ARTICLE Why Study God? The Role of Theology at a Catholic University John C. Cavadini O W hy does Notre Dame require all undergradu- ate students to complete theology courses and why do other Catholic universities and colleges sometimes have similar require- ments? W h a t is theology, anyway? How does it benefit students? How does the university benefit from having a faculty of theology? W h a t benefit, in turn, does such a uni- versity offer the world of higher education? The presence of a theology department is unique to re- ligiously affiliated colleges and uni- versities, though certainly far from ubiquitous there, and even at Catho- lic schools theology requirements have dwindled over the years, and are often challenged to justify their exis- tence. W h a t does it mean to accept a faculty of theology as an academic unit in a university community? Its presence implies something about the whole academic community be- cause other academic communities exclude such departments. Secular universities and colleges do not even recognize theology as an academic discipline. What, then, does the fact that a Catholic university welcomes theology tell us? "By its very nature, each Catho- lic University makes an important contribution to the church's work of evangelization. It is a living institu- tional witness to Christ and his message, so vitally important in cultures marked by secularism." This passage from John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae provides a characterization of the distinctiveness of a Catholic univer- sity. It is, he says, a kind of "witness." This term can sound somewhat strange in an academic context, and I draw atten- tion to it, in part, for that reason. Witness is not a category that one finds applied to secular universities very often, if John C. Cavadini is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. Thursday, Wenceslaus Hollar 0607-1677) ever, though I imagine that even secular universities would count themselves as bearing witness in some way to values such as social justice, equality, and inclusiveness. According to Ex corde, however, the witness of a Catholic university is connected to the church's work of evangelization, and that seems to up the ante. A Catholic university, though proceeding "from the heart of the church," is still not the same as the church itself, and its witness can't take exactly the same form as the witness of a parish or a diocese. So what would that witness be—"so vitally impor- tant," as the pope says, "in cultures," such as our own, "marked by secular- ism"? Of course, this witness may take many forms in various campus activities, but here I am looking for the "institutional" witness, the wit- ness that must be encoded into the very thing that makes a university a university—namely, its intellectual life, its mode of intellectual inquiry. Here, we find a crucial connection to theology as a discipline. Theology is the "study of G o d " {Theos-logos). T h.

1. ARTICLE
Why Study God?
The Role of Theology at a Catholic University
John C. Cavadini
O
W
hy does Notre Dame require all undergradu-
ate students to complete theology courses
and why do other Catholic universities and
colleges sometimes have similar require-
ments? W h a t is theology, anyway? How does it benefit
students? How does the university benefit from having a
faculty of theology? W h a t benefit, in turn, does such a uni-
versity offer the world of higher education? The presence of a
theology department is unique to re-
ligiously affiliated colleges and uni-
versities, though certainly far from
ubiquitous there, and even at Catho-
lic schools theology requirements
have dwindled over the years, and are
often challenged to justify their exis-
tence. W h a t does it mean to accept
a faculty of theology as an academic
unit in a university community? Its
presence implies something about
the whole academic community be-
cause other academic communities

2. exclude such departments. Secular
universities and colleges do not even
recognize theology as an academic
discipline. What, then, does the fact
that a Catholic university welcomes
theology tell us?
"By its very nature, each Catho-
lic University makes an important
contribution to the church's work of
evangelization. It is a living institu-
tional witness to Christ and his message, so vitally important
in cultures marked by secularism." This passage from John
Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae provides a
characterization of the distinctiveness of a Catholic univer-
sity. It is, he says, a kind of "witness." This term can sound
somewhat strange in an academic context, and I draw atten-
tion to it, in part, for that reason. Witness is not a category
that one finds applied to secular universities very often, if
John C. Cavadini is professor of theology at the University of
Notre Dame.
Thursday, Wenceslaus Hollar 0607-1677)
ever, though I imagine that even secular universities would
count themselves as bearing witness in some way to values
such as social justice, equality, and inclusiveness. According
to Ex corde, however, the witness of a Catholic university
is connected to the church's work of evangelization, and
that seems to up the ante. A Catholic university, though
proceeding "from the heart of the church," is still not the
same as the church itself, and its witness can't take exactly
the same form as the witness of a
parish or a diocese. So what would

3. that witness be—"so vitally impor-
tant," as the pope says, "in cultures,"
such as our own, "marked by secular-
ism"? Of course, this witness may
take many forms in various campus
activities, but here I am looking for
the "institutional" witness, the wit-
ness that must be encoded into the
very thing that makes a university a
university—namely, its intellectual
life, its mode of intellectual inquiry.
Here, we find a crucial connection
to theology as a discipline.
Theology is the "study of G o d "
{Theos-logos). T h a t sounds weird
and pretty subjective. After all, God
seems rather reclusive, not normally
offering the divine self as an object
of study. How could God be stud-
ied? How could one ever control such
study? How could one keep it from
becoming hopelessly subjective and fanciful? The study of
God (as opposed to the study of religion) might sound like
the study of an illusion of our own making. Unless, of course,
one believes that God has in fact presented the divine self
to us. It is God's self-presentation, God's "revelation," that
is the subject of theological study. Theology begins from
faith in God's self-revelation and moves toward "under-
standing" what God has revealed. It is in that way the study
of God—or, as St. Anselm famously put it, "faith seeking
understanding." Theology is the only discipline that has as
its proper object God's revelation.
12

4. O
ne might wonder whether there's really a need
for a special discipline to study God's revela-
tion. Can't we just read it in the Bible and leave
it at that? For Catholics, though, "revelation"
is not only what is in Scripture; it is also contained in the
apostolic tradition of the church. There was no New Testa-
ment around when Jesus lived, died, and rose. The church
preceded the New Testament and only gradually accepted
its writings as Scripture, just as Israel preceded the He-
brew Bible, and only gradually ratified it as Scripture. The
church's struggle over how and (even) whether to accept the
Hebrew Bible as Scripture was itself complex. There is no
book that dropped out of heaven with
a self-verifying label reading "FROM:
GOD; TO: WORLD; CONTENTS: CERTI-
FIED INSPIRED SCRIPTURE." Whether
the Book of Revelation is Scripture
was contested until the fifth century in
some churches, and in fact Christians
still disagree about what constitutes
inspired Scripture. The Bible is "the
church's book," and Catholics have
always valued the oral traditions and
the living liturgical practices in which it
was used. Not every practice or homily
is as valuable as every other, and the
magisterium of the church—its teach-
ing authority—is there to clarify what
is and what isn't authentic tradition,
as well as what is and what isn't an

5. acceptable interpretation of Scripture.
Studying God's self-revelation is
therefore not equivalent to studying
Scripture. But even if it were, one
encounters problems in the scriptural
texts—^what St. Augustine called quaes-
tiones in his sermons. Many of these
problems or questions are posed by the
learned disciplines, the arts and scienc-
es, which one finds at any university.
To take a simple example, if according
to science the earth seems much older
than the six thousand years or so the
Bible reports, then we have a problem.
Do we give up faith in revelation, or
do we "seek understanding"? Are we
so sure we understand what Scripture
is saying, or how it is saying it?
Nor are these questions limited to
the modern period. Sophisticated in-
tellectuals both Jewish and Christian
have for the past two millennia won-
dered about difficulties in the Book
of Genesis: What kind of God creates
supposedly precious human creatures
and then loses track of them in the garden, having to walk
around calling out and asking where they are? For that
matter, what kind of a God walks around in a garden at all?
One doesn't have to be a Scripture scholar to notice that, in
the first few verses of Genesis, God divides the light from
the darkness and calls the light day and the darkness night,
but the sun and the moon are not created until a few verses
later. Where was the light coming from? We moderns think

6. we are the only ones burdened with such questions, but
learned Jews and Christians of the first, second, and third
centuries were possibly more troubled than we are by these
passages, and yet they pressed on, "seeking understanding."
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W h a t was the "day" created before the sun and the moon
that define our days, and what vvras the "light" that preceded
these heavenly bodies? Was it the light of created intelligence
(the rational incorporeal spirit, not mentioned anywhere else
in the narrative)? Was it the light of understanding, which
pervades the text as a whole? Is God's creation of the first

7. "day" a way of saying that God created time and that time
is older than the sun and the moon?
No matter how they answered these particular questions,
theologians of the early centuries agreed that the most im-
portant truths contained in these scriptural texts were that
the origin of the world is God's creative act and that creation
is not simply a matter of mechanical origin but of God's
"speaking." God doesn't just create the world as the first
in a series of mechanical causes. Rather, he creates it in his
"word," or intention, which continues to sustain the world
ever after. Another crucial truth: Everything God created
is good—indeed, the whole of creation is "very good." And
one more truth: Human beings have the special dignity of
being created in the "image and likeness" of God.
Have we fully understood the "goodness" of the cosmos
and all that is in it? Or what it means to be in the "image
and likeness of God?" Of course not, but the "seeking" never
stops because, for one thing, the questions never stop. Today
we have, in addition to biblical texts, the benefit of this tradi-
tion of consensus, built up from the earliest centuries, about
the central meaning of these texts, and we can study that
consensus, along with the texts themselves, as we attempt
to further our "understanding" in light of modern versions
of the ancient questions.
H
ow, then, can we square the texts of Genesis with
what science tells us? We can do so primarily by
noticing that the elements that the traditional
consensus finds central—the dependence of the
world on God, the goodness of the world, and the dignity of
human beings as God's "image and likeness"—are none of
them measurable or empirically observable. In other words.

