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  Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction

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  VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide.

  The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology.

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  Very Short Introductions available now:

  AFRICAN HISTORY John Parker and Richard Rathbone

  AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel

  THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY Charles O. Jones

  ANARCHISM Colin Ward

  ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw

  ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas

  ANCIENT WARFARE Harry Sidebottom

  ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman

  THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair

  ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia

  ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller

  ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn

  ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne

  ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes

  ART HISTORY Dana Arnold

  ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland

  THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin

  ATHEISM Julian Baggini

  AUGUSTINE Henry Chadwick

  BARTHES Jonathan Culler

  BESTSELLERS John Sutherland

  THE BIBLE John Riches

  THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea

  BRITISH POLITICS Anthony Wright

  BUDDHA Michael Carrithers

  BUDDHISM Damien Keown

  BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown

  CAPITALISM James Fulcher

  THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe

  CHAOS Leonard Smith

  CHOICE THEORY Michael Allingham

  CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson

  CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead

  CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson

  CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY Helen Morales

  CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard

  THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon

  CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore

  CONTEMPORARY ART Julian Stallabrass

  CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY Simon Critchley

  COSMOLOGY Peter Coles

  THE CRUSADES Christopher Tyerman

  CRYPTOGRAPHY Fred Piper and Sean Murphy

  DADA AND SURREALISM David Hopkins

  DARWIN Jonathan Howard

  THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Timothy Lim

  DEMOCRACY Bernard Crick

  DESCARTES Tom Sorell

  DESIGN John Heskett

  DINOSAURS David Norman

  DOCUMENTARY FILM Patricia Aufderheide

  DREAMING J. Allan Hobson

  DRUGS Leslie Iversen

  THE EARTH Martin Redfern

  ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta

  EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch

  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Paul Langford

  THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball

  EMOTION Dylan Evans

  EMPIRE Stephen Howe

  ENGELS Terrell Carver

  ETHICS Simon Blackburn

  THE EUROPEAN UNION John Pinder and Simon Usherwood

  EVOLUTION Brian and Deborah Charlesworth

  EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn

  FASCISM Kevin Passmore

  FEMINISM Margaret Walters

  THE FIRST WORLD WAR Michael Howard

  FOSSILS Keith Thomson

  FOUCAULT Gary Gutting

  FREE WILL Thomas Pink

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION William Doyle

  FREUD Anthony Storr

  FUNDAMENTALISM Malise Ruthven

  GALAXIES John Gribbin

  GALILEO Stillman Drake

  GAME THEORY Ken Binmore

  GANDHI Bhikhu Parekh

  GEOGRAPHY John A. Matthews and David T. Herbert

  GEOPOLITICS Klaus Dodds

  GERMAN LITERATURE Nicholas Boyle

  GLOBAL CATASTROPHES Bill McGuire

  GLOBALIZATION Manfred Steger

  GLOBAL WARMING Mark Maslin

  THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND

  THE NEW DEAL Eric Rauchway

  HABERMAS James Gordon Finlayson

  HEGEL Peter Singer

  HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood

  HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson

  HINDUISM Kim Knott

  HISTORY John H. Arnold

  HISTORY OF LIFE Michael Benton

  HISTORY OF MEDICINE William Bynum

  HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside

  HOBBES Richard Tuck

  HUMAN EVOLUTION Bernard Wood

  HUMAN RIGHTS Andrew Clapham

  HUME A. J. Ayer

  IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden

  INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Sue Hamilton

  INTELLIGENCE Ian J. Deary

  INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION Khalid Koser

  INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Paul Wilkinson

  ISLAM Malise Ruthven

  JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves

  JUDAISM Norman Solomon

  JUNG Anthony Stevens

  KABBALAH Joseph Dan

  KAFKA Ritchie Robertson

  KANT Roger Scruton

  KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner

  THE KORAN Michael Cook

  LAW Raymond Wacks

  LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews

  LITERARY THEORY Jonathan Culler

  LOCKE John Dunn

  LOGIC Graham Priest

  MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner

  THE MARQUIS DE SADE John Phillips

  MARX Peter Singer

  MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers

  THE MEANING OF LIFE Terry Eagleton

  MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope

  MEDIEVAL BRITAIN John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths

  MEMORY Jonathan Foster

  MODERN ART David Cottington

  MODERN CHINA Rana Mitter

  MODERN IRELAND Senia Pašeta

  MOLECULES Philip Ball

  MORMONISM Richard Lyman Bushman

  MUSIC Nicholas Cook

  MYTH Robert A. Segal

  NATIONALISM Steven Grosby

  NELSON MANDELA Elleke Boehmer

  THE NEW TESTAMENT AS LITERATURE Kyle Keefer

  NEWTON Robert Iliffe

  NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner

  NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and H. C. G. Matthew

  NORTHERN IRELAND Marc Mulholland

  NUCLEAR WEAPONS Joseph M. Siracusa

  THE OLD TESTAMENT Michael D. Coogan

  PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close

  PAUL E. P. Sanders

  PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig

  PHILOSOPHY OF LAW Raymond Wacks

  PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Samir Okasha

  PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards

  PLATO Julia Annas

  POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY David Miller

  POLITICS Kenneth Minogue

  POSTCOLONIALISM Robert Young

  POSTMODERNISM Christopher Butler

  POSTSTRUCTURALISM Catherine Belsey

  PREHISTORY Chris Gosden

  PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY Catherine Osborne

  PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns

  PSYCHOLOGY Gillian Butler and Freda McManus

  THE QUAKERS Pink Dandelion

  QUANTUM THEORY John Polkinghorne

  RACISM Ali Rattansi

  THE RENAISSANCE Jerry Brotton

  RENAISSANCE ART Geraldine A. Johnson

  ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway

  THE ROMAN EMPIRE Christopher Kelly

  ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler

&nb
sp; RUSSELL A. C. Grayling

  RUSSIAN LITERATURE Catriona Kelly

  THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION S. A. Smith

  SCHIZOPHRENIA Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone

  SCHOPENHAUER Christopher Janaway

  SCIENCE AND RELIGION Thomas Dixon

  SEXUALITY Véronique Mottier

  SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer

  SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt

  SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY John Monaghan and Peter Just

