Philip Clayton. Religion and Science: The Basics. 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-138-56276-9.
Reviewed by E. Harold Breitenberg, Jr., SciTech† Editor
Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology, is well-known in the area of religion and science. Author or editor of over two dozen books, numerous articles, essays, and reviews, and a regular contributor to the journal Zygon, he is a leading authority on the topic of science and religion. Clayton’s command of the subject well positions him to author a primer to the field.
Writing an introduction to so vast a subject as religion and science can be a daunting task, even for disciplinary experts, and may be approached from any number of angles. For example, in Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd ed., Thomas Dixon and Adam R. Shapiro take a largely chronological approach, highlighting well-known persons and issues significant to religion and science in the West, including Galileo, Darwin, and Creationism/ Intelligent Design (Oxford University Press 2022). In Science and Faith: A New Introduction (Paulist Press 2012), John F. Haught devotes most of the text to discussions of several topics as understood from the perspectives of three typical positions regarding religion and science: conflict, contrast, and convergence. Longer introductory treatments allow a broader range of coverage at greater depth, such as the 3rd edition of Alister E. McGrath’s Science and Religion: A New Introduction, which also concentrates primarily on science and religion in the West (Wiley Blackwell 2020).
In Religion and Science, Clayton travels a different route. While limiting the scope of coverage to “the basics,” Clayton widens his focus by attending to how religion and science is seen not only from Christian perspectives but also by other religions. He eschews a chronological approach to religion and science, or one interested primarily with “what is true,” or questions about “the truest picture of the way reality actually is.” Instead, Clayton focuses on “practical or pragmatic issues,” about which some “look for partnerships where science and religion can work in a complementary fashion to address the planet’s most pressing issues” (x). “This book,” he writes, “will not tell you what to believe about these issues. It is organized instead around the questions themselves, in the conviction that each person must come to answers for himself or herself” (x).
Early on, Clayton affirms the explicitly elementary focus of the book: “The pages before you are intended as a first introduction to this fascinating field” (x). In addition, Clayton highlights his approach in the book, noting “the questions that arise at the boundaries between the sciences and the religions will be with us for as long as there are humans to ask questions,” while also observing that “this debate is of immense practical importance,” because “[s]cience and religion may just be the two most powerful social forces in the world today” (viii). Clayton’s perspective on the significance of both religion and science is consistent with that of noted biologist, the late E.O. Wilson, who claimed “religion and science are the two most powerful forces in the world today, including especially the United States” (The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, Norton, 2006, 5). Attending to a range of important practical questions and issues in an introductory treatment of science and religion, as Clayton does, is a worthy and welcome objective.
The contents of the second edition of Religion and Science fall into three sets of three chapters. The first group introduces the subject of religion and science, considers representative ways of construing the relationship between them, and presents an overview of how the major world religions approach the subject. The stated goal of Clayton’s manner of dealing with the major world religions (Chapter 3) is “to discover how vastly different are the concerns that different religious traditions bring to the discussion with science” (36), an important point. To that end he highlights the significance of miracles for Christianity, obedience to the law for Judaism, and consciousness for both Hinduism and Buddhism, in addition to other areas of interest. Clayton’s treatment of Islam covers a wide set of topics various Muslims have, without stressing one more so than others.
In chapters 4-6 Clayton turns to the sciences themselves. He clearly lays out his approach by noting “we will work with the core theories and assumptions of a specific set of scientific disciplines. We will then explore the speculative questions that arise, directly or indirectly, out of these sciences” (66). Clayton devotes a chapter each to “Physics,” “The Biological Sciences,” and “The Neurosciences,” all largely unchanged from the first edition of Religion and Science.
Three more chapters round out the book: a new one on “Religion and Science in Historical and Philosophical Perspective,” a revised treatment of “Science, Technology, and Ethics,” held over from the first edition, and a concluding chapter on “The Future of Science and Religion,” retained essentially unchanged from the first edition. Each of the book’s chapters ends with “Questions for Reflection and Discussion,” “Notes,” and “Suggestions for Further Reading.”
First published in 2012, this 2nd edition of Religion and Science has several substantial and helpful changes, including a new 62-item Glossary as well as notes moved from the back of the book to the end of each chapter. Chapter 2, previously titled “The Two Most Famous Foes: Intelligent Design versus the New Atheists,” is significantly revised and renamed “Expanding the Options.” The chapter gives less attention to Richard
Dawkins than before and now includes short discussions of representative approaches to religion and science taken by Michael Shermer, Francis Collins, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. An added section on Christianity enhances Chapter 3, “Science and the World’s Religions,” with discussions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism kept from the first edition. Here and there elsewhere in the book, new material adds to coverage of these and other non-Christian religions, including Native American science (58) and Taoism (81).
Chapter 7, “Religion and Science in Historical and Philosophical Perspective,” is a valuable addition to the new edition. The chapter gives a short history of science and religion, addresses the notion that religion and science are inherently in conflict, attends to current endeavors in the philosophy of science, asks if science is actually objective, notes characteristic positions taken with respect to science and religion by those described as “separationists” and “integrationists,” and takes up the suggestion, recently posed by some, of changing from using the words science and religion to other terms, thereby potentially altering how we view those two areas of life and the relationship between them.
