TOKENS PODCAST: S3E2
An interview with Alister McGrath, esteemed professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and one of the world’s leading Christian apologists. Lee and Alister discuss one of the great modern dichotomies of our day: the supposed mutually exclusive choice between science and faith; why the teachings and writings of Einstein played a significant role in undermining McGrath’s own former atheism; and why adhering to a more holistic, incorporative view of science, religion, and philosophy may lead us to a better understanding of ourselves and of the world.
ABOUT GUEST
Alister McGrath was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1953. He grew up in Downpatrick, Co. Down, where he attended Down High School. In September 1966 he became a pupil at the Methodist College, Belfast, majoring in pure and applied mathematics, physics and chemistry. He was elected to an open major scholarship at Wadham College, Oxford University, to study chemistry from October 1971, where his tutors included Jeremy R. Knowles and R. J. P. Williams. He gained first class honours in chemistry in June 1975, and began research in molecular biophysics in the Oxford University Department of Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Sir George K. Radda, FRS, who is presently head of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford University. He was elected to an E.P.A. Cephalosporin Research Studentship at Linacre College, Oxford, for the academic year 1975-6, and to a Domus Senior Scholarship at Merton College,Oxford, for the period 1976-8. He also spent three months as a European Molecular Biology Organization visiting fellow at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. During the years 1975-8, he carried out scientific research, leading to the publication of a number of peer-reviewed research articles, alongside studying for the Oxford University Final Honour School of Theology. In December 1977, he was awarded an Oxford D.Phil. for his research in the natural sciences, and he gained first class honours in Theology in June 1978. The interaction of Christian theology and the natural sciences has subsequently been a major theme of his research work, and is best seen in the three volumes of his Scientific Theology (2001-3).
McGrath left Oxford to work at Cambridge University, having been elected to the Naden Studentship in Divinity at St John’s College, Cambridge (1978-80). He also studied at the same time for ordination in the Church of England at Westcott House, Cambridge. In September 1980, he was ordained deacon, and began work as a curate at St Leonard’s Parish Church, Wollaton, Nottingham, in the English east midlands. He was ordained priest at Southwell Minster in September 1981. In 1983, he was appointed lecturer in Christian doctrine and ethics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University Faculty of Theology. McGrath spent the fall semester of 1990 as the Ezra Squire Tipple Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at theTheological School, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. He gave the Bampton Lectures at Oxford University in 1990, in which he explored the factors which lead to the origins of doctrinal statements in Christianity.
McGrath was elected University Research Lecturer in Theology at Oxford University in 1993, and also served concurrently as research professor of theology at Regent College, Vancouver, from 1993-7. In 1995, he was elected Principal of Wycliffe Hall, and in 1999 was awarded a personal chair in theology at Oxford University, with the title of “Professor of Historical Theology”. He earned an Oxford Doctorate of Divinity in 2001 for his research on historical and systematic theology. In September 2004, he resigned as Principal of Wycliffe Hall to become the first Director of the newly-established Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. In October 2006, he was elected to a Senior Research Fellowship at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, where he began directing a major new research project on natural theology, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2005.
In September 2008, McGrath took up the newly-established Chair of Theology, Ministry and Education in the Department of Education and Professional Studies at King's College, London. He also served as the academic leader of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, and was involved both in theological research and the professional development of clergy from a range of Christian denominations.
In 2013, McGrath accepted the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. He took up the new post on 1 April 2014.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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TRANSCRIPT
Lee Camp: This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Alister McGrath: When I came to Oxford to study science, I was an atheist.
Lee Camp: That's Alister McGrath, professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. Professor McGrath has three doctoral degrees from Oxford. And, as he just said, he showed up as an undergrad with no belief in the divine.
Alister McGrath: One of the things that made me rethink that was reading Einstein.
Lee Camp: Here at Tokens Show, of course, we relish breaking down false dichotomies. And, today in our interview with McGrath, we explore one of the great supposed dichotomies of modern fault: the supposed mutually exclusive choice between science and faith.
Alister McGrath: There’s this idea that you cannot be a scientist and a religious believer. That's clearly not right, but we need to explain why it's not right.
Einstein was very unhappy about being described as being an atheist. So the idea that somehow science entailed atheism was simply seen by Einstein as certainly not a conclusion that he would draw at all. Einstein really felt there had to be a confluence, a coming together of science and religion, if we were going to be able to answer all of life's big questions. In other words, if you'd like a theory of everything that matters, not just a scientific theory of everything.
Lee Camp: So on this episode of Tokens: our interview with Professor Alister McGrath on his new book, A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God.
Coming right up.
Part 1
Lee Camp: Alister McGrath is one of the world's leading theologians, born in Belfast, has three doctoral degrees from Oxford university, one in molecular biophysics, a doctor of divinity degree in theology, and a doctor of letters degree in intellectual history. He's a former atheist as a young person, who's done a great deal of work in the relationship between science and theology.
