Topic:	Has Science Replaced Religion?
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Guest:	George F. R. Ellis, Professor of Applied Mathematics; Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems, University of Cape Town; McVittie Visiting Professor of Astronomy, Queen Mary (London University)
What is it?	Has science replaced religion? Can one be religious and maintain a scientific viewpoint? Does belief in evolution undermine morality or belief in God, or vice versa? Ken and John take on the big questions.

About the Guest

George F. R. Ellis has pursued rigorous scientific research into cosmology with the same doggedness he has brought to social activism, offering him a perspective that has advanced his career as a theoretical cosmologist, thrust him to a position of leadership as a humanitarian, and made him a trusted voice in the science and religion dialogue.

At Cambridge, Ellis served as a research fellow from 1965 to 1967, was assistant lecturer in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics until 1970, and was then appointed university lecturer, serving until 1974.  Ellis rapidly established himself within academic circles, becoming a visiting professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago in 1970, a lecturer at the Cargese Summer School in Corsica in 1971 and the Erice Summer School in Sicily in 1972, and a visiting H3 professor at the University of Hamburg, also in 1972.

The following year, Ellis co-wrote The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of General Relativity Theory, Ellis' specific area of expertise. Soon, it became a standard reference. Still in print and selling steadily today, the book's condensed approach to difficult topics ranging from classical relativity theory to the nature of black holes have led students to refer to it as the "Yellow Peril."  The following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, a position he continues to hold.

Coming home to South Africa also brought Ellis back to the barbarous system of apartheid that created a racially divided populace lorded over by a white minority. Though his parents were atheists, Ellis grew up immersed in the youth activities of the Anglican Church. By the time he returned to South Africa in 1974, however, the injustice of the political system helped draw Ellis to the Society of Friends. "I found the Quakers more to my taste," Ellis has written, "liking the mixture of spiritual awareness and social activism, the lack of creeds combined with the basis of silence in the meeting for worship."

His activism found an outlet in 1977 when Ellis and three colleagues released The Squatter Problem in the Western Cape , a plea for the rights of homeless people and for a new social policy to help them. Some years later, Ellis co-wrote Low Income Housing Policy in South Africa , a comprehensive analysis of how to transform the desperate housing situation of the nation's oppressed majority. Ellis recalls, as a point of pride, how the book so infuriated segments of the Nationalist government that the minister for housing policy took to the floor of the parliament to denounce it. Ironically, the book later helped influence a renewed national housing policy.

With a fervor equal to his social work, Ellis also pursued his cosmological inquiries, writing or co-writing Flat and Curved Space Times (1988), The dynamical systems approach to cosmology (1996), and Is the Universe Open or Closed? The Density of Matter in the Universe (1997). He served as the head of his university department from 1974 to 1982, was the plenary speaker at the 7th and 9th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in 1974 and 1978, respectively, and a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 1978-79, and at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 and 1989.

During those years, Ellis also distinguished himself by moving to bring the forces of science and religion together to the general benefit of both fields. In 1994 he served as J.K. Russell Fellow of Science and Religion at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California. In 1996 he co-wrote, with Nancey Murphy, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Cosmology, Theology and Ethics, a significant contribution to understanding the ethical underpinnings of the universe, one that specifically holds that the moral basis of ethics is the self-sacrificing love known as kenotics.

His efforts to balance the rationality of evidence-based science with faith and hope has made Ellis a key figure in the discussion at the boundaries of science and theology. By his ongoing efforts within both camps – in 2002 he edited The Far-Future Universe , proceedings of a symposium on eschatology held at the Pontifical Academy in the Vatican and wrote The Universe Around Us: An Integrative View of Science and Cosmology, an electronic book comparing the natural and life sciences – he continues to provide an informed, compelling body of work.

Listening Notes

Has science replaced religion? In John and Ken's first discussion on the issue, Ken claims that science can explain everything. Religion insofar as it does anything, certainly does not explain how the world works. Religion and science, then, shouldn't be seen as two different worldviews designed to examine and provide solutions for the same questions. John, on the other hand, challenges this claim. Historically, there have been two arguments from design that have persuaded many people that God must exist in order for the world to exist as it does. The first argument ranges over a somewhat lesser scope than the second, and points to the fact that many things seem to have some kind of purpose or design without which they or other species could not exist or, at least, flourish. For example, it can be argued that trees bear fruit designed in such a way that people can eat it. Sheep grow wool designed to be useful protective human clothing. Even machines, which are not as complicated as human beings, are not a product of luck or random chance. Therefore their must be some higher being, God, who designed the world in such a way to explain its complexity. As Ken points out, this argument lost its soundness after Darwin posed his theory of evolution.