Whereas the original edition of the book had two chapters devoted to “Science, Technology, and Ethics” — one centered on “Research,” the other on “Applications” — the new edition expands the contents of the “Science, Technology, and Ethics” chapter, with an additional section on “Modifying Our Genes,” along with an extended discussion of “The Rights of Subjects in Scientific Experiments and Medical Care,” and another new section on “Warfare Technologies.” Dropped from the second edition is the “Applications” chapter, whose material included “‘Designer drugs’: The Ethics of Pharmaceuticals,” “Computers, Ethics, and Artificial Intelligence,” and “Access to Medical Technologies.” Other chapters are largely unchanged from the first edition.
None of the chapters, though, are devoted to other natural sciences, such as chemistry, geography, astronomy, and earth science. This may cause readers to wonder if Clayton does not see these fields as having significant roles to play in any of the planet’s most pressing issues or if lack of attention to these sciences is due to other reasons.
At times Clayton covers a position too quickly for someone not familiar with the topic to understand what the issue is or grasp its implications. For example, his description of quantum physics and consciousness (76-79) may leave some readers confused. Similarly, the first few pages of Chapter 6 introduce the neurosciences through a discussion that some may find more opaque than clear. Elsewhere, Clayton does not provide sources or citations for concepts he recounts, such as how some Christian theologians view imago Dei, the belief that humans are created in God’s image (80). Similarly, in his discussion of Buddhism Clayton refers to “The Enlightened One” but without specifying who that is (55). In other places, though, Clayton makes some insightful and intriguing comments, such as this: “Could it be, then, that the real insight of ID [i.e., intelligent design] is this intuition of design, this experience of sensing order in the universe? If that’s right, then the painful mistake of ID is the attempt to turn the intuition of divine order into a new kind of empirical science” (20).
Significantly, Clayton positions science as producing facts while religion provides values. Near the end of the Preface he illustrates this perspective with reference to climate change. Clayton writes, “Gradually we will realize that the [climate] changes are real and that the science is accurate. As the reality sinks in, the calls to action from across the world’s religious traditions will resonate more and more strongly. Fact, plus value. The way the world is, and the ways that it should be” (xii). Clayton’s stance here typifies the standpoint advanced by Stephen Jay Gould. The well-known paleontologist introduced the concept of Non-overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), which sees religion and science as separate “magisteria” or domains of teaching authority. As Gould declared in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), the magisterium “of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value” (6). But what does Clayton’s position on science/facts and religion/values imply about religious truths? Are they only relevant for and pertinent to “values”?
More broadly, can facts and values be so neatly separated into different areas of life and fields of study, then brought together and interact as needed to confront pressing issues and respond to important questions? Or does Clayton view this “values” role for religion only with respect to religion’s relationship with science? Curiously, in a section titled “Values from science, values from religion,” presented as one of four possible “two-way partnerships” taken up in the concluding chapter, Clayton proposes that “facts about the natural world [provided by science] and some foundational [philosophical] principles set the overall context for thought and action. Beyond this basic framework, however, various kinds of more specific guidance are provided by specific religious traditions” (176). This stand on the values that religions might bring to the table, though, seems to reduce religions’ contributions of values just to “various kinds of more specific guidance.”
Two other points. First, Clayton does not define religion or religious traditions. He states that “The goal of this chapter [Chapter 3: Science and the World’s Religions] is to discover how vastly different are the concerns that different religious traditions bring to the discussion with science” (36). Later he notes that critics of religion “frequently allege that religion, by its very nature, stands in tension with science.” However, since Clayton offers no definitions or descriptions, readers are left to their own assumptions about what he understands religion and religious traditions to be. Similarly, Clayton does not offer a definition of science, leaving readers in the same position of relying on their own assumptions about what constitutes science as well as specific sciences. Second, although alluding to it, Clayton does not explicitly include tradition as a source of religious knowledge. For example, writing about “the central beliefs of traditional or ‘orthodox’ Christianity” he parenthetically remarks, “We won’t try to decide which of these core beliefs are found in the Bible and which come from elsewhere” (37). Tradition though — understood as a set of beliefs, teachings, and actions produced, sustained, and handed on by the church or other religious community — is one of the primary sources of knowledge, insight, and guidance for religious persons and groups, together with scripture, reason, and experience. More explicit attention to the role and importance of tradition would strengthen the book.
These shortcomings notwithstanding, readers of Religion and Science stand to gain a solid introduction to — or refresher in — relationships between these two areas of contemporary life. Any relatively short book seeking to cover “the basics” of religion and science can only deal with so many topics and Clayton chose wisely. Both newcomers and those looking to brush up on the area of religion and science stand to benefit from the book. The second edition of Clayton’s Religion and Science: The Basics is a valuable contribution to the field.
