Many believe that before Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, Christians as a whole maintained an entirely literal, six-day interpretation of Genesis in which the earth was only a few thousand years old. In fact, however, the idea of an old earth had already become increasingly popular among Christians throughout the half century leading up to The Origin of Species. ¹

Another misconception is that the arrival of Darwin’s theory led the scientific and theological communities to immediately take up positions opposing each other. But history reveals that one of the earliest supporters of evolutionary theory in the American scientific community was a devout Christian botanist named Asa Gray. And among theologians, BB Warfield—an architect of the contemporary evangelical understanding of biblical inerrancy—believed that certain forms of evolution were also compatible with a high view of Scripture.

The First Christian Response to Origin of Species in America

Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution. By the time The Origin of Species was published, the idea of evolution in many natural processes was already popular, and the term development was used in its place for discussions of society’s change or the history of the solar system.² What’s more, it was widely accepted that the earth was much older than previously thought. Most of the groundwork for this understanding resulted from geological work done earlier that century. Through meticulous study of the fossil record, naturalists helped spread the view that the earth was old rather than young.

See How are the ages of the earth and universe calculated?

Though many people like to focus on Christian hostility to evolutionary theory, a careful look at history reveals some surprising facts. For instance, the first American scientist to carefully review and publically support Darwin’s Origin of Species was a devout Christian named Asa Gray, now regarded as one of the most prominent American biologists of the 19^th century. A shy person who avoided politics, Gray worked quietly and does not have the same name recognition as scientists like Louis Agassiz and T.H. Huxley—both flamboyant self-promoters who provoked public debate. But, his brilliant research during his 30-year career at Harvard University helped usher in the era of modern biology in the United States.

Source: http://www.huh.harvard.edu/libraries/Gray_Bicent/images/gray_1325.jpg

Asa Gray made his commitment to Christ in 1835, a few years after completing medical school (much like Francis Collins of our own era). ³ As a professing Christian, Gray was a committed churchgoer and member of a local congregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a professional scientist, he insisted that science was neutral in matters of religion and metaphysics. Gray found evolutionary theory incredibly stimulating to his scientific research, but never found it threatening to his faith. Both before and after reading Origin of Species, Gray remained firmly grounded in the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith that Christians have shared since the early Church. ⁴

What happened when Origin of Species burst onto the scene? Gray’s extensive research on American and Japanese plants—which he published after corresponding with Charles Darwin—had already convinced him that species and genera found in both countries resulted from common ancestry, not separate creations. He responded to Darwin’s book by writing the first major review⁵ of Origin on his side of the Atlantic, and he defended Darwin’s scientific theory in a series of meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1859 and 1860. Gray was determined that Origin would get a fair reading from the scientific community, and he even took a leading role in negotiations to reprint Origin in the United States in 1860, ensuring that Americans could have the most accurate edition in their hands.

Regarding the theological implications of evolution, Gray believed that Darwin’s theory was not atheistic, although he recognized that some would use it as an “excuse” for unbelief. Henceforth, he concluded, we need “to reshape” the argument from design “in such wise as to harmonize our ineradicable belief in design with the fundamental scientific belief of continuity in nature, now extended to organic as well as inorganic forms, to living beings as well as inanimate things.” The question of whether or not life evolves should not be confused with the issue of God’s existence. Instead, Gray thought that each issue should be investigated using methods appropriate to the subject of inquiry. His refusal to argue for either extreme in this contentious debate upset both anti-evolutionists and radical popularizers of science, both of whom were eager to believe that evolution implied atheism.⁶

For more, be sure to read the full FAQ "How have Christians responded to Darwin’s Origin of Species?" in our Questions section!

Notes

1. Two of the most insightful books dealing with the discovery of Earth’s antiquity are Paolo Rossi’s The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); and Rhoda Rappaport’s When Geologists Were Historians, 1665-1750. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
2. David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987), xi. (book info)
3. Francis Collins’ conversion to Christianity is described in his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for his Belief (New York: Free Press, 2007) (book info)
4. Dupree, A. H. Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988)
5. Asa Gray, “Darwin on the Origin of Species”, in The Atlantic, July 1860 (html).
6. Asa Gray, Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College (C. Scribner's Sons, 1880) (html). Asa Gray, Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism (D. Appleton 1884) (html)

Asa Gray

If Thomas Huxley earned the title of "Darwin's bulldog," then Asa Gray should be remembered as "Darwin's dove." Whereas Huxley enjoyed a good fight in his defense of Darwin's theory, Gray sought to mediate and bring sides together around a common understanding of "good science." As Darwin's strongest and most vocal scientific ally in the United States, Gray recognized the scientific importance of Darwin's efforts for the growing professionalism of biological researchers.

But as an orthodox Christian, a Presbyterian firmly devoted to the faith expressed in the Nicene Creed, Gray saw in Darwin's theory both evidence for his philosophical commitment to natural theology and support for his opposition to the idealism advocated by Louis Agassiz and the Naturphilosophen in both Europe and America. Indeed, Agassiz's advocacy of Platonic forms as a basis of biological understanding (e.g., "A species is a thought of the creator")¹ would be a major source of American opposition to Darwin's theory.

Professor of botany at Harvard during most of the middle half of the nineteenth century, Gray was one of the few members of the scientific community to whom Darwin revealed his theory before the publication of On the Origin of Species, and, from what I can tell, the only American. Gray and Darwin met briefly in January 1839 during one of Gray's visits to England. Later, during the 1850s, Darwin wrote Gray on several occasions requesting information--a practice that Darwin frequently employed. In 1854, Darwin's friend and confidant, Joseph Hooker, showed Darwin Gray's review of Hooker's Flora of New Zealand, in which Gray had argued strongly against Louis Agassiz's idealism and had raised questions from his own work on the stability of species. Gray was not yet ready to deny their permanence, but hybrids and other observations were beginning to trouble him.

The next year Gray wrote a lucid and penetrating positive evaluation of Alphonse De Candolle's two-volume Géographie botanique raisonnée, a pioneering work dealing with plant geography and distribution from a statistical perspective. Hooker had sneeringly dismissed the work. In A. Hunter Dupree's authoritative biography of Gray, he describes Gray's puzzlement at Hooker's response in these terms:

Although in the long view Gray's evaluation of the epoch-making nature of De Candolle's book was more justified than Hooker's sneers, [Gray was confused by his response, for] Hooker seemed to be talking with a more comprehensive theory definitely in mind, some reason for taking his position, which he did not divulge and which his friend [Gray] did not possess.²

Darwin, however, saw in both Gray's review of Hooker's book and in his comments on De Candolle's tome that Gray was troubled by some of the same empirical data that had been bothering him. In April 1855, Darwin wrote Gray to urge that Gray update his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States first published in 1848, and especially to address the issue of the range of Alpine plants in the United States. Specifically, he said: "Now I would say it is your duty to generalise as far as you safely can from your as yet completed work."³

Behind this request was Darwin's desire to test his impression that Gray could make a good ally. Gray passed the test, and finally, in July 1857, Darwin let Gray in on his theory of the transmutation of species. Gray was never an uncritical supporter, and there are many evidences in the correspondence between these two scientists that Gray was willing to challenge Darwin and disagree with some of his conclusions. Nevertheless, Gray saw the importance of Darwin's work and the ways in which it provided answers to the troublesome issues that he had confronted in his own botanical efforts.

