Science/Faith Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford

Science/Faith Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford

Outline Fun things about science
Creation or Evolution, do we have to chose? God, Atheism & the Philosphers

We share 15% of our genes with E. coli “ “ 25% “ “ “ “ yeast
“ “ % “ “ “ “ flies “ “ % “ “ “ “ frogs “ “ % “ “ “ “ chimps Biological networks and evolution what makes us different?

Why so few genes? Mycoplasma genitalium (483) E.coli (5416)
(300 minimum?) E.coli (5416) S. cerevisiae (5800) Mycoplasma genitalium, a procaryote, has the smallest genome of an independent organism -- it can cause Escherichia coli, the most popular model procaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most popular simple model eucaryote; it is a a species of budding yeast (Baker’s yeast) Drosophila Melanogaster is one of the most popular models for genetics The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, is very important for laboratory studies in development -- Pristionchus. pacificus (Sommer et al) is very similar to C. elegans (but lives in beetles) -- has many more genes. Why? The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, the staple of laboratory studies in development, contains only 959 cells, looks like a tiny formless squib with virtually no complex anatomy beyond its genitalia, and possesses just over 19,000 genes. The general estimate for Homo sapiens - sufficiently large to account for the vastly greater complexity of humans under conventional views - had stood at well over 100,000, with a more precise figure of 142,634 widely advertised and considered well within the range of reasonable expectation. Homo sapiens possesses between 30,000 and 40,000 genes, with the final tally almost sure to lie nearer the lower figure. In other words, our bodies develop under the directing influence of only half again as many genes as the tiny roundworm needs to manufacture its utter, if elegant, outward simplicity. Drosophila Melanogaster (13,500) C. elegans (19,500) & P. pacificus (29,000) H. sapiens (23,000) 4

Biological self-assembly
Keiichi Namba, Osaka Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves) Can we understand? Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

Self-assembly: how things make themselves
viruses Biological objects are self-assembled Can we understand? Can we emulate? (nanotechnology) We study one of the simplest: viruses made of identical capsomer units 6

“computer virus” self-assembly
Computer viruses? Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisation 7

Self-assembly with legos?
8

Science is fun :-) 9

Science is fun! 10

Antimatter Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter + = Paul Dirac
Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics) + Paul Dirac Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity) = Dirac Equation (1928) Electrons Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932 See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. From a famous essay by the Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960). E. Wigner "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960) In many ways the “design” here elicits wonder, similar to that experienced when viewing mountains, or the stars etc Thus science helps us to better appreciate the wonders of creation, it extends our ability to view spatial design -- from the smallest atoms, to the mysterious creatures of the ocean depths, to the distant galaxies -- as well as temporal design -- think of the amazing age of the universe, and our own very brief sojourn, “a few seconds before midnight”. Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve (E. Wigner (1960) See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);

Antimatter Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter + Paul Dirac
See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. From a famous essay by the Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960). E. Wigner "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960) In many ways the “design” here elicits wonder, similar to that experienced when viewing mountains, or the stars etc Thus science helps us to better appreciate the wonders of creation, it extends our ability to view spatial design -- from the smallest atoms, to the mysterious creatures of the ocean depths, to the distant galaxies -- as well as temporal design -- think of the amazing age of the universe, and our own very brief sojourn, “a few seconds before midnight”. Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve (E. Wigner (1960) See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);

Science and Beauty A Scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. John Polkinghorne, who recalls that Dirac "was once asked what was his fundamental belief. He strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations."[13] Dirac: the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations. Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912 13

Many Universes & Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics: Science or Philosophy?
“false vacua” in Calabi-Yau Manifolds …. String Landscape … Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912 14

We are made of stardust He C through a resonance
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology” His atheism was “deeply shaken” This quote comes from the November 1981 issue of the Cal Tech alumni magazine, where Hoyle wrote: “Would you not say to yourself, "Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you would.... A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” (Hoyle F., "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections", in Engineering and Science, November 1981, p12). See also (O. Gingerich, "Dare a Scientist Believe in Design", in J.M. Templeton ed., Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator, Continuum: New York, 1994, pp24-25) Hoyle( ) is also know for his advocacy of the “Steady State” model of the universe, a position he defended in part because he was unhappy with the way the Big Bang theory points to a beginning, and therefore suggests a “beginner”. Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U

Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle
Fine tuning is not a proof of God, but seems more consistent with theism than atheism Note the difference with “God of the gaps” We seem to have three choices'... We can dismiss it as happenstance, we can acclaim it as the workings of providence, or (my preference) we can conjecture that our universe is a specially favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse.’ If this multiverse contained every possible set of laws and conditions, then the existence of our own world with its particular characteristics would be inevitable. Sir Martin Rees (just 6 numbers) -- John Leslie firing squad argument Again, I recommend books by Polkinghorne for a more sophisticated discussion of these points.

