Free The GOD Delusion by Unknown Page B

I
found myself scribbling 'teapot' in the margin. Again invoking T. H.
Huxley, McGrath says, 'Fed up with both theists and atheists making
hopelessly dogmatic statements on the basis of inadequate empirical
evidence, Huxley declared that the God question could not be settled on
the basis of the scientific method.'
    McGrath
goes on to quote Stephen Jay Gould in similar vein: 'To say it for all
my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull
sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its
legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible
superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply
can't comment on it as scientists.' Despite the confident, almost
bullying, tone of Gould's assertion, what, actually, is the
justification for it? Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists?
And why isn't Russell's teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
equally immune from scientific scepticism? As I shall argue in a
moment, a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very
different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a
scientific matter?
    Gould
carried the art of bending over backwards to positively supine lengths
in one of his less admired books, Rocks of Ages. There
he coined the acronym NOMA for the phrase 'non-overlapping magisterial
    The
net, or 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. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass
all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the
meaning of beauty). To cite the old cliches, science gets the age of
rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens
go, religion how to go to heaven.
    This
sounds terrific - right up until you give it a moment's thought. What
are these ultimate questions in whose presence religion is an honoured
guest and science must respectfully slink away?
    Martin
Rees, the distinguished Cambridge astronomer whom I have already
mentioned, begins his book Our Cosmic Habitat by
posing two candidate ultimate questions and giving a NOMA-friendly
answer. 'The pre-eminent mystery is why anything exists at all. What
breathes life into the equations, and actualized them in a real cosmos?
Such questions lie beyond science, however: they are the
province of philosophers and theologians.' I would prefer to say that
if indeed they lie beyond science, they most certainly lie beyond the
province of theologians as well (I doubt that philosophers would thank
Martin Rees for lumping theologians in with them). I am tempted to go
further and wonder in what possible sense theologians can be said to have a province. I am still amused when I recall the remark of a
former Warden (head) of my Oxford college. A young theologian had
applied for a junior research fellowship, and his doctoral thesis on
Christian theology provoked the Warden to say, 'I have grave doubts as
to whether it's a subject at all.'
    What
expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that
scientists cannot? In another book I recounted the words of an Oxford
astronomer who, when I asked him one of those same deep questions,
said: 'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I
have to hand over to our good friend the chaplain.' I was not
quick-witted enough to utter the response that I later wrote: 'But why
the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' Why are scientists so
cravenly respectful towards the ambitions of theologians, over
questions that theologians are certainly no more qualified to answer
than scientists themselves?
    It
is a tedious cliche (and, unlike many cliches, it isn't even true) that
science concerns itself with how questions, but
only theology is equipped to answer why questions.
What on Earth is a why question? Not every English
sentence beginning with the word