IT KEEPS ME SEEKING

This rigorous and wide-ranging discussion of central issues at the interface between science, philosophy and religion reflects the formidable intelligence and insight of the joint authors, respectively Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton and Professor of Physics at Oxford. They are all committed Christians dedicated to grappling fully with the complexities and subtleties of hard problems in all three fields. There are four key themes running through the book: God as a being to be known, not a hypothesis to be tested; the setting of a high bar on what constitutes good argument; the view that uncertainty is okay; and that we have permission to open up the window offered by the natural world in order to see more deeply into it on the basis that it gestures beyond itself to what we experience inwardly in our lives. Evidence and reason are esteemed throughout the book, and the authors note the implications of the mathematical harmony of the natural world, which they regard as 'freighted with meaning' in contrast to the atheistic outlook, unpicking the equating of rationality with this view.

They take Richard Dawkins to task in a number of respects, presenting as he does the evolutionary process as an argument for atheism. The authors regard this approach as a misconceived category error, and reject the idea that God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis, advocating instead both a positive cataphatic and negative apophatic approach based on knowing and relationship rather than ideas. Andrew Steane describes the process of reading Dawkins as a form of intellectual mugging employing the tactics of propaganda and overstating his case, while also failing to distinguish between facts and his presuppositions. The authors acknowledge their own assumptions in their quest to make sense of the world, making the observation that what we consider real corresponds to this sense-making process and flows from more basic presuppositions. They present a very helpful chart/glossary (p. 36) where they clarify a number of words, distinguishing between their commonly understood meaning and their meaning as used by them. These are critical, and need to be borne in mind - for instance religion as 'a set of practices in relation to beliefs about God' as compared with their view that it is 'a way of living in relation to God', which in turn relates to what they regard as the essential message of Jesus, which is how life is to be lived in the light of his understanding of God. Then again, faith in the commonly understood parlance means 'forming beliefs without evidence' (c.f. Dawkins) while for them it means 'willingness to respond to suggestive evidence.' In this respect, philosophy, theology and science all have unresolved questions to be lived with and processed. (p. 82)

The authors address in a series of chapters and dialogues some of the principal features and ideas of modern science, including machine learning, issues arising from quantum physics, general relativity, biological evolution and the argument from design; from philosophy and theology, they look at naturalism, the nature of human identity, readings of Scripture, free will and attitudes to miracles. From the transition to quantum physics, they take the limit to the validity of reductionism in a dance-of-the-probability-waves picture, and the fact that 'the entangled state cannot be described using any description that tries to model the system as two individual things.' (p. 93) The picture of a deterministic clockwork mechanism can no longer be sustained, but this does not mean that the difficulties around free will have been thereby resolved, rather that human responsibility is not ruled out by our scientific outlook.

The discussion of the arguments involved in fine tuning and intelligent design are detailed and subtle. They find the first to be self-undermining in that two aspects pull in opposite directions: 'if the niceness of our particular universe suggests that it was created by God… then it must assume the non-niceness of the laws, so that fine tuning is needed.' (p. 145) Yet God is also assumed to be capable of choosing the laws as well as initial conditions. They also take the view that fine tuning of physical constants is really a 'just so story'. Likewise, they find the complexity argument of ID overstated and some of its claims lacking in evidence. This leads on to a chapter on how they see the story of life on Earth, where they suggest that randomness should be seen as openness and that a better metaphor for selfish genes would be eager. For them, our connection to the rest of life on Earth does not diminish our humanity but should heighten our regard for the natural order and its possibilities. They address the question of suffering, pain and death as part of the God-given pattern of life on Earth while not claiming to resolve it, but rather being left – as we all in fact are - in a position of not knowing and needing to trust the overall process.

A chapter on the relationship between science and religious commitment draws on historical examples from the 13th and 17th centuries by entering into the thought- space and categories of those eras as reflected arguments between a number of leading thinkers. This helps to define the scope of science in discovering 'those truths that are amenable to systematisation and mathematisation', which form only part of our reality. The authors see the practice of science calling for new vocabularies and standpoints that can enrich rather than destroy a religious perspective as a different frame of reference. Their treatment of miracles is extensive in relation to reasonable belief and questions of evidence. Rather than taking sides on New Testament accounts, they prefer instead to treat the stories as 'conveying truths that are important for growth in wisdom.' Their central concern is moral issues and our personal response to these, more specifically the challenges raised by Jesus himself which do not relate to certainty, but rather the importance of developing an overall sense of trust and the practice of love.

Reading and digesting the contents of this book is a demanding but highly rewarding process due to the quality of intelligence and insight into issues central to knowledge and human life. The authors have thought deeply, conversed widely and articulated coherent ways of making sense of the world that does justice both to the Christian commitment and scientific integrity. Readers are also encouraged to keep seeking for themselves.