Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

Is science closer to religion than is typically assumed? Is religion closer to science? Might rational enquiry, based on evidence, share similarities with faith? These questions were raised by Charles Taylor, the distinguished Canadian philosopher, speaking at a Cambridge University symposium (pdf). He suspects that in the modern world we've bought into an illusion, one that posits a radical split between reason and revelation. Today, given the tension and violence that arises from misunderstandings about both, is a good time to examine them again.

The illusion, if that is what it is, emerged after the Enlightenment, when epistemological authority was questioned. It came to be assumed that you have to chose between one or the other – or, at least, if you appeal to revelation, its "truth" will only stand if allowed by the court of reason.

The new power invested in reason itself arose from the tremendous success of the natural sciences. Physics, geology and the like set a new standard of rational enquiry that is couched in procedural terms. Hence, what is rational has come to be equated with what is logically coherent. Further, it must be derived by proper methods including repeated observation and correct inference. In short, it's what scientists do.

Further, science's success carries political implications, for it seems that the rational can be disengaged from the specifics of culture, ethnicity and religion. A physicist in Sante Fe can communicate easily and directly with a physicist in Shanghai. From that observation, which is undoubtedly true, comes the dream of a brighter tomorrow: if only humanity could approach all its problems in the same way – deferring only to evidence and reason – then perhaps it could solve its problems too, or at least a fair number of them. Moreover, if people would only drop their appeals to revelation – which conflict, are irrational, and have a marked tendency towards violence – then perhaps the world would become a more peaceful place. That's the promise. Who'd deny its appeal?

The question: What would you get rid of for Christmas?

The first followers of Jesus – those individuals whom the church now celebrates as apostles and saints – could not have believed in the virgin birth of the messiah, let alone the perpetual virginity of Mary, his mother, a doctrine which the Roman Catholic church subsequently declared necessary to confess for salvation. The apostles knew of the surviving brothers and sisters of Jesus, and probably knew them in person. Seeing her as a virgin mother would have been vergin' on the ridiculous.

The New Testament remembers Jesus' siblings too. Reconciling the biblical evidence with official doctrine has been a problem for believers ever since. As Erasmus put it: "We believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, although it is not expounded in the sacred books." He was scholar. He knew that Matthew was misquoting when, in his gospel, he recorded a virgin conceiving and bearing a son called Emmanuel. The original passage from the Hebrew Bible refers, merely, to a "young woman." Matthew had the luxury of writing long after Jesus' contemporaries were dead.

So the first reason for wanting to be rid of the references to virginity at Christmas are historical. It's not true, and no one amongst Jesus' intimates, not least his mother, could possibly have believed it.

Another week, another book chastising, or cheering, the new atheists. God can't have had such publishing appeal since a bunch of renegade Jews, who followed a loser called Jesus, decided to publish their collected memories and letters.

But this month, two books are a cut above the rest. For one thing, they pack hilarious rhetorical punch. You'd expect that in Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, by Terry Eagleton. His review of The God Delusion in the London Review of Books became a minor publishing event in its own right: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology," it began.

However, there is something deeper going on in Eagleton's book than highbrow trench warfare. As there is in the second work, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart.

Eagleton does not let up now. Of Daniel Dennett's scientific treatment of belief, he writes: "[Dennett] is rather like someone who thinks that a novel is a botched piece of sociology." To Christopher Hitchens, whom he respects, Eagleton says: "Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov."

However, there is something deeper going on in Eagleton's book than highbrow trench warfare. As there is in the second work, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart. They're worth considering even if you naturally

Would the world change if someone came up with an utterly convincing proof for the existence of God? In 'A Corner of the Veil', a novel by Laurence Cossé, this happens. A conclusive demonstration is formulated by a holy man who hands it to his religious superiors. They read it, are convinced, but panic, fearing anarchy if it should fall into the hands of the faithful. When the government gets wind of the proof, ministers too want to conceal it, fearing that capitalism's ethos would be undermined in an outbreak of compassion.