Evolution and its discontents
Charles Robert Darwin: (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) 1859 publishes “Origin of Species” Darwin “had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind” --George Bernard Shaw Natural Does where we come from determine who we are and how we should then live?

Charles Robert Darwin: (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) 1859 publishes “Origin of Species” Gallup: 42-47% of US (much higher among evangelicals) “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

Charles Robert Darwin: (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) 1859 publishes “Origin of Species” University of Wageningen (Netherlands) poll of 415 staff and 215 academics (2009): 38% don’t think variation and natural selection is sufficient to explain life on earth

Charles Robert Darwin: (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) 1859 publishes “Origin of Species” ComRes/Theos poll of UK, (2009) Evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages 14% definitely true 37% probably true ~ 51% favourable of ID “Rescuing Darwin” by Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander

2009: ComRes/Theos poll “ Either way, it appears that, in the country of Darwin’s birth, a century and a half after the publication of his masterwork, only about one in four people would qualify as confirmed Darwinians, with at least as many being actively hostile towards Darwinian evolution, and an even larger portion being inclined towards Darwinism but distinctly unsure about its merits.” “In much the same way as earlier generations encountered evolution through a particularly ugly form of Social Darwinism, and not surprisingly then rejected it, many today, it seems, associate it with an amoral, materialist, hopeless, selfish outlook on life, which they are extremely reluctant to countersign and which turns them firmly against the theory.” This year celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the “Origin of Species”. The strong consensus of the biological community is that the big picture story of evolution is true, even if they disagree about many details. But in poll after poll, we see that public scepticism is large. In my own country, the Netherlands, a poll at the university of Wageningen found that an astounding 38% of the students and staff don’t believe that variation and natural selection is sufficient to explain the diversity of life on earth. A recent poll in the UK, commissioned by the Theos think-tank, finds that about half of the population believes that a designer is needed to explain the origin of complex life. Now I think that the Theos commentators are probably right when they say that In much the same way as earlier generations encountered evolution through a particularly ugly form of Social Darwinism, and not surprisingly then rejected it, many today, it seems, associate it with an amoral, materialist, hopeless, selfish outlook on life, which they are extremely reluctant to countersign and which turns them firmly against the theory I think that in particular popularisers of evolution, including some of my Oxford colleagues who will remain nameless, have contributed to this scepticism. Similarly, I was recently in Turkey, where anti-evolution feelings are strong. Darwinism became an issue mainly during the left-versus-right political turmoil before a 1980 military coup because Communist bookshops touted Darwin’s works as a complement to Karl Marx. “It looked like Marx and Darwin were together, two long-bearded guys spreading ideas that make people lose their faith,” said Istanbul journalist Mustafa Akyol. But in addition to the distrust engendered by encrusting evolution with ideological overtones, I think that the differences in how the public views science, as compared to the way that biologists weave their tapestries to support a common evolutionary heritage, also play a role. Science is generally popularised in a ways that greatly oversimplify. For example, the weight of a single experiment is often exaggerated, as we saw with the Michaelson Morely experiment and special relativity. I argue that this privileges the physical sciences, where single decisive experiments do play a stronger role than say a field like evolution, where the tapestry is made up of a larger number of weaker strings. Quotes are from Rescuing Darwin, by Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander

Intermezzo: Defining Evolution
1) Evolution as Natural History the earth is old (+/- 4.5 Billion years) more complex life forms followed from simpler life forms 2) Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of biological complexity generated by mutations and natural selection (note: most Christians agree that God created this mechanism) 3) Evolution as a “big picture” worldview (scientism) George Gaylord Simpson: "Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material." or Richard Dawkins: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” The problem is that Christians feel under threat from 3) , but attack 1) and 2) rather than pointing out that 3) doesn’t follow from 1) and 2)

Christian approaches to emergence of biological complexity
Young Earth Creation Science Earth is about 10,000 years old Genesis 1,2 are historical in the modern sense mainly in the last 50 years Progressive Creationism Earth is old Complexity came about through miracles Varied views on exegesis of Genesis Theistic Evolution/Biologos Complexity came about through normal processes of God Genesis 1,2 are theological (framework view --prose poem) Intelligent Design All the above views are strictly ‘creationists’ and believe in intelligent design Capital ID is a more recent movement, could be YECS, PE, or TE. word “fundamentalism” is partially derived, of a mass-produced series of essays in twelve volumes known as The Fundamentals, written by conservative Protestants in the period 1910–15. The aim of The Fundamentals was to counteract the liberal theology that was then flooding into American churches from Germany. Among these essays there were a number by evangelical writers committed to evolution, such as Benjamin Warfield, who called himself a “Darwinian of the purest water”, James Orr, who pointed out that Genesis was not written as a scientific text, and the geologist George Wright.