Gray responds to Darwin's theory

After considerable interchange--one might even say debate--among Gray, Darwin, and Hooker, Gray wrote to Hooker in October 1859 (one month before the publication of On the Origin of Species) saying that he had absolutely no problem with cognate species arising by variation. He did, however, raise a concern that would be the source of much future discussion. He wondered about Darwin's "carry[ing] out this view to its ultimate and legitimate results,--how [do] you connect the philosophy of religion with the philosophy of your science." He added: "I should feel uneasy if I could not connect them into a consistent whole--i.e., fundamental principles of science should not be in conflict."⁴

When Origins was published, Gray wrote a clear, positive, yet critical review in The American Journal of Science. Aware of mounting religious opposition, he ended his review by arguing that whereas one could use Darwin's theory in support of an atheistic view of Nature, one could use any scientific theory in that way. He wrote: "The theory of gravitation and ... the nebular hypothesis assume a universal and ultimate physical cause, from which the effects in nature must necessarily have resulted."⁵ He did not see the physicists and astronomers who adopted Newton's theories as atheists or pantheists, though Leibniz earlier had raised such reservations. And a similar situation existed with the origin of species by natural selection. Darwin, Gray continued: "merely takes up a particular, proximate cause, or set of such causes, from which, it is argued, the present diversity of species has or may have contingently resulted. The author does not say necessarily resulted."⁶

This far Gray could go with Darwin. But there was a point at which he parted company, and that was the fortuitous randomness of the process that Darwin's theory seemed to imply.

In part 2, Dr. Miles describes Darwin's struggle with the problem of natural evil and design in nature.

Notes

1. Cited in A. Hunter Dupree, Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1959), 151. 2. Ibid., 236.
3. Charles Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903), 252.
4. Dupree, Asa Gray, 266.
5. Asa Gray, "The Origin of Species" in Darwiniana (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1963), 44.
6. Ibid.

Darwin’s finches are some of the most visible and recognizable symbols of evolution in the world today. Biology textbooks feature them prominently, and the National Academy of Sciences has enshrined them in the entrance of their headquarters in Washington, DC. Surely the finches that Darwin collected on the Galápagos islands were a central feature of his evolutionary theory, right?

Lobby of The National Academies Building. Courtesy of CPNAS. Photo by Robert Lautman

Actually, the Galápagos finches are never even mentioned in Darwin’s famous work On the Origin of Species. Nor do they appear in Darwin’s famous notebooks on “Transmutation of Species”, in which he formulated the idea of evolution by natural selection.¹ Even Darwin’s private diary of his voyage on the HMS Beagle only mentions the Galápagos finches briefly in passing.²

It was only in 1845, in the second edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, that Darwin included a tantalizing sentence about the Galápagos finches:

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.³

However insightful this statement may have been, Darwin never published anything else about the Galápagos finches for the rest of his life. Nor did he publically present these birds as direct evidence for this theory of evolution.⁴

If these finches were so important to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, why did he remain silent about them? One of his comments in The Voyage of the Beagle provides us with a clue:

Unfortunately most of the specimens of the finch tribe were mingled together; but I have strong reasons to suspect that some of the species of the subgroup Geospiza are confined to separate islands.⁵

When Darwin was exploring the Galápagos himself in 1835, he had not formulated his theory of evolution yet, and thus he did know what data would be necessary to make definitive conclusions about finch evolution. In particular, he did not keep careful track of which of his specimens came from which islands. Moreover, as was customary among naturalists at that time, Darwin only collected a small number specimens—he brought home only 31 finches and 64 total birds from the Galápagos.⁶

Though Darwin sensed that these birds were truly special, he lacked sufficient evidence to reach any specific conclusions about their evolutionary origins. It would be up to the rest of the scientific community to carry out the necessary empirical research. Subsequent expeditions in 1868, 1891, 1897, and 1905 brought back thousands of Galápagos finch specimens, but instead of unlocking the mysteries of evolutionary theory, the Galápagos finches became a great enigma.⁷

A century after Darwin's voyage, scientists still struggled to explain the staggering variety of finches on this tiny, remote archipelago. By the mid-1930’s, British Museum ornithologist Percy Lowe argued that the finches presented a "biological problem of first class importance", and he told the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the finches displayed a "bewildering diversity, intergradation, and distribution".⁸ Who would be up to the challenge of making sense of such tremendous biological complexity? It was David Lack.

David Lack

Ornithologist David Lack

David Lack had an exceptionally keen eye for bird-watching, and he possessed a passion to match it. By age 15, he had already observed 100 distinct species of birds, and before entering college, authored his first scientific paper. At Cambridge University in the early 1930’s, Lack was disappointed to find that his zoology professors taught “nothing about evolution, ecology, behavior or genetics, and of course nothing about birds.”⁹ In fact, at that time, there were only two professional ornithologists in all of Britain!

Thus David Lack took it upon himself to create his own learning opportunities. As an undergraduate, he became the president of the Cambridge Ornithological Club, traveled to Greenland for a bird-watching expedition, and cultivated a relationship with the prominent biologist Julian Huxley (grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley). Huxley was an inspiring mentor and encouraged Lack to expand his research further by studying tropical birds.¹⁰ Following this advice, Lack embarked on a research trip to Tanzania in the summer of 1934, but his greatest adventure was yet to come.

In 1937, Lack became fascinated by the scientific mysteries surrounding the Galápagos finches. But in order to study their behavior, Lack would need to travel to remote islands halfway around the world. How could he possibly get there? Once again, Julian Huxley was tremendously supportive and raised funds from two prominent scientific societies to pay for his expedition. After a long delay, David Lack and five companions finally set off on their journey.

Instead of residing in comfortable quarters aboard a royal naval ship, Lack’s group subsisted on a shoestring budget, traveled on commercial steamers, and stayed with local settlers. Their experience was definitely not a romantic tale of imperial expedition:

The Galápagos are interesting, but scarcely a residential paradise. The biological peculiarities are offset by an enervating climate, monotonous scenery, dense thorn scrub, cactus spines, loose sharp lava, food deficiencies, water shortage, black rats, fleas, jiggers, ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, Ecuadorian Indians of doubtful honesty, and dejected, disillusioned European settlers.¹¹

Whereas Charles Darwin spent only nineteen days on the shores of the Galápagos, Lack and his crew conducted more than five months of meticulous and exhausting study in the harsh climate. At that time, even the finches themselves provided little solace. Lack wrote,

Darwin’s finches are dull to look at, not only in their orderly ranks in museum trays, but also when they hop about the ground or perch in the trees of the Galápagos, making dull unmusical noises. Only the variety of their beaks and the number of their species excite attention.¹²

Large Cactus Finch on Española Island in the Galápagos Islands

The repetitive tedium requisite for important scientific discoveries is rarely discussed in public, and even today many bright-eyed science students become disillusioned by the painstaking work demanded by their Ph.D. programs. But one of the things that distinguishes great scientists is their unwavering commitment and tenacity in completing major projects. David Lack's efforts were not in vain:

"Despite his personal discomforts (or perhaps because of them), Lack did see something on the Galápagos that no one had ever seen before—natural selection at work among its finches through interspecies competition." ¹³

When the birds’ breeding season ended in 1939, Lack was ready to return to his home in England. But the captive finches that he had brought with him fared so badly on the voyage home that he detoured to San Francisco and put them in the care of the California Academy of Sciences. Turning this mishap into an opportunity, Lack stayed there for five additional months to study the Academy’s enormous collection of Galápagos finch specimens.¹⁴

To complete his systematic research, Lack then travelled across the United States to study the Galápagos finch collection housed at the American Museum in New York.¹⁵ Altogether, Lack examined more than 8000 specimens and specifically measured the length, width, and depth of all their beaks.¹⁶

Lack’s final obstacle was in getting his research published. Though he completed his academic manuscript “The Galápagos Finches—A Study in Variation” in 1940, paper shortages during World War II delayed its publication by the California Academy of Sciences until 1945. Were he only interested in making an original contribution to science, Lack could have stopped here and congratulated himself on a job well-done. However, his motivation sprung from a deeper source:

David Lack's drawing of 14 species of Galápagos finches, p. 19 of Darwin’s Finches

"I did not watch birds primarily for scientific reasons but for sheer enjoyment, and from the age of 15 onward returned day after day in a glow of excitement after seeing a new bird or a new habit." ¹⁷

Lack’s joyful fascination with the Galápagos finches inspired him to continue developing his conclusions long after returning from his expedition. While waiting for his academic paper to be published, he began writing a book that would enable students and the general public to share his excitement about these remarkable birds and the evolutionary processes that shaped them.

First published in 1947, Lack’s book became tremendously influential. Before this time, biology textbooks had never even mentioned the Galápagos finches. But after David Lack’s study, the finches became a primary example of evolution by natural selection, specifically adaptive radiation. Not only did textbooks fully rely on Lack’s findings, they also followed his lead in calling them “Darwin’s finches”, the title of Lack’s famous book.¹⁸

Iconic Finches

What was it about these birds that made them such a prominent symbol of evolution? As Darwin himself pointed out, the numerous Galápagos finch populations each have distinctive beaks, and he speculated that they could have evolved from an ancestral species that came to the islands. But a complete picture of finch evolution would have to wait another hundred years, when David Lack arrived.

During his five months on the Galápagos, including both the rainy and dry seasons, Lack observed that these beak differences enable the finches to subsist on different kinds of food:

The beak differences between most of the genera and subgenera of Darwin's finches are clearly correlated with differences in feeding methods. This is well borne out by the heavy, finch-like beak of the seed-eating Geospiza, the long beak of the flower-probing Cactornis, the somewhat parrot-like beak of the leaf, bud, and fruit-eating Platyspiza, the woodpecker-like beak of the woodboring Catcospiza, and the warbler-like beaks of the insect-eating certhidea and Pinaroloxias.¹⁹

Lack's image of beak adaptations from Darwin’s Finches

Specializing in such different sources of food enables these finches to live in close proximity without directly competing with each other or driving populations to extinction. The fact that so many of these closely related finches are able to co-exist is a remarkable fact in itself. As Lack himself put it, “It is not only the origin, but also the persistence, of new species which require explanation.”²⁰

But it is also fascinating to consider how these birds got to be so different in the first place. How did a finch come to have a beak like a “parrot”, “woodpecker”, or “warbler”? The answer lies in the distinct characteristics of the Galápagos. Because the islands are so remote, no actual parrots, woodpeckers, or warblers ever settled on it. In the absence of these species, the Galápagos finches were able to adopt feeding habits and forms that they would never have taken on a large continent full of other birds competing for food. The isolation of these islands offered just the right conditions for us to see living examples of adaptive radiation.²¹

Conclusion

Considering the immense popularity of the Galápagos finches, it is quite surprising to learn that Charles Darwin himself had so little to say about them. In fact, it was actually David Lack, one century later, who conducted the critical research that immortalized the finches in biology textbooks and popular lore. By naming his landmark book Darwin’s Finches,²² Lack paid homage to the man whose voyage on the HMS Beagle helped transform the study of natural history. But at the same time, Lack also obscured the fact that evolutionary biology is an enterprise conducted by a large community of brilliant scholars, not just the product of one man’s efforts.

This tendency to immortalize “great men of science” has also led many people to refer to modern evolutionary theory as Darwinism, despite the fact that it has substantially changed and developed over the past 150 years. It is important to give credit where credit is due, and if that’s the case, we should seriously reconsider how we refer to the Galapagos finches. Evolutionary biologist Dolph Schluter, who studied the finches several decades after David Lack, had this to say:

I find Lack's intuition really stunning given how little information he had. He's my hero actually… They should be called Lack's finches.²³

In the second part of this series, we’ll explore the fact that David Lack, in addition to being a world-renowned evolutionary biologist, was also a devout Christian. His study of evolutionary theory did not cause him to lose his faith; in fact, he actually converted to Christianity after completing his Galápagos finch research.

For Discussion

Further Reading

• Grant, Peter R.; Grant, B. Rosemary. How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches, Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Sulloway, Frank J. (Spring 1982), "Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend" (PDF), Journal of the History of Biology 15 (1): 1–53.
• Weiner, Jonathon. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Vintage Books, 1995.

Notes

1. Sulloway, F. (1983). "Darwin and his finches: The evolution of a legend." Journal of the history of biology 15(1): 32. Darwin’s notebooks on transmutation mentioned Galapagos tortoises and mockingbirds, not finches.
2. Lack, David. Darwin’s Finches. Cambridge University Press, 1947: 9. Confirmed by Sulloway (1983), p5.
3. Darwin, Charles. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world. London: John Murray. 2d ed. 1845: 379-80. This edition of the book also contained the drawings of four different finches that have become enshrined in biology textbooks and on the walls of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.
4. Sulloway, p35. Sulloway points out that the first published evolutionary account of the Galapagos finches was not until 1876, by Osbert Salvin: "On the Avifauna of the Galapagos Archipelago." Trans. Zool. Soc. London, 9:447-51.
5. Darwin (1845), p395.
6. Sulloway, p40.
7. Sulloway, p40.
8. Larson, E. J. Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands. New York, Basic Books, 2001: 166-67.
9. Lack, David. (1973) “My life as an amateur ornithologist.” Ibis: 424.
10. Lack (1973), 425-27.
11. Lack (1947), p1.
12. Lack (1947), p11.
13. Larson, 167-68.
14. The California Academy of Sciences sponsored an expedition to the Galapagos in 1905-06 and collected nearly 9000 Galapagos finch specimens (Sulloway, p40).
15. In New York, Lack roomed with the curator of the finch collection—German émigré zoologist Ernst Mayr. By developing this relationship, Lack had close ties with two of the biggest figures in the neo-Darwinian synthesis, Julian Huxley and Ernst Mayr (Larson, 168).
16. Larson, p168.
17. Lack (1973), p424.
18. Larson, p198.
19. Lack (1947), p60.
20. Lack (1947), p158.
21. See Lack’s concluding chapter on “Adaptive Radiation”, pp146-159 of Darwin’s Finches (1947).
22. British ornithologist Percy Lowe originally proposed the name “Darwin’s finches” in 1935, but the name did not catch on until Lack used it in his book. See P.R. Lowe, (1936) "The Finches of the Galapagos in Relation to Darwin's Conception of Species." Ibis, 13th ser., 6:310-321. (Cited in Larson, p287)
23. Schluter, in an interview with Edward Larson, 16 March 2000.