8. Genesis is not a scientific text at all, primitive or otherwise,
and cannot in principle be replaced by one. Science cannot
determine or measure the goodness of anything, no mat-
ter how sophisticated the instruments of detection. These
are not statements proposed for scientific verification, but
truths proclaimed unto faith, in the context of the rest of
revelation. One responds to them by faith and by seeking,
in turn, to understand what one has come to believe, not
by observing and testing and verifying the hypothesis of
goodness, as would be appropriate for a scientific theory.
Faith in the goodness of creation proceeding from God's
love is precisely that—faith. And if our faith is challenged
by the obvious presence of evil in the world, that is grounds
for working to understand further what is meant by the
"goodness" we believe in and how the doctrine of creation
fits into the broader revelation of God's love.
Once we stop thinking of the text as some kind of primitive
science, we might glimpse how self-consciously it proclaims
that its subject is a mystery too great for words. T h e six-day
creation scheme is obviously a construct intended to under-
score that very fact. No one can have observed the creative
"speech" of God. Isn't that the point of reserving the creation
of the only possible observer until the sixth "day," after all
the speaking is done? The fact that the framework of "days"
precedes the creation of the sun and moon is the text's way
of telling us that the six-day scheme is a construct, used to
direct our attention past the text to the ineffable mystery
it proclaims. T h e text makes itself a vessel containing the
great light of a mystery that can shine through it, casting
the very words of the text as its shadow. The six-day scheme,
oriented toward the seventh day of rest, is of course a liturgi-
cal construct, which proclaims that creation itself is oriented
toward rest—that is, toward the praise of God's goodness. No
science can prove, disprove, or even observe this mystery. It

9. transcends scientific questions without denying their validity.
It is important to observe that science is affirmed in this
example, even as its results inspire questions pointing to
something beyond science. In this way, science itself becomes
oriented toward an integration of knowledge transcending
science. One learns to recognize that some concepts, such as
"creation," are irreducibly theological: they can't be reduced
or translated into scientific categories because they arise
from mysteries, such as the goodness of the cosmos, that are
proclaimed to, and apprehended only by, faith. Language of
"transcending" science is not meant as an insult to science,
but only as a way of affirming it in its own methodology. A
culture of "faith seeking understanding" is not a culture that
holds that there is a Catholic or Christian science or that faith
alone offers a sufficient answer to all questions. T h e very
point of theology is to engage the truths of faith in a "dialogue
with reason"—that is, with all the other disciplines that arise
from the questioning human spirit and our observation of
the world. Theology affirms the truths of other disciplines
even as it integrates them into a discourse that transcends
their methodologies. This discourse generates a kind of thick
intellectual culture, in which faith generates new questions
about what we learn through scientific research rather than
replacing or preempting such research.
Nor does this apply only to the natural sciences. If research
into other cultures of the world discovers religious teachings
of undeniable and exquisite beauty, these results are left
standing, but they also occasion new questions. How can we
understand their truth relative to revelation? "Faith seeking
understanding" can afford to acknowledge truth wherever it
may be found without fearing that the universal significance
of God's self-revelation in Christ is somehow threatened.
Truth cannot be threatened by truth. Seeking in this case
means deepening our own understanding of revelation even

10. as we deepen our own thinking about other religions.
Now we can see why a university community that accepts
in its midst a theology department is not different simply
because it accepts one more discipline than secular univer-
sities do. In accepting that discipline, a university isn't just
adding another element to the paradigm already in place at
14
secular universities; it is accepting an
altogether different paradigm of the
intellectual life—a paradigm of intel-
lectual culture as a dialectic between
faith and reason, to use the traditional
expression. Having a theology depart-
ment means accepting a commitment
to the intellectual life as oriented to-
ward an "understanding" of something
that integrates and transcends all the
disciplines. Such an understanding
keeps each discipline from closing
in on itself and proceeding as if the
truths it discovers were incommen-
surable with the truths discovered by
other disciplines. It means openness
to a conversation that necessarily tran-
scends each discipline but is not merely
"interdisciplinary." If the disciplines
converge at some point, it must be
at a point "above" them all, in a dis-
cipline that has as its explicit object
of study the mystery that transcends
all other objects of study. Otherwise

11. one must either force nondisciplinary
solutions of questions onto the disci-
plines (e.g., claiming that faith is an
adequate answer to scientific ques-
tions), or declare that knowledge is
hopelessly fragmented into incom-
mensurate disciplinary truths.
The task of seeking an integration
of knowledge has been called a "sa-
piential task"— sapiential because it
is a search for the ultimate and over-
arching meaning of life. The Catholic
intellectual life is never finished or
settled. It is, as John Paul II put it,
a quest: "Integration of knowledge
is a process, one which will always
remain incomplete." This quest tends
toward wisdom, and so the Catholic
intellectual life, in its open-endedness,
can be thought of as a wisdom tra-
dition. It is inescapably theological
because it grows out of faith in the
God of revelation, and because the-
ology performs the essential integra-
tive function. Philosophy is a partner
to theology in the integration of the
intellectual life, since it, too, asks
questions that transcend the disci-
plines—questions about the nature
of knowledge itself, for instance, or
of language, or of meaning, or even,
as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, of
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13. 5
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God. Still, philosophy does not in the end have as its defining
object of study God's self-revelation and everything as seen
in the light of God's self-revelation, as Thomas also points
out in the first article of the Summa Theologiae. Philosophy
can remain philosophy without asking the question of the
relation of its own results to revelation; and if that question
is asked, it cannot be answered without theology. Further,
much contemporary philosophy does not even concern itself
with questions of transcendence or ultimate meaning, and
yet it remains philosophy. But if theology ceases to address
itself to God's self-revelation, it ceases to be theology.
Yet theology achieves no understanding apart from the
other disciplines (because, as John Paul II puts it, "reason
discovers new and unsuspected horizons," because "faith
and reason mutually support each other; each influences
the other, as they offer to each other a purifying critique
and a stimulus to pursue the search for deeper understand-
ing"). Thus, the Catholic intellectual life, as a theologically
integrated wisdom tradition, provides a middle ground
between secularism and sectarianism. This is the "witness,"
specific to a university, that a Catholic university can—and
does—provide in our culture.
What benefit does this witness offer to the American
academy in general? Without this witness, the intellectual
culture in our country will remain dominated by, and lim-
ited to, the increasingly sterile polarity between aggressive

14. secularization and aggressive anti-intellectual fideisms.
These two poles are equally unattractive, and they tend to
perpetuate each other. Seven years ago, Stephen Pinker fa-
mously observed that "universities are about reason, pure and
simple," and that "faith—believing something without good
reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious
institution" {Harvard Crimson., October 27, 2006), by which
he meant a church, synagogue, mosque, or the like. Such a
caricature of faith is itself anti-intellectual, but persons of
faith may be tempted to respond to such hostility by turn-
ing to a self-isolating fundamentalist position that finds in
faith an intellectual world sufficient unto itself. But that
position is so narrow and anti-intellectual that it prompts
a kind of intellectual revulsion, and so feeds the growth of
the opposite position—secularization, which at least seems
open to all questions (if not all answers). Part of the Catholic
university's mission is to provide an alternative to these two
extremes, to heal an intellectual imagination wounded by
the antagonism between secularism and sectarianism, where
these are understood as the only two options. The "witness"
of a Catholic university involves offering another option.
It should be noted that this witness may appear to "pinch"
both faith and reason. It will appear to pinch reason be-
cause of its commitment to faith in God's self-revelation as
entrusted to the church. This requires links to the church.
Without these links, the intellectual culture of the uni-
versity will, beyond any doubt, be secularized. Apart from
the community of believers, no one will care whether faith
seeks understanding or not. In a way, the church protects
this intellectual environment. On the other hand, the dia-
lectic between faith and reason has to be free enough that
real thinking is possible, and so to some this freedom will
seem to pinch faith. Academic credibility is a sine qua non
of any witness appropriate to a university, while fidelity is a

15. sine qua non of any real witness to the church's distinctive
intellectual culture. The question for a Catholic university is:
Are its connections to the church accidental and occasional
or programmatic and consistent? Is its project rooted in the
church, linked to ecclesial persons, and accountable in some
way to authority in the church? Is dissent the default mode
of its theological culture? Or is refusal to tolerate critical
reflection in the public domain on various magisterial posi-
tions the default mode? If the answer to either of these last
two questions is yes, then the appropriate balance has not
been struck.
N
ow we are in a position to answer the other
questions this article began with. Why should
undergraduates be required to take courses in
theology? An undergraduate course in theology
is essentially different from, say, an undergraduate course
in history. Even if both courses use some of the same texts,
they will use them in different ways. The history course will
examine the circumstances of their production, the culture
behind them, the social situation for which they provide
evidence. But the point of a theology course is to find out
about God, in and through the properly disciplined study
of these texts. If a student asks a question about God in a
history class, the instructor is free to answer, "That's not
a relevant question in this class" (or, as it was put to me
somewhat indecorously in a class at the non-Catholic in-
stitution where I studied as an undergraduate, "Please leave
your theological baggage at the door"). But for a theology
instructor to reply in the same way would be to violate the
very identity of one's discipline. Students are right to ask
about God, and all matters related to God, in a theology
class, where the question is not finally "What influences
were operating in Julian of Norwich's social setting that

16. caused her to have visions?" or "What did Thomas Aquinas
think about God?"—though such questions are certainly
and necessarily involved—but rather "How has this study
helped me think about God and God's self-revelation?"
From theology classes, students can also learn that faith in
revelation isn't something that has to remain purely private,
a matter of individualistic piety without reference to the
intellectual life. Rather, faith—the very faith that connects
them to all believers, learned and unlearned—can acquire a
level of "understanding" as sophisticated as that of any other
discipline of study in the university. I find that this is the
single most important benefit of the study of theology for
undergraduates: the discovery of the sophistication of the
"science of God," of the perspective of faith. It comes to
16
many of them almost as a shock. If anything is likely to bind
them more fully to their faith—or, if they are not believers,
to make them take the faith of others more seriously—it is
this discovery, and not unchallenging courses that seem to
replace teaching with preaching. I intend here no devalua-
tion of preaching, but the special witness of the university
takes place in the context of a classroom. The witness of a
university is not the same as that of a parish or a diocese,
where preaching is the proper modus operandi.
Through required courses in theology, students are exposed
to a mode of inquiry that belies the false dichotomy between
secularization and sectarianism, a mode of inquiry in which
faith is not excluded as irrelevant to reason but is itself the
opening to a rich intellectual world. W h a t Augustine calls
the initiumfidei, the starting point of faith, drives this inquiry