Language: Random or stochastic?
Random mutations and natural selection...(chance and necessity -- Monod) Stochastic optimisation e.g. used to price your stock portfolio ..... There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and … from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Gene language, emergence & meaning?
[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence. [Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. v.s. Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006) Richard Dawkins -- The Selfish Gene (1976)

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: Re-run the tape of evolution?
“Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” In evolution, there is no direction, no progression. Humanity is dethroned from its exalted view of its own importance S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989) When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction. Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”; (CUP, 2003) 27

Convergent Evolution? "For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." (On Growth and Form, 1917.) D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (May 2, 1860–June 21, 1948) was a biologist and mathematician and the author of the 1917 book, On Growth and Form, an influential work of striking originality. Nobel laureate P. Medawar called On Growth and Form "the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue"[1]. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Thompson has been called "the first biomathematician" by Simon Singh[2] He died in St. Andrews, Scotland. On Growth and Form The central thesis of On Growth and Form is that biologists of his day overemphasized the role of evolution, and underemphasized the roles of physical laws and mechanics, as determinants of the form and structure of living organisms. Transformations on crocodilian skulls Enlarge Thompson pointed out example after example of correlations between biological forms and mechanical phenomena. He showed the similarity in the forms of jellyfish and the forms of drops of liquid falling into viscous fluid, and between the internal supporting structures in the hollow bones of birds and well-known engineering truss designs. His observations of phyllotaxis (numerical relationships between spiral structures in plants) and the Fibonacci sequence has become a textbook staple. Thompson's illustration of the transformation of Argyropelecus Olfersi into Sternoptyx diaphana by applying a 70° shear Utterly sui generis, the book never quite fit into the mainstream of biological thought. It does not really present any single central discovery, nor, in many cases, does it attempt to establish a causal relationship between the forms emerging from physics with the comparable forms seen in biology. It is a work in the "descriptive" tradition; Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. Thompson was aware of this, saying that "This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is 'all preface' from beginning to end." The huge (1116 pages in an edition currently in print), well-written, and extensively illustrated tome has enchanted and stimulated generations of biologists, architects, artists, and mathematicians, and, of course, those working on the boundaries of disciplines. Perhaps the most famous part of the work is Chapter XVII, "The Comparison of Related Forms." He explored the degree to which differences in the forms of related animals could be described by means of relatively simple mathematical transformations. Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunas Jeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, (6 May 2004) 28

Convergent Evolution North America: Placental Sabre-toothed cat
South America” Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat 29

Convergent Evolution compound eye camera eye 30

Convergent Evolution? Each of these mammals has a long, sticky, worm-like tongue, no teeth to speak of and scimitar claws. Each has bulging salivary glands, a stomach as rugged as a cement mixer and an absurd, extenuated, hairless snout that looks like a cross between a hot dog and a swizzle stick. Despite their many resemblances, the three creatures are unrelated to one another; the spiny anteater, in fact, lays eggs and is a close cousin of the duck-billed platypus. What has yoked them into morphological similitude is a powerful and boundlessly enticing process called evolutionary convergence. By the tenet of convergence, there really is a best approach and an ideal set of tools for grappling with life's most demanding jobs. The spiny anteater, pangolin and giant anteater all subsist on a diet of ants and termites, and myrmecophagy, it turns out, is a taxing, specialized trade. As a result, the predecessors of today's various ant hunters gradually, and quite independently, converged on the body plan most suited to exploit a food resource that violently resists exploitation. Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to intelligence. Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “ The principal aim of this book has been to show that the constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like ourselves a near-inevitability. SCM, “Life’s Solution”, (CUP 2005) pp328 31

Evolution, God & Morality
I expect moral truths (like killing innocent people is wrong) (pace Euthyphro) – most likely emanate from God’s character I expect a moral sense This is widely observed I expect the moral sense to be truth-tracking Note, atheism may be able to explain moral sense, But it would be a tremendous accident if this was truth tracking: A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value – Sharon Street “evolution is only interested in the four f’s (feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing”, …. truth “definitely takes the hindmost.” -- Patricia Churchland, the evolutionists case is that ethics is a collective illusion of the human race, fashioned and maintained by natural selection in order to promote individual reproduction, … ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. -- Michael Ruse

SUMMARY on Evolution COMPLEX MATERIAL!
Does where we come from determine who we are and how we should then live? Metaphors are important Evolution as: Natural history Mechanisms to create biological complexity World view (evolutionism) The mechanisms of evolution can be beautiful Among evangelicals, this is going to be a long hard slog

Science & Ultimate Questions
How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Did the universe need a creator? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead… Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge Stephen Hawking Cambridge U The Grand Design: new answers to the ultimate questions of life S. Hawking (2010)