Judging from the flurry of headlines over the past week, one might be tempted to think that proof positive of God’s existence (or lack thereof) had just appeared out of a 27-km-tunnel buried beneath the Swiss-French border. This frenzy of news headlines and blog titles hailed the recent news that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has discovered a brand new particle of a mass of 125-126 GeV, which is assumed to be the Higgs boson, or the so-called “God particle.” The discovery of the Higgs boson would certainly be a breakthrough for particle physics and cosmology, but would such a finding also radically redefine theology’s understanding of God or challenge the existence of such a deity? Is there actually any theological or religious significance in Higgs physics at all?

The short answer is “no,” which becomes apparent when one considers the widely-reported story of how it got named. In 1993, Nobel Laureate physicist Leon Lederman, along with science writer Dick Teresi, wrote a book detailing the history of particle physics starting with Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy Democritus and culminating with the hunt for the Higgs boson. Until this latest discovery, the Higgs boson was the elusive final missing piece of the puzzle known as the Standard Model—a collection of the fundamental particles that constitute our universe and the complex and mathematically-sophisticated relationships between them. Considering how incredibly difficult finding the Higgs boson was proving to be, Lederman wanted to name the book after that “goddamn particle,” according to some of his collaborators. His editor, however, would not allow it and so the name was shortened to “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?” And thus ‘the God particle’ was born, carrying with it more than enough social baggage for such a miniscule particle.

Particle physicist Dr. Zosia Krusberg (at right) is visiting assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vassar College and thinks “the term ‘god particle’ is unfortunate. The Higgs boson is no more (or less) divine or spiritually significant than any other elementary particle within the standard model of particle physics.” It may be fundamental to explaining one of the most basic characteristics of the universe—namely the existence of matter and mass in addition to energy—but “it is no more (or less) important than any other physics principle underlying the Standard Model.”

Last week’s discovery was monumental in that it may have finally provided experimental evidence for the Higgs Mechanism and defined the specific energy of the resulting Higgs boson, but even this “breakthrough” for particle physics leaves many scientific questions unresolved. Finding the Higgs boson completes the Standard Model, but it does not do away with many other questions and shortcomings of the current state of particle physics, such as the constituent particles of dark matter, a quantum theory of gravity, and other “mathematically subtle problems.” Not to mention that there is still significant work to be done to determine the exact nature of this newly-found particle. According to Dr. Krusberg, this particle might behave just as the Standard Model predicts or it could instead be “a Higgs-like particle that will serve as a gateway into explorations of physics beyond the Standard Model." Krusberg continued, “And I guarantee that it is this latter scenario that most of us are hoping for: physicists love nothing more than discovering the shortcomings of their theories, since this is the first step toward more fundamental theories with even more predictive power!”

No, finding the Higgs boson does not answer all the questions of particle physics, much less lend insight into the existence (or not) of God. For that reason, Dr. Krusberg (like most physicists) bemoans the term ‘God particle’ and insists, “There really is nothing either literally or metaphorically god-like about the Higgs boson.” Indeed, one writer for the British journal The Guardian reached such a point of frustration about the name that he ran a competition for alternatives. The winner was “the champagne flute boson,” ostensibly because the bottom of a champagne bottle is an excellent and oft-used demonstration of the energy potential of the Higgs Mechanism. Or then again, perhaps it is simply because physicists thought that finally finding this shy particle would call for some of the bubbly.

On the other hand, some science writers and scientists can appreciate the ‘educational benefits’ of such a mysterious and controversial name because it attracts the attention of the general public and puts a relatable face on an extremely esoteric physics concept. Krusberg herself admits that “People are naturally drawn to the mysterious and the controversial, providing educators with great teaching opportunities.” But she worries about the larger social implications involved in “mixing the vernacular of physics and spirituality,” not least because such uncritical mixing can lead the non-scientific community to draw conclusions about the authority and reach of science that are not justified.

Understanding that the Higgs boson is not the literal stuff of God and that it does not prove or disprove God’s existence (as the name seems to suggest) extinguishes the fire under any sort of religious outcry. But this does not mean that its discovery is irrelevant to the discussion of science and faith, nor to the Christian community as a whole. As Dr. Krusberg remarks, “The recent discovery of [this] new boson at the LHC perfectly embodies the scientific process at its best (and thereby illustrates to the public why and how science works).” Scientific exploration of nature is not a fool-proof endeavor; healthy skepticism and accountability to a wide community of other researchers are absolutely critical to its success. But such evidence of the power and finesse of well-executed science as we saw last week is a testament to our ability to explore and understand the ‘how’ of the universe. God has equipped humanity with the desire, the intellectual abilities, and the collective will to recognize and explore the cosmic order and beauty of his creation. God has made our home knowable, and has given us the tools and capacities by which to know it.

At left, Cern researchers present their findings to a few hundred of their colleagues in Melbourne, Australia. Image © 2012 CERN

It is valuable, then, for the Christian community to understand and appreciate how science works, in part to recognize that there are many instances in which science and the church work in tandem in order to better understand and better serve the world. But I think there is something else we can draw from the story of the Higgs boson, too. The nickname ‘the God particle’ has touched nerves in religious communities because it implies that science has the ability to prove or disprove divine existence by physical means. Even though the physics community is by no means claiming insight into the divine, it is sometimes assumed by the religious community that scientists view their work as chipping away at God’s existence when they begin to understand something that was previously unknown, or known only “by faith” in esoteric theories and models.

And yet, regardless of motives or metaphysical interpretations, perhaps physicists' search for the Higgs boson is in fact an apt picture of our own search for God. How many times have we stared up at the starry ceiling in times of crisis and prayed fervently for some kind of sign from God to assure us of his presence? And how many times has that much-desired evidence appeared only in retrospect, when we look back to see God’s hand faithfully and elegantly working in ways inscrutable at the time? It took a community of physicists to discern the presence of the Higgs boson. But even so, they could only do so after the fact from the cascade of particle decays it sparked; they could not observe the particle itself directly. In a similar way, though we often do not see the working of God directly, “in the moment,” we still trust in his presence and providence, often depending on friends, family and the community of the church to help us see his hand in hindsight.

So while the discovery of the Higgs boson does not itself explain God, we rejoice at the subtle yet striking new insight we have into God’s creative genius via the Higgs boson and at the way God gives evidence of his faithfulness in the ordered creation itself. Perhaps, however, the greatest insight we can glean from this breakthrough is an analogy for the way God calls us to seek him and find him together, in the community of those who follow his son.

Tomorrow, Baylor University physicist Gerald Cleaver answers the question, "What is the Higgs boson?"

A scientist, my dear friends, is a man who foresees; it is because science provides the means to predict that it is useful, and the scientists are superior to all other men. --Henri de Saint-Simon¹

Scientism is a rather strange word, but for reasons that we shall see, a useful one. Though this term has been coined rather recently, it is associated with many other “isms” with long and turbulent histories: materialism, naturalism, reductionism, empiricism, and positivism. Rather than tangle with each of these concepts separately, we’ll begin with a working definition of scientism and proceed from there.

