I picked up The Way The World Is: The Christian perspective of a scientist, by theologian and former physicist, John Polkinghorne. I'd really like to understand the thought process that leads some scientists not just to belief in god, but to belief in the doctrines of a specific religion. I'd love to know what argument could trump the scientist's natural inclination to follow the evidence and apply skepticism, or indeed, what evidence the religious scientist thinks that he possesses for the god hypothesis. This book claimed it could do that. It was written specifically for the scientists who had expressed surprise at Polkinghorne's decision to study for the clergy. Polkinghorne believes that Christianity "affords a coherent insight into the strange way the world is," and he will explain in just over a hundred pages why.

I would say that I was disappointed, but then, having one's preconceptions confirmed does give one some satisfaction. And this book confirmed that that scientists arguing for Christianity give weak and embarrassing arguments.

The problems really start at chapter three, "The Personal View of the World". Here, Polkinghorne sets out his reasons for believing in God (as supposed to specifically Christianity). The "argument" boils down to a series of non sequiturs and arguments from incredulity in order to set up a god-of-the-gaps (GOTG ) to explain the "mystery" of human morality and enjoyment of art. Sadly, not only is the logic wanting, most of the premises are themselves just plain wrong.

In his discussion of art, for example, Polkinghorne describes how science fails in explaining our enjoyment of it: chemical analysis of the pigments in a Rembrandt would miss the point of the picture; Fourier analysis will not help you appreciate a performance of Bach. There's no reason why science must explain art, of course, but it actually does do a much better job of it than Polkinghorne's caricature suggests. Polkinghorne's background is, of course, physics, and it shows: if you couple the physics with biology and psychology, we actually get quite a good picture of how we appreciate art. As to why we appreciate art, what is the most parsimonious explanation: God, or spandrels?

Then there is morality -- the "sense we have of moral obligation." This is an area where the religious often actually frighten me. Polkinghorne tells us that 'ought', the sense of obligation, cannot be deduced from 'is', the facts of the world. The trouble is, this is quite plainly wrong. It is, of course, true that the answer to the two questions, 'what is?' and 'what ought to be?' are not the same. But 'what is the world like?' can most certainly help inform our investigations into 'how should we behave?' Is-ought, in the form of 'I eat meat, therefore meat eating is good,' is a bad argument; but, in the form of 'animals do not exhibit the sort of cognition necessary for rights, therefore meat eating is acceptable behaviour,' is a defensible position. Polkinghorne shows that the first type of is-ought argument is wrong, ignores the second, and concludes that God is the source of our morality.

And this is why the religious are frightening when it comes to morality. Religion is quite demonstrably not required to be ethical, and the argument that the non-religious are only moral because we and our society inherit our morals from religion is clearly false. People are moral in part because of their instincts built in by biology, but more importantly because we think and reason about how the world ought to be. As Dawkins put it, "are you telling me that the only reason you don't steal and rape and murder is that you're frightened of God?" And by delegating the thinking to God -- or to their church leaders, or to nomadic desert herdsmen of four thousand years ago -- the religious are giving up thinking about ethics, and inviting bad moral choices, such as the Pope's genocidal positions on sexuality and contraception.

Polkinghorne does devote one paragraph to the biology of morality, under the banner of sociobiology. I actually face-palmed. "If altruism is just an aid to survival, it is surprising those selfish genes have not been more efficient at creating it." Wow. I'm just going to leave that one hanging.

I won't go through all of the weak evidence Polkinghorne gives for the historicity and importance of Jesus Christ, and the nature of the trinity. Post hoc attempts to reason that a banal old fairytale is reality don't really interest me. But there is one more aspect of the book that I want to comment on. Polkinghorne presents the book as being from the perspective of a scientist, and he certainly scatters the book with scientific facts and analogies (shoe-horning physics into his worldview, while dismissing biology apparently without real understanding of it). However, as is repeatedly pointed out on this blog, science is more than just a library of facts: it is a way of thinking about the world. Science is a method for discovering what is true about the world, and indeed, what is not true. It is a toolbox, containing experiment, observation, reason, logic, and the sonic screwdriver of skepticism.

Polikinghorne does not get skepticism. "I believe that this problem of theodicy ... constitutes the greatest difficulty that people have in accepting a theistic view of reality." No, no, no. It is not a case of, "I would accept this, but...," it's a case of "I reject this unless, and until...." We don't start out believing a complicated and unnecessary hypothesis about the way the world is and then reject it because of one flaw in it. We reject the hypothesis as having been proposed without good reason. Your problem is far more fundamental than theodicy.

Polkinghorne goes on to describe David Hume as "the determined skeptic" (my emphasis). "... no one need adopt so intransigent a position." Lol. I think you're doing it wrong. The adjective "determined" just doesn't fit with "skeptic". I shouldn't need to explain again that skeptic is not a synonym for "cynic" or "closed minded." Skeptics aren't refusing to listen to your ideas. A skeptic just knows how to spot the bad ideas, and turn them away at the door. You can't blame us and call us "intransigent" when you fail to provide a convincing idea. But then, this is a man who thinks that being able to "imagine" a matter teleporter between the universe and heaven is the same thing as such a transporter being "possible."

Polkinghorne quotes approvingly this preface to Augustine's work on the trinity:

I ask my readers to make common cause with me when they share my convictions; to keep an open mind when they share my doubts. I ask them to correct me if I make a mistake, but to return to my way of thinking if they do.

No! That's not how it works! You don't ask people to gloss over the little holes in your argument, and to accept your conclusions even when the most basic premises of your idea have been shown to be false!

So the book fulfilled its purpose: I know now how (if not why) scientists like Polkinghorne hold on to their Christian beliefs. They lack the imagination or will to see past the GOTG argument; they lack to the scientific toolbox for knowing the world and filtering bad ideas; they make desperate and unconvincing rationalisations, full of wishful thinking and leaps of logic, for the life of Jesus and the bizarre doctrines of the church; and they don't feel capable of leading a moral life without God by their side.

Oh, wait. Was that not what you intended?

Final thought:

... in the improvement in the status of women, the Church has a record in which the Christian can take some comfort.

I think you'd better sit down, John. This might come as something of a shock...

John Polkinghorne, 1992. The Way The World Is: The Christian perspective of a scientist. Triangle Books (SPCK), London.

(This is an archival re-post of something I write some time ago on a now closed blog. I thought it was an appropriate moment to resurrect it.)