  SOCIALISM Michael Newman

  SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce

  SOCRATES C. C. W. Taylor

  THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR Helen Graham

  SPINOZA Roger Scruton

  STUART BRITAIN John Morrill

  TERRORISM Charles Townshend

  THEOLOGY David F. Ford

  THE HISTORY OF TIME Leofranc Holford-Strevens

  TRAGEDY Adrian Poole

  THE TUDORS John Guy

  TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan

  THE VIKINGS Julian Richards

  WITTGENSTEIN A. C. Grayling

  WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman

  THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION Amrita Narlikar

  Available soon:

  1066 George Garnett

  AUTISM Uta Frith

  EXPRESSIONISM Katerina Reed-Tsocha

  RELIGION IN AMERICA Timothy Beal

  SCOTLAND Rab Houston

  STATISTICS David J. Hand

  THE UNITED NATIONS Jussi M. Hanhimáki

  THE VIETNAM WAR Mark Atwood Lawrence

  For more information visit our websites

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  Thomas Dixon

  SCIENCE AND RELIGION

  A Very Short Introduction

  Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

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  Published in the United States

  by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

  © Thomas Dixon 2008

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

  First published 2008

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

  You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover

  and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Data available

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Data available

  ISBN 978–0–19–929551–7

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Ashford Colour Press Ltd, Gosport, Hampshire

  For Emma Dixon

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  List of illustrations

  1 What are science–religion debates really about?

  2 Galileo and the philosophy of science

  3 Does God act in nature?

  4 Darwin and evolution

  5 Creationism and Intelligent Design

  6 Mind and morality

  References and further reading

  Index

  Preface

  Books about science and religion generally fall into one of two categories: those that want to persuade you of the plausibility of religion and those that want to do the opposite. This Very Short Introduction falls into neither category. It aims instead to offer an informative and even-handed account of what is really at stake. The polemical passion the subject often generates is an indication of the intensity with which people identify themselves with their beliefs about nature and God, whether they are religious or not. The origins and functions of those beliefs form the subject of this book.

  In recent years the topic of ‘science and religion’ has become almost synonymous, especially in the United States, with debates about evolution. For this reason, two of the six chapters of this book are devoted to evolutionary subjects. The modern American debate about evolution and ‘Intelligent Design’ illustrates particularly clearly how stories about conflict or harmony between science and religion can be used in political campaigns – in this case relating to the control of education and the interpretation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

  Historical notions about famous individuals, especially Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin; philosophical assumptions about miracles, laws of nature, and scientific knowledge; and discussions of the religious and moral implications of modern science, from quantum mechanics to neuroscience, are regular features of science–religion debates today. All of these are scrutinized here.

  It is no part of my aim in this book to persuade people to stop disagreeing with each other about science and religion – far from it. My hope is only that it might help people to disagree with each other in a well-informed way.

  Acknowledgements

  I was first introduced to this fascinating topic, as an undergraduate student, by Fraser Watts’s lectures on theology and science at Cambridge University, and by John Hedley Brooke’s classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991). Subsequently, as a postgraduate, I was taught at the Universities of London and Cambridge by distinguished historians and philosophers of science, including Janet Browne, Hasok Chang, Rob Iliffe, Peter Lipton, Jim Moore, and Jim Secord. I am indebted to all of them and to the supportive and stimulating research environment I encountered in Cambridge both at the Department for the History and Philosophy of Science and in the Faculty of Divinity. I am also grateful for the support of colleagues, in more recent years, in Lancaster and London. I would particularly like to mention Stephen Pumfrey and Angus Winchester at Lancaster University, and Geoffrey Cantor for his help with the organization of a conference there on ‘Science and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’ in July 2007 to mark John Hedley Brooke’s retirement. I learned a great deal from all the contributors to that conference. Most recently I have benefited from the guidance and encouragement of my colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London, especially Virginia Davis, Colin Jones, Miri Rubin, Yossef Rapoport, Rhodri Hayward, Joel Isaac, and Tristram Hunt. Emilie Savage-Smith and Salman Hameed have given me much-appreciated guidance on the subject of Islam and science. At Oxford University Press, Marsha Filion, Andrea Keegan, and James Thompson helped me through the production process with patience, skill, and enthusiasm. Fiona Orbell acquired the images and necessary permissions with great speed and efficiency, and Alyson Silverwood ensured that the text was copyedited to the highest standard. Special thanks are due to those friends who took the time and trouble to read drafts of the text and offer me advice on how to improve it, namely Emily Butterworth, Noam Friedlander, James Humphreys, Finola Lang, Dan Neidle, Trevor Sather, Léon Turner, and especially Giles Shilson. My greatest debt is to my family. The book is dedicated to my sister Emma, who advised me to become an academic and no
t a lawyer.