Historian Richard G. Olson defines scientism as “efforts to extend scientific ideas, methods, practices, and attitudes to matters of human social and political concern.” ² But this formulation is so broad as to render it virtually useless. Philosopher Tom Sorell offers a more precise definition: “Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture.” ³ MIT physicist Ian Hutchinson offers a closely related version, but more extreme: “Science, modeled on the natural sciences, is the only source of real knowledge.” ⁴ The latter two definitions are far more precise and will better help us evaluate scientism’s merit.

A History of Scientism

The roots of scientism extend as far back as early 17th century Europe, an era that came to be known as the Scientific Revolution. Up to that point, most scholars had been highly deferential to intellectual tradition, largely a combination of Judeo-Christian scripture and ancient Greek philosophy. But a torrent of new learning during the late Renaissance began to challenge the authority of the ancients, and long-established intellectual foundations began to crack. The Englishman Francis Bacon, the Frenchman Rene Descartes, and the Italian Galileo Galilei spearheaded an international movement proclaiming a new foundation for learning, one that involved careful scrutiny of nature instead of analysis of ancient texts.

Descartes and Bacon used particularly strong rhetoric to carve out space for their new methods. They claimed that by learning how the physical world worked, we could become “masters and possessors of nature.” ⁵ In doing so, humans could overcome hunger through innovations in agriculture, eliminate disease through medical research, and dramatically improve overall quality of life through technology and industry. Ultimately, science would save humans from unnecessary suffering and their self-destructive tendencies. And it promised to achieve these goals in this world, not the afterlife. It was a bold, prophetic vision.

As this new method found great success, the specter of scientism began to emerge. Both Bacon and Descartes elevated the use of reason and logic by denigrating other human faculties such as creativity, memory, and imagination. Bacon’s classification of learning demoted poetry and history to second-class status.⁶ Descartes’ rendering of the entire universe as a giant machine left little room for the arts or other forms of human expression. In one sense, the rhetoric of these visionaries opened great new vistas for intellectual inquiry. But on the other hand, it proposed a vastly narrower range of which human activities were considered worthwhile.

The Enlightenment

A century later, many of the Enlightenment intellectuals continued their love-affair with the power of natural science. They claimed that not only could science enhance the quality of human life, it could even promote moral improvement. The Encyclopedist Denis Diderot aimed to collect, organize, and preserve all human knowledge so that “our children, becoming better instructed, may become at the same time more virtuous and happy.” ⁷ Many of the French philosophes even claimed that science could be a substitute for religion. In fact, during the French Revolution, numerous Catholic churches were converted into “Temples of Reason” and held quasi-religious services for the worship of science.⁸

Positivism

The 19th century witnessed the most powerful and enduring formulation of scientism, a system called positivism. Its founder was August Comte, who built his positive philosophy from a deep commitment to David Hume’s empiricism and skepticism. Comte claimed that the only valid data is acquired through the senses. Nothing was transcendent, and nothing metaphysical could have any claim to validity.⁹ The task of scientists was twofold—first, to demonstrate how all phenomena, including human behavior, are subject to invariable natural laws.¹⁰ Second, they would reduce these natural laws to the smallest possible number, and ultimately unify them under the laws of physics.¹¹

Comte also subsumed all of human intellectual history into a single process which he called the Law of Three Stages. In his view, each branch of knowledge passes through three stages: the theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and lastly the scientific or positive state. He believed that through the continual advancement of human understanding, religion would fade away, philosophy and the humanities would be transformed into a naturalistic basis, and all human knowledge would eventually become a product of science. Any ideas outside that realm would be pure fantasy or superstition.

Logical Positivism

Positivism did not lose its appeal in the 20th century. To the contrary, a group known collectively as The Vienna Circle reinvigorated the fundamental tenets of positivism with enhanced symbolic logic and semantic theory. They called their approach, fittingly, logical positivism. In this system, there are only two kinds of meaningful statements: analytic statements (including logic and mathematics), and empirical statements, subject to experimental verification. Anything outside of this framework is an empty concept.¹²

Given its sweeping claims, logical positivism came under heavy scrutiny. Karl Popper pointed out that few statements in science can actually be completely verified. However, a single observation has the potential to invalidate a hypothesis, and even an entire theory. Therefore, he proposed that instead of experimental verification, the principle of falsifiability should demarcate what qualified as science, and by extension, what can qualify as knowledge.¹³

Another weakness of the positivist position is its reliance on a complete distinction between theory and observation. Observations, essential to the empirical approach of science, were claimed by positivists to be brute facts which one could use to establish, evaluate, and compare the theories. However, W.O. Quine pointed out in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” that observations themselves are partly shaped by theory (“theory-laden”).¹⁴ What counts as an observation, how to construct an experiment, and what data you think your instruments are collecting—all require an interpretive theoretical framework. This realization does not deal a death-blow to the practice of science (as some post-modernists like to claim), but it does undermine the positivist claim that science rests entirely on facts, and is thus an indisputable foundation for knowledge.

Scientism of Today

Scientism today is alive and well, as evidenced by the statements of our celebrity scientists:

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. –Carl Sagan, Cosmos

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. –Stephen Weinburg, The First Three Minutes

We can be proud as a species because, having discovered that we are alone, we owe the gods very little. –E.O. Wilson, Consilience

While these men are certainly entitled to their personal opinions and the freedom to express them, the fact that they make such bold claims in their popular science literature blurs the line between solid, evidence-based science, and rampant philosophical speculation. Whether one agrees with the sentiments of these scientists or not, the result of these public pronouncements has served to alienate a large segment of American society. And that is a serious problem, since scientific research relies heavily upon public support for its funding, and environmental policy is shaped by lawmakers who listen to their constituents. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it would be wise to try a different approach.

Physicist Ian Hutchinson offers an insightful metaphor for the current controversies over science:

The health of science is in fact jeopardized by scientism, not promoted by it. At the very least, scientism provokes a defensive, immunological, aggressive response from other intellectual communities, in return for its own arrogance and intellectual bullyism. It taints science itself by association.¹⁵

Noting that most Americans enthusiastically welcome scientific advancements, particularly those in health care, transportation, and communications, Hutchinson suggests that perhaps what the public is rejecting is not actually science itself, but a worldview that closely aligns itself with science—scientism.¹⁶ By disentangling these two concepts, we have a much better chance for enlisting public support for scientific research than we would by trying to convince millions of people to embrace a materialistic, godless universe in which science is our only remaining hope.

Distinguishing science from scientism

So if science is distinct from scientism, what is it? Science is an activity that seeks to explore the natural world using well-established, clearly-delineated methods. Given the complexity of the universe, from the very big to very small, from inorganic to organic, there is a vast array of scientific disciplines, each with its own specific techniques. The number of different specializations is constantly increasing, leading to more questions and areas of exploration than ever before. Science expands our understanding, rather than limiting it.

