In Our Time - Science and Religion

Episode Date: January 25, 2001

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the areas of conflict and agreement between science and religion.What space should science leave to religion? What ground should religion give to science? Do they need to give ground to each other at all? The American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould tackles the old problem in his book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. In it he writes: “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that co-ordinate or explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important but utterly different realm of human purposes”. In other words ‘science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven’. But do the two realms really exclude each other? Can religion and science be so easily divided?With Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology, Harvard University; John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews and Stanton Lecturer in Divinity, Cambridge University; Hilary Rose, sociologist and Visiting Professor of Social Policy, Bradford University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, what space should science leave to religion? What ground should religion give to science? Do they need to give ground to each other at all?

The American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould tackles the old problem in his latest erudite and odajic. perhaps, charming book, Rock of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fulness of Life. In it, he writes, Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate

or explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different realm of human purposes. In other words, science studies how the heavens go, religion, how to go to heaven, the rocks of ages and the age of rocks. But do the two realms really exclude each other,

with me to discuss whether religion and science can be so happily divided, is Stephen Jay Gould himself, the Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University, the Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, and Stanton Lecture of Divinity at Cambridge University, and also with us, the sociologist Hilary Rose, Grecian professor of physics, and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Bradford University.

Stephen Jay Gould, at the heart of your argument in this book in Rocks of Ages, there's a principle you call non-overlapping magisteria or noma. Will you, first of all, elucidate that for the listeners, please? Oh, why not invent a little acronym for an important principle? Actually, barred the term from my Catholic colleagues. A magisterium is a teaching authority, and it's etymological definitions from Magister, teacher. The magisterium or teaching domain of science

is the factual state of the universe and why it's made that way rather than some other way, fact and theory. The domain of religion, as I understand it, is a discussion of ethics and values and the meaning of our lives and why we're here in that spiritual rather than factual sense. And these are both awfully important sets of questions, but they're entirely different than one's attitude on one subject should not really affect what you think about the other. And in that sense, they're non-overlapping magisteria, which doesn't mean that they hate each other shouted each other across divides because any serious question, any important question in human affairs has both factual and ethical dimensions.

So scientists and religious folk going to be talking to each other. Let's start with science and the magisteria of science, the realm of science. What belongs to Caesar? I mean, what belongs to science? To science belongs the attempt to understand the factual character of the natural world, which is factuality, often hard to ascertain. and our ideas about it alter, but there's a world out there, and it's one way rather than another, though it's difficult to figure out how often. And then, because science can't just be descriptive factuality, science is also an attempt to understand why the world works that way rather than some other way, theory, so to speak.

And that's what science does. It merely ascertains or tries to how the world's made and why it's made that way. That's a very, very big subject, and it's a fascinating compliment. complex, confusing world out there, but none of that is going to teach you the ethical basis of human behavior. John Holden, would you agree with that definition of science? Do you see science as basic as Stephen Jay Gould has expressed it, given that from these simplicity is coming almost complexities as we know? I think to some extent it oversimplifies about science itself.

This emphasis on factuality and on nature. I mean, among the things that science might investigate, for example, of the operations of the human mind concerned there with certain kinds of facts, but those facts have a complexity in a character that is unlike that, say, of basic physical or biochemical facts, perhaps. So, for instance, I mean, there's the science of reasoning, if you like, looking at logical inference, which is concerned not just as well with what as a matter of fact people do think, but what they ought to think.

what if given they think one thing, what they ought to think next. So questions of consistency, coherence, and so on, which are absolutely central to the practice of science, what counts as good evidence, what counts as good argument. Those very notions, evidence, argument, good reason, and so on, in some sense fall within the domain of the factual, but they're not facts like the presence of particles in the void. So I think even when we think about the domain of fact,

long before we get to questions of religion and morality, there's a complexity there that might, so far at any rate not be fully captured. I think I prefer the idea of different kinds of aspects or even better perhaps two prospectors because I think it's unlikely that the religious believer is going to want to yield over vast chunks of reality, as it were, as being outside their domain or their concern.

