God vs. Science

Well Time Magazine has dove headfirst into a topic that always generates a lot of heat and (occasionally) a bit of light. "God vs. Science," the latest cover story, takes the form of a debate between the atheist philosopher Richard Dawkins, author of the recent bestseller The God Delusion, and Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

The debate is based on the assumption that most of us as readers want to occupy something the author calls a 'middle-ground': we want the benefits of science and technological development but we want to hang on to the possibility of miracles and supernatural intervention. We want to celebrate the advances of science while retaining a sense of cosmic significance. We want to have our cake and eat it too.

On the whole I thought the debate was a fairly honest presentation of the key differences between the two sides. Collins talks about the intricacy of the natural world and the astronomical unlikelihood of our universe being able to sustain life as arguments for the existence of a Designer. Dawkins posits the multiverse theory, that argues that ours is but one of an infinite number of universes, most of which do not sustain life.

There's also some discussion of the idea of whether or not we have to look 'within the machine' for an answer to the question of God's existence. Dawkins finds Collins' view of the possibility of supernatural intervention 'from the outside' to be an abdication of scientific responsibility. Collins sees an argument that rules out the possibility of the supernatural before the fact to be a decision that is not necessarily based on evidence but on prior commitments.

They touch briefly on the moral question: Do the categories of 'good' and 'evil' make sense if morality is seen as an evolutionary adaptation? Here Dawkins seemed a bit confusing to me. Consider the following statements:

"I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen."

"Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning."

I'm not sure I understand how the categories of good and evil are possible without some kind of external reference point. How are good and evil distinguishable without some kind of standard? How is moral behaviour on the one hand evidence of our evolutionary adaptation to our environment and on the other hand a 'responsibility' that is ours on the virtue of our capacity for reason? This becomes especially confusing as Dawkins tries to address the question of stem-cell research. Here he employs a moral category as the criterion for decisions in this area, "Moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused."

So where do these thinkers eventually come out? The following are quotes from their concluding statements:

Collins...
"I find absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard in practically all of his conclusions about the natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers that science isn't able to provide about the natural world--the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I'm interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist."

Dawkins...
"My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up."

This was an interesting read but like most debates on this topic it seems that there is an inevitable stalemate that is reached as both positions are pushed back to their starting points. Dawkins views any attempt to explain the evidence by positing the existence of God to be contrary to the scientific method. Collins remains open to the possibility of supernatural intervention in the world. Once these cards are on the table it can feel like there's not an obvious way forward in the conversation.