Science without limits?
“there is no reason to expect that science cannot deal with any aspect of existence... …although poets may aspire to understanding, their talents are more akin to entertaining self-deception. Philosophers too, I am afraid, have contributed to the understanding of the universe little more than poets ... I long for immortality, but I know that my only hope of achieving it is through science and medicine, not through sentiment and its subsets, art and theology" --The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, Ed. J Cornwell. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995 The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, Ed. J Cornwell. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, . (pp. 123, 131). Prof. Peter Atkins Oxford U

Limits of Science? “ That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer. These are the questions that children ask – the “ultimate questions” of Karl Popper. I have in mind such questions as: How did everything begin? What are we all here for? What is the point of living?” “ It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things.” -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987)) Sir Peter Medawar 37

God & Science not the right question?
Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed. -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987)) Sir Peter Medawar 38

We are all philosophers or theologians
What these dons disagree on: How do I obtain reliable knowledge about the world?

Science-Religion conflict metaphor
Galileo goes to jail and 25 other myths about science and religion Ed. R. Numbers (Harvard U Press 2009) If we want non scientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo's incarceration to Darwin's deathbed conversion to Einstein's belief in a personal God who 'didn't play dice with the universe'. The picture of science and religion at each other's throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in "Galileo Goes to Jail" shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths. Those who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion Will draw little comfort from history … Those who have magnified more recent controversies about the relations of science and religion, and projected them back into historical time, simply perpetuate a historical myth … the myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe. Peter Harrison, Christianity and the rise of western science (2008)

Unicorns or the source of all being?
If you want to believe in … --teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh -- the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.” -- Richard Dawkins I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so (see Ibn Warraq's excellent book, Why I am not a Muslim). Moonies and scientologists get a bad press, but they just haven't been around as long as the accepted religions. Theology is a respectable discipline when it studies such subjects as moral philosophy, the psychology of religious belief and, above all, biblical history and literature. Like Bertie Wooster, my knowledge of the Bible is above average. I seem to know Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon almost by heart. I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum - you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns.

The professional debate
“The justification of most contemporary naturalist views is defeated by contemporary theist arguments” The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism, by Quentin Smith, Philo 4, vol 2 (2000) "Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga's writings, began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians" "Quickly, naturalists found themselves a mere bare majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the various disciplines of philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van Fraassen) to epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of naturalist philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but is due to the lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves. God is not dead in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments." Smith concludes that THE JUSTIFICATION OF MOST CONTEMPORARY NATURALIST VIEWS IS DEFEATED BY CONTEMPORARY THEIST ARGUMENTS Quentin Smith Western Michigan U

HOW SHOULD WE WEIGH THE EVIDENCE?
KEY DIFFICULTY: not the evidence, but: HOW SHOULD WE WEIGH THE EVIDENCE? Why is there something rather than nothing? All options are completely different from prosaic experience

The professional debate
Alvin Plantinga (Reformed Epistemology) - God & other minds: belief in God is properly basic; “Warrented Christian Belief (2000)” Basil Mitchell (Cumulative argument) Others: Woltersdorf, Alston, … The Evidentialist Objection to Theism 1) It is irrational or unacceptable to accept theistic belief without sufficient or appropriate evidence or reason. 2) There is not sufficient/appropriate evidence or reason for theistic belief. 3) Belief in God is irrational -- Quentin Smith Western Michigan U

Science & the ultimate questions
Science and Hawking’s Ultimate questions? Citation from Plantinga’s “Warranted Christian Belief, p 406 Commenting on John Macquarrie [This] argument … is like the drunk who insisted on looking for his lost car keys only under the streetlight on the grounds that the light was better there. In fact, it would go the drunk one better: it would insist that because the keys would be hard to find in the dark, they must be under the light. Alvin Plantinga Science’s great success comes from self-imposed limits

Brute facts If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the 1) Brute fact of the physical world or the 2) Brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world John Polkinghorne, Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue, (1995). John Polkinghorne Cambridge U Dawkinsian evidentialism presupposes 1)

If there is a God …. Theistic assumptions help ground rationality
For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. -J.B.S. Haldane, “When I am Dead” J.B.S. Haldane

If there is a God …. A universe fine-tuned for life that allows free, rational, moral creatures is what you would expect. In addition: something like sensus divinitatus, incarnation, are not surprising Something like the scientific method (studies the customs of the creator) is likely

If there is no God Questionable justification for:
Moral realism Free will Rationality Fine-tuned universe for life Even scientific method (only a-posteori) Unless you posit many brute facts. (or deny the above) By Occam’s razor, Theism is much more likely, given the evidence.