He's also been ordained in the Church of England and has held university posts at Oxford, Cambridge, King's College of London, and currently now back at Oxford. Today, we're discussing his recent book, A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God.
Welcome Professor McGrath...
Alister McGrath: Well, it's great to be with you. Thank you for having me.
Lee Camp: A delight to be with you. And thank you so much for your time. Uh, would you tell us a little bit about why this book and, uh, and why now, perhaps.
Alister McGrath: I thought that by engaging Einstein, I could not only say, look here is a very prominent scientist who thought religion was very, very important, but actually use that as a way of opening up the big questions in science and faith and help us think through some really good questions.
Lee Camp: One of the points of work in that sort of agenda seems to be making sure, at least people start with a good understanding of what science is. It seems.
Alister McGrath: Well science begins by patiently accumulating observations. And, you know, that's really important, but it's not just these observations. It is trying to figure out what the bigger picture behind them actually is. And I think we have to say that, um, you know, science is no more a mere accumulation of factors.
Building a house is putting stones in a big pile. You know, putting things together involves positioning them and trying to find a bigger picture behind them. And that's why Einstein is so good. He's a theorist who realizes you need to see the bigger picture, not just the fine detail. You need to be able to see what the detail points to.
Lee Camp: And it seems so remarkable to me to think of Einstein, as you sketch out so well, he's not doing much experimentation, if any, he's a theoretical physicist.
Alister McGrath: I think Einstein is really saying that I don't need to do experiments, but I can look at other people's experiments and ask, what do they point to? But actually Einstein is very good at one kind of experiment and it's a thought experiment. Imagine something. And in fact, one of the ways he used to illustrate his theory of relativity is to imagine somebody on a train, he goes through this and you imagine it. And suddenly you see the point he's getting at. So Einstein is very much not an experimentalist, but an interpreter of experiments saying, that's the detail. What's the big picture behind it?
Lee Camp: One of the common retorts that I hear people say, in suspicion of science, is that “that’s just a theory.” But that seems a problematic retort given what you've just described.
Alister McGrath: I think there are those who would say, “hey, this is just a theory,” meaning it doesn't necessarily have to be true. I know what they mean, but you've got to say that in effect some theories will be discarded. That's true. Others will stay and we don't know which they are. So in fact, it may just be a theory, but it may be a theory that actually is right.
And that's why you keep checking up on these things to make sure they are right. Some theories were wrong in the past. Absolutely. But that doesn't mean they're all wrong. You've got to check them out.
Lee Camp: You sketch out in one of your chapters, the incredible year that Einstein has in 1905 publishing four major papers that are these brilliant accomplishments in the history of science. I wanted to see if we could just do an experiment here ourselves. Let's take three to five minutes on each of these and take a stab at describing these in layman's terms for those who are life folks, and kind of sketch out what they are and then perhaps some of the significance of these.
So the first one of course, photoelectric effect: light is both a wave and a particle.
Alister McGrath: Well, Einstein has papers on the photoelectric effect, one that won him the Nobel prize. So in many ways it is the most important of that group of papers. And what you're saying is we make this observation that when you shine a light at, for example, metals, it dislodges electrons. But the electrons curiously don't seem to depend on the brightness of the light, they depend on the color of the light.
Why is that? And so Einstein began to say, supposing light is made up of in effect little wave vehicles where the energy is shaped by its frequency not by its intensity. If you do that, suddenly everything becomes clear. And in fact, Einstein is opening the way to the understanding of light as both waves and particles. But also just showing that in effect we've got a way of understanding the nature of light, which makes sense of some otherwise very puzzling scientific observations and philosophical riddles. So that was a very significant paper.
Lee Camp: One or two of the philosophical riddles that help us begin to get some solutions to.
Alister McGrath: Well, I think one of them was, how can light be one and two things at the same time? Uh, you know, people said, “hey, it's a wave, no it’s a particle”. Einstein would say, well, you know, actually, it's something of each. There is a distinct entity which later became known as a photon. And that actually, um, when you, when you see it like that, you realize this brings these two things together.
In other words, these two things initially seemed to be different. When Einstein came along, you could see them as different aspects of the same thing. So if you'd like, it's a wonderful exercise in integration, showing that things make sense without becoming chaotic.
Lee Camp: The next major paper on Brownian motion points to the reality of Adams.
Alister McGrath: Einstein's paper on Brownian motion is really interesting. Now some may say “hey, what's Brownian motion?” Well, if you put some very fine particles in water or something like that, and look it up close, you'll see they vibrate. Why? People used to think it was because they're alive but no! Einstein made the point that the reason these particles appear to vibrate is because there are atoms.
Water is made up of atoms and those are vibrating and are transferring their vibrations to these bits of pollen or whatever it is. Now, here's the point. People have been suspicious about these things called atoms. Some said it's just a theoretical construct. It doesn't actually really exist.
Einstein says the best explanation of that vibration of small particles is the existence of atoms. If you like, it's a very powerful indication that atoms were not simply a good idea. Actually, they really were there.
Lee Camp: Next, his paper on special relativity, consistency of laws of physics regardless of inertial frames.
Alister McGrath: Einstein here is really making what I think is a very important point. He's trying to say that, in a very special case, in other words where things are only moving under certain constraints, you begin to realize that the speed of light is absolute.
Lee Camp: The speed of light is actually close to 671 million miles per hour. If you could travel the speed of light, you could encircle the entire globe something like something like 7 and a half times in one second. That speed is represented by the constant c, the letter c, in the famous formula E = mc2. Here's how Einstein makes his case:
Alister McGrath: Imagine you're traveling on a train and it's going let's say 60 miles an hour.
The point Einstein is making is that if you shine a light on a train the speed of that light is the same, even though the train is moving 60 miles an hour faster.
Lee Camp: That is, imagine you're standing on a platform where you can watch a train pass by at 60 miles per hour. And imagine that you can see a man standing still in one of the passenger cars of the train. His speed, too, would be 60 miles per hour to you. But inside the train the man's speed, as he's standing still, would be zero relative to the train.
But imagine now that the train passes by again, still moving at 60 miles per hour. And yet this time, imagine that the man is walking toward the front of the train at a normal pace of something like 4 miles per hour. To you, watching from the platform, the man's speed is calculated this way: the speed of the train plus the speed of the man walking, 60 + 4 = 64 miles per hour.
But to that man, his speed, relative to the train, is only 4 miles per hour.
Here comes the crazy part by which Einstein begins to blow everybody's mind. Let's go back to the first scenario: a train moving 60 mph; a man standing still in the passenger car of that train; and you, standing still on a platform. You can see the train and the man standing still on that train. Now imagine that the man this time pulls out a flashlight, points it toward the front of the train, and turns it on.
Our intuition would lead us to assume that from our perspective, watching the train pass by at 60 miles per hour, that the speed of the light beam would be the speed of light, what we're calling c, plus 60 miles per hour. That the speed of the light beam would be c + 60.
But Einstein says nope. The speed of light would be c: and it would be c to you watching from the platform, and it would be c to the man on the train holding the flashlight.
If you happen to be thinking, well that's crazy, then well, you might actually be beginning to understand the special theory of relativity. And this observation about the speed of light, it turns out, has other outrageous implications.
Alister McGrath: Once you realize that you suddenly realized actually we have to rethink the nature of time. And that's why Einstein's whole idea of space-time, not space and time, but space-time is really so important. Now that paper was actually a limited case study, only one example. And he would expand that later in his theory of general relativity, which in fact was made applicable to everything. But it's certainly made people rethink.
It was very controversial. And there were many who said that he ought to have got a Nobel prize for that paper, but actually people were not sure about it until much later.
Lee Camp: I've always wondered, in thinking about special relativity and space-time continuum, when you think of the space-time continuum, are you able to visualize that somehow? Or after all your years of study, does that still seem to be a construct that causes some sort of cognitive dissonance that you can't quite get your head around?
Alister McGrath: I think that's a really good question. Can I imagine, um, space-time? Can I imagine multiple dimensions? The answer is I find that very difficult. I'm a very concrete thinker. I'm very used to the world I see around me, but I have friends who say “Hey, we can imagine this easily. We can think of up to 10 dimensions.” And I'm beginning to wonder if there's something to do with our psychological makeup and maybe some people can do this and others can't. I find it difficult, but I'm very happy to accept that other people find this very easy.
Lee Camp: Do you think that, um, Einstein felt that sort of imagination easy? Or was it still a stretch for him as well, you’d suspect?
Alister McGrath: Well, Einstein used to emphasize how important the imagination was to scientific discovery. And again think of his thought experiments. He's using the imagination to in effect help us to see something that otherwise we wouldn't be able to see. So I personally think that Einstein felt that his theory of relativity offered a new way of imagining what space and time were all about.
And then once you step into that way of thinking you begin to realize it has major implications, for example, for the way in which you understand time.
Lee Camp: As if those first three weren’t enough in one year, his fourth paper on the equivalence of matter and energy gives rise to the famous equation: E = mc2.
Alister McGrath: Well, this is a very famous paper. E = mc2 is probably the most famous equation in the world. And actually you even see it on college T-shirts. That really shows it's famous. But it's very important because Einstein at the States thought this is a theoretical possibility. He wasn't actually sure that this meant this could be done.
It just meant that in effect, at least in theory, this is the case. And of course later on, Einstein became really well known for this. And of course, the real difficulty for Einstein is that this principle of interconversion of mass and energy underlies nuclear weapons. And of course, Einstein later had real anxieties about the fact that his uncovery of this principle could be argued to lead to the atom bomb.
I don't think it was his fault at all. I think we need to make that very, very clear. But certainly there were those who felt that Einstein opened the theoretical doors to that kind of development.