17. rather than cutting it short. Nor are we talking about faith
in the abstract, but a specific faith: the basic doctrines or
mysteries of the Catholic faith, considered as part of a living
tradition and not an artifact of the past. Basic knowledge
of these teachings, and exposure to a mode of inquiry that
neither opposes faith to reason, nor reduces faith to reason,
is a benefit to any student no matter what his or her own
particular "starting point" may be.
As students come to understand the sophistication of the
Catholic theological tradition, I find that their sympathy
for it increases. They see riches where before they saw only
old, irrelevant texts. They come to appreciate that there
were difficult challenges in the church long before our own
time, controversies much more heated than some of those we
observe today. They discover a beauty they had not expected,
a variety where previously they had assumed there would
be only uniformity. They find out that Scripture is not as
"primitive" as they had thought. They learn that, while not
reducible to reason, faith has its own logic. They learn to
distinguish between what is reasonable and what is provable.
They learn some of the basic doctrines of the Catholic faith,
not as doors that close off all questioning, but as openings
to lifelong reflection on the ultimately ineffable mystery of
God's love, which is the ultimate referent of all doctrine. It
is the formation of an intellectual life continually engaged
with this mystery that is the principle benefit of theology
as a field of study.
Thus a Catholic university that welcomes a theology de-
partment and requires theology courses for its undergraduates
endorses an academic approach that is essentially integrative.
Even without any specific integrating programming, the
university thereby identifies its whole intellectual project as
distinctive. In such a university, the other disciplines remain
themselves; their different disciplinary methodologies are not

18. erased or homogenized. But each disciplinary conversation
is experienced as part of a larger whole. Since one part of
the curriculum is explicitly oriented toward understanding
the mystery of God's self-revelation, the whole is thereby
implicitly oriented toward such understanding. T h e kind
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20. of integration such an approach makes possible is never
complete, always a work in progress. It is the character of a
conversation, rather than a settled intellectual accomplish-
ment or system.
L
et me offer a small example of how the integrative
potential of the conversation might be actualized
in a specific way. Contrary to popular belief, the
"preferential option for the poor" is first and fore-
most a doctrine about God, and not about the poor. In his
book On Job, Gustavo Gutiérrez writes, "The ultimate basis
of God's preference for the poor is to be found in God's own
goodness and not in any analysis of society or in human
compassion, however pertinent these reasons may be." If
the poor and the "little ones" are "the privileged addressees
of revelation," this is "the result not primarily of moral or
spiritual dispositions, but of a human situation in which God
undertakes self-revelation by acting and overturning values
and criteria. The scorned of this world are those whom the
God of love prefers."
All good universities want to be committed to social ser-
vice of some kind, and the Catholic university most of all.
But it is important to note here that, from a Catholic point
of view, the reason for such service is first and foremost
found in God's manner of self-revelation. We are, in the
first place, confronted with a mystery of God's transcen-
dent love that cannot be reduced to human reason, because
it is a "preference" based in God's "goodness." It cannot be
derived from any notion of justice based on human reason
alone, on the supposed merits exhibited by the poor (or lack
thereof). Theology is a contemplative discourse that is de-

21. fined by its attempt to understand this goodness as well
as it can be understood, and to arrive at a notion of justice
that flows from it. The language appropriate to theolo-
gy, according to Gutierrez, is the union of the contempla-
tive and prophetic, of the contemplation of God's love and
the "overturning" it implies in its very mode of revelation.
Isn't this language—which could only arise in a depart-
ment oriented by definition to the mystery of God's self-
revelation—itself an example of the integration required
of a Catholic university? Other disciplines can then con-
tribute to an understanding of this language of contem-
plation and of justice, spoken as it must be in a world of
science, technology, law, literature, social studies, and art.
A Catholic university might even offer clusters of linked
courses, each speaking its own disciplinary language, but
all integrated theologically into the language of contem-
plation and prophecy.
Thus does the mere presence of a theology department
orient a university, quietly and almost imperceptibly, toward
the transcendent mystery of God's solidarity with the "little
ones," the mystery of the Cross. Is there a better way to pre-
pare students for a lifetime of active, conscious immersion
in the mystery of God's love? •
2
O
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23. individual use.
Review Essays
The Impact of Cognitive Science on Religious Studies:
A Revolution in the Making
SPIRIT, MIND, AND BRAIN: A PSYCHOANALYTIC
EXAMINATION OF SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION
By Mortimer Ostow
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007
Columbia Series in Science and Religion
Pp. xi + 232. $29.50
THE NEW FRONTIER OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE:
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, NEUROSCIENCE, AND THE
TRANSCENDENT
By John Hick
New York: Palgrave, 2007
Pp. xii + 228. $85.00
BODIES AND SOULS, OR SPIRITED BODIES?
By Nancey Murphy
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006

24. Current Issues in Theology
Pp. x + 1 5 4 . $24.99
CONTEMPLATIVE SCIENCE: WHERE BUDDHISM AND
NEUROSCIENCE CONVERGE
By Alan B. Wallace
New York: Columbia University Press, 2006
Columbia Series in Science and Religion
Pp. vii + 2 1 1 . $31.00
PRACTICING SCIENCE, EXPERIENCING SPIRIT:
INTERVIEWS WITH TWELVE SCIENTISTS
Edited by Philip Clayton and Jim Schaal
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007
Columbia Series in Science and Religion
Pp. xiv +250. $29.50
MIND AND RELIGION: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND
COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOSITY
Edited by Harvey Whitehouse and Robert N. McCauley
Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2005
Cognitive Science of Religion Series

25. Pp. xxx+ 248. $32.95
DARWIN STRIKES BACK: DEFENDING THE SCIENCE OF
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
By Thomas Woodward
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006
Pp. 220. $14.99
THE GOD DELUSION
By Richard Dawkins
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006
Pp. χ + 406. $27.00
THE CREATION: A MEETING OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION
By E.O. Wilson
New York: W. W. Norton, 2006
Pp. v i i + 1 7 5 . $21.95
REVIEWER: Kelly Bulkeley
The Graduate Theological Union (UCB)
Berkeley, CA
In recent years, the ostensible conflict between "science" and
"religion" has become a proxy battle for many different ideo-

26. logical debates: rationality versus faith, modernism versus
postmodernism, liberalism versus conservatism, secular
elites versus pious masses. One of the unfortunate conse-
quences of this much-hyped battle between religion and
science is that it makes life more difficult for researchers,
teachers, and students who want to learn what's truly new
and interesting in this area of study. Fascinating research
data is often buried in obscure texts, while the superficial
arguments of extremists on both sides get all the headlines.
This is one of the reasons why the full implications of
recent scientific findings on the human brain-mind system
(hereafter "cognitive science") are only just beginning to be
felt in the academic study of religion. All the rhetorical flash
and drama of the science-religion tempest has distracted
religious studies scholars from a serious consideration of the
newly emerging picture of the human psyche provided by
cognitive science. It may be helpful, then, to analyze some of
the latest works in the cognitive science of religion within

27. the broader ideological context of the conflict between
religion and science. This essay will discuss three sets of
three texts each. The first three books represent efforts to
accommodate the findings of cognitive science within well-
established conceptual frameworks. For Ostow, it's rela-
tional psychoanalysis; for Hick and Murphy, it's Christian
theology. The second three books take a more empirical
approach by focusing on the analysis of data from brain
Religious Studies Review, Vol. 34 No. 4, December 2008
© 2008 Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, Inc. 239
Religious Studies Review · VOLUME 34 · NUMBER 4 ·
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imaging (Wallace), experimental psychology (Whitehouse
and McCauley), and biographical interviews (Clayton and
Schaal). These books are, like the preceding three, shaped
by the pre-existing viewpoints of their authors, but they go
farther than the first three in developing new sources of
evidence to support their claims.
The insights gained from a close reading of these six
works give a fresh perspective in reviewing the final three
books, which address the broadest and most contentious
issues in the religion-science debate: Woodward's cheer-

28. leading advocacy of Intelligent Design in Darwin Strikes
Back, Dawkins' bilious attack on religion in The God Delu-
sion, and Wilson's prophetic call for a pan-human bioethic in
The Creation. Intriguingly, the findings of cognitive science
play a minimal role in the most argumentative of these
texts-neither Dawkins nor Woodward makes any significant
use of cognitive science research either for or against reli-
gion. The reason, I will suggest, is that the latest findings of
brain-mind research undermine the extreme positions on
either side. What emerges from cognitive science is an
understanding of the power and creativity of the human
brain-mind system that neither traditional religions nor
mainstream scientific paradigms can adequately represent.
Therein lies the revolutionary potential of this field of
research and its importance to the future of religious studies.
I
The first two books represent the crowning works of two
academic giants in their respective fields, psychoanalyst
Mortimer Ostow and theologian-philosopher John Hick. I
find it remarkable that two scholars who have achieved so
much in their careers should decide in the closing years of
their lives (Ostow died in 2006 at the age of eighty-eight, just
before his book was published; Hick is now eighty-six years
old) to write books about cognitive science. Ostow had a
long-standing interest in building bridges between psycho-
analysis and Jewish theology, and his approach to recent
findings of brain-mind research emphasized the continu-
ities with psychoanalytic theory. According to Ostow, spiri-
tual experience reproduces the feeling of mother-infant
bonding. That feeling is real, whether or not it becomes
labeled with the term "religious" after the fact. The psycho-
physiological reality ofthat spiritual feeling underscores the
importance of cognitive science, where we can learn about
the biology of attachment and the emotions generated
by experiences of bonding, love, separation, and loss. For

