IN PRAISE OF FOLLY? THEOLOGY AND THE UNIVERSITY

To suppose the possibility of dialogue between theology and science is to suppose that theology is an intellectually worthy partner to engage in dialogue with science. The status of theology as a discipline, however, remains contested, one sign of which is the absence of theology from the university. I argue that a healthy theology‐science dialogue would benefit from the presence of theology as an academic discipline in the university. Theology and theologians would benefit from the much closer contact with university disciplines, including the sciences. The university and the sciences would benefit from the presence of theology, providing a department of ultimate concern, where big questions may be asked and ideologies critiqued. A university theology would need to meet standards of academic integrity.     

THEOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE WARS: WHO OWNS HUMAN NATURE?

Lluís Oviedo examines in his article the current conflict over human nature and the role of the sciences in the debate, suggesting that there may be a role for theology to play as well. In this essay I examine and respond to some aspects of Oviedo's article and suggest that the nature of the conflict needs to be nuanced to understand it as a conflict not between scientific and philosophical/social‐scientific views of human nature but among scientists, social scientists, and philosophers over the role of science in thinking about human nature. I analyze some of the obstacles for theology's becoming involved and propose that thinking about what are distinctively theological questions as opposed to scientific ones may be an appropriate starting point.     

GOD VERSUS TECHNOLOGY? SCIENCE,SECULARITY, AND THE THEOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY

Abstract. In debate with John Caiazza, we clarify the meaning of the terms technology and secular, arguing that technology is not really secular. Only when combined with antireligious secularism do we get the modern techno‐secular worldview. Science is not secular in the strong sense, nor does its practice automatically lead to the techno‐secular. As a complete worldview, techno‐secularism is antireligious, but it also is dehumanizing and destructive of our environment. Religion may provide a transcendent source for a humanizing morality that might move technology in a more ecofriendly, humane direction. The alternative is not a happy one for our posthuman technological future.     

EXPERT AND NAIVE RATERS USING THE PAQ: DOES IT MATTER?

A finding by Smith and Hakel (1979) is that job expert ratings on the PAQ correlate highly with ratings obtained from college students who are given no information about jobs other than their titles. One possible explanation for this finding is that the PAQ measures only trivial or common knowledge about work that both experts and naive observers possess. This particular view, of course, has serious implications for the use of the PAQ. In this paper we point out a problem in the way Smith and Hakel calculated the convergent validity between expert raters and naive raters. We also present the results from a replication study that indicate convergent validities are much lower than those reported by Smith and Hakel. Additional points are presented in order to caution against the interpretation that the PAQ measures only common knowledge about jobs.     

IS ALTRUISM GOOD? EVOLUTION,ETHICS, AND THE HUNGER FOR THEOLOGY

This essay pushes the discussion of biology and altruism in radical directions by highlighting the moral ambiguity of biology itself. The extent to which we draw positive moral implications from animal behavior, and even the extent to which we see positive traits in animals, is shaped by the preconceptions and the purposes one brings to the study. These preconceptions, when examined, involve worldview issues that are all related in one way or another to either a theological position or some nontheistic substitute for an account of ultimate reality. It is arguable that Darwin's own perceptions of nature were colored by the theological and social‐ethical context in which he worked. William Paley's natural theology, together with Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, led many theologians of Darwin's day to conclude that struggle, inequality, suffering, and death are basic features of the natural world and are the result of divine providence. No wonder, then, that Darwin was able to see competition as the major key to natural selection. The moral ambiguity of biology can be pressed further by contrasting contemporary attempts to find altruism in animal behavior with the conclusions reached by Friedrich Nietzsche, partly in response to his reading of Darwin. Nietzsche concluded that the standard, more or less Christian, morality of his day is best labeled “slave morality.” It is created by the weak in order to coerce the strong to provide for them. In this essay I contend that competing views of morality can be adjudicated only by turning to an account of ultimate reality. Whether Nietzsche is right in arguing against the morality of altruism depends on whether God is indeed dead.     