In his new book, Keith Ward, the former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, seeks to refute the arguments against the existence of God propounded in 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. 'Why There Almost Certainly Is No God' is the title of Dawkins' fourth chapter. Consider one element of Ward's counter-case.

Dawkins claims that the existence of God is even less likely than the apparently improbable emergence of conscious beings, on the grounds that if God designed such complex entities he would have to be even more complex, making him even more improbable. But rebuts Ward, God is simple, and anyway simple entities routinely give rise to more complex phenomena, a good case in point being the laws of nature themselves. Moreover, to talk of God being more or less probable is simply, or perhaps deliberately, to misunderstand the concept of God: whether or not God actually exists, the idea of God is of a necessary not contingent being.

Ward pursues his quarry along many other twists and turns; part of the pleasure of reading him is staying with him through the metaphysical maze. Whether or not Dawkins will bother to keep up seems unlikely, Ward believes. For one thing, he has heard the rebuttals before, not least in Oxford debates against Ward himself. And yet, '[Dawkins] goes on saying that theologians have never answered his arguments.' This refusal to engage perhaps explains why

The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behaviour of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.

The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.

Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos "has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen."

D'Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics

One day, the eye of the philosopher Mark Rowlands was caught by an advertisement in his local newspaper, the Tuscaloosa News: "Wolf cubs for sale, 96 per cent". Rowlands was eyeballing the father of those cubs just an hour later, the wolf’s yellow eyes on a level with his own, the beast’s enormous paws propping it up against a stable door. This encounter had the opposite effect to that which it would have on most human beings, who fear wolves with a primordial terror. Rowlands purchased one of the cubs and his life changed. Within hours, Brenin had savaged his furniture and destroyed the air conditioning.

When Brenin was alive, he was the centre of Rowlands’s life; each day the creature had to be exercised, fed and settled before the philosopher could embark on anything else. The demand the wolf made on him reminds Rowlands of the myth about St Francis and a wolf that terrorized a village. St Francis made a deal with the wolf, whereby the creature would cease his hostilities if the villagers promised to feed him regularly. The arrangement worked, and firm arrangements are what you need to make with wolves if the relationship is to flourish. Now that Brenin is dead, the philosopher still thinks of his "brother wolf" every day. He misses the relationship that was one of the most formative in his life, and confesses to worrying about Brenin’s bones, now that they lie buried in a lonely spot in the South of France.

In his professional life, Rowlands is known for the idea that consciousness is embedded in the world around us as much as within us.

Sir John Templeton, who died last week, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists whom he hoped might put religious beliefs on a more solid foundation. His very substantial Templeton Foundation–with assets of nearly $1.5bn–has attracted particular reprobation in recent years. Some say its aim–to sponsor “human progress” through scientific research in religion–is simply misconceived: in Stephen Jay Gould's famous distinction, science and religion are two magisteria, fundamental but separate.

Others have been more vociferous in their critique. In Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, the Templeton Foundation warrants five index entries, one of three-page length. I do not know whether Dawkins has read much Freud, but he seems to be feeling his way towards the link the founder of psychoanalysis made between gold and excrement.

I should confess that I have been a minor beneficiary of Sir John's largesse, as a Templeton–Cambridge journalism fellow. That said, now might be a good moment to put the aims of the foundation to the test. For what progress has its funding produced in relation to science and religion? It's a big question, but then Sir John liked the big questions. So consider the thoughts of, say, three of his Templeton prize winners. They are, perhaps, illuminating.

Take Freeman Dyson, winner in 2000. The mathematical physicist and Emeritus professor at the prestigious Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, has written about science and religion on many occasions. There is an article summing up what he thinks in his latest book, A Many-Colored Glass.

Dyson draws an analogy with one of the central ideas in modern physics, that of complementarity. The best-known example of complementarity is that of the dual nature of light. Depending on how you look at it, you see either particles or waves. Light itself is richer than any one picture we might use to describe it.