Lee Camp: You already noted this a moment ago but that his special theory of relativity in turn is abstracted or generalized into the general theory of relativity, in which he predicts this phenomenon of the so-called gravitational dilation of time.
Alister McGrath: The whole idea of that gravitational dilation of time is really very counter-intuitive. I think that we find this really difficult, but what Einstein is saying is that the nature of time is such that it is affected by gravity. The easiest way of thinking about this is in terms of light beams traveling through the sky. We naturally think they just go straight.
Well, Einstein is saying no, no, no. Um, in effect, they are bent by gravitational pull. That is why one of the most significant experiments was the observation of some solar eclipses shortly after Einstein published his paper on general relativity, which showed that light from stars behind the sun, which is coming to earth, were actually bent on the way by the gravitational pull of a sun. That was not predicted at all by earlier theories of the nature of light. And so in many ways, what Einstein was saying is that in effect, there's this gravitational warping of space-time, which causes light to be affected in this way. Very counter-intuitive.
Lee Camp: So is the idea that what happened during the eclipses was that they compared perhaps a night sky and the layout of the apparent point of origin of light from stars? And then they could compare that with those light beams passing past the sun during the eclipse, because the eclipse has blocked out the blinding light of the sun. And then you could still see the star field behind the sun and compare the bending of the apparent point of the light in the sky, is that the basic idea?
Alister McGrath: That's the basic idea. They took photographs. And what they showed was that the position of the stars that they were looking at shifted slightly when the sun got in the way. And it wasn't because the stars had moved, it's because the light had been warped. That's complicated because If Newton's theory was right then actually light will be bent by gravity. Newton acknowledges that, but there's this additional factor that it’s bent even more than that because of the gravitational warping of space-time.
So in effect, that's the new element that Einstein introduces.
Lee Camp: Okay. Yeah. And so you worked through this pretty carefully in that chapter showing, was it Eddington, perhaps it gave the different kind of, if it had been this much, then that's Newton. If it had been this much, that's Einstein and so forth.
Alister McGrath: That's right. Eddington was very important because it said, look, here's what we might observe. If this, it means that Einstein and Newton are both wrong. If it's this, it means Newton's right. Einstein's wrong. If it's this, Einstein's right. It was very, very clear. And people were very impressed when the results showed, it was very clear, Einstein was right.
Lee Camp: Hmm. I suppose that this might be one of the theories that affects many of us on a daily basis.
Alister McGrath: I think that's right. I mean, most of us use GPS without knowing how it works. But if you go into the theory, you have to take into account the diminishing impact of gravity of the earth on the motion of light as we go further away from the earth. And GPS does that. It's a technical detail. I know, but a very important technical detail.
Lee Camp: And I think it's something like the clock's run, what 45 millions of a second, faster in the satellites than our clocks would on earth. And that therefore takes account of this adjustment.
Alister McGrath: And we don't know anything about that. We just use our GPS happily, but Einstein in effect got that right. And we needed to get that right to have GPS.
Lee Camp: Yeah. You mentioned a moment ago that for Einstein, his emphasis upon the importance of imagination. He's got this famous quote: “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Uh, fill that out a bit for us.
Alister McGrath: What Einstein is saying is that if you like knowledge, it’s there, it's what we know. The question is how do we generate new knowledge? How do we begin to say here's another possibility to investigate? What Einstein is really saying is that imagination is a tool of scientific discovery that in effect invites you to imagine other ways of looking at the world and then check them out.
In other words, in the philosophy of science, you make a distinction between, in effect, the logic of discovery and the logic of justification. Logic of discovery is how we go about generating new ways of thinking about the world. Logic of justification? How do we check them out? Einstein is very, very clear.
The imagination is really important in generating new hypotheses.
Lee Camp: Hmm. Related to this, you sketch out this fascinating description of Einstein's relationship to music and to Mozart, which appears to be at least somewhat intuitively to the notion of imagination. Would you talk to us a bit about that?
Alister McGrath: I think Einstein's appeals to the imagination is probably seen at its best in the way that he didn't just listen to music. That in some way, music like Mozart or Johann Sebastian Bach made him receptive to something deeper. It's a very difficult idea to explain, but it’s almost as if Einstein was tuning into something deep and music helped them to do it.
So there's a famous story his wife tells about how he would come down, have some breakfast, and go play his violin for a bit. He was a great violinist. Go upstairs. And the violin playing in a kind of way capitalized his scientific thinking. I mean that seems to be amazing. I mean, how many scientists do you know who kind of would play instruments in that way? But with Einstein that was creating an ambiance or a kind of intellectual environment, in which the imagination could work and he could in effect see these new ways of looking at our world.
Lee Camp: Why don't you suspect that your observation that so few scientists can play instruments that way, or, how have we gotten ourselves into the situation in which the ongoing tyranny, perhaps of specialization, keeps us from having these larger visions of the world.