If you assume there is no God
“The universe we observe had precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins

Science and God? KEY DIFFICULTY: HOW SHOULD WE WEIGH THE EVIDENCE?
not the evidence, but: HOW SHOULD WE WEIGH THE EVIDENCE? Why is there something rather than nothing? All options are completely different from prosaic experience

Creation or Evolution, do we have to chose? God, Atheism & the Philosphers These questions are not simple -- and if someone tells you they are, they probably don’t know what they are talking about

Who are some of the most interesting resource people on science/faith?
Francis Collins at NIH – general topics/genome/biology/evolution John Polkinghorne at Cambridge – physics/theology/fine-tuning/ Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge – evolution/convergence Denis Alexander at Cambridge – evolution/creation/history John Barrow at Cambridge – physics/ fine-tuning/anthropic principle Alister McGrath at Oxford/Kings – theology/philosophy/science/atheism John Lennox at Oxford – science/faith Peter Harrison at Queensland/Oxford – history of science/religion Ron Numbers at Wisconsin – history of science/religion Mark Noll at Notre Dame – history of science David Livingston at Belfast – history of science John Hedley Brooke Oxford/Lancaster – history of science Bill Newsome at Stanford – mind/brain/neuroscience Ian Hutchinson at MIT – physics/scientism Rosalind Picard at MIT – robots/computers/emotions Gerry Gabrielse at Harvard – physics Jeff Schloss at Westmont – evolution and ethics Justin L. Barrat at Oxford/Fuller – cognitive science of religion/ evolutionary ethics Pieces by the above can be found at

The scientific method …
Science deals with things that can be systematically tested etc… Usually that means things that are repeatable under controlled conditions. It’s strength comes from imposing strict limitations on the questions it allows. Limits are not a sign of weakness - Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

Uniformity Rationality Intelligibility Applicability of mathematics Science has deeply Christian roots, See e.g. Alfred North Whitehead, Stanley Jaki; Rooijer Hooykaas; Peter Harrison Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine Priest, Professor at Seton Hall, and Templeton Prize winner, has written extensively on this topic. See, for example, The Saviour of Science, (Eerdmans, 2000) Another classic book is Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, (Eerdmans, 1972) by R. Hooykaas, who was professor at the University of Utrecht, my alma mater

Science has deep Christian roots
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.” Sir Isaac Newton This quote is from Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton wrote extensively on theology, especially about prophecy. However, his theology was rather heterodox. For example, later in life he began to doubt the trinitarian nature of God. Nevertheless, he was, I believe, deeply motivated by Christian belief. The best biography on Newton is probably Never at Rest : A Biography of Isaac Newton by Richard S. Westfall (Cambridge University Press, 1983), see also the shorter The Life of Isaac Newton by the same author (CUP, 1994). For a recent discussion of his faith, see the web page

Science has deep Christian roots
Wrote “The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of Creation”, Was governor of the “Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England” Sir Robert Boyle ( ) Robert Boyle, often called the father of modern chemistry. A good source for information is

Those who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion will draw little comfort from history…… the myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe. -- Peter Harrison, Christianity and the rise of western science (2008) Those who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion Will draw little comfort from history … Those who have magnified more recent controversies about the relations of science and religion, and projected them back into historical time, simply perpetuate a historical myth … the myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe. Peter Harrison, Christianity and the rise of western science (2008) Peter Harrison, Oxford

Galieo goes to jail and 25 other myths about science and religion Ed. R. Numbers (Harvard U Press 2009) If we want non scientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo's incarceration to Darwin's deathbed conversion to Einstein's belief in a personal God who 'didn't play dice with the universe'. The picture of science and religion at each other's throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in "Galileo Goes to Jail" shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths. Those who argue for the incompatibility of science and religion Will draw little comfort from history … Those who have magnified more recent controversies about the relations of science and religion, and projected them back into historical time, simply perpetuate a historical myth … the myth of a perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no historian of science would subscribe. Peter Harrison, Christianity and the rise of western science (2008)

Nothing Buttery humans are collections of chemicals:
enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool enough fat to make 10 bars of soap Thus the late Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, wrote that: The Astonishing Hypothesis is that ‘You’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.20 Science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue 20. F Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis(Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 3. 61

enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool enough fat to make 10 bars of soap 62

enough Fe for 1 nail enough P for 2000 matches enough Cl to disinfect a swimming pool enough fat to make 0.1 bars of soap 63

Dawkins on being human Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)
"The individual organism ... is not fundamental to life, but something that emerges when genes, which at the beginning of evolution were separate, warring entities, gang together in co-operative groups as `selfish co-operators’. The individual organism is not exactly an illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is [NOTHING BUT] a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally separate, even warring agents.” Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, (Penguin, London, 1998) p 308. Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)

Mechanism does not exhaust meaning
I come in to the lab and you are boiling water – I ask – why is the water boiling Scientific explanation I am making a cup of tea .. You know it is illegal to do this in the lab why is the water boiling?