Scientism, on the other hand, is a speculative worldview about the ultimate reality of the universe and its meaning. Despite the fact that there are millions of species on our planet, scientism focuses an inordinate amount of its attention on human behavior and beliefs. Rather than working within carefully constructed boundaries and methodologies established by researchers, it broadly generalizes entire fields of academic expertise and dismisses many of them as inferior. With scientism, you will regularly hear explanations that rely on words like “merely”, “only”, “simply”, or “nothing more than”. Scientism restricts human inquiry.

It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can't catch in his nets does not exist.¹⁷ Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific.

Notes

1. "Un savant, mes amis, est un homme qui prévoit; c’est par la raison que la science donne le moyen de prédire qu’elle est utile, et que les savants sont supérieurs à tous les autres hommes." Translated into English by Valence Ionescu in The Political Thought of Saint-Simon. Oxford University Press, 1976. Page 76
2. Olson, Richard G. Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2008.
3. Sorell, Tom. Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science. New York: Routledge, 1991.
4. Hutchinson, Ian. Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism. Belmont, MA: Fias Publishing, 2011.
5. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method
6. Sorell, p176
7. Sorell, p35
8. Ozouf, Mona. Festivals and the French Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1988.
9. Zammito, John H. A Nice Derangement of Epistemes : Post-Positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
10. This view is a form of strict determinism, and current popularizers of continue to enthusiastically endorse it. Perhaps they are “determined” to do so?
11. This view is a form of extreme reductionism, also widely endorsed by current popularizers of science.
12. Zammito, p8
13. Popper, Karl. Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1959
14. For an extended discussion, read Zammito’s chapter “The Perils of Semantic Ascent: Quine and Post-positivism in the Philosophy of Science” in A Nice Derangement of Epistemes. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
15. Hutchinson, p143
16. Hutchinson, p109
17. Giberson, Karl, and Mariano Artigas. Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

The astronomy community is particularly interested in this event because exoplanets throughout the Milky Way galaxy regularly transit their parent stars in just the same way. This local example will allow astronomers to test and refine techniques used to determine the composition of these exoplanets' atmospheres, providing insight into whether these distant planets could possibly harbor life.

As Venus begins to cross in front of the disk of the Sun, Venus's atmosphere will refract the Sun's light, illuminating the backlit portion of the planet's atmosphere. Telescopes on the ground and in orbit will be trained on this thin arc of atmosphere lit up by the Sun. Astronomers will use spectrometers to break the light up into its constituent colors, from which they can determine the chemical composition of our over-heated sister planet's atmosphere. Once perfected, this same technique can be used to examine the atmospheres of planets far beyond our own solar system, offering us one of our best clues as to the habitability of these distant worlds.

Not only is this process of discovery exciting for natural science, but it has profound theological ramifications as well. Surely a God capable of orchestrating both the majestic swirls of a spiral galaxy and the intricate language of DNA could bring forth life where and when He chooses, but only now are we on the verge of being able to answer the age-old question: “Did God confine His creative life-giving actions to our own planet, or does His abundant fertility extent far beyond our limited experience?”

In 1882, William Harkness, the Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, was one of two astronomers to determine from the transit of Venus the distance from Earth to the Sun. Just as previous viewers could never have imagined calibrating the scale of the solar system from such an event, Harkness could not predict its importance in 2004 and 2012 (the most recent Venus transits). As we look to the future, we can hardly imagine what new frontiers the next Venus transit of 2117 will find us exploring.

The image above shows Venus on the eastern limb of the Sun during the 2004 transit. As described in Tucker's essay, the faint ring around the planet comes from the scattering of light through its atmosphere, which allows some sunlight to show around the edge of the otherwise dark planetary disk. The faint glow on the disk is an effect of the TRACE telescope through which the image was captured. For more on the historical significance of the transits of Venus (including the voyage of Captain James Cook), see this article from NASA, which also includes links to several live webcasts of today's transit.

I take that as a hallmark of its significance—for many Christians today, science is seen as a threatening force, potentially even fatal to Christian faith: if we can’t believe that God created the Sun and Moon on the fourth day, then how can we believe that the Incarnate God suffered unto death for our sake? Others prefer to bracket the questions that science poses to Christianity, putting them off for some other time, a time that may never actually come. Although the sciences pose many different kinds of questions for people of faith, I’ll pass over most of them for the time being, in order to concentrate on issues related to origins, since for so many Christians the questions really start with Genesis. I’ll also ignore the big questions that faith poses to science—there are some of those, and they are also very important, but they would take us in different directions, so let’s put those, too, on the back burner for now.

So, let’s talk about origins, then, which is what most people implicitly mean when they talk about “science and the Bible.” I’ve been teaching adults and teenagers about this topic for thirty-five years, and have published work that addresses both the historical and contemporary aspects of the ongoing debate. All of that activity generates a lot of feedback—what works, what doesn’t; what’s helpful, what’s not; which issues to present, which ones to leave out. In the next few months, I’ll be offering an online version of lectures and readings that work, at least as far as I can tell from what students, faculty colleagues (several have sat in on my course), pastors, and members of local churches say about them. If you don’t find this course helpful, please tell me—in that way, you might at least be helpful to me, even if I haven’t helped you. However, if you do find it helpful, please tell others—and invite them to join in the conversation here at BioLogos.

What sort of conversation will this be? To a significant degree, it will be what you make it. I probably won’t be able to respond to each comment or question. My day job and other responsibilities will necessarily limit the time I can devote to this, as much as I might wish it were not so. Please don’t think I’m ignoring the author of a contribution, simply because I don’t respond to it. Actually, having too many comments for me to handle would be a great problem to have! Nevertheless, I’ll try to respond to as many separate issues (not necessarily separate comments) as I can. Quite often, I’ll point readers to places where they can learn more; IMO, the best learning experiences involve motivated minds pursuing the truth with diligence, sometimes with clear guidance from a teacher (a role I will try to fill as far as possible) and sometimes on their own.

An important caveat: print still matters, especially for this topic

One very important caveat: print books are not obsolete—at least not yet, and probably not for a long time to come. Keepers of the cloud would like you to believe that print has gone the way of the LP record, but the fact is that a lot of the best literature about Christianity and science is still available only in books, and a lot of those books are still available only in print. Or, perhaps the electronic version of the book is just not available for free from any source, whereas the print version can be borrowed from the library down the street—either from their own stacks or via “inter-library loan,” something else invented a long time ago that isn’t obsolete just yet.

The internet is wonderful in many ways, but the democratization of access to knowledge is not an unambiguously good thing. It’s not good when so many people seem to believe that everything they need to know about something can be found in three paragraphs that are no more than three clicks away. It’s not good when school children don’t use any print sources in their history projects (this is starting to happen). And it’s even worse when their school libraries have gotten rid of the very sources that might have been the best ones for them to use. I may sometimes recommend something that will be available to you only in a borrowed print book. You might have to wait a week or two to follow up with comments, but so what? To some younger folks that might sound like a life sentence, but if you limit yourself to what you can read in ten minutes on an iPad you might be missing something important that you really didn’t want to miss. So, if you have the patience to read something really good the old fashioned way, don’t hesitate to tell us about it, even if the current topic is something different. (Blogs aren’t usually seen this way, but as you’ve probably figured out I’m not your typical blogger.) Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your worldview is a lot more important than the Pantheon. Make the investment.