29. Ostow, recent research on the limbic system of the brain (a
neuroanatomical center of instinctual behavior) is signifi-
cant because it sheds light on the primal attachment behav-
iors found not only in humans but all mammalian species.
Ostow saw this is a major empirical boost for his approach to
psychoanalysis, which emphasized the relational qualities of
human life and accepted spiritual experience as a mentally
healthy phenomenon. He rejected the neurotheology of
Newberg and Persinger for their overly-specific localization
of spiritual experience, and after reviewing their claims he
said, "To summarize, we don't have much to say that is
specific about the brain's creation of the spiritual experi-
ence. Arising as an expression of the attachment instinct, it
must originate in the instinctual apparatus, which presum-
ably is mediated in the brain stem, a small, crowded area
that creates motivation, but relatively nonspecifically" (117).
For Ostow, the value of cognitive science lies in its providing
good experimental data to support a relational theory
of psychoanalysis, not in its attempts to replace psycho-
analysis with a narrower explanatory framework.
John Hick's long career at Birmingham University in the
United Kingdom and Claremont Graduate University in the
United States has revolved around a conversation between
Enlightenment philosophy (particularly Kant) and Christian
theology. Hick has strongly and controversially advocated a
pluralistic theological approach in which he encourages
Christians to accept the multiplicity of faiths in the world. In
The New Frontier of Religion and Science, Hick applies his
pluralistic perspective to cognitive science and its relevance
to religion. Like Ostow, Hick considers religious experience
to be the key, not the external creeds, rituals, and texts of
institutional religions. Hick takes interest in the findings of
cognitive science regarding the limbic system, epilepsy,
meditation, and psychoactive medications, and he grants a

30. great deal of value to this knowledge. But he disputes any
effort to turn these findings into an argument for a materi-
alist explanation of religious experience. Hick critically
reviews and rejects the monistic claim that mind-body cor-
relations prove mind-body identity, and he concludes that
cognitive science has done nothing to dispel the fundamen-
tal "mystery of consciousness" (89). For Hick, the moral
dignity and spiritual grandeur of human life comes from its
"cognitive freedom" (142), the capacity to think, feel, and
will beyond the constraints of material existence. Nothing
that cognitive science tells us about the pathological work-
ings of the brain can take away that ultimate freedom: "It is
entirely reasonable, rational, sane, for those who participate
in what is apparently an awareness of the Transcendent to
believe, and to base their lives on the belief, that in living as
physical beings within the natural world we are at the same
time living in relation to a transcendent-and-imminent
reality whose presence changes the meaning for us of every-
thing that we do and that happens to us" (145). Although
Hick's intention in The New Frontier of Religion and Science is
to philosophically scrutinize the materialist underpinnings
of cognitive science, I can imagine a more fruitful follow-up
conversation in which his work on Kantian categories of
240
Religious Studies Review · VOLUME 34 · NUMBER 4 ·
DECEMBER 2008
thought could be brought into contact with new scientific
data on perception, reasoning, and memory.
Nancey Murphy is also a Christian philosopher and
theologian, but her evaluation of cognitive science differs

31. quite radically from Hick's-let it never be said there is only
one Christian view of cognitive science. Murphy's aim in
Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? is to explain a theory
she calls "nonreductive physicalism." She starts by accept-
ing what Hick spends his entire book rejecting-namely,
the reduction of mental experience to bodily functioning.
Murphy gives up the dualist fight and accepts the physical
causation of psychological experience, blaming the Greeks
for misleading Christian theologians who have tried for cen-
turies to separate the body and the soul. She argues instead
for a vision of "human distinctiveness" (116) over other
animals by virtue of our capacities for imagination, lan-
guage, and free will. In this, she rejoins the company of
Ostow and Hick in highlighting the sophisticated psychologi-
cal processes in the human brain-mind system that cannot
be adequately modeled by cognitive science: "[Interactions
with the environment and higher-level evaluative processes
alter neural structure. Thus, behavior is seldom controlled
exclusively by neurobiology. More important here is the fact
that our complex neurobiology enables us to conceive of
abstract goals that become causal factors in their own right"
(103). Some readers may take issue with Murphy's elision of
the mind-body problem and her credulity-straining argu-
ment in favor of bodily resurrection, but I would suggest the
significance of her work derives from its impact on the sci-
entific literacy of Christian theologians. Murphy's intelligent
translation of cognitive scientific ideas promotes greater
Christian study of this research literature, providing both
the conceptual language and the theological justification for
seeking new psychological knowledge.
II
Ostow, Hick, and Murphy have all pointed to what may be
called the "explanatory gap," the distance between the
current findings of cognitive science and the ultimate expla-
nation of human mental life and spiritual experience. Based

32. on their prior theoretical commitments, each of these three
argues that the gap is quite wide and may never be bridged.
The next set of books take a more optimistic position, claim-
ing the gap is not so wide after all and may be narrowed even
further by new empirical research.
Wallace approaches cognitive science from the perspec-
tive of an American-born religious studies scholar and
Buddhist monk trained by the Dalai Lama. Buddhism, like
Christianity, takes many different forms, and Wallace's
ideas about "where Buddhism and neuroscience converge"
do not represent any kind of official statement of Buddhist
doctrine. But Contemplative Science describes better than
any other current book the multiple points of contact
between traditional Buddhist teachings about the mind and
contemporary Western research on the brain. Wallace opens
the book by affirming the importance of introspection as a
means of studying subjective experience in a systematic
way. This is what he means by "contemplative science,"
and he rejects the claims by some cognitive scientists that
introspection has no use in serious research. According to
Wallace, people (like Buddhist monks) who have rigorously
trained their introspective attention are able to provide reli-
able evidence about the inner workings of the human mind,
particularly those experiences of "higher bandwidth" mental
functioning reported not only by Buddhist meditators but
also by Christian mystics and Neoplatonist philosophers.
Ordinary scientific methods cannot observe or measure such
phenomena, and Wallace sounds very much like Hick and
Ostow in his critique of those who claim to have "explained"
consciousness: "The consensus among cognitive scientists
that the brain is solely responsible for the generation of all
states of consciousness is remarkable in light of the facts
that 1) they have no scientific means of detecting the pres-
ence of consciousness in anything; 2) they have no scientific

33. definition of consciousness; 3) they have not identified
the neural correlates of consciousness; and 4) they have
not discovered the necessary and sufficient causes of
consciousness" (153).
Here is a bold statement of the explanatory gap. Yet
elsewhere in Contemplative Science, Wallace makes clear his
belief that Buddhism and neuroscience do indeed converge
on certain points. One such point regards the capacity for
selective attention and sustained, focused awareness.
Buddhism has long studied this powerful psychological
faculty, and cognitive scientists today have revealed new
features of its neural foundation in certain regions of the
prefrontal cortex of the brain. Wallace argues that the intro-
spective reports of Buddhist meditators contribute to our
knowledge of the nature, range, and long-term development
of human attention, while scientific research on the prefron-
tal cortex can guide more effective Buddhist mindfulness
practices. Wallace also points to lucid dreaming (the aware-
ness within the dream state that one is dreaming) as another
area of Buddhist-neuroscientific convergence. The Buddhist
teaching that dream experience reveals the illusory nature
of all reality corresponds closely to the neuroscientific view
that dreaming involves the autonomous generation of
subjective imagery, often accompanied by metacognitive
processes like lucidity. Here, too, there is room for much
more research, and compared to the previous three authors,
Wallace seems more genuinely interested in developing new
lines of experimentation and actively gathering new forms
of evidence. Buddhist teachings have long emphasized
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34. DECEMBER 2008
systematic observation and rational analysis of the mind,
and this spirit of empiricism is exactly what Wallace and
other contemporary Buddhists (including the Dalai Lama
himself) find so interesting in cognitive science.
The best example of that empirical spirit being put into
research practice comes from Whitehouse and McCauley's
edited volume Mind and Religion. Another entry in the
"Cognitive Science of Religion Series" from Altamira Press,
the book's editors are among the most intellectually creative
and influential figures in this area of study. The contributors
to their book have been collectively developing a theoretical
framework built on the "modular" functions of the mind and
their relevance to religious beliefs, practices, and experi-
ences. Whitehouse's "modes of religiosity" theory is the spe-
cific focus of Mind and Religion, and the contributors bring a
variety of methods to bear in its evaluation. As McCauley
makes clear in the Introduction, the modes theory is but one
of many cognitive approaches to religion. Whitehouse's
work has attracted special interest because of its conceptual
simplicity and ethnographic scope. To understand why
people believe what they believe about religion, Whitehouse
refers to the extensive scientific literature on the cognitive
processes involved in memory and learning. This body of
research provides Whitehouse with a wealth of experimental
data to use in developing a binary classification of religious
belief and practice. The two modes of religiosity arise from
the two different systems of memory processing in the
human mind. The "doctrinal" mode works to shape semantic
memory via frequently repeated rituals and statements of
faith, enforced by theological authorities. The "imagistic"
mode depends on episodic memory, and rare but emotionally
arousing experiences that prompt idiosyncratic religious
ideas and "spontaneous exegetical reflection." According to

