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Science vs. Religion

Has Darwin Failed?

By Markus Becker

Part 2: An 'Empty, Hollow, Spin-Doctored Sham'

The representatives of religions also tend to get involved in less philosophical discussions, such as when they declare condoms to be ineffective as protection against HIV infection and preach chastity instead, or when they seek to impose narrow limits on stem cell research. The Vatican consults physicians to determine whether a candidate for sainthood truly performed miracles.

'Not Verifiable'

So is religion capable of staying out of science, or is the missionary urge part of its essence, as journalist Christopher Hitchens writes in his furious bestseller, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"? Is Dawkins right when he warns that enlightenment, reason, science and truth itself are threatened by religion?

Some scientists don't go that far. After a survey revealed that one in two scientists is religious, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who died in 2002, said, "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism." But Hitchens believes "all attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule." Dawkins makes himself even clearer: "The alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham."

The suspicion that the Christian religions continue to claim a universal prerogative of interpretation was recently fueled by Pope Benedict XVI. In April 2007 he wrote in a theological textbook that the process of evolution is "not verifiable." When asked about the origins of human rationality, the Pontiff said: "Science can and may not answer this question directly."

Most scientists would say that it can. They would be especially adamant about insisting that it may. But in uttering this sentence, Benedict provided ammunition to those who argue that religion and science are incompatible, and that it is part of the core of institutionalized religion to believe, not question -- and to forbid certain questions. This makes religion not only incompatible with science, they argue, but with modernity itself -- no matter how far it contorts itself to create the opposite impression.

"Darwin is one of the great authors of modern thought," Zurich historian Philipp Sarasin said in a recent interview with the German weekly Die Zeit. "This modern age accepts nothing that is given, and no order derived from the divine." This is why churches continue to wrestle with Darwin's theory now.

Yet evolution, as an idea, has not become the dire threat to religion once feared by Darwin's contemporaries -- at least from a global perspective. The churches can look on calmly as many atheists claim to live happy lives without God and without lapsing into evil. Their argument that organized religion has led to more hatred, death and suffering than faithlessness can be hard to refute. But religious belief worldwide has hardly suffered.

The Ultimate Question: Why?

Science, ironically, is finding answers to the question of why evolution stands such a poor chance against religion. There is growing evidence that man, as a result of his brain, is wired to believe in higher powers, not just because of his fear of death.

The human weakness for gods may be rooted in the tremendous social abilities of Homo sapiens. "People are very good at maintaining relationships with individuals beyond their physical presence," the American psychologist Pascal Boyer recently wrote in the scientific journal Nature. Boyer argues that this is the only way hierarchies and alliances can function over time.

Religions also share surprisingly universal traits -- including a preference for personal gods, which look, think and feel like people. And ritual behavior could be directly related to the architecture of the brain. As Boyer writes, it is known that the human brain contains networks designed to avoid danger. Religious rites, which revolve around physical purity, predatory villains and hidden threats are presumably nothing more than an echo of the past millions of years.

American psychologist Michael McCullough, after evaluating studies from the social sciences and neurosciences, has found evidence that religious convictions and modes of behavior are helpful in strategic planning and controlling emotions. Religious rituals like prayer and meditation, McCullough writes in the current issue of the Psychological Bulletin, a professional journal, "affect the parts of the human brain that are the most important for self-regulation and self-control."

Besides, Boyer notes, religious thinking is "the path of least resistance for our cognitive system." Non-belief, writes Boyer, is usually the result of deliberate hard work against the natural disposition -- "not exactly an ideology that is easy to disseminate."

There are many indications that man's astonishing inclination toward faith is a byproduct of the evolution of the brain. But perhaps, writes Boyer, we will one day find proof that faith played an active role in the survival of Homo sapiens. In this sense, perhaps, God would indeed have played a role in the evolution of man.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan