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Can Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs Believe? Some Examples of the Attitudes of Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs
to Religion edited by Sir Nevill Mott, James & James, pp 182, £21

Born in 1905, Nevill Mott studied physics and mathematics at Cambridge,
Gottingen and Copenhagen during that revolutionary period when quantum mechanics
was transforming the physical sciences. Until the age of about 50, when
he was head of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he had little interest
in religion. His curiosity was then aroused, following an invitation to
speak at the university church of Great St Mary’s, on the theme of science
and religion. After reading some theology, he concluded that ‘truth, as
we understand it in science, and truth in religion, are not the same thing’.
He began to attend his college chapel and Anglican churches elsewhere, and
became acquainted with the ideas of the demythologising theologian Rudolf
Bultmann.

Mott’s faith is, however, rather remote from the mainstream ideology
of the Church of England or of its prelate George Carey. He rejects the
virgin birth and all other miraculous elements that he hears in the creed.
‘I respect these statements as the beliefs of our ancestors,’ he says. But
‘the doctrine that the crucifixion was a ‘sacrifice for our sins’ and that
we are redeemed by it, are meaningless to me’. For Mott, God is neither
omniscient nor omnipotent. Citing Don Cupitt, Dean of Emmanuel College,
Cambridge – an ordained minister ‘who seems not to believe in any external
God at all’ – he adheres to the Anglican rather than Roman Catholic church
because it offers ‘much greater freedom of belief’.

There is nothing new about a major scientist professing a minimal version
of Christianity or espousing even less doctrinal philosophies. Those wedded
to the methods of natural science and uneasy about dogma, yet craving a
spiritual dimension they would otherwise feel to be missing in life, have
long been attracted towards Quakerism, Unitarianism and, within the Anglican
tradition, breakaways such as the so-called Modern Churchman’s Union.

What is perplexing is why Mott should wish to assemble the testimonies
that comprise this book. Even if we overlook the unfulfilled implication
in the subtitle – that this will be a representative sampling of scientists’
attitudes towards religious notions – and the book’s restrictive Judeao-Christian
boundaries, the collection is an odd one.

For example, 6 of Mott’s 14 fellow contributors are Roman Catholics,
who robustly endorse the very beliefs he sets aside as unbelievable in the
first 30 pages. ‘The ‘evil deed’ of the crucifixion became the glorification
of Christ, the source of redemption for the whole world,’ we are assured
by physicist Gunther Ludwig of the University of Marburg-Lahn in Germany,
in a chapter emphasising the omnipotence and omniscience of God. ‘Miracles
are not arbitrary violations of natural law to impress the people involved,
but they are the appropriate evidences of God’s free activity in making
Himself known,’ writes Richard Bube of Stanford University, California.

These and many other affirmations will be literally meaningless to many
scientists – especially to biologists, who are scarcely represented at all
in Mott’s stable of writers. But the central demerit of the book is that
very few contributors come anywhere near to the concrete issues in the continuing
schism between naturalistic and theistic interpretations of reality – above
all, the contrast between assertions of the supernatural significance of
human life and the abundant evidence against any idea of direction or purpose
in evolution. Many of the authors offer little more than bald statements
that there is no problem.

Conformist believers whether within Christianity or Judaism, will be
as disturbed by Mott’s cheerfully heterodox perspective in introducing this
symposium as liberal believers are puzzled by the many components that smack
of authoritarian orthodoxy. Adherents of other world religions will be dismayed
by the book’s intellectual narrowness.

For the rest of us, the dissonance between science and religion remains
as profound as ever. Why it should remain of interest at all is, of course,
another question altogether.

Bernard Dixon is European editor of Bio/Technology.