Is science the only way to reliable knowledge?
Bill Newsome Stanford U. Monument to irrationality? Gilbert Harman --- Inference to a best explanation Critical realism Polkinghorne My faculty colleague felt differently, however, and once exclaimed to me only half in jest, “That church pisses me off; I think we should bomb the thing!” When I asked why he felt that way he replied, “It is a monument to irrationality; it doesn’t belong on a university campus.” As it happens, I lived at the time in a home on the Stanford campus, and my reply to my colleague was: “By far the most irrational thing I have ever done 10 was to marry and have children. If we are going to bomb campus monuments to irrationality, we had better start with my home!” Sagan’s famous opening line for the popular science show Cosmos seems innocuous enough, but is in fact an outrageous declaration of scientism. When I was studying for my PhD at Cornell, where he was on faculty, I attended a seminar by Sagan in which he made more or less the following argument: In the past people used a pendulum to determine the sex of an unborn child. Now we can predict eclipses to astonishing accuracy thousands of years in the future. Therefore, we should turn back religion, which is superstition, just like the pendulum story, and embrace science, which can explain everything. I remember thinking that this seemed a rather silly and simplistic argument, but was too intimidated to say anything about it. This type of scientism, or radical materialism, is strongly criticized by Newsome. The quote above comes from his essay “Life of faith, life of science”, which will be published in a proceedings of the Science and the Spritual Quest conference ( At present, the Newsome’s essay is available at Here’s another quote: “From a religious point of view, both the core assumption of natural science and the resulting method are fine as far as they go. Conflict arises when the additional assumption is introduced that the scientific process is the only reliable way to acquire truth that is meaningful and universal. This radically materialistic proposition is, of course, fundamentally incompatible with most traditional forms of religious belief and practice. At one fell swoop, it dismisses the existence of God, the possibility of divine revelation to humanity, any notion of universal grounding for right action (ethics), or any possibility that humanity can participate in a reality that trancends itself---none of which is testable by scientific method or required for understanding the mechanics of nature.” “The most important questions in life are not susceptible to solution by the scientific method” 66

Evidentialism or blind Faith?
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Richard Dawkins Oxford U

Evidentialism or tapestry arguments?
BRUTE FACTS: In the beginning God, or in the beginning nothing? -Morality -Basis for modern science (rationality, uniformity) -Beauty -Intelligibility (unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics) -Fine tuning of the universe is one of my heroes -- he writes beautifully, I recommend for example his book “Boojums all the way through” . I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen- not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (1942).

Fine Tuning of physical constants: Goldilocks Enigma … why just right?
If the [fine structure constant] were changed by 1%, the sun would immediately explode -- Prof. Max Tegmark, MIT “The universe is the way it is, because we are here” – Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life ... Paul Davies (2006) Just Six Numbers Sir Martin Rees (2000) The Hawking quote comes from a paper with C.B. Collins, so really both authors should be quoted, but I only list Hawking, following the “Matthew Principle” (see N.D. Mermin, Boojums all the Way Through for the source of this “principle”). The quote by Tegmark is at from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/06/2002 Many authors have written about the Antropic Principle, including J.D. Barrow and F. Tipler The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, (Oxford University Press, 1986). Polkinghorne is also very clear on this topic, I recommend Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context (CUP) for a simple introduction, and he has written many other books that touch on this topic as well. See also for a recent conference report.

Tapestry arguments and Christian faith?
Why do I believe in Jesus Christ? ---tapestry arguments---- -Bible -Resurrection -Life and teachings of Jesus Christ Just a great teacher? - Experience of God in myself and friends Oma I was a PhD student at Cornell, working with David Mermin’s great text book collaborator Neil Ashcroft, when Collins and Pinch wrote their book -- Pinch was on the floor just above us. Mermin is one of my heroes -- he writes beautifully, I recommend for example his book “Boojums all the way through” . I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen- not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (1942).

Materialism & self-consistent rationality
For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. -J.B.S. Haldane, “When I am Dead “ Born in Oxford to a Professor of physiology --- studied in Oxford (New College) then a fellow there and later taught at Cambridge and UCL. Founder of modern population genetics In 1925, George Edward Briggs (Cambridge Botanist) and Haldane derived a new interpretation of the enzyme kinetics law Gould says: J. B. S. Haldane was one of the great rascals of science—independent, nasty, brilliant, funny and totally one of a kind During World War I, Haldane volunteered for the Scottish Black Watch and was sent to the front. There he found, to his shock and dismay, that he liked killing the enemy. Twice wounded, he personally delivered bombs and engaged in sabotage behind enemy lines, prompting his commander to call him "the bravest and dirtiest officer in my Army.” Haldane was a keen experimenter, willing to expose himself to danger to obtain data. One experiment involving elevated levels of oxygen saturation triggered a fit which resulted in him suffering crushed vertebrae. In his decompression chamber experiments, he and his volunteers suffered perforated eardrums, but, as Haldane stated in What is Life, "the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.” J.B.S. Haldane