(Unfortunately, some of the best material is also found only in academic journals that can be accessed for free only at a few carefully selected academic libraries—even though almost all journals are now primarily in electronic form. I won’t hesitate to mention sources like these either. Articles can still be sent to public libraries by inter-library loan, and it’s not hard to do—someone at your local library can help you with it, if you want to follow up on a recommendation.)

Ultimately, that’s what this course will come down to: everyone has limited time, and everyone makes his or her own decisions about how deeply to explore the material I will present. Sometimes I’ll write a “lecture” that can be read in a few minutes, and that will be as far as you will want to go. Sometimes I’ll assign “homework” that may take a few hours, and perhaps you will find it time well spent. In short, you’ll have the opportunity to take an online course of the best kind—no grade to worry about, no tuition to pay, and no one making you do anything you don’t want to do. How’s that for a deal?!

Our goals for the course

Here’s what I hope to accomplish:

• To help people understand the range of opinion about science & the Bible among Christians
• To introduce people to the kinds of questions that come up, when origins is the topic
• To present biblical, philosophical, theological, historical, and cultural aspects of the origins controversy—and to do this accurately & fairly, without distortion or rancor
• To help people think more clearly for themselves about this topic

At the same time, I am NOT trying to do any of the following things:

• To persuade anyone that any particular view of origins is the “correct” view
• To persuade anyone that any particular view is NOT the “correct” view
• To confuse anyone about any aspect of the origins debate (if and when this happens, please tell me what is confusing and I’ll try to be clearer)

None of this means that I have no opinions myself, or that I won’t offer them from time to time, especially when responding to your comments. However, my overall goal is to educate, not to indoctrinate. As I tell my students: I’m not interested in cloning my opinions; I’m not interested in telling anyone what to think. However, I do want people to adopt a similar attitude: I want people to think for themselves, to be fair to the viewpoints of others (this doesn’t mean that you must agree with someone’s view, but it means that you must not deliberately misrepresent it), and to acknowledge the shortcomings of your own position(s). Hold me to the same standards: none of us has a monopoly on truth. Imagine (as the Beatles might have said) all the people doing this in political discourse—wouldn’t we all be so much better off?

Five basic attitudes & approaches to origins

We will discuss five overall views about origins in coming weeks, in this order:

• “Scientific Creationism,” or “young-earth” creationism. A common acronym for this view is YEC. When people use the word “creationism” without a preceding adjective, they usually mean this type of creationism.
• “Concordism,” or “progressive creationism,” or “old-earth creationism” (OEC). Although some prominent YEC people are fond of saying this is really a type of “theistic evolution,” that is neither accurate nor helpful. This is a type of creationism, in which the special creation of humans (and usually the evolution of many other organisms) is clearly held.
• The “Framework” view (I have not seen a common acronym). This view stands out because it’s not really about science at all, simply about the Bible; however, it is relevant to conversations about origins, as we shall see.
• “Theistic evolution” (TE), which the folks here at BioLogos like to call “evolutionary creation” (EC), because the noun should be more important than the adjective. I will use the older term (TE), partly because I’m an historian and partly because it’s more widely recognized.
• “Intelligent Design.” Nearly everyone calls this just ID, and so will I. Theoretically, ID is not supposed to be about the Bible at all (as I will explain when we get there), so it’s inclusion in this general topic could fairly be questioned. Indeed, I only started including ID in my lectures a few years ago, partly for that reason. I believe it belongs here, however, because many people sense (probably for good reasons) that ID can’t easily be separated from the larger conversation about God, origins, and the Bible—especially at the level of “culture wars,” where it seems to come up all the time.

One point about the “terms” of debate: many people who engage in on-line discussion of these topics take apparent glee in twisting these acronyms into dismissive alternatives, especially when they believe those who disagree with them aren’t just wrong, but stupid. Turning “ID-ists” into “IDiots” is one common example of what’s obviously just nasty name calling, and I won’t tolerate it. If you use any such terms, except to call attention to their pejorative usage, your post will disappear and you might not be back. You can find other ways to express strong disagreement with the positions of others without being childish.

I’ll present each of these positions in a separate column, or perhaps two columns if necessary. I’ll state the basic assumptions (for example, each view will include a proposition about the Bible), making every effort to do this in a manner that reflects what an adherent of that view would actually say. Then, I’ll draw some analytical conclusions about the view—again, trying to be fair to the position itself, even if I might be a bit critical of it. Finally, I’ll make some historical comments. This isn’t the place to write full histories of each view, and of course I will have to be very selective. I’ll let you in on a trade secret: every historian has to be selective, regardless of the topic and the word limit. The key is to do that without distorting the topic too badly. If you think I’m doing that, call me on it—but don’t be surprised if I answer simply by referring you to a book.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be back with one more introductory column before we start getting into the topic. I’ll introduce you to a few books where you can read broadly and fairly deeply about science and the Bible, and let you have a peek at the most important book that has ever been written about science and the Bible. That one is available on the internet, so we can all read it together. Can you guess what book it is? Hint: the author is no longer living. Not by a long shot.

For 30 years, Alaska Airlines gave passengers little prayer cards with their meals. One favorite among the inspiring messages was a verse from the 107th psalm: "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever."

Gradually, the commercial airlines stopped serving hot meals. On Alaska Airlines they've stopped handing out prayer cards, too. Most passengers liked them, but a minority complained.

This wasn't a First Amendment battle, but the capitulation reflects the changing public face of religion in America.

Simply put: atheism and agnosticism are on the rise. Secularists are growing more vocal in the United States and western Europe, and increasingly insistent they not be force-fed a diet of someone else's faith. Unaware of the irony, many prominent atheists have become passionate proselytizers.

A spate of books by in-your-face atheists have made several unbelievers, notably Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, into best-selling authors and stars of the lecture circuit. This un-holy trinity is part of a larger trend. From his platform as talk show host on HBO, left-leaning social commentator Bill Maher openly ridicules organized religion. After a nuanced portrayal of a religious man in "Tree of Life," movie star Brad Pitt explains that off-screen he veers between agnosticism and atheism and that as a boy growing up in a Southern Baptist household he found Christianity "stifling." And so it goes.

Meanwhile, research in the relatively new discipline of "neuro-theology" by pioneering clinicians such as University of Pennsylvania professor Andrew Newberg suggests to some that spiritual rapture is really just the tickling of the pleasure centers in the brain.

All this activity is having an effect. Since 1990, the percentage of Americans who say they identify with no religion has doubled to 13 percent of the population. These numbers are even higher among the young, many of whom equate Christianity with political conservatism.

"By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans," reports the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in a study of so-called Millennials. "Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents' and grandparents' generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation...are unaffiliated with any particular faith."

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has warned of a prevalent "post-Christian narrative," particularly in the Northeast region of the United States, that he believes threatens the very fabric of American society.

In this environment, a Newsweek article proclaims "the end of Christian America." Writing in the Washington Post, secularist Gregory S. Paul gloats that atheism in western countries has "evolved." Atheists, Paul claimed, are at the vanguard of "a forward-looking movement that has the wind at its back." He acknowledges that the United States has been a "religious anomaly in the Western world," but insists that is changing, too. Atheism, he proclaims, is making "major gains while Christianity withers."