Alister McGrath: I think it is a concern. And I think it's a fairly recent development because if we go back to the time of the Renaissance, we find scientists being very engaged with the arts, music, everything, and now that's quite unusual. I think the main reason, I'm afraid, is simply specialization. It takes so much concentration, so much intellectual energy, so much reading time to keep up with your own field.
It's very, very difficult to actually be able to get involved in any others. I wish it were otherwise, but it's so good that people like Einstein are there to, in effect, offer us an alternative.
Lee Camp: Later in your book, you speak of the ways in which his great quest in the latter years of his life to find some sort of single unifying theory was in some ways his great failure.
Alister McGrath: Einstein's great vision was to find a unified theory, a theory of everything which would account for quantum theory for gravity, for all these things. And, you know, he felt it was within his grasp. One of the reasons he was so excited about the general theory of relativity is that it explained so much.
And also not just explain things that couldn't be otherwise explained. Actually it held together things that people are up to that point for him as being completely different. And Einstein thought this was a staging post along the way to finding the big theory that actually explained everything. And unfortunately by the late 1940s, Einstein realized it simply wasn't going to happen. And some of those who knew him felt he was saddened by this. In effect, this was really the failure of an effort if you like. But I have to say that Einstein came closer to it than anybody else at the time. And I think that we have to give him credit for that.
Lee Camp: So the difference simply between what Einstein is working most on with theories of gravitation, he's dealing with, the very big, the very large, uh, in which there's a certain consistency and predictability. Whereas once one gets into the quantum area in Heisenberg's uncertainty principles of where there's, there's a sort of principled, inability to know or predict certain things.
If I'm understanding that correctly. And so he's trying to find a way in which you could find some metatheory that could somehow hold both of those together.
Alister McGrath: I think the use of the word metatheory is very helpful here because in effect it implies a bigger theory, which makes sense of existing theories. And I think the real difficulty Einstein found with quantum theory is it seemed to be statistics. It didn't seem to be about the laws of nature, and there's a very famous quote, unfortunately it’s a misquotation, “my God doesn't play dice.” But what Einstein is getting at is that if PAWS 'way of looking at quantum theory is right, it's all about statistics. And he just couldn't see how notions of causality actually played into that. So, um, he just found that very difficult to comprehend. And I think that's one area where he might now say that actually Einstein may have got that wrong.
There are very few people today who would agree with Einstein and quantum theory, even though we can understand the concern he had.
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This is our interview with Professor Alister McGrath on his new book, A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God. Coming up, we talk about the often-hostile public intersection between science and religion, and the role Einstein played for McGrath in helping him come to a more holistic worldview. Part two in just a moment.
Part 2
You're listening to Tokens and our interview with Professor Alister McGrath, at Oxford University, author of A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God.
Lee Camp: Well, let's learn a little bit about your exploration of the relationship between science and religion and the way in which Einstein becomes a dialogue partner for you in that sort of conversation. You sketch out three primary attitudes in Western culture: that of the war, that of two silos, or that of a dialogue.
But let's first talk about this notion of seeing science and religion as being in a war. I was fascinated that you point to the 1925 scopes trial here in Tennessee as one of the sources of the perceived antagonism between the two. But talk a little bit about how you've seen this notion of science and religion being at war with one another.
Alister McGrath: Most historians would now say that the idea that science and religion have been and must be permanently at war with each other as a myth, you know, something that's been invented for deliberate reasons. I mean, historically this goes back to the enlightenment. It's given a new burst of energy in the late 19th century.
And of course we find that doctored by the new atheism in the 21st century. And I think it's all about saying science is the only form of knowledge. There are other things which are simply about making things up as you go along and to preserve scientific integrity. We have to fight those who are simply making things up.
So a very good example of someone who thinks that science and religion are at war is Richard Dawkins. He would perhaps be the poster boy for that way of thinking. It is, I have to say, very difficult to justify that historically, because certainly there have been tensions in the past between science and religion.
But there've also been synergies. In other words there's no one way of looking at this and it's certainly not warfare. So I think that that's a very influential media trope, which is always repeated, but actually it's not taken seriously by scholarship anymore.
Lee Camp: It seems to me that there are a great number of similarities between American fundamentalists and the militant atheists. We presume that they're kind of polar opposites, but it seems like in many of their presumptions they seem to be quite similar, do you think that's fair?
Alister McGrath: I think that's fair. I have described Richard Dawkins as a kind of secular fundamentalist and people don't like that because they say, no, you have to be religious to be a fundamentalist, but that's not true actually. First of all, fundamentalism is about a quest for certainty. This has to be absolutely right.
And we find that in both camps. Also, fundamentalism is about, in effect, the in-group and the out-group. There's no in-between group and again, Richard Dawkins falls into that category just as well. So my sense is that we have two groups of fundamentalists and everybody else is trying to find out where they are in the middle ground.
Lee Camp: Hmm. What do you see from your perspective in the UK regarding the apparent rising tide of “anti-science”? Anti-science among Christians in the United States.
Alister McGrath: We are seeing cultural suspicion of science as a whole increasing. And that's causing concern. There's a concern that scientific experts are having too much control over our lives.
And I have to say I know what people mean by this. But nevertheless science is a tool of investigation and when it's used well, it really can help us. It doesn't answer all our questions, but nevertheless it needs to be taken seriously on its own terms. My problem with Richard Dawkins is that by exaggerating the power of science, he placed straight into the hands of those who want ineffective critique-science. Overstatement doesn't help the case at all.
Lee Camp: What do you suspect is precipitating this sort of rise in anti-scientific posture?
Alister McGrath: I think certainly in the United Kingdom, there are two things going on. One is, growing suspicion of experts, you know, in effect, “who are these people who are telling us what's right and what's wrong?” And there are scientific experts. There are political experts. And so on. People are just suspicious of the whole social category of experts as a whole.
So that's part of it. But I think there's also a sense of betrayal. Let me explain what I mean by that. There's this feeling science promised us so much, but actually it hasn't delivered.
Lee Camp: Do you have at hand any sort of criteria or suggested best practices for lay people in thinking through assessing sources and thinking critically?
Alister McGrath: I think what I would say is that science is about not here is a body of data. That is right. It's much more, here's a way of thinking that delivers results that can be trusted. But actually we constantly review those results and they may change over time. So very often in high school, people are taught that science is about this set of fixed beliefs.
It's not really, it's about the application of a method and its applications made the different results at different times. And I guess it is hard for people to grasp. What I would say is that culturally on the whole, you can trust scientists. Except where they stray beyond their area of competence. For example, if they're shaped by economic factors or political factors or religious factors, things can begin to go wrong.
Lee Camp: Hmm. Well, that raises the conversation that you have in the book about the so-called anti-Einstein campaign. I think it was in 1920, in which we see this sort of mixing of political and or cultural agendas with science. Would you talk us through that a bit?
Alister McGrath: Yes, this is a very disturbing episode in Germany. Einstein was a Jew, and by the early 1930s Einstein was very, very famous because of the theory of general relativity. For some reason, we don't quite understand the dynamics of this but basically, Einstein fell out of favor and was very quickly labeled as representing Jewish science because he was a Jew. And Jewish science in Germany was seen as hyper theoretical.
It didn't do experiments. It thought about other people's experiments. And so a lot of German scientists say that the authentic way of doing science in Germany is experimental. These theoretical guys. That's not real science. That's Einstein, that's Jewish science. So in effect, you saw this polarization between a theoretical science and an experimental science and Einstein was seen as being on the wrong side of that.
So if you like it here’s a racial or religious or a cultural division. And actually most would say, look, the distinction between the theoretical and empirical is a little bit difficult to draw because theorists reflect on experiments. So it's a symbiotic relationship. So it's a very interesting example of where a cultural or political environment forces a distinction, which doesn't need to be drawn for political reasons.
Lee Camp: Last question within this attitude about thinking of the relation of science and religion as a war. You point to the fact that Einstein chafed at the notion that he himself was an atheist.
Alister McGrath: Einstein was very unhappy about being described as being an atheist. He wasn't. Einstein talks about God as a supreme mind behind the universe. And he was really quite annoyed when he learned that some people were, in effect, saying Einstein is an atheist, therefore all scientists are atheist.
He said, look, look, that's not me. And he was quite angry about that. And one of the reasons he was angry is that for Einstein, religion was actually very important. It was his own way of thinking about religion, which isn't mine, but he was saying religion actually is about a sense of wonder. And that sense of wonder is fundamental to scientific research.
We have to have it. So the idea that somehow science entailed atheism was simply seen by Einstein as certainly not a conclusion that he would draw at all.
Lee Camp: The second attitude that you sketch out that's common in western culture is this of, uh, different silos. You note how perhaps Stephen Jay Gould’s notion that these constitute non overlapping magisteria might be a good analog for that today. But to talk us through that and the ways in which Einstein does and does not fit that particular approach.
Alister McGrath: This idea of science and religion, in effect, being in different silos is quite influential. Especially I have to say on academic campuses, because, in effect, it is about avoiding conflict. By avoiding interaction and avoiding discussion. Um, and yes, it buys academic peace. That means that scientists don't fight with theologians and theologians don't fight or scientists, but also means they don't talk to each other.
So for me it really is very inadequate. If you'd like, it’s simply about closing down a discussion because it might get unpleasant. And I have to say that the academic in me just says, this is unacceptable. We need to talk, even though the outcomes of that may be a little bit difficult at times.
It's really important to get out of the silo and talk to other people, in effect, interdisciplinarity talking to other people and trying to make connections between what you're doing and what other people are doing.
Lee Camp: Throughout the book, you point in numerous ways that there's a difference in agenda between science and your definition of religion. That science is talking about explaining how things happen. And religion is more toward what end, or for what purpose, or finding some sort of meaning in that description of causal relations, and so forth.
But talk to us a little bit more about those two different concerns.
Alister McGrath: I think it's always difficult to try and reduce science to one point and religion to another point. But I think it's helpful in some ways because it means you can look at the same thing, the same process and approach to the different levels. And science is very much about how does this actually function?
What's the bigger picture? It helps to understand why this works. But a theologian might further the question, which is, well, what does this actually mean? So you might say that science focuses on how things work, religion focuses on what things mean, providing you don't say that's the end of it.
There's actually more nuancing that needs to be done. But I think it is a helpful way of starting that conversation because it's saying, in effect, that the scientific method is something that's very wonderful. But Einstein constantly pointed out that science is inadequate. It does not meet human needs. It doesn't tell us what is right in terms of moral behavior or what life is all about.
And Einstein gave a very famous lecture at Princeton in 1939 where he began to say: look what the scientific method does is tell us how things relate to each other. But it doesn't tell us what we ought to be doing. And it doesn't inspire us to do that either. So for Einstein science and religion were different, but they could be brought together to give you a deeper and richer understanding of what things were all about.
Lee Camp: You have this quote from Einstein: “a science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Alister McGrath: I think what Einstein was really trying to get at is that religion could very easily generate some kinds of superstition and science might help that to not go that way. But Einstein was more concerned that science would become a purely formal understanding of processes within nature.
And Einstein was saying, look, we need more than that. We need to have a vision of what it means to be human and understanding of what is right, what is wrong. And of course his thinking here was catalyzed by the rise of Nazi-ism and Germany. And Einstein really felt there had to be a confluence, a coming together of science and religion if we were going to be able to answer all of life's big questions. In other words, if you'd like a theory of everything that matters, not just a scientific theory of everything.
Lee Camp: That prompts in me one other discussion hearkening back to our conversation about evangelicalism in the United States, perhaps over and against evangelicalism in the UK, even though I hear you saying that you all are experiencing a similar sort of rise in anti-science in your context as perhaps we are here.
It does seem to me though that in the UK there's been more, or at least a different set of questions that has not immediately prompted some of the antipathy between the two. For example, if someone goes to Westminster Abbey, you've got a statue of Darwin in the church, whereas I think many evangelicals in America could not possibly fathom doing such a thing.
What do you think is the source of that sort of particular difference? It seems to me that many Christians in the UK generally have not had a hard time accepting, holding together, a theory of evolution with Christian tradition, whereas it's been much more challenging for many Christians in America.
Alister McGrath: I think that's a very good question because you're quite right. That if you like it, it's less polarized over this issue here in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States. And people do try and reflect on what the reason for that might be. I mean, one reason might be that the influence of religious fundamentalism here in the United Kingdom is a lot less than it is in the United States.
That might be one reason. Another reason is that things aren't quite as polarized here, culturally, we aren't really into cultural wars in the way that you are. But I think one of the reasons is simply that we have so many active scientists who have either religious belief themselves or have sympathy with the religious belief, and therefore are interested in constructing dialogues or bridge-building across disciplines to try and make this clear.
And I think that is a significant element in understanding the difference between these two cultures.
Lee Camp: And that raises then this third category of relationship between science and religion of seeing them in dialogue, one with the other. And clearly it seems to me that your own life experience illustrates this sort of quest for the conversation given your advanced degrees in both scientific fields and theology, as well as your experience.
So, being an atheist when you're young and then coming to faith through science. Talk to us a little bit more about how you see this quest for dialogue being key to your own autobiography.
Alister McGrath: Well, when I was a teenager, I loved science, I really did. But I was a very aggressive atheist. I believed that I needed to be an atheist to be a scientist. And I was into the conflict models, now called the warfare models, in a very big way. I then began to realize that actually this was wrong.
That actually history didn't justify it. But more importantly, I think when I went to Oxford to study theoretical chemistry, I read Einstein a lot. And actually Einstein was saying, look, we have science, we have religion, we have ethics. We can find a way of holding all these together. They are different.
But they're not incompatible for that reason. And that, that made me think that, that there are other ways of doing this. So when I became a Christian in my first year at university, I had to do this major recalibration of intellectual possibilities. And I began to realize that you could find ways of saying, look, science is very, very good at helping you to understand how the world works. But religious faith helps you understand what life is all about, what matters. If you like, science tells me how I function. My faith tells me what I mean. And so, that way of thinking has become very important for me. Now let me emphasize that a dialogue can be very cozy and uncritical. The kind of dialogue I have in mind is robust and critical, but nevertheless productive.
So for me, I have my science, I have my faith. Both are very important to me, but they can talk to each other. They can enrich each other. And to me that's really exciting and important.
Lee Camp: You use the work of Mary Midgley and talk about multiple maps of reality, which I find to be a helpful analogy for describing what you just articulated. Can you talk about that a bit?
Alister McGrath: Yes, Mary Midgley and I got to know each other back in 2006, I think it was, when I went up to give some lectures at the university where she was based. And we had a great time talking about Richard Dawkins. She was very critical of him because she felt that he simply reduced everything to science and she uses the idea of a mental map.
And it's a very helpful idea to say we need multiple intellectual toolboxes to make sense of a complex reality. Science gives us one set of tools, philosophy another, religion another. And actually what we need to do is find a way of taking the maps that each of these toolboxes generates and super-impose them, because each map gives us different information and we need all of that there to give us a bigger picture of reality.
So I find that way of thinking very helpful. If you want me to amplify a map of Europe which shows you physical features, here are mountains, here are lakes. Think of a political map of Europe, which shows where the borders are between countries. Our physical maps are great if you're tourists looking for lakes, if you're a refugee looking for asylum, you want to know about the political boundaries and you need different maps for those purposes. Midgley is saying to give as detailed and full an account of reality as possible. You need all these maps. And find some way of layering them on top of each other, and you can see what they all mean.
Lee Camp: Closing out this notion of dialogue: I'm interested in any sorts of accounts of dialogue, personal dialogue, between you and Dawkins.
Alister McGrath: Well, Dawkins and I have had debates. I don't think we've had discussions. I have to say that is quite frustrating because one of my big criticisms of Dawkins is this: that he uses criteria to judge religious belief. Which he doesn't apply to his own beliefs. You know, he says, can you prove there's a God? I would say, Nope.
Can you prove your atheism? Nope. I don't need to because it's right. There's a sense that in effect, the burden of proof lies on his opponents. So I do find that very unsatisfactory. What I would say though, is it's very important to have these conversations because as somebody who used to be an atheist who used to hold views very similar to what Richard Dawkins holds.
Now, I know why I don't have those views anymore. I want to talk to those who are atheist scientists and find out why they think like that, because I think there are other possibilities that need to be taken very seriously.
Lee Camp: There is in science, there are certain metaphysical, unprovable assumptions in the scientific method itself, as there are in the practice of theology, right?
Alister McGrath: Absolutely. I think scientists have to make a lot of assumptions to make things work like the uniformity of nature and things like that. But the real difficulty is that very often scientists import philosophical presuppositions into their thinking without realizing they're doing so. For example, Richard Dawkins is a scientist, but he's also a metaphysical naturalist.
Lee Camp: In case "metaphysical naturalist" is not in your ready stock of vocabulary words, here you go: metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical commitment to the conviction that the only way to explain any and everything is in terms of natural elements, the laws of nature, and the relations between natural things.
Alister McGrath: But you can be a scientist without being a metaphysical naturalist. I think it's very important to say that they'll need to challenge these implicit philosophies and ask where are they coming from?
Lee Camp: Can you point to any sorts of particular ways in which science or scientific contemplation provides a sort of immediate fueling funding of wonder and faith in you? Or does the dialogue within you remain rather abstract?
Alister McGrath: No, I think that the dialogue within me, it can be quite concrete. Let me give you an example. I read Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord.” And I think that's wonderful. I mean, the night sky is beautiful so I can see that. But then I began to realize no cosmology tells me the immensity of our universe.
And that means I go back to Psalm 19:1, and I read it in a new way. It's saying in the vastness of this universe, there is a God and I'm here. And I matter to God. For him it's like Psalm 8. So if you'd like, I see science, in effect, helping me to appreciate the majesty of God, the vastness of the universe, and therefore the amazing fact that God cares for me.
As he cares for you as well. That is truly amazing. So if you'd like, when read rightly theology gives you a grid, which helps you to appreciate some key themes of the sciences even better and make a scientific application.
Lee Camp: Last and final thing here, going out. A quick round of favorite nonspecialist introductory books, given your doctoral degree in intellectual history. What would be maybe two or three introductions to, or primers in intellectual history?
Alister McGrath: Tom Holland's recent book Dominion is very, very good at setting the scene for things. And that might be a very good starting place for somebody these days. Very up to date.
Lee Camp: Yeah. What about in the area of philosophy of science?
Alister McGrath: What I recommend is getting hold of one of these Oxford or Cambridge companions, handbooks, the philosophy of science, because those in effect will give you a general overview and allow you to focus on the questions that really matter to you.
Lee Camp: And finally, uh, primers on the Christian faith.
Alister McGrath: Well, there, I'm afraid I go straight back to C.S. Lewis, who I have to admit an extraordinary fondness for. His Mere Christianity remains a very good starting point. Sure, a lot more needs to be said, but it's a great place to begin that exploration.
Lee Camp: We've been talking to Professor Alister McGrath. One of the world's leading theologians, professor at Oxford university on his book, A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God. Thank you, Professor McGrath.
Alister McGrath: It's been a great pleasure being with you. Thank you for having me.
Lee Camp: You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life, and our interview with Alister McGrath, professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, and author of a wonderful new book entitled A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God.
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