Science and questions of value
What is the value of a human life? chemist – value of the elements? physiologist – size of your brain psychologist – how smart you are anthropologist – how the community values you economist – how much economic value you produce .ALT is Peter Singer? a Een antropoloog zou kunnen kijken wat voor antwoord andere culturen hierop geven. Maar ook al zijn al deze feiten interessant, ze helpen niet veel met het centrale vraagstuk. Het is juist belangrijk dat we elk mensen leven als gelijkwaardig zien, ongeacht hoeveel gouden kronen ze hebben (chemisch) of hoe groot hun hersenen zijn (fysiologisch) of hoe slim ze zijn (psychologisch) of hoeveel vrienden ze hebben (sociologisch) of hoe rijk ze zijn (economisch) of wat hun culturele achtergrond is (antropologisch). De fundamentele redenen waarop zo’n morele positie zijn gebaseerd liggen buiten de natuurwetenschap, en het is gevaarlijk om die grens te verschuiven.

Tapestry arguments for Bible
I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of his [gospel] text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage .. or else, some unknown [ancient] writer .. without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative. OPA … the man who helped Jesus carry the cross was the father of Alexander and Rufus, (Mark 15) fish, he ate a fish C.S. Lewis

Resurrection N.T. Wright

Deriving an ought from an is
when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. D. Hume in “A Treatise of Human Nature” Sometimes confused with the “Naturalistic Fallacy” David Hume ( )

Materialism is not self-consistent
Epicurus: “He who says that all things happen of necessity cannot criticize another who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he has to admit that the assertion also happens of necessity. (here it is an argument against determinism, but is linked to the argument against materialism) Karl Popper (the self and its brain) I do not claim that I have refuted materialism. But I think that I have shown that materialsm has no right to claim that it can be supported by rational argument – argument that is rational by logical principles. Materialism may be true, but it is incompatible with rationalism, with the acceptance of the standards of critical argument.; for these standards appear from the materialist point of view as an illusion, or at least as an ideology. Epicurus 341 – 270 BC Karl Popper (the self and its brain)I do not claim that I have refuted materialism. But I think that I have shown that materialsm has no right to claim that it can be supported by rational argument – argument that is rational by logical principles. Materialism may be true, but it is incompatible with rationalism

Science on values, meaning purpose
In matters of values, meaning, and purpose, science has all the answers, except the interesting ones. F. Ayala in Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion. (2007) Francisco J. Ayala UC Irvine

What is ID The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. (Discovery Institute) Here is a definition they use to describe what ID is: •The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. • (Discovery Institute)

Intelligent design movement
Very successful at popularisations. Scientific issues raised include: Origin of life Cambrian Explosion Irreducibly Complex biological elements e.g. the bacterial flagellum biological information The ID movement has been particularly successful at popularising its views, and has, at least in the West, received an enormous amount of publicity I think that part of its success, and part of the vehemence of its opposition, has to do with its perceived relevance for ideologies that get encrusted onto evolutionary biology. Unfortunately these overtones obscure the many of the key issues in this interesting debate. But today I want to look mainly at something else, which I believe also plays a role in the popular appeal of ID. I’ve noticed anecdotally that a a good fraction of the academics who have been vocal in their support of ID are engineers or physical scientists. Why is this?

Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are too complex to have evolved in stepwise manner. “Darwin’s Black Box” 1996 To answer this question, I will focus in particular on two of the most famous ID scientists, Michael Behe and William Dembski. Behe is a biochemist at Lehigh University, and famous for his book “Darwin’s Black Box”, in which he argues that many biological structures, such as the bacterial flagellum that I showed you earlier, are too complex to have arisen by evolutionary mechanisms. The crux of the argument revolves around irreducible complexity: For the flagellum to function, all its constituent parts must be present, it can’t be reduced down to constituent parts that would provide an evolutionary advantage, and so, argues Behe, since the probability of all the components evolving at the same time by chance is negligible, the flagellum couldn’t have arisen by evolutionary mechanisms. Instead, and intelligent designer must have been involved. It’s easy to see why this argument is appealing to engineers. Note there is a whiff here of the Levinthal paradox: the system has to navigate a search space so vast that it will never arrive at its destination. Darwin (1850): "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down This result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science ... The discovery [of intelligent design] rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger, Pasteur and Darwin.” Darwin’s Black Box (1996)

Irreducible complexity?
Easily popularized Appealing to physical scientists and engineers Biologists counter with reasoning based on indirect evidence that implicitly depends on tapestry arguments Possibly a genuine scientific question -- but see Levinthal paradox Now there were many howls of protest from the biological community to Behe’s book. Some of the examples of irreducible complexity that he presented do now have pretty convincing evolutionary pathways. But although we do find interesting homologies (similarities in proteins that suggest common descent) for some kinds of flagella and some simpler systems (type III secretary systems) it is fair to say that no convincing evolutionary pathway for the flagellum has been worked out. Now for most biologists this doesn’t really matter, the flagellum is very complex, and the fact that we can’t work out a pathway yet is perhaps not surprising. Besides, there are so many other strands woven together in the tapestry of evolutionary common descent that the fact that we don’t have this one yet is not such a big deal. But to members of the public, including physical scientists, for whom the existence and strength of the many other strands is hard to assess, the irreducible complexity argument against the evolution of the flagellar motor seems quite convincing.

