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e; religion without science is blind' …

The study of rocks shatters the rock of ages: 'Science without religion is lame; religion without
science is blind' wrote Albert Einstein. Crispin Tickell wo
Crispin Tickell
The Financial Times. (Mar. 4, 2000): Arts and Entertainment: p4.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 Financial Times Ltd.. Information may not be copied or redistributed.
http://www.ft.com/home/us

Full Text:

ROCKS OF AGES: Science and Religion in the Fullnes of Life by Stephen Jay

The relationship between science and religion is a conundrum which reaches back to the beginnings
of science. The frontier between them, if such there be, is in constant motion. New ideas about them
have generated a crop of new books, mostly in the US, where the recent decision of the Kansas
Board of Education to make the teaching of evolution optional in biology classes has caused dismay in
some quarters and amusement in others.

Among the recent books is Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages. He cites the old saying: "Science
gets the age of rocks and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how
to go to heaven". He then develops the thesis of Non Overlapping Magisteria (under the repellent
acronym NOMA) to suggest that science and religion occupy two quite different domains or magisteria
of knowledge: science seeks to document the factual character of the natural world and to develop
theories that coordinate and explain the facts; while religion operates in the realm of human purposes,
meanings and values. Each sometimes intrudes into the domain of the other. Thus he believes that
science has wrongly sought to explain faith and morals, and religion has wrongly sought to impose
itself on science. Christianity with ideas of incarnation and divinely inspired texts is a notorious
example. Both traditions have their own vocabularies of thought which are scarcely intelligible to the
other.

Gould is one of the gurus of our time. He is prolific, learned, eloquent and entertaining. His tangents
are a pleasure in themselves: for example, his description of the Scopes trial in Tennessee and its
aftermath (including the downfall of the US presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, once
described as "a tinpot pope in the Coca Cola belt"); his account of contemporary attitudes towards
Galileo and the subsequent papal acceptance - as recently as 1996 - of the concept of evolution; and
the allegedly moral issues raised by the ichneumonid wasps, whose larvae eat their paralysed hosts,
usually caterpillars, from inside, leaving the heart and other vital organs to the last nutritious morsel.

But I do not think he makes his central case for the incompatibility of science and religion. He is
prepared to allow what he calls the anthropology of morals, which he brings into the category of
religion, to be the proper concern of science. He could scarcely do otherwise. Although most people
working in the area would reject any suggestion of genetic determinism, our genes are one of the
factors which affect human behaviour, and conform in broad terms to good Darwinian principles. But
Gould goes on to deny scientific competence in "the morality of morals" and maintains that whatever
may be discovered to characterise human behaviour, it gives no support to the proposition that we
"ought" to behave in one way or another.

Gould prays Darwin in aid. But I doubt if Darwin really helps. Darwin was always extremely cautious.
He thought that the whole subject of a beneficent creation or otherwise was "too profound for the
human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton". Darwin was anxious to avoid
exposure to accusations of atheism. T.H. Huxley was more of an intellectual bruiser, and saw laws and
moral precepts as opposed to the processes of natural selection. But neither, I believe, would have
condoned the notion of separate magisteria, each with its own rules and vocabulary.

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Of course there are differences of method and attitude towards knowledge, itself a slippery concept. In
the vast range of the human mind, relativity rules, and change is endemic. The heresies of one
generation become the orthodoxies of the next. But I see no reason for ring-fencing ideas about
morals and how we came by them, and still less notions of God, from the scrutiny of science and its
practitioners. Surely there is a spectrum of ideas and methods all penetrating and illuminating each
other: in short one magisterium to encompass the lot. Nothing is for ever. Otherwise we become dogs
speculating on Newton's mind.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)

Tickell, Crispin. "The study of rocks shatters the rock of ages: 'Science without religion is lame; religion
without science is blind' wrote Albert Einstein. Crispin Tickell wo." Financial Times, 4 Mar. 2000,
p. 4. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A59746839/AONE?
u=swinburne1&sid=AONE&xid=94e04d63. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A59746839

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