserving them involves either some curious notion of the abstract timeless self floating above all or of an infinite afterlife in which these events are recalled and off course recalling is a time embedded notion.
Without pursuing the issue, it is far from clear how we might in any way hold on to the past in any theistic scenario. Does it help if God has hold of these events whatever that might mean but they cannot exist for us? It depends on what one thinks is going on if we picture God holding in memory the delight or dismay of a twelfth birthday party. Conceiving of eternal life as the solution to the "problem of mortality" has this same difficulty. There is nothing about us that exists either in the timeless or in infinitely long time. Look close enough and the thing most desired reverses. Eternal life begins to loom as the ultimate conceivable horror rather than the ultimate desirable.
The universal first up reaction to human finitude is perfectly understandable. It is worth looking closely at what we conceive of a solution to see whether it really holds up under scrutiny though. Maybe like the cartoon character who is fine till they look down after running off a cliff, we are fine till we look closely at our solution. It may be that the solution lies neither in ignoring the issue or grasping at the first childlike magical response but in reexamining the question that we think we understand. Interestingly and even ironically perhaps, some of the world's great religious (perhaps less so in Christianity) have encompassed a tiny number of psychological traditions devoted to just such direct reexamination of the nature of the question. Sufism in Islam and Zen in Buddhism immediately come to mind.
It would not be a theistically oriented book on science and religion without mentioning Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins. Try as he might Weinberg has no chance of ever explaining what he actually meant in his ancient reference to the ultimate meaninglessness of the universe - the original line is just too good to let go of. Richard Dawkins has almost achieved satanic status in Christianity and perhaps he is just as necessary to hang the fears and loathing on. The response that he generates seems indicative of a widespread fear of a nameless threat that is so potent because it just might be true in ways we have not come to grips with. Fortunately or unfortunately, Dawkins has an unsociable habit of dismissing religion out of hand and being a highly articulate thinker and writer. This makes him a perennial love/hate object which is a pity because this man who shares many of the same values as the wider theistic community is really worth paying attention to. Alexander who lives in the land of Dawkins takes the theological party line with all its caricature.
Chapters nine through thirteen are Alexander's views on evolution (three chapters) cosmology and miracles.
His view on evolution is summarized in the line, 'As a theory to explain the origins of biological diversity evolution has, I would suggest, no philosophical, theological, racist, economic or political implications whatsoever.’ He argues that it is neither a prop for atheists or creationists. It is easy to agree with Alexander in this.
Unfortunately he leaves completely unaddressed the question that worries so many other philosophers, scientists and theologians. 'What is the proposed mechanism by which god achieves his ends?’ He eschews the question by maintaining that there is no mechanism because God is continuously involved in all of creation as if this eliminated the question that many other theists feel is left untouched by this assertion whatever its meaning. Much of his discussion of evolution addresses the perceived inadequacies of naturalistic accounts like those Daniel Dennett and Michael Ruse. Perhaps going on the attack when the home ground is so vulnerable is a wise strategy.
The same problem arises with the way Alexander addresses the question of miracles. In common with many writers in the field he is keen not to have too many current miracles whatever the status of the traditionally required miracles. His mechanism is simple. God makes the rules and God suspends the rules but nonetheless he is keen on subtlety. His approach is revealed in these lines.
"....let us suppose that a super-scientist had access to a complete analysis of Mrs. B's body at the moment she was being healed of her rheumatoid arthritis. It is conceivable that he night be able to describe what was happening in normal scientific terms, albeit referring to processes enormously speeded up compared to what might normally obtain in the regression of the disease... There is no need to get bogged down in discussions of whether claimed miraculous events have potential or actual scientific explanations."
It is just this move to attain scientific consistency that is so problematic to explanations of this ilk. Enzymatic and cellular processes driven at super fast/almost instantaneous speeds are just as much dramatic miraculous interventions as say the instantaneous replacement of the whole knee.
In the final chapter, Alexander argues that religion and Christianity in particular is what gives science a human face. This is no surprise as he argues that all other human values are also derived thus. The alternative of course for others is that it is the humanity of the practitioners that gives science its human face rather than externally derived values.
In summary, there is a great deal to recommend in Alexander's book and it deserves a place on the shelf of any who think seriously about these questions.