Conceiving God

The accusation followed the publication of two of the most contentious books ever written – On the Origin of Species (1859), and The Descent of Man (1871), the first detailing Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the second applying it to the human species.

The debate that was sparked by these books is emblematic of the science-versus-religion controversy, still so much a feature of contemporary culture, fuelled latterly by books such as The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, and The End of Faith, by Sam Harris.

However, in his new book, David Lewis-Williams (he’s professor emeritus at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) reminds us that the first great public clash between science and religion was the Galileo affair in 1632.

That, and the impact of evolution, have been the two chief leitmotifs in accounts of the meeting of science and religion, down to the present time. If the tensions caused by the contradictions between science and religion led to Galileo facing a heresy charge in the 17th century, they also produced the infamous Scopes ‘monkey trial’ in Tennessee in 1925.

And, at the present time, those contradictions surround the debate over whether or not “creationism” should be taught in schools, a debate that is particularly sulphurous in the United States.

The author amply demonstrates that at the root of the present conflict between religion and science are two contrasting kinds of knowledge – “supernaturally revealed knowledge and that which comes from scientific thought and observation: two warring empires of the mind.”

He succinctly states the dilemma facing people today: “Each has to decide whether to accept the legitimacy of two different ways of knowing about the world and life – science and supposedly revealed knowledge.”

The author doesn’t hide his antipathy to religion; on the contrary, it is the animating force of this fascinating book. Yet, he says the continuity of religion – that people, at all times, seem to have had a religion – must be faced. Even though he is convinced that “humankind would be better off without religion,” he acknowledges that there are “a few aspects of religion that almost have me too ‘hoping it might be so’.”

And although he roams over much of the same territory previously covered by the likes of Dawkins, Harris and Christopher Hitchens, in their bestselling books, his own is singularly free of the sneeringly dismissive tone displayed by them towards people of faith.

Of course, as he reminds us, there is the paradox of religion. “There is nothing else that has caused the difference of opinion, of bitterness, of hatred, of war, of cruelty, that religion has caused.” These words were spoken in July, 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes trial.

They were uttered in a small country courtroom by Clarence Darrow, widely regarded, at the time, as the greatest trial lawyer in America. They were then followed by an admission that religion “has also given consolation to millions.” The fault-line that runs through this book (and others of its ilk) is the failure, or the refusal, of the author to recognise and acknowledge that unbelief is itself a form of faith.

If Thomas Aquinas failed conclusively to prove (his famous Five Proofs) that God exists, neither has Richard Dawkins succeeded in conclusively proving that God does not exist.

The author is himself marooned on his own little island of faith. Here he is on the Big Bang: “There is, of course, no reason to suppose that what preceded the Big Bang was supernatural. It is more reasonable to suppose that what preceded the Big Bang was, like what followed it, natural and material.” The theist supposes a supernatural cause, the atheist a natural cause – two different forms of faith.

He relentlessly attacks the three main functions that people commonly think religions perform – (a) fostering unity within a social group, (b) providing peace of mind, and (c) explaining puzzling aspects of life. But when the smoke from his fusillades clears, the rock of religion is found still standing, albeit in somewhat battered form. The sub-title of the book – The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion – is a clue to the author’s central contention that God is a human construct. The best riposte to this has come from the BBC presenter, John Humphrys, in his 2007 book, In God We Doubt: “Unlike the militant atheists, I do not think people are stupid if they believe in God. For vast numbers of ordinary, thoughtful people it is impossible not to ... Quite simply – and this will cause many an atheist lip to curl – they want there to be something else.”

The difficulty for academics, like Lewis-Williams, militant atheists, like Dawkins and, more importantly, legislators, is that religion has not gone away, and is unlikely ever to go away. Islam is on the march; the number of Catholics in the world has reached 1.2bn, and in the United States no candidate can hope to make it to the White House without first loudly proclaiming belief in God.

The Oxford scientist, Alister McGrath, put it thus in his 2004 book, The Twilight of Atheism: “The question of whether there is a God has not – despite the predictions of over-confident Darwinians – gone away since Darwin, and remains of major intellectual and personal importance.”

All of this means a place has to be found for religion in the public square. In an age in which societies are divided over faith schools, the status of a fertilised ovum, about whether Christian morality should be reflected in legislation, over the banning of minarets, the wearing of the burqa in public places, or the free speech issues raised by the controversy over the publication of cartoons of Mohammad, legislators can’t bury their heads in the sand.

Yes, you can drain a constitution of all religious references, meanings and underpinnings, so that it is ‘neutral’ in the face of all faiths and no faith. But this still leaves you with the reality of religious faith, with how that manifests itself in the lives of people, and the practical consequences of those manifestations.

The fall-out from the X Case of 1992 (and the late Mr Justice Niall McCarthy’s rebuke to Irish politicians for failing to legislate on abortion) is sufficient to illustrate the pointlessness of attempting to confine religion to the private sphere.