35. Whitehouse, religion can be fundamentally understood in
terms of these two poles of psychological functioning.
To be sure, the contributors to Mind and Religion give
Whitehouse quite a drubbing. They fault him for describing
rather than explaining religion, they dispute his ideas about
ritual action, and they dismantle his binary opposition of
"doctrine" and "image." Readers will have to judge for them-
selves how much of Whitehouse's original theory survives,
but I was struck by the forward-looking tone of his eloquent
response in the book's final chapter. Instead of bickering
with his critics, Whitehouse takes their comments as grist
for new research and better theories. Especially intriguing in
this regard is his suggestion that cognitive scientists should
work on developing a wider-angle perspective on reli-
gious phenomena by integrating cultural dynamics more
thoroughly into their analyses: "Rather than thinking of
cognition as something that takes place exclusively in the
mind/brain, it makes sense to think of it as 'extended' and
thus to talk about 'cognitive environments' rather than
purely interior cognition" (221). This notion of "extended"
cognition opens up vast new research horizons, which I
believe is exactly Whitehouse's point: to stimulate new
empirical investigations that put abstract explanations
(including his own) to the experimental test.
A different kind of evidence appears in Clayton and
Schaal's edited work Practicing Science, Living Faith (the
third book under review from the Columbia Series in Science
and Religion), namely the evidence of personal testimony
and oral history. Wallace would, I imagine, welcome this
first-person data, and so would Ostow and Hick. Whitehouse
and McCauley might question it as too unreliable, and
Richard Dawkins, as we will see below, dismisses such per-
sonal testimony as scientifically useless. Practicing Science,

36. Living Faith is a product of the "Science and the Spiritual
Quest" program funded by the Templeton Foundation from
1999 to 2003. The program sponsored dozens of events
around the world in which professional scientists were
invited to discuss their religious and spiritual beliefs
and their relevance to their scientific work. Clayton and
Schaal have transcribed what they believe to be the best
and most representative interviews with these scientists,
including primatologist Jane Goodall, biologist Ursula Good-
enough, computer scientist Henry Thompson, and "meta-
mathematician" Hendrik Pieter Barendregt. Clayton and
Schaal borrow themes from Ian Barbour's model of religion-
science relations to illuminate the personal narratives of
the scientists, whose beliefs range across the theological
spectrum from devout members of a specific Christian or
Muslim tradition to individual seekers of a panentheistic
"unchurched" spirituality. Here, for example, is Jane
Goodall: "It is my belief-and because it is a belief, you can
discuss it but not disprove it-that there is a great Spiritual
Power and that there is a spark of that spiritual power within
each of us. And I believe that there is a spark of the same
spiritual power in all life" (27). It becomes clear in her inter-
view that this spiritual belief has been a primary driving
force in Goodall's heroic scientific career. She doesn't
proselytize on behalf of any particular faith, but she openly
acknowledges that her revolutionary scientific research on
the intelligence of African chimpanzees was motivated by
a deeply felt sense of spiritual kinship with the rest of
creation, and she's glad that her work has stirred the
same feelings in other people.
Clayton and Schaal focus most of their attention on the
similarities in these stories. Even though we might want to
hear more about those pesky, Templeton-confounding differ-
ences, it is certainly impressive to hear so many prominent
scientists discuss the active influence of religion and spiri-

37. tuality in their professional lives. Of course, questions arise
regarding the representative nature of the people included in
Clayton and Schaal's book. Are they unusual, out of the
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Religious Studies Review · VOLUME 34 · NUMBER 4 ·
DECEMBER 2008
professional mainstream? How many other scientists have
no religious or spiritual interests whatsoever? We don't
know, and even after reading this book it still seems likely
the nonreligious remain in the majority. Nevertheless, Prac-
ticing Science, Living Faith provides empirical evidence that
religion and science are, at a minimum, not mutually incom-
patible in the context of people's actual lives. A person can
be a first-rate scientist and an authentic religious believer.
More importantly in methodological terms, this book gives
us good reasons to study religion and spirituality as motiva-
tional resources in scientific inquiry. Just as Whitehouse and
McCauley apply cognitive science to the study of religion,
Clayton and Schaal apply religious studies and theological
reflection to the study of how science actually develops and
grows in people's lives.
Ill
The final three books to be considered address the religion-
science debate in what their authors believe are the widest,
most comprehensive conceptual terms. They make only
limited use of cognitive science, but they propose basic
methodological principles that presumably apply to brain-
mind research. It seems worthwhile, then, to explore the
implications of their arguments for the books we've dis-

38. cussed so far.
Woodward has written Darwin Strikes Back as a system-
atic defense of the scientific status of "Intelligent Design"
(ID) against its critics. Woodward has academic training in
rhetoric, and Darwin Strikes Back analyzes the explosion of
anti-ID controversy following an August 1,2005 comment by
President Bush in support of teaching ID alongside evolu-
tionary theory in American public schools. Bush said in
response to a question from a reporter, "I think that part of
education is exposing people to different schools of thought.
You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed
to different ideas, the answer is yes."1 A media uproar
ensued, which Woodward chronicles in all its hyperventilat-
ing detail. Advocates of ID were denounced as fools and
charlatans and attacked as enemies of civilization; their
ideas were treated as intellectually toxic and their
arguments were dismissed out of hand, often by leading
researchers and educators who admitted they had never
read any actual ID works.
I confess, I had never read an ID book myself, so Darwin
Strikes Back has certainly given me a better understanding of
this bitter area of religion-science conflict. Alas, after
reading the book I have not become one of the converts
Woodward tries to win to the ID cause, and in some ways I'm
more concerned than ever about the potentially pernicious
effects of ID. Woodward characterizes President Bush's
pro-ID comment as merely a stray remark with no hidden
agenda, but this attitude seems almost willfully oblivious to
the political and cultural context in which Bush made his
comment. Given Bush's many other controversial attempts
to instill the ideals and values of conservative Christianity
into the workings of the US government (e.g., in "faith-
based" social welfare programs, stem cell research, family

39. planning practices, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan),
people had good reason to believe the newly-reelected Presi-
dent would take actions to promote ID in public schools as
part of his increasingly theocratic administration. You may
or may not agree with that view of his presidency, but to
analyze people's reactions to Bush's ID comment of August
2005 without taking these widely-held feelings into account
does an injustice to his critics and gives a false impression
of innocence on the part of ID proponents. Woodward
expresses a kind of "gee whiz!" amazement at the hundreds
of ID clubs on college campuses sprouting up all over the
country, and he takes this as evidence in favor of ID's
growing intellectual credibility. I'd say the rise of these clubs
is more likely the product of improved social networking
among conservative Christian college students, with ID
providing a useful tool for new evangelical activities.
Critics have called ID creationism in a cheap tuxedo, but
that's misleading. ID is indeed a direct outgrowth of Biblical
creationism, but with a sharp twist-instead of trying to
prove the world was created by God, ID focuses on identify-
ing and exploiting the weaknesses of Darwinian evolution-
ary theory. If evolution can be disproven, or at least shown to
be fundamentally incomplete, that opens the conceptual
door to alternative theories of the origin and development of
life. It is precisely at this point that ID takes on a surprising
and perhaps unsettling significance for our discussion,
because ID challenges the Darwinian foundations of contem-
porary science in terms very much like those used by Ostow,
Hick, Wallace, and Clayton and Schaal. Strange bedfellows
indeed! Exactly like these other authors (and exactly like any
number of postmodernist, feminist, environmentalist, and
altered-states-of-consciousness theorists), the proponents of
ID are questioning the materialist ontology and physicalist
reductionism of evolutionary theory.

40. Darwin Strikes Back summarizes ID analyses of several
phenomena that he claims defy the explanatory framework
of evolutionary theory: the "irreducible complexity" of cells,
proteins, and RNA; the sudden eruption of new species in the
Cambrian era; the spontaneous origin of organic life on
earth; the "big bang" and the creation of a universe that is
exquisitely fine-tuned for the appearance of our kind of life.
In each case, Woodward argues that evolutionary science
offers at best a kind of promissory materialism: We can't
explain these phenomena in material terms right now, but
some day we certainly will. That, as Woodward rightly points
out, is not a scientific conclusion, but a statement of faith.
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The upshot is that we know a great deal about "micro-
evolution," the slow, gradual fine-tuning of pre-existing fea-
tures, but not enough about "macro-evolution," the sudden
emergence of new forms of life. Drawing on recent research
in evolutionary developmental biology ("evo/devo"), Wood-
ward says "the current, gene-centered theory can only reli-
ably explain the diversification of body structures or forms
once those forms have arisen; it cannot explain the rise (or
origination) of those forms in the first place" (35). As leading
evo/devo researchers have concluded, Darwinian science
"has no theory of the generative" (179).
Considering the other books we've been discussing, it
might seem curious that Woodward does not include brain-
mind research in his list of areas where mainstream scien-
tific approaches appear incapable of explaining the full

41. range of evidence. The origin and nature of consciousness
remains as mysterious as ever, as do the various "altered
states" (dreaming, meditation, prayer, trance, and sexual
ecstasy) that humans experience the world over. One reason
Woodward avoids brain-mind research may be a reluctance
to rely on phenomena so closely related to religion and spiri-
tuality. He clearly wants ID to meet the highest standards of
mainstream science, and he apparently believes the psychol-
ogy of religion does not rise to that level. I suspect another
reason for the absence of brain-mind data in the ID program
is the Pandora's Box of self-reflexive questions inevitably
opened by that line of research. It's one thing to debate the
biological nature of a cell; it's quite another to be confronted
with the multiple dimensions of one's own psyche. As all the
preceding books have shown, the recent findings of cogni-
tive science have unsettling implications for traditional reli-
gious beliefs and practices. To judge by Darwin Strikes Back,
the advocates of ID have little interest in pursuing those
kinds of questions.
Next is a book that attacks religion as nothing but a pack
of pathetic superstitions, a mass psychosis based on childish
beliefs that stunt the developing mind and prompt aggres-
sion and cruelty toward others. The book argues that modern
science and cool reason are better guides to a fulfilling life,
and the author is the leader of a growing movement aimed at
converting others to his secularist cause. No, I'm not talking
about Sigmund Freud's 1930 work Civitization and Its Dis-
contents, but Richard Dawkins's 2006 book The God Delu-
sion. The parallels are uncanny, however, all the more so
because Dawkins never mentions his predecessor in pub-
licly proclaimed atheism (bringing to mind Carrette's [2001]
notion of "disciplinary amnesia" in the psychology of reli-
gion). Like Civilization and Its Discontents, The God Delusion
is a brilliant, provocative, and deeply flawed book that
sharply challenges easy assumptions about religion's role in

42. individual and collective life. The basic flaw comes early, and
it's similar to Freud's (the best guide to Freud's thinking
here is Parsons's [1999] The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling).
In chapter one, Dawkins makes a distinction between
"Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion." The
former is a wonder-filled reverence for life, nature, and the
cosmos, and Albert Einstein is its greatest representative.
The latter is, well, everything Dawkins doesn't like about
religion-the texts, creeds, priests, churches, moral codes,
etc. Once that line is drawn, Dawkins sets aside the Einstein-
ian sentiments of pantheistic spirituality and focuses on
tearing up the rest of it. To be sure, there is much necessary
work to be done here, and Dawkins is a witty, incisive critic
of religious pretensions to explain the natural world and
provide uniquely sound moral guidance. The God Delusion
includes some passionate and persuasive denunciations of
the religious indoctrination of children, and the book is
perhaps most valuable as a blunt warning of the dangerous
world we are creating by such theologically rigid educational
practices.
Unfortunately, Dawkins's initial distinction blinds him
to the many ways in which "Einsteinian religion" and
"supernatural religion" merge and interact with each other,
both in individual lives and throughout entire traditions. The
scientists interviewed by Clayton and Schaal provide a good
case in point, as does Woodward himself, who speaks in
thoroughly Einsteinian terms of the "unexpected wonders at
the root of biological life" (188). Dawkins dismisses such
hybrid individuals as self-deluded and accuses them of bad
conscience (or "belief in belief," in the terms of his ideologi-
cal compatriot Daniel Dennett), but this is where his
approach veers perilously close to the religious fundamen-
talists he so heartily detests. When faced with evidence that
healthy, functional humans can be both religious and scien-

43. tific, Dawkins falls back on his axiomatic faith in their
mutual incompatibility. His intellectual courage fails him
just when the deeper and more interesting questions begin
to emerge. What else can we learn about the insights and
wisdom disclosed by Einsteinian spirituality? Can it be
cultivated, trained, and developed? How does it emerge in
"supernatural" religious practices, and how do those prac-
tices shape its appearance and channel its impact? To what
extent do experiences of wonder (in science or religion)
stimulate the mind, expand awareness, intensify empathetic
insights into the lives of others, and deepen a sense of con-
nection to powers greater than oneself? To answer these
questions would require a more sophisticated analysis of
religion and science than Dawkins is willing to pursue.
Having read The God Delusion after Darwin Strikes Back,
I was disappointed Dawkins did not address ID in more
direct terms, preferring instead to create his own composite
caricatures, which he then slays with ease. He says virtually
nothing about specific ID questions over micro- versus
macroevolution, the Cambrian explosion, or the origins of
244
Religious Studies Review · VOLUME 34 · NUMBER 4 ·
DECEMBER 2008
cellular life. Dawkins emphasizes that scientists are working
on these problems right now, and we have good reason to
expect that future discoveries will transform present-day
mysteries into rational explanations. That may be true, but
it's still troubling that Dawkins so quickly dismisses ques-
tions about the emergence of life, cells, consciousness, and
the big bang by renaming such phenomena as products of

44. chance and random "one-off" events. Given the manifest
limits of current scientific knowledge, I find that no more
persuasive than the crypto-deism of ID.
Dawkins condemns virtually all religion-science dis-
course as "gap theology," an approach originally identified
and rejected by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in which currently
unexplained phenomena are used as proof of scientific inad-
equacy and theological truth. The problem, according to both
Dawkins and Bonhoeffer, is that science inevitably closes the
gap with new knowledge, forcing theologians to retreat and
seek God's presence in some other unexplained phenom-
enon. But what if some gaps aren't shrinking-what if some
of them are growing, so that the more we learn, the more we
realize the inadequacy of current materialist assumptions?
That's the case with the "generative" phenomena discussed
by Woodward, and it's especially true in the study of the
brain-mind system. Dawkins, like Woodward, makes no
sustained effort to discuss the latest findings of cognitive
science. He briefly cites modular explanations of particular
features of religion, but never really addresses the wide-
open debate over the nature, range, and developmental
potentials of human consciousness. As with Woodward, I
suspect Dawkins avoids this area of research because to
acknowledge it would severely undermine his opening dis-
tinction and deflate his explanatory grandiosity. It is mis-
leading to suggest, as Dawkins does, that current scientific
theories have explained the phenomenology of conscious-
ness in a satisfying fashion. His ultra-Darwinian rhetorical
over-reaching does a disservice to science and ironically
opens the door for legitimate complaints by religious
believers who know well what a fig leaf looks like.
It's a relief to conclude this review with a calmer voice.
Wilson's The Creation should be required reading for anyone
interested in the future relationship of religion and science.

45. A renowned entomologist and evolutionary theorist, Wilson
brings the best modern science has to offer to the discussion.
He's a far more credible representative of the scientific world-
view than Dawkins, Dennett, or any of the other authors of
anti-religion, pro-science screeds in recent years. Wilson
frames his book as a letter addressed to an imaginary South-
ern Baptist pastor (the religious tradition in which Wilson
himself was raised; he now calls himself a "secular human-
ist"). The contrast with Dawkins's bombastic, mocking, take-
no-prisoners rhetoric could not be more dramatic. Wilson's
main goal is to awaken in the pastor, and in all American
Christians, a greater reverence for the natural world and a
heightened concern for its welfare. He speaks at length of na-
ture as a source of wonder, which he associates with Biblical
perceptions of the sacred beauty of the created world. He
discusses research on the impact of environmental processes
on human mental health and highlights the benefits of bio-
logical science (e.g., curing disease and alleviating famine),
all of which contribute to the core moral and spiritual values
of the pastor's Christianity. Wilson calls this shared ethic
"biophilia" (63), by which he means a reverence for life itself
and every living creature, a reverence grounded in science
and given lyrical voice in religion. His great hope is that one
day soon, before it's too late (Wilson also shares the pastor's
apocalypticism), "the central ethic will shift, and we will come
full circle to cherish all of life-not just our own" (69).
Wilson has little interest in ID or ultra-Darwinian expla-
nations of religion and the human mind. He makes a few
references to current psychological research, but it's clear
he believes much more scientific work needs to be done to
understand properly the dynamic interaction of mind,
nature, and spirit: "[M]uch of human nature was genetically
encoded during the long stretches of time that our species
lived in intimacy with the rest of the living world—

46. I believe that as the scientific study of human nature and
living Nature grows, these two creative forces of the human
self-image will coalesce" (69). Of all the books considered in
this review, The Creation provides the best template for
thinking about religion and science in terms of how they
support each other's primary goals. Wilson's message is not
simply that religion needs to listen to science, but science
needs to listen to religion. This is especially true in the study
of the human mind, which Wilson sees as one of the great
research frontiers of the future: "The spiritual roots of Homo
sapiens extend deep into the natural world through still
mostly hidden channels of mental development. We will not
reach our full potential without understanding the origin
and hence meaning of the aesthetic and religious qualities
that make us ineffably human Only in what remains of
Eden, teeming with life forms independent of us, is it
possible to experience the kind of wonder that shaped the
human psyche at its birth" (12).
This passage should light the creative fires of anyone
who takes an interest in cognitive science and religion. To
illuminate those "hidden channels of mental development,"
to explore the myriad connections between the psyche and
the rest of the created world, to trace the impact of that
primal sense of wonder on art, religion, and science-if we
can make good on Wilson's prophetic vision and continue
developing new, data-driven knowledge about these topics,
we will give the academic study of religion little choice but to
revise its fundamental assumptions about the nature and
potential of the human mind.
245
Religious Studies Review · VOLUME 34 · NUMBER 4 ·

47. DECEMBER 2008
NOTE
1. "Bush: Schools should teach intelligent design," Associated
Press story, August 1, 2005.
REFERENCES
Carrette, Jeremy R.
2001 "Post-Structuralism and The Psychology of Religion:
The Challenge of Critical Psychology." In Diane
Jonte-Pace and William B. Parsons (eds), Religion and
Psychology: Mapping the Terrain, 110-26. London and
New York: Routledge.
Parsons, William B.
1999 The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the
Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
246
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COMMENTARY
The Genesis Machine:
Physics and Creation
William E. Garroll
Champagne and strawberries at theheadquarters of C E R N '
near Geneva
and hyperbole in the media greeted the
news at the end of March 2010 that the
Large Hadron Collider began to function as
expected. Two beams of protons, each with
an energy equivalent of 3.5 trillion electric
volts, smashed into one another in a tunnel
seventeen miles in circumference. Physi-
cists have great hopes that this huge particle
accelerator, built three hundred feet under-
ground on the Swiss-French border, will
provide new and fascinating insights into
what the universe was hke shortly aftier the
Big Bang. One goal is to discover elusive
Higgs bosons, particles reputedly responsible
for the conversion of the energy of the Big
Bang into the mass of the nascent universe.

50. Some in the media have already dubbed the
accelerator the "Genesis Machine,"^ and it
has been easy for them to reach the con-
clusion that experiments conducted using
it will, as one author in Le Monde put it,
permit us "d'éclaircir le mystère de la créa-
tion de l'Univers."^ Almost a decade earlier,
a science journalist for the New York Times
predicted that high-speed particle accelera-
WILLIAM E. C A R R O L L is Thomas Aquinas Fel-
low in Theology and Science at Blackfriars, Uni-
versity of Oxford.
tors would help scientists to work out "a
mechanistic, gears-and-levers theory of the
Genesis moment itself—the hows, if not the
whys of creation ex nihilo!"*
Fascination with origins is common-
place in the natural sciences. The cover
of the September 2009 issue of Scien-
tific American announced the theme for a
wide variety of essays on "Understanding
Origins." Topics included: the origins of
teeth, of cooking, of chocolate, of paper
money, of the internal combustion engine,
and of intermittent windshield wipers.
Most prominently displayed on the cover,
however, were origins of life and of the
universe. Michael Turner of the Univer-
sity of Chicago was the author of the essay
on the origin of the universe and he opti-
mistically claimed that "cosmologists are

51. closing in on the ultimate processes that
created and shaped the universe." Turner
drew a compelling picture of the many
advances in cosmology over the past one
hundred years that have radically trans-
formed our understanding of the universe
and its development, from a kind of "form-
less soup of elementary particles" into "the
richly structured cosmos of today."
Developments in cosmology and par-
ticle physics have long encouraged flights
of fancy about what the natural sciences
114
THE GENESIS MACHINE
can discover about the world. Perhaps one
of the more extravagant claims about what
contemporary science can tell us about
the origin and nature of the universe can
be found in an essay, "The Limitless Power
of Science," written by the Oxford physi-
cal chemist, Peter Atkins, several years ago.
Atkins claimed that the domain of scientific
discourse is truly limidess; there is no cor-
ner of the universe, no dimension of reality,
no feature of human existence, which is not
properly the subject of the modern natural
sciences! Atkins has htde use for philosophy
as a guide to truth, but it is religion that is
the special object of his ire:

52. Theologians, incidentally, have con-
tributed nothing [to the understand-
ing of the Universe]. They have
invented a world and language of
their own. . . . In so doing they have
contaminated truth, and wasted the
time of those who wish to under-
stand this world. Scientists have had
and are continuing to have to scrape
away the detritus of religious obfus-
cation before they can begin their
own elucidation.
Scientists liberate truth from prej-
udice, and through their work lend
wings to society's aspirations. While
poetry titillates and theology obfus-
cates, science liberates. The grave
responsibility of scientists is to use
their voices to blow back the fog that
shrouds the minds of those who have
not yet seen.^
The science embraced by Atkins truly
knows no limits. Creation itself falls
within its grasp. Science, he writes, must
be able to account for the "emergence of
everything from absolutely nothing. Not
almost nothing, not a subatomic dust-like
speck, but absolutely nothing. Nothing at
all. Not even empty space."*" Following
in Atkins's footsteps, Christopher Hitch-
ens, in his popular book Cod Is Not Creat,
contends: "Religion has run out of justi-
fications. Thanks to the telescope and the

53. microscope, it no longer offers an expla-
nation of anything important."' In fact, as
the subtitle of his book urges, he thinks
religion "poisons everything." It is a view
widely shared in the circles of the "new
atheism."
"The Right Question to Ask"
Even if we were to reject the overly exu-
berant rhetoric of Atkins and Hitchens, it
seems easy to draw connections between
developments in cosmology concerning
the beginning of the universe and theolog-
ical reflections about creation. Neverthe-
less, we ought to be alert to what it is that
cosmology explains, or seeks to explain,
and what creation means. What can cos-
mologists tell us about the "mystery of the
creation of the universe"? An answer to
this question requires us to be clear about
the explanatory domains of the natural sci-
ences, philosophy, and theology.
Stephen Hawking once famously
remarked that his cosmological model,
which denied a beginning to the universe,
"left nothing for a creator to do." Theories
concerning what happened "before the
Big Bang" as well as those that speak of an
endless series of big bangs are often attrac-
tive because they too deny a fundamental
beginning to the universe and thus appear
to make a Creator irrelevant. But others
have embraced traditional Big Bang cos-
mology, which seems to affirm an absolute

54. beginning to the universe, as providing
scientific support for, if not actual confir-
mation of, the Genesis account of creation.
The argument is that an initial "singular-
ity," outside the categories of space and
time, points to a supernatural cause of the
115
MODERN AGE Winter/Spring2011
beginning of the universe. In a way, the
debate is about whether or not cosmol-
ogy discloses a beginning of the universe
and thus whether cosmology rejects or
embraces the idea of creation. Despite fun-
damental differences as to what contem-
porary cosmology tells us, all these views
tend to identify'what it means for the uni-
verse to be created with its having a tem-
poral beginning.
News of the experiments to be con-
ducted at C E R N provide renewed interest
in questions concerning the relationship
between physics and creation, but, unfor-
tunately, much of the discussion contains
old errors concerning what physics, philos-
ophy, and theology tell us about the world
and its origin. This is true even when more
careful commentators remind us that the
Large Hadron Collider can offer at best
only insights about the very early history
of the universe, shortly after the Big Bang.

55. One part of the confusion between cre-
ation and the natural sciences has its source
in a broad commitment to a kind of "total-
izing naturalism," which we have already
seen in the analysis of Atkins. This is the
view that the universe and the processes
within it need no explanation beyond the
categories of the natural sciences. The claim
is that contemporary science is fully suffi-
cient, at least in principle, to account for all
that needs to be accounted for in the uni-
verse. Whether we speak of explanations of
the Big Bang itself (such as quantum tun-
neling from nothing) or of some version of
a multiverse hypothesis, or of self-organiz-
ing principles in biological change, the con-
clusion which seems inescapable to many is
that there is no need to appeal to a creator,
that is, to any cause which is outside the
natural order. Here is how one cosmologist.
Lee Smoün, has put it:
We humans are the species that
makes things. So when we find
something that appears to be beau-
tifully and intricately structured,
our almost instinctive response is to
ask, "Who made that?" The most
important lesson to be learned if we
are to prepare ourselves to approach
the universe scientifically is that this
is not the right question to ask. It is
true that the universe is as beautiful
as it is intrinsically structured. But

56. it cannot have been made by any-
thing that exists outside of it, for by
definition the universe is all there is,
and there can be nothing outside it.
And, by definition, neither can there
have been anything before the uni-
verse that caused it, for if anything
existed it must have been part of the
universe. So the first principle of
cosmology must be "There is noth-
ing outside the universe." . . . The
first principle means that we take the
universe to be, by definition, a closed
system. It means that the explana-
tion for anything in the universe can
involve only other things that also
exist in the universe."
Thus, whatever kind of "creation"
science can disclose, or be used to deny,
through particle accelerators or elaborate
mathematical models, it would be a sci-
entific account of origins employing, as
Smolin would say, principles drawn from
within the universe. But such a conception
of "creation" is not what philosophers and
theologians mean when they speak of cre-
ation. The distance between minute frac-
tions of a second after the Big Bang and
creation is, in a sense, infinite. We do not
get closer to creation by getting closer to
the Big Bang. Since, as we shall see, cre-
ation is not really an event at all, it is not
within the explanatory domain of cos-
mology; it is a subject for metaphysics and
theology. Similarly, the "nothing" in some

57. 116
THE GENESIS MACHINE
cosmological models which speak of the
Big Bang in terms of "quantum tunnelling
from nothing," is not the nothing referred
to in the traditional sense of creation out
of nothing. The "nothing" in cosmologi-
cal reflections may very well be nothing
like our present universe, but it is not the
absolute nothing central to what it means
to create; it is only that about which the
theories say nothing.
Understanding Creation
Confusions concerning creation and cos-
mology, as I have suggested, run the gamut
from denials of creation because the uni-
verse is conceived as having no beginning,
to explanations of a beginning in exclu-
sively scientific terms which avoid any
appeal to a Creator, to opposing claims
that the Big Bang itself offers a kind of
scientific warrant for belief in God's crea-
tion of the universe. Contrary to all these
claims, we need to recognize that creation
is a metaphysical and theological affirma-
tion that all that is, in whatever way or
ways it is, depends upon God as cause. The
natural sciences have as their subject the
world of changing things: from subatomic

58. particles to acorns to galaxies. Whenever
there is a change there must be something
that changes. Whether these changes are
biological or cosmological, without begin-
ning or end, or temporally finite, they
remain processes. Creation, on the other
hand, is the radical causing of the whole
existence of whatever exists. Creation is
not a change. To cause completely some-
thing to exist is not to produce a change in
something, is not to work on or with some
existing material. When God's creative act
is said to be "out of nothing," what is meant
is that God does not use anything in creat-
ing all that is: it does not mean that there is
a change from "nothing" to "something."
Cosmology and all the other natural sci-
ences offer accounts of change; they do not
address the metaphysical and theological
questions of creation; they do not speak to
why there is something rather than noth-
ing. It is a mistake to use arguments in
the natural sciences to deny creation. It
is also a mistake to appeal to cosmology
as a confirmation of creation. Reason (as
well as faith) can lead to knowledge of the
Creator, but the path is in metaphysics not
in the natural sciences. Discussions of cre-
ation are different from arguments from
order and design to a source of order and
design. Creation offers an explanation of
why things exist at all.
To avoid further confusion, we need
also to recognize different senses of how

59. we use the term "to create." We often speak
of human creations, especially with respect
to the production of works of art, music,
and literature. What it means for God to
create is radically different from any kind
of human making. When human beings
make things they work with already exist-
ing material to produce something new.
The human act of creating is not the com-
plete cause of what is produced; but God's
creative act is the complete cause of what is
produced; this sense of being the complete
cause is captured in the expression "out of
nothing." To be such a complete cause of
all that is requires an infinite power, and
no creature, no human being, possesses
such infinite power. God wills things to
be and thus they are. To say that God is the
complete cause of all that is does not negate
the role of other causes which are part of
the created natural order. Creatures, both
animate and inanimate, are real causes of
the wide array of changes that occur in the
world, but God alone is the universal cause
of being as such. God's causality is so dif-
ferent from the causality of creatures that
there is no competition between the two;
that is, we do not need to limit, as it were.
117
MODERN AGE Winter/Spring2011
God's causality to make room for the cau-

60. sality of creatures. God causes creatures to
be causes.
Already in the thirteenth century the
groundwork was set for the fundamental
understanding of creation and its rela-
tionship to the natural sciences. Working
within the context of Aristotelian sci-
ence and aided by the insights of Mus-
lim and Jewish thinkers, as well as his
Christian predecessors, Thomas Aquinas
provided an analysis of creation and sci-
ence that remains true. As Thomas wrote:
"Over and above the mode of becoming
by which something comes to be through
change or motion, there must be a mode of
becoming or origin of things without any
mutation or motion, through the influx of
being.""
Creation is not essentially some distant
event; rather, it is the ongoing complete
causing of the existence of all that is. At
this very moment, were God not causing
all that is to exist, there would be noth-
ing at all. Creation concerns first of all
the origin of the universe, not its tempo-
ral beginning. Indeed, it is important to
recognize this distinction between origin
and beginning. The former affirms the
complete, continuing dependence of all
that is on God as cause. Whatever is cre-
ated has its origin in God. But we ought
not to think that to be created must mean
that whatever is created has a temporal
beginning. It may very well be that the

61. universe had a temporal beginning, as the
traditional interpretation of the opening
of Genesis acknowledges, but there is no
contradiction in the notion of an eternal,
created universe: for were the universe
to be without a beginning it still would
have an origin, it still would be created.
This was precisely the position of Thomas
Aquinas, who accepted as a matter of faith
that the universe had a temporal begin-
ning but also defended the intelligibility
of a universe, created and eternal. It. is the
failure to recognize that to be created does
not necessarily entail a temporal begin-
ning which causes considerable confusion
in contemporary debates about the impli-
cations of cosmology for arguments about
whether or not the universe is created.
Thomas also thought that neither sci-
ence nor philosophy could know whether
the universe had a beginning. He did
think that metaphysics could show us that
the universe is created,'" but he would have
warned against those today who use Big
Bang cosmology, for example, to conclude
that the universe has a beginning and
therefore must be created. He was always
alert to reject the use of bad arguments in
support of what is believed. The "singu-
larity" in traditional Big Bang cosmology
may represent the beginning of the uni-
verse we observe, but we cannot conclude
that it is the absolute beginning, the kind
of beginning which would indicate cre-

62. ation. As some contemporary cosmolo-
gists recognize, there could very well be
something before the Big Bang. Indeed,
Gabriele Veneziano, a theoretical physicist
at CERN and one of the fathers of string
theory in the late 1960s, observes that "the
pre-bang universe has become the latest
frontier of cosmology.""
When it came to how to read the open-
ing of Genesis, Thomas Aquinas observed
that what is essential is the "fact of cre-
ation," not the "manner or mode" of the
formation of the world.'^ Questions con-
cerning order, design, and chance in
nature refer to the "manner or mode" of
formation of the world. Attempts in the
natural sciences to explain these facets of
nature do not challenge the "fact of cre-
ation." A world with a temporal beginning
concerns the kind of world God has cre-
ated. It may very well be easier to accept
that a world which has an absolute tempo-
ral beginning is a created world, and such
118
THE GENESIS MACHINE
a world may be especially appropriate for
understanding sacred history, important as
it is for believers. But an eternal world, one
without a beginning to time, would be no
less a created world.

63. The Ultimate Cause
Cosmological theories are easily used, or
rather misused, to support or to deny cre-
ation. Each time, however, as I have sug-
gested, "to create" has been joined inex-
tricably to temporal finitude such that to
be created necessarily means to begin to
be; thus, to deny a beginning is to deny
creation. It was the genius of Thomas
Aquinas to distinguish between creation
understood philosophically, with no refer-
ence to temporality, and creation under-
stood theologically, which included the
recognition that the universe does have an
absolute temporal beginning."
There is a wider confusion at work here
as well: the failure to distinguish between
creation and change, and hence to recog-
nize that the natural sciences, including
cosmology, have nothing to tell us about
the ultimate cause of existence of things.
God's creative power is exercised through-
out the entire course of cosmic history, in
whatever ways that history has unfolded.
No explanation of cosmological or bio-
logical change, no matter how radically
random or contingent such an explanation
claims to be, challenges the metaphysical
account of creation, that is, of the depen-
dence of the existence of all things upon
God as cause." When some thinkers deny
creation on the basis of theories in the nat-

64. ural sciences, or use cosmology to confirm
creation, or reject the conclusions of sci-
ence in defense of creation, they misun-
derstand creation or the natural sciences,
or both. The experiments now beginning
at CERN may very well offer new and
spectacular insights into the nature of the
very early universe, but they will tell us
nothing about the creation of the universe.
1 In 1954 the European Organization for Nuclear Research
replaced the original Conseil Européen pour la Recher-
che Nucléaire, but the acronym CERN was kept. 2 Physicist
Michio Kaku of City College of New York told the
Associated Press: "This is a huge step toward unraveling
Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1—what happened in the begin-
ning. This is a Genesis machine. It'll help to recreate the most
glorious event in the history of the universe." See
Alexander Higgins and Seth Borenstein, "Atom Smasher Will
Help Reveal 'The Beginning,' " Associated Press,
March 30, 2010. 3 Pierre Le Hir, "Big Bang en Sous-sol," Le
Moniie, 30 mars 2010. 4 John Glanz, "On the Verge of
Re-Creating Creation," New York Time.!, January 28, 2001. 5
Peter W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science,"
in Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, ed.
John Cornwall (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1995),
121-22. 6 Ihid., 131. 7 Christopher Hitchens, Cod Is Not Creat.
How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve

65. Books), 282. 8 Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Cravity
(New York: Basic Books, 2001), 17. 9 Thomas Aquinas,
On Separated Substances, c.9. 10 The argument involves a
recognition that the difference between what things are
(their essences) and that they are (their existence) must
ultimately be resolved in a reality (God) in whom essence
and existence are identical. Thus, what it means to be God is to
be, and God is the uncaused cause of all beings. One
need not accept the validity of Thomas's claim to demonstrate
that the universe is created in order to understand
his distinction between creation and science and that "to create"
is not to produce a change. 11 See his essay "The
Myth of the Beginning of Time," Scientific American, April
2004. 12 In II Sent., dist. 12, q. 1, a. 2. 13 See Steven
E. Baldner and William E. Carroll, Aquinas on Creation
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997).
14 See my essay "At the Mercy of Chance? Evolution and the
Catholic Tradition," Revue des Questions Scientifiques
177:2 (2006), 179-204.
119
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Science
According to a crop of provocative new
books, science and religion are the two
major cultural forces in the world today,
although they collide at least as often
as they complement each other. Four
of the following books explicitly address
the thorny Issues of how to teach natural
science where it appears to conflict with
religious scripture. Not surprisingly, aii
four have sometimes vastly different per-
spectives. The fifth title, Jeremy Camp-
beil's The Many Faces of God, aiso fits
into the discussion through its analysis
of how God has been viewed over time
through the lens of science.
Campbell, Jeremy. The Msny Faces of God:
Science's 400'Year Quest for Images of
the Divine. Norton. Aug. 2006. c.384p.
ISBN 0-393-06179-5. $26.95. sci
God may be invariable, but human

67. perceptions of God are not. In par-
ticular, the meanings of the qualities
of God—omnipotence, transcendence,
and benevolence—change as cultures
change, and thus images of God reflect
these variations, Campbell [The Liar's
Tale) commences his scholarly investiga-
tion in the 17th century, roughly through
the influences of Francis Bacon and
Isaac Newton on images of the Judeo-
Christian God, and continues with many
departures backward and forward in
time, through the entanglement of theol-
ogy with 20th-century technology. An
ongoing theme is how science limits per-
ceptions of how God works and what he
can do. Marked by an obtuse style and
a tendency to digress, this heady aca-
demic discourse is recommended only
for academic philosophy and history of
science collections.
r- Collins, Francis S. The Language of
God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for
Belief. Free Pr: S. & S. Jul. 2006. c.304p.
illus. index. ISBN 0-7432-8839-1. $26. sci
When the head of the Human
Genome Project calls the genetic code
"the language of God," he deserves to be
taken very seriously. In a discussion that
is both broadly ecumenical and scientifi-
cally incontrovertible, Collins entertains
propositions both for and against the

68. existence of God and biblical author-
ity, as well as the moral implications of
bioethics. He personalizes the narrative
by recounting his own journey from athe-
ism to faith, portraying it as
much an intellectual quest
as a spiritual one. His excel-
lent discussion of intelligent
design seeks not to debunk
the theory, but rather to cite
its limitations and to show
how a scientific worldview
transcends them without, in
his opinion, conflicting with
faith. Finally, he talks about
his vision of "BioLogos,"
; or science and religion in
1 harmony. An essential read,
1 equally for readers of reli-
gious or secular persuasions.
Roughgarden, Joan. Evolution and Christian
Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary
Biologist, island. Aug. 2006. c.168p. ISBN
1-59726-098-3. $14.95. SCI
Roughgarden, a Stanford biologist
and author of Evolution's Rainhow, sees
no conflict between biblical accounts
of creation and the biological principles
of evolution that she has taught for 30
years. Her strategy is to discuss general
theories of evolution, such as species