Of the plethora of recent antithetical books on the subject of God I have chosen Gerald L. Schroeder's The Hidden Face of God and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to exemplify an interesting and ongoing phenomenon within the scientific community. Both authors are eminent scientists: Gerald L. Schroeder is an American-born physicist educated at MIT who emigrated to Israel. Richard Dawkins is a first-rank American biologist. They both offer an exceptional level of scientific explanation to support their opposite views on the subject.

Schroeder is convinced that that religion and science are compatible, not opposed. Indeed, the book's subtitle, Science reveals the Ultimate Truth, tells us that the author finds in science a pathway toward God. Dawkins, on the other hand, believes that life can be reduced to genes and memes and information bytes and that God is a mere delusion. How does one begin to explain this wide divergence? Let’s make an attempt.

To be sure the antithesis has been there since the times of Plato and Aristotle who reasoned to God, and the materialist Epicureans, such as Lucretius (see his De Rerum Natura), who saw the idea of God as an invention of religion to keep people fearful and under control. With the advent of modern science the gulf between the two positions seemed to widen considerably. Many 18th century philosophers and scientists took the “enlightened” position that religion was a mere Gothic vestige of former obscurantist times better left to priests and theologians, the sooner disposed of the better. What is intriguing about the current phenomenon is that the controversy is now raging within the scientific community itself and those who believe that we can reason to God seem to be getting the intellectual upper hand. It would appear that to be a convinced atheist is no longer on the intellectual cutting edge.

Here is an insightful comment in Booklist by Bryce Christensen on Schroeder’s book: “Schroeder takes the widespread perception that science disproves religion and turns it on its head: from cosmology to neurology, the latest research makes sense only if viewed from a metaphysical perspective. The strict materialism that excludes all purpose, choice, and spirituality from the world simply cannot account for the data pouring in from labs and observatories. Nor can it explain the thrill of transcendence that occasionally pierces ordinary lives. Well schooled in the rigors of the sciences, Schroeder knows too much about natural complexity to try to wring some tidy set of doctrines out of the cosmos. Rather, it is an ineffable shiver of the divine, a deep-down stirring of wonder, that he discovers in the furthest reaches of quantum physics, glossed with the poetry of the Hebrew prophets and the mysteries of the kabala. At the heart of the cell, in the depths of the quasar, lies a deep wisdom encoded in a unified chain of information. Let rigid atheists and biblical literalists take a pass, but this book deserves widespread circulation among readers still alive to the hidden harmonies of the universe.”

Wow! That is quite a glowing review, but is it justified? Dawkins certainly does not think so. He argues that religions are extensions of childhood fantasies. His book parades a litany of absurdities in traditional religious beliefs, and disposes of proofs for God summarily. Religion is brought down to the level of a caricature while science is elevated to the ultimate arbiter of metaphysical truths. V.V. Raman, a scholar with wide knowledge expertise in the nexus between religion and science who reviewed the book rather favorably in Global Spiral magazine, nevertheless wonders why a clear thinker such as Dawkins should resort to “harsh mud-slinging” against what he dislikes.

Here is his insightful explanation: “Perhaps we can get some idea of why he (and others like him) is so vehement about God and religion when we consider the matter in more general terms. People engage in virulent attacks, whether on belief-systems, on political opponents, on governments, or even on personal enemies, under two kinds of stress: moral outrage or feelings of being victimized. They also become very harsh when they feel that the opponent is either winning or seems invincible. Many atheists experience a moral outrage, and also feel that religions seem to be winning in the culture war between science and religion, if not in arguments, at least in numbers. Under these conditions, one may become violent with words or with bloody deeds. Intentionally hurtful words and deeds are usually justified on the grounds that their targets embody all that is wrong and evil and dangerous to society… Ardent true-believers as well as true-unbelievers tend to be unaware of, or choose to ignore, anything positive in their adversaries. Indeed, this is the ultimate cause of any conflict that seems irreconcilable. The goal of physical or verbal violence is to destroy one’s enemy. If this is not achieved, one hopes to have at least some reformatory impact on them. Those who choose this path sometimes become indiscriminate in their attacks. Unfortunately, this is what seems to be happening frequently to the rational scientist Dawkins when he talks about religion or God. Even in the midst of valid and clever reasoning, he questions the honesty of Stephen Jay Gould and the integrity of those who accept the Templeton Award for their work on science-religion dialogues.”

I found this explanation quite plausible since I underwent a similar experience at the hand of a self-declared atheist and guardian of political correctness in this very magazine. He seems to have disappeared again lately, but he managed to carried on a veritable personal campaign of vituperations and ad hominem arguments and attacks which began at the very moment I dared examine with some depth the topic of religion and belief or disbelief in God, and lasted for almost two years. No need to mention him by name here but the regular readers of Ovi will surely know to whom I refer.

