Willem B. Drees - Religion, Science and Naturalism

Cover

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This book considers the consequences of the natural sciences (physics, biology, neurosciences) for our view of the world. Drees argues that higher, more complex levels of reality, such as religion and morality, are to be viewed as natural phenomena and have their own concepts and explanations, even though all elements of reality are constituted by the same kinds of matter (ontological naturalism). Religion and morality are to be understood as rooted in our evolutionary past and our neurophysiological constitution. This book takes a more radical naturalist position than most on religion and science. However, religion is not dismissed: religious traditions remain important as bodies of wisdom and vision, and the naturalist view of the world does not exclude a sense of wonder and awe, since at the limits of science questions about the existence of natural reality persist. As well as defending a particular position, Drees also includes a survey and classification of discussions on science and religion and a substantial introduction to contemporary studies on the history of science in its relation to religion.

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RELIGION, SCIENCE AND NATURALISM

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WILLEM B. DREES

Nicolette Bruining Professor of Philosophy of Science and of Technology from aLiberal Protestant Perspective, University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands

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Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

Cambridge University Press 1996

First published 1996

Reprinted 1997

Paperback edition 1998

Transferred to digital printing 1997

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Drees, Willem B., 1954

Religion, science and naturalism / Willem B. Drees.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0 521 49708 6 (hardback)

1. Religion and science. 2. Naturalism. 1. Title.

BL240.2D74 1996

215 DC20 96-8813 CIP

ISBN 0 521 49708 6 hardback

ISBN paperback

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To Zwanet Drees-Roeters

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Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism? ( Thomas Huxley 1894, 52)

We need to be honest to science. Through the natural and social sciences we know in considerable detail the reality in which we live, move and have our being (to adapt a phrase from Acts of the Apostles 17: 28). We should not sacrifice our sense of truth in the effort to harmonise impossibilities, nor should we waste our time on attempts to adapt new insights to old views of the world. Rather, we need to adapt our view of the world to the best available insights we have.