Is the portrait of religion in the United States really this linear? In a word or two: Probably not.

For starters, if 13 percent of Americans identify with no religious tradition -- "Nones" in the parlance of the field -- this means that 87 percent of the citizenry do consider themselves part of a faith community. That's a super-majority rarely found in U.S. civic life. Moreover, the most comprehensive study of American religion, the American Religious Identification Survey, found in 2008 that even among the "Nones" atheism is somewhat rare.

"Regarding belief in the divine, most Nones are neither atheists nor theists but rather agnostics and deists (59 percent) and perhaps best described as skeptics," the survey found. Likewise, a Pew study done the following year reveals that only about one-fourth of non-believers actually are certain enough to apply the word "atheist" to describe themselves.

Michael Cromartie, vice president of a Washington-based think tank called the Ethics and Public Policy Center, points out that all the atheistic best-sellers of the last decade put together don't come close to the 25 million hardback copies of California pastor Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life." Nor is Warren unique. "Books by evangelical authors are selling like hot cakes," Cromartie notes. "Authors like Tim Keller, Philip Yancey, Eric Metaxas, N.T. Wright - and, of course, C.S. Lewis -- are always selling."

What's actually happening in the field of religion is that Americans are racing off in several different directions at once. It's true that the ranks of atheists and agnostics are growing, but it's also true that within Christianity, the staid, mainstream denominations are stagnating while evangelical congregations are exploding.

This burgeoning activity takes place in every venue from storefront congregations bursting with immigrants to sprawling suburban mega-churches. One of the most famous of the latter, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, is in California, arguably the most culturally liberal state in the nation. A little over a year ago, Californians rejected gay marriage in a statewide referendum that united in opposition African American clergymen, conservative evangelicals, and Mormon elders. Speaking of which, a practicing Mormon is poised to become the Republican Party's presidential nominee.

And even among that 13 percent cohort of non-believers, transformations are taking place. For one, several cataclysmic events of the past decade caused secularists to take a hard look at their own relative lack of charitable works. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, Rick Warren happened to be emailing a pastor from a satellite church in Sri Lanka, who felt the earthquake and asked Warren to "pray for us" -- because he knew it meant a tsunami was coming.

Warren did more than that; he fired off instant email communications asking his extended church family to gear up to donate money, medicine, food, and monetary aid to the tsunami's victims -- before the tidal wave had even reached shore. This is not an isolated example. Several studies have shown that Christians in this country donate at a greater rate -- even to secular charities -- than non-believers. Sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell found a six-in-10 chance that an American who never attends church worship services will give money to a secular charity, while the percentage for religious people is eight in 10.

But the 2004 Christmastime tsunami moved more than tectonic plates below the ocean floor. It motivated many "secular humanists" to contemplate the implications of the second word in that description. "There has been an absolute sea change," Dale McGowan, executive director of the Georgia-based Foundation Beyond Belief, told Religion News Service. "Boom, the beginning of 2005 was when these organizations started because our members called up and said, ‘What can we do for these people?' Giving has really become much more of a front-and-center concern for our community."

That's an example of how inter-faith dialogue -- that is to say, communications between those of faith and those without faith -- can influence each other. And despite the results of the 2010 California referendum, it's happening on the issue of gay marriage, with young people leading the way. Consider this: evangelical Christians under the age of 25 are more in favor of gay marriage than are New Deal Democrats over the age of 65.

On the personal level, the everyday interactions between Americans of faith and Americans who are non-believers is almost never as stark as it is on the Bill Maher show. Christianity may not be Brad Pitt's cup of tea, but he's the opposite of intolerant. In an interview with Parade magazine, the actor speaks with sensitivity and subtlety about why he turned away from the church, while acknowledging that, for most people, "religion works."

And while politically motivated commentators on the left and the right like to rail on about "the war on science" or "the war on religion," a more accurate way of looking at the age-old argument between science and religion is that in the 21st century, there is a historic cross-pollination taking place, which does not always cut in predictable ways.

When a Pentecostal pastor named Scott McDermott submitted himself to Professor Newberg's brain imaging experiments, he informed Newberg that he prayed at least two hours a day for 25 years. Asked by NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty what effect that might have on the human brain, the researcher replied, "The more you focus on something -- whether that's math or auto racing or football or God -- the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain."

But that wasn't McDermott's reaction.

After undergoing the procedure in Newberg's lab -- he was injected with a dye that shows the location and intensity of brain activity -- McDermott's faith was, if anything, strengthened. "The first thing that got me was I could hear God's voice," the pastor said. "And it so enamored me -- I mean, it changed me dramatically. I couldn't wait to pray!"

His take on neuro-theology? "I think we're wired for the supernatural. I think we're meant to sense a world beyond our five senses: Come on! Taste and see that God really is good."

Sometimes, the religion-science dialogue results in conversions -- not always in science's favor. Ard Louis, a professor of theoretical physics at Oxford University, recently told a group of journalists at an Ethics and Public Policy Center seminar in Miami that a friend of his, a biologist, was inadvertently steered on his faith journey by atheist Richard Dawkins.

This scientist, who had been agnostic, read Dawkins's book The Blind Watchmaker and was nonplussed by Dawkins's anger at organized religion. "Why is this guy so cheesed off?" he thought, adding that he was motivated to "read the other side."

He did -- and became a Christian.

Despite over-heated political rhetoric fueled by incendiary bloggers, partisan cable television formats, and opinionated radio talk show hosts, the one-on-one discourse on religion in this country is usually done with mutual respect. The best example might be the touching, if unlikely, friendship that Christopher Hitchens developed in the last years of his life with Francis S. Collins. Hitchens was a gifted writer and polemicist, author of god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; Collins is a committed follower of Jesus Christ, author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

But Collins is also a world renowned scientist -- he was director of the Human Genome Project -- and the two men developed a mutual respect while opposing each other in formal debates on religion. They also developed a mutual affection, which deepened when Hitchens' was diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer in June 2010.

"And the thing to note about stage four," Hitchens noted dryly, "is that there is no stage five." But the writer was determined to fight his disease, and he found a committed ally in Francis Collins, who helped devise an aggressive plan to fight it by drawing on his own research and identifying a gene mutation in Hitchens' cancer that doctors believed might lend itself to experimental drug treatment.

Christopher Hitchens lost that fight. He died six weeks ago. Among the many eulogies was one penned by Francis Collins, who wrote that he had been praying for his friend, adding sadly, "But the great voice finally fell silent on December 15."

After medical school, life and death issues faced by his patients prompted Francis Collins to search for answers to deeper questions. As a graduate student in chemistry in the 1970s, he had been an atheist who saw no reason to probe for truths that transcended the boundaries of math and physics. But asked by a terminally ill patient about his own beliefs, Collins undertook his own faith journey. Among his questions: Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms? From where do human beings derive their moral sense? What happens after people die?

Ultimately, Collins learned of a body of scholarship beyond science, making the acquaintance of thinkers ranging from C.S. Lewis to G.K. Chesterton, who observed, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

At the end of his quest Francis Collins was a Christian, although he's the first to concede that one can't arrive at that place from a purely empirical standpoint. "Faith is reason plus revelation," he has written. "Ultimately, a leap of faith is required."

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Editor for RealClearPolitics.