  The second argument from design, however, begins by questioning the origins of evolution itself. It runs as follows: first, grant that evolution—and not God—can sufficient explanation for the complexity discussed in the first argument. Still, the universal constants that define important parameters for our universe such as the smallest measurable length, the gravitation constant, the rate of expansion, and so on need to be so precise—they would define a different universe if they weren't—that it seems that we couldn't possibly be here by chance. Again, there must be some higher being, God, who selected the constants for the universe in order to explain why such a universe that can sustain human life exists. Physics itself seems to point to the conclusion that if the constants determining the fundamental aspects of our universe were any different, a universe like ours would not exist. However, at least Ken concedes that even if there was an ultimate objection to this argument, it seems that science cannot explain everything. After all, questions of ethics and how we ought to live tend to lie outside science's domain. To say that science explains everything, then, is not to say that every question is a scientific one.

George Ellis discusses the reasons he finds this second argument from design so appealing. Without postulating a God who could determine the laws of physics, it seems hard to believe that conscious beings could arise spontaneously and purely by chance from protons and electrons. Furthermore, there is the “fine tuning” of the universe. If, in the history of the universe, any of the laws of physics were slightly different, atoms wouldn't be able to form: there would be no protons or electrons, light, or anything else if any of the fundamental forces were altered or if the balance between gravity and the expansion of the universe was any different than it is. Our universe is especially unique, even among possible universes that could have supported intelligent life forms. But the question as Ken puts it still remains: why should a God be a necessary condition for the unlikelihood of the universe? Why not simply explain our existence in a universe as a matter of luck? Ellis answers the question by explaining some of the arguments for the claim that the universe arose from chance. There are two such arguments. The first argument claims that there was only one universe created and that it happened to be the kind that could produce human beings who could observe it. Since only one universe is postulated, the amount of chance involved is incredulously large. The other argument or theory states that there are actually billions of other universes—or regions of our universe beyond our observable universe—that had various expansion constants and consequently evolved differently. Some of these universes, then, survived long enough and had the right conditions to support life: many did not. Some cosmologists claim that the multiverse theory is more scientifically acceptable than the prior theory because it can be statistically verified—in theory—and it's probability is much better than that of a single universe happening to be the one in which we live.

• Amy Standen the Roving Philosophical Reporter (Seek To 00:04:30): Bob Russell, a physicist and director of the Center for Theology in the Natural Sciences at Berkley, relates a personal story of when he confronted the issue of science and religion as a twelve-year-old boy.  Russell now believes that in doing science he is coming to know God's creations in a new and meaningful way. For him, then, science can be understood in a broader framework, a framework that does not automatically exclude God from its worldview.

• Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher (Seek To 00:37:50): Ian Shoales discusses the life and work of B. F. Skinner.

Additional Resources

• The multiverse theory and reactions from physicists.  (Useful backgorund information such as the anthropic principle, the argument from design, and the cosmological constant.)

• Multiverses and religious implications.

• Evolution, Religion and the Genesis account by Robert C. Newman.  (An argument for creationism.)

• A Unitarian point of view in support of evolution.

• Book pertaining to evolution and religion, links to do further research.

• A site that poses and offers answers to frequently asked questions concerning creationism and science. Many of the answers to these questions try to address popular misconceptions that arise from misguided arguments given on both sides of the issue.

• Links to popular and academic articles on science and religion.

• The debate over cosmology and young earth creation theory. (Contains links to other valuable sources such as the Pope's statement on evolution and several Christian sites arguing for the compatibility of religion with science).

• The Bahai faith

• Other articles and texts:
• Fritjof Capra. The Tao of Physics.  (Shambhala 2000).

 

• David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 10 “Of Miracles."  (Oxford UP 1999).

 

• Owen McLeod.  "Science, Religion, and Hyper-Humeanism."  Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring-Summer 2001) pp. 68-81.

 

• Jerome A. Stone.  "Religious Naturalism and the Religion-Science Dialogue: A Minimalist View."  Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, Vol. 37, No. 2 (June 2002) pp. 381-394.

 

• David Sloan Wilson.  Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution Religion and the Nature of Society.

 

• Gary Zukav. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics.  (Bantam 1984).