Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

A Personal Rant

In a recent BBC Hardtalk interview with Stephen Sackur, Robert Winston, renowned British scientist and occasional Christian apologist, typecasts atheists as believing in the absolute and, therefore, unreasonable certainty of science. By implication many non-atheists take a more reasonable, nuanced view that scientific knowledge is probabilistic with some claims being more assured than others. Interestingly, Christians like Winston are quick to complain that critics generalise Christians as having a Middle Ages theology rather than acknowledge the ’new age’ Christian variants of today. Karen Armstrong has turned this claim into an industry.

Atheists typically reject beliefs in an ‘other’ (à la William James) reality extra to our physical world, especially one with ultimate influence or control. Also most atheists see science as our best shot at achieving reliable knowledge about our world rather than using the religious repertoire of personal revelations – imaginings, feelings, and guesses - and deference to traditional religious authorities. Scientists may admire Darwin or Newton but do not seriously use their data or conclusions as the basis for current research. This is typically not so in religious circles.

However being atheist does not mean being blind to the limitations of scientific endeavours: they are conducted by humans within social contexts and, therefore, subject to the same limitations as other human endeavours. However good science embraces attitudes of exploration; reproducible evidence and reasoning independent of personal faith; and welcomed public criticism and comment. Most importantly, unlike religious history, heretical namecalling should have no place in genuine search for knowledge. This does not mean accepting every new idea with substantial independent support from evidence and reasoning – not so open to new ideas that the brain drops out!

As a contrary example, most world-wide Christians, even today, accept the historicity of the physical resurrection of Jesus – reanimation of a dead body – and even apply that hope to the physical resurrection of all believers when God’s kingdom arrives in the future. All this is described in some clarity in the Christian bible. Remove the Christian faith – personal feelings and authority appeals - and its basis looks very shaky. In fact to non-Christians – religious believers or not – these claims, so fundamental to much Christian theology, look very fanciful and somewhat naive. Many Christians in western nations quietly walk away from these biblical claims though unwilling to publicly criticise these beliefs for fear of hurting fellow brethren.

So how do the claims of modern science look compared to religious claims of bodily resurrections?

Alex McCullie