So I have some sympathy with the idea of a duality here. There are two kinds of takes, if you like, but I think of these in terms of two perspectives on the totality. There's one, as well, reality, science is concerned with its structure, with certain aspects of its operation, how it's put together what it does. Religion is concerned with its significance and its meaning. Hillary Rose, can I come to you on this same laying the basis for this discussion? Do you agree with Stephen Jay Gould again? His book is the starting point for this discussion, that the purpose of science is to discover and communicate to us the facts of the natural world, and that is the magisteria in the domain there.

Well, for me, always such things have to be historically contextualised. And so the concept of science is constantly shifting, changing. And what Stephen's trying to do, I think, is pull out some sort of irreducible minimum inside science. But the huge and dramatic changes that have taken place since the birth of modern science in the 17th century are absolutely enormous. And so what I want to do is open up a nasty, little thing which Stephen's own words invite me to do, and that is he asks us to take a cold bath, he and Mr Darwin, when looking at nature, and I want us to take a cold bath before we look at science and religion, and not talk so much about the irreducible minimum, but science

as it actually is, which I think is a great deal often nastier and more complicated and much less attractive from this beautiful image of science that Stephen offers us. With such an introduction, we have to have the second paragraph. Well, I mean, for example, we are almost at the end of science in the way that Stephen describes it. And that what we are seeing in the 21st century is the emergence of technoscience in which technology and science are emmeshed. And that the dominant account of nature will be one that is heavily involved also in changing nature at the same moment as describing nature. And that will come through the two dominant fields. of biotechnology and information science.

Stephen Jay Golden. It was never really different when Bacon and the early 17th century developed all his imagery about raping nature, so to speak, which is why feminists don't like him, though they should, because in fact he also gives the first very clear

accounting through his idols of why the scientific mind is freighted with all sorts of social and psychological biases as well. I accept what Hillary's says about the utility of science and believe it needs to be analyzed in that social context, what I'm trying to do is to set aside its methodological operation, which is a different area from its social context. I don't deny anything of what you said in the same sense

as I don't deny, even though I take this position that in a logical sense of their enterprises, science and religion don't overlap. Of course, I don't deny that historically they have always done so, which is why the perceived conflict exists. But that's for an odd reason. If I can just take a moment. That is, the human mind cannot not ask questions of an empirical nature like, why is the sky blue? It's too fascinating. How big is the universe? There wasn't an institution we call science in its modern form until late 17th century, so vote them, yeah, because there was no one else. Those questions used to fall under the domain of theology. And nobody likes to give up turf. So when science rose, there were bound to be Galilean Mafaio Babarini

Urban the 8th type struggles, but the logical point remains sound. There have been turf wars. There are bigger ones in the United States now than you have here. But I think the basic position that I hold is both sound and humane and probably the right way for these two disparate disciplines to deal with each other, which they must do all the time. John Haldon. Can I go back and say a word about the origins of the notion of science? Because I think is relevant to this. When we think about science now, we really think about modern science,

the science of observation and theory. But the term science comes from the Latin sciencia, which is concerned with a certain kind of knowledge. That's to say, sciencia is defined not by what its knowledge of, but the kind of certainty that it enjoys. So in the pre-modern period in antiquity, in the Middle Ages and so on, the aspiration to science was the aspiration was the ambition

to have a well-organized kind of knowledge. In fact, they even believe that you could deduce logically every bit from every other bit in some way, given certain general principles and so on. Now, in that sense of science, as sciencia, as organized knowledge, there can be all sorts of sciences. Indeed, theology in that sense was sacred science. It was organized knowledge about God.

What we're talking about, I think, in this discussion, is science in the modern conception of science, science as it arose in the Renaissance in the 16th and 17th centuries, science as observation plus hypothesis, looking at the world