Complex Specified Information
William Dembski Complex specified information “Law of the conservation of information” No Free Lunch theorems Explanatory filter Our other protagonist is William Dembski, a mathematician and a leading light in the ID movement. The arguments he has popularised have to do with the detection of design and what he calls complex specified information (CSI).

A favourite example he uses to illustrate this concept is mount Rushmore in the USA, where the heads of several famous presidents are carved in. Dembski applies what he calls an “explanatory filter” to show that what you see in the top right is indeed an example of CSI, and thus an intelligence must have designed it, while an interesting set of rocks, even if the shadow looks like JFK, can be shown to be produced by chance JFK picture is from W.L. Bradley, ‘Is There Scientific Evidence for God’ JFK? Explanatory filter

William Dembski Dembski then applies these ideas to DNA. It has a lot of complex information, and he argues that it is in fact CSI, which points to some kind of design. The detailed arguments he uses are fundamentally based on a mathematical logic very similar to that of Levinthal. In my experience, many engineers and physical scientists find his arguments that the complex information that exists in DNA cannot have arisen by evolutionary mechanisms intriguing. Clearly the way they are presented has a strong popular appeal. DNA Easy to popularize Appealing to physical scientists Information theory in biology has a bad name Theoretical arguments in biology are suspect

Mathematical proofs in biology?
The Design Inference, W. Dembski CUP (1998) endorsed by William Wimsatt: “Dembski has written a sparklingly original book … No Free Lunch, Roman & Littlefield (2001) Anyone who could have succeeded in showing that natural selection is incapable of generating biological structures according to standards from mathematics or logic would have constructed a mathematical proof that would have dwarfed Godel’s famous Undecideability theorem in importance I can categorically say that Dembski has surely done no such thing, and I call upon him as a mathematician to deny and clarify the implications of his advertising copy William Wimsatt April 4, 2002 Now I won’t bore you here with what I think are the incorrect assumptions that Dembski makes. I’ll instead appeal to authority, and note the reaction of William Wimsatt, a famous philosopher of biology at the University of Chicago, and I think a member of Dembski’s thesis committee for his PhD there. Dembski’s first book, The Design Inference (CUP 1998), did not really address evolution but the broader question of how to infer that something is designed, clearly an interesting question with potential applications in many different fields. Wimsatt endorsed it by saying he “found it a sparklingly original book.” Dembski had Wimsatt down as one of his references for quite some time. It is interesting to see what Wimsatt has to say about Dembski’s second technical book, “No Free Lunch”, in which he applies these ideas to suggest that evolutionary mechanisms can’t explain the complexity we see around us. Wimsatt writes: Anyone who could have succeeded in showing that natural selection is incapable of generating biological structures according to standards from mathematics or logic would have constructed a mathematical proof that would have dwarfed Godel’s famous Undecideability theorem in importance I can categorically say that Dembski has surely done no such thing, and I call upon him as a mathematician to deny and clarify the implications of his advertising copy. ... Which is another way of pointing out the lack of confidence many of us have in the use of purely deductive mathematical reasoning to say anything grand in biology. But although these feelings are widespread among professionals working in biology, physical scientists, and I think also the general public, tend to give these mathematical arguments much more weight. William Wimsatt

Public Appeal of ID? Primarily a reaction to evolutionism/culture wars
Appeal to physical scientists? Use of theoretical/logical arguments (e.g. counterfactuals and explanatory filter) Lack of experience with culture of biological tapestry arguments – e.g. historical science Public perceptions of “real science” are often closer to traditions of the physical sciences To summarize, although I think the primary appeal of an anti-evolutionary movement like ID is its perceived positioning on larger questions of world-view, I think a secondary reason for its remarkable popularity lies in the movement’s skillful use of the rhetoric of the physical sciences. The lack of experience with the style of tapestry arguments in evolutionary biology, coupled with the difficulty in recognizing the strength and number of interconnected threads of evidence, makes it hard for the general public, or indeed some physical scientists, to properly understand why biologists are so convinced about evolution. Like an ice-berg, we see some differences at the surface, but the collisions often happen with the much larger body of assumptions that lie hidden under the waterline. I argue that these cultural differences play an important role in the public (mis)understanding of evolutionary theory.

Science/Faith Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford

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Science/Faith Dr. Ard Louis Department of Physics University of Oxford

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