Peter,

I was surprised at the thinness of Dawkins’ The God Delusion and the fact that there was so much ad hominem rant in it. However, I was even more surprised by the views of Dawkins’ TIME magazine collocutor, Francis Collins, a practising scientist and an evangelical Christian. Collins was quite happy to admit that the existence of God was an hypothesis with the probability of verification being slightly greater than zero.

I think I would disagree with you that “No serious-minded scientific thinker today would be so dogmatic as to assert that ‘science’ alone brings us into contact with the world as it really is.” My feeling is that this is the majority view not only within the scientific academic community but is also very widespread among educated people in the developed countries. I think it is also a major factor in the collapse of religious faith in the West, especially in the last 50 years.

Science has been extremely successful in giving us the impression that we control the world. Between CE 50 and 1800 there was little change in the life of the average human being. Per caput income rose by about 50% over the whole 1800 year period- from about $US500 to $US 750 (in 1990 constant dollars). The earth’s population expanded from about 230 million to 900 million

But between 1800 and 2006 economic growth in a small number of countries (about a sixth of world population) exploded. One of them is my country, Australia, where per caput income (at $US 32,000 in 2006) is at least 25 times what it was in 1800. This economic growth has made been possible to a large extent through the discoveries of science.

Science has thus become in the minds of many the model for all knowledge. People have seen how powerful the scientific method is: the emphasis on patient data collection, the exposure of all theories to falsification, and the willingness to jettison any theory, no matter how venerable, in favour of a new theory that is better attested.

But of course science is only one form of life among innumerable others and it has no privileged point of vantage from which to assess others, including religion. However, the same point applies to religion. It has no privileged point of vantage from which to assess other forms of life, including science or atheism. Hence, I do not think Rom 1.20 applies: it is not about atheists but about those who believe but do not worship appropriately.

I would also take issue with your statement that

Science no more gives us direct access to reality than anything else; it relies just as much on faith as religious belief.

I assume that when you say that faith and science both rely on faith you mean that their foundations cannot be proven. This cannot be right because it implies that no statements within religion or science can be said to be unqualifiedly true but only probably true. And yet the religious believer who says he trusts in God does not append to his statement “on the assumption, of course, that God exists”. Equally, the scientist who has established the boiling point of water as 100C does not add “on the assumption that my Bunsen burner did not go out of existence for two minutes during the experiment”.

Embedded in the language games of science and religion are all sorts of facts that are taken for certain but which are not themselves grounded or subject to proof. However they are not the foundations of the language games- rather they define its grammar: if they are not taken as certain the language game cannot be played.