In any case, it is certainly not the case that, contrary to what Dawkins et al contend, religion and science have been wholly antagonistic and exclusive of each other in Western culture. I mentioned Plato and Aristotle above, but one could also mention the Italian humanists who while resurrecting Greco-Roman civilization via the rediscovery in monasteries of ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts, nevertheless remained, for the most part, pious believers. Petrarch, who was a deacon of the Church, and considered the father of humanism, is a perfect example. Those humanists understood well that it is impossible to confirm God’s existence through arguments in one’s head, just as one cannot establish his non-existence through laboratory experiments. It was indeed bizarre and absurd for a Russian astronaut to come back from outer space in the sixties and declare that he had met no God out there and therefore it was a confirmation that he does not exist.

Raman sees a silver lining in Dawkins’ books in as much as they function as a sort of antidote to an extreme form of fundamentalism which creates havoc with rationality and allows for no bridges between religion and science, but then he also shows his perplexity in asking together with Alister McGrath (see his Dawkins’ God: genes, memes and the meaning of life) as to why intelligent scientists such as Dawkins refuse to abandon genes and memes and help in building those bridges.

Be that as it may, let’s return to Schroeder’s The Hidden Face of God. This is what the Editorial Review from Weekly Publisher has to say about the book and its author: “Israeli physicist Schroeder extends the approach taken in previous works (Genesis and the Big Bang; The Science of God) by reviewing biological phenomena whose intricate complexity hints at "wisdom within wisdom" in the design of the universe. ‘If we could see within as easily as we see without, every aspect of existence would be an unfolding encounter with awe; almost a religious experience even for a secular spectator,’ he writes. Although Schroeder can claim no special expertise in cell biology or neuroscience, his enthusiasm and sense of wonder are personally engaging, and his metaphysical speculations reflect a wry humility that cannot be taken for granted in this genre. Schroeder writes in two moods, sometimes discerning the transcendent unity of the divine wisdom with unequivocal clarity, sometimes tracing the pattern only faintly and accentuating the continuing hiddenness of God. Although he expresses obvious impatience with orthodox Darwinism and the "materialist superstition" of hard-core reductionists like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, he is gracious toward religious skeptics and often addresses them as his primary audience. While many in the scientific community have been openly distrustful of the "intelligent design" movement and suspicious of its (generally Christian) religious associations, Schroeder's professional stature and his non-literalistic approach to the Bible may help him connect with a wider readership.”

An earlier book by Schroeder, The Science of God, combined the thinking of the 13th-century Kabalist scholar Nachmonodies with modern cosmology and general relativity, and thereby found a way out of a dilemma between modern physics and an Orthodox reading of Scripture. In The Hidden Face of God, Schroeder leaves physics and instead goes into molecular biology to show that the proponents of scientific materialism are missing a lot of the essential science when they glibly say that evolution and natural selection are driven only by random fluctuations. They revert to cognitive dissonance in order to cling to materialism in the face of overwhelming evidence for a metaphysical cause. Schroeder says he used to believe that line, until he took the trouble to study molecular biology.

Rooted in Orthodox Jewish tradition, Schroeder is unquestionably among those who accept that the universe is intelligently designed, but adds a scientific aspect. Schroeder cites Biblical examples to conclude that "...intelligent design, even at the level of the Divine, is not necessarily perfect design." He warns "If your image of God is based on a simplistic model of the Divine, don't expect that image to rest easily with the Bible's concept of God or with the real world." Schroeder is entirely comfortable in both his science and his religion, and thus provides a good example to many others striving to reconcile the two.

In Schroeder's presentation, the science comes first, and Scripture confirms it. In a series of chapters that describe the nervous system, the brain, and the distinction between the brain and the mind, Schroeder conveys a high level of scientific information while maintaining a high level of clarity and readability. The brain is surely the platform for the mind, but the mind is a new, emergent property that cannot be squeezed into the limits of scientific materialism. He cites the example of a chess-playing computer to illustrate the difference. Here the similarity with the thought of Teilhard de Chardin on the development of human consciousness (already explored in Ovi’s pages) is quite apparent. 

Indeed there is little doubt in my mind that reading this book would give pause to many intelligent atheists presently antagonistic to religion. They will be thoroughly challenged intellectually to reconsider materialistic assumptions arrived at hastily without adequate attention to all of the scientific evidence. They should read the book not necessarily to end up agreeing with Schroeder, but to understand the other side of the coin a bit better, before summarily and misguidedly relegating it to the heap of history as so much superseded superstition and fall into the trap of simplistic caricature, perhaps even begin to harbor the idea that a bridge between religion and science is not only feasible but necessary and desirable in the brave new world in which we live.

The Hidden Face of God by Gerald L. Schroeder, Simon and Schuster, 2002

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins,  Bantam Press, 2006