GOD OF THE GAPS OR THE GOD OF “DESIGN AND DOMINION”? RE-VISITING NEWTON'S THEOLOGY

Starting with Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton's theology has often been caricatured as putting forward a “God of the gaps” argument for God's existence and continued involvement in the world. Peter Harrison has pointed out that this characterization of Newton's theology is “not entirely clear.” A closer look at Newton's letters and the drafts to the Opticks reveals that, rather than arguing God's providential ordering and care over the world, he takes these for granted and is reluctant to specify instances of this order and care based on his physical research. He certainly believes in gaps in mechanical causes but is more eager to fill those gaps with nonmechanical natural causes than with God. Further, his system does not exhibit the two most prevalent weaknesses attributed to “God of the gaps” theologies: (1) that by describing God as intervening in natural causes his skill as a designer is maligned and (2) that by describing the physical details of God's involvement in the world one puts too much weight on theories likely to be replaced as science advances. Newton avoids the former weakness because it is only God's masterfulness as designer that he ties in any way to his theories of the physical world. He avoids the latter because he never points to God as the direct cause of any specific physical processes. Newton hoped that his system would cause his readers to marvel not only at God's providence but also at humankind's inability to sufficiently understand it.     

IS CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY WELL SUITED TO ENTER THE DISCUSSION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND HUMANISM?

The last several years have seen the emergence of increasing hostility from philosophers toward some pronouncements on human nature by the biological and cognitive sciences. Theology is also concerned about such matters, even if there have been, until now, few theologians involved in the discussion. This essay examines both the reasons that justify a neutral position of theology in the face of scientific disqualification of human uniqueness and the reasons to engage apologetically in such a debate on the side of humanists. Constructing a synthesis, I propose a greater theological involvement and concern in the discussion already underway, even if it means accepting some trade‐offs.     

THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: WHERE ARE WE?

Abstract. Revolutionary developments in both science and theology are moving the relation between the two far beyond the nineteenth-century “warfare” model. Both scientists and theologians are engaged in a common search for shared understanding. Eight models of interaction are outlined: scientism, scientific imperialism, ecclesiastical authoritarianism, scientific creationism, the two-language theory, hypothetical consonance, ethical overlap, and New Age spirituality. Developments in hypothetical consonance are explored in the work of various scholars, including Ian Barbour, Philip Clayton, Paul Davies, Willem Drees, Langdon Gilkey, Philip Hefner, Nancey Murphy, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Robert John Russell, Thomas Torrence and Wenzel van Huyssteen.     

THEOLOGY AS THE QUEEN (BEE) OF THE DISCIPLINES?

Abstract. Once Queen of the Medieval court of sciences, dethroned theology may be able in our time to play a strategic servant role in rightly humiliating, elevating, and ordering the disciplines, in gadflying like a mutant honeybee, generating surprise and serendipity through the intermediacy of social science, and in offering ethical homing direction to the disciplines in their applied endeavors.     

EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE REINFORCEMENT: DOES THE SOURCE MATTER?1

In a chamber with a single response key, pigeon's key pecks were reinforced with food according to a variable-interval schedule. In addition, extra reinforcements occurred concurrently according to an independent schedule. In one condition, availability of the extra reinforcements was signalled by a change in key color from white to red. The extra reinforcements occurred after a peck on the red key. In a second condition, the extra reinforcements were unsignalled and occurred only after a 2-sec pause in pecking for one group of subjects and were unsignalled and occurred freely as scheduled for another group of subjects. In the first two conditions, duration of reinforcement was varied. A third condition duplicated the second but varied rate rather than duration of reinforcement. The rate of pecking varied inversely with the amount of extra reinforcement per unit time according to the same function, regardless of the condition regulating occurrence of the extra reinforcements, and regardless of whether or not a 2-sec pause was required for their occurrence. The shape of this function was predicted by Herrnstein's (1970) matching law.     

THEOLOGY,EVOLUTION, AND THE HUMAN MIND: HOW MUCH CAN BIOLOGY EXPLAIN?

Evolutionary biology contributes much to our present understanding of life, and it promises also to deepen our understanding of human intelligence, ethics, and even religion. For some scientific thinkers, however, Darwin's science seems so impressive that it now supplants theology altogether by providing the ultimate explanation of all manifestations of life, not only biologically but also metaphysically. By focusing on human intelligence as an emergent aspect of nature this essay examines the question of whether theology can still have an explanatory role to play alongside biology in attempts to understand mind.     

ARE SCIENCE AND HUMANISM SUITED TO ENTER THE ANCIENT QUEST OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY? A RESPONSE TO LLUÍS OVIEDO

This response reverses the title of Lluís Oviedo's essay (2006) while retaining the structure. In the pendulum swing between science and humanism, theology finds its uniqueness not in refuting either but in subverting them: subverting the scientific quest for certainty without denying its pursuit, and subverting the humanist quest for the unique dignity of the human by reducing it to the most despoiled creature, yet finding in it the presence of the divine. Theological pursuit is about reason and its limits, about brokenness and glory in it. Yet the engagement is unavoidable, for without the scientific pursuit of certainty, incompleteness could never be established; without the humanist search for the uniqueness of the human, its admixed and impure character would not be recognized. The concept of hybridity tries to convey that and is presented in three instantiations: the conflation of the human with machine (cyborg), of humans and other animals (oncomouse), and of the human and the divine. Following these ontological cases of hybridity, at the epistemological level theology becomes hybrid “science” in search of the mythos in the midst of logos, and conversely it is hybrid humanism, for it locates God in the greatest depravity of mammalian existence.     

IS THERE A DISTINCTIVE QUANTUM THEOLOGY?

Quantum mechanics (QM) is a favorite area of physics to feature in “science and religion” discussions. We argue that this is at least partly because the arcane results of QM can be deployed to make big theological claims by the linguistic sleight of hand of “register switching”—sliding imperceptibly from technical into everyday language using the same vocabulary. We clarify the discussion by deploying the formal mapping of QM into classical statistical mechanics (CSM) via the mathematical device of “Wick rotation.” This equivalence between QM and CSM suggests caution in claiming distinctiveness for quantum theologizing. After outlining two areas in which quantum insights nevertheless resonate with longstanding themes in theological reflection (hiddenness and visualizability), we suggest that both QM and CSM point to a theology of science in which scientists participate in the divine gaze on creation as imago Dei.     

SCIENCE AND SERIOUS THEOLOGY: TWO PATHS FOR SCIENCE AND RELIGION'S FUTURE?

Although they take different approaches, both Taede A. Smedes and Kevin Sharpe have challenged the theology-and-science enterprise and raised important questions about theological and scientific assumptions behind this work. Smedes argues that theology should be taken more seriously, and Sharpe believes that theology should be more scientific. A proposed middle way involves engaging in the dialogue itself and exploring the questions and methodological implications that arise in the context of problem-focused interactions.     

IS SCIENCE PERSISTENCE A MATTER OF VALUES?

This study investigates the hypothesis that congruence in value perspectives distinguishes science-able students who persist in science from those who do not (nonpersisters). A science values measure was administered to 173 undergraduates with high levels of commitment and ability in the sciences. On each of six hypothetical dilemmas from everyday science, respondents rated the importance of three justice and three care considerations for self and for science, using a Likert-type 7-point scale. A significant three way interaction involving sex, persistence, and point of view (self/sience) emerged, with persisters generally demonstrating congruence between self and science on the value perspectives; female persisters, however, were more likely to combine justice and care perspectives than were males. Nonpersisters' self/science ratings of justice and care were sharply dissimilar, with females demonstrating the most incongruence. In all groups, justice was the prominent perspective attributed to science.