Science - the biggest influence on how we see the world?

This paper was prepared as a discussion starter for a meeting of the EFCW Executive, and is meant, therefore, to provoke debate rather than provide definitive answers.

I have noticed in recent months that we are being offered a lot of new programmes on television which emphasise the place of science in modern understanding. Some of them have brought to us astonishing pictures of planets in our solar system, thanks to recent exploratory missions, and they rightly create a sense of awe and marvel as we see the colour, the detail, as well as learning some amazing facts about these distant neighbours.

But why is science being given such a high profile? It seems linked in part to the two-hundredth anniversary last year of the birth of Charles Darwin, which automatically leads to eulogising the theories of evolution. I suspect it is also linked to the more aggressive secularism which some (only some) leading scientists are advocating. Perhaps it is not insignificant that the teaching of Evolution is proposed by all the main political parties to be made part of the National Curriculum within a couple of years. And children’s television is also starting to broadcast science programmes, with a lot of fun and some slapstick, made especially for its young audience.

There has also recently been another series on the BBC entitled The Story of Science, the trailers for which told us, "Of all human endeavours science has had the biggest impact on how we see the world and understand ourselves."

That seems rather an inflated claim to me. After all, science as we know it has only been around for a couple of centuries. Before that it was alchemy and the general study of the natural world – done in order to understand more fully our place within God’s universe.  And despite the way the Church is berated for its treatment of Galileo when he suggested the earth went around the sun, we would all do well in the twenty-first century to ponder how deeply our self-understanding in the West has been shaped by the claim in Genesis that human beings are made "in the image and likeness of God."  And we ought also to recall our indebtedness to Islam for much of the science and mathematics which helped bring new learning to Europe and helped nurture the renaissance.

At Easter time this year, in contrast to an increasing focus on science and a "scientific" world-view, I struggled in vain to find any programme on the main TV channels that screened anything pertinent for Good Friday. Over the Bank Holiday there was a good programme on The Secret Life of an Easter Masterpiece despite being told that we didn’t need to believe it was the Son of God dying on the cross in order to feel the full pathos of the picture! The sheer detail which the artist managed to put into his work – revealed now only by digital enlargement – suggests that it is faith that makes sense of the subject.

Another aspect of an assumed secularist viewpoint being "the right way" to describe reality was demonstrated in the tragic events of the fatal plane crash in Russia in which many leading Polish people were killed. On Easter Eve the people of Poland were holding a memorial service prior to the State Funerals the following day. I heard the news report on the radio before seeing, a couple of hours later, the same event covered on the television news.  The radio reporter described the people of Poland as saying their farewells to those who had died so tragically.  But the news pictures showed a huge cross erected as a focus for the memorial, and an altar laid out with a Catholic requiem mass taking place at that very same service. Clearly it was part of commending their lost leaders into the hands of God. But a quite different idea of mourning was created by the radio report which omitted so much of the factual detail. 

On Easter Monday Archbishop Rowan Williams played host to Andrew Marr and guests for Start the Week from Lambeth Palace. One of the other guests was Philip Pullman, the author of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. What was most engaging about that programme was the way both Archbishop Rowan and Philip Pullman evidently respected each other’s works, and at least in the Archbishop’s case had read Pullman’s novels and gave his response which was carefully listened to.

It was good to hear two protagonists of faith and secularism talking together in mutual respect. I would like to think that people of faith and people of science can do similarly.  But while the current emphasis is so lop-sided, with science held up as ‘reality’ and faith regarded as ‘preference’, it seems that the light faith sheds on being human will be avoided for a while yet.

But what is EFCW’s role in these matters? Should we try to engage with the assumed secularism of our age, as part of our standing up for the Christian faith in Wales – and if so, how best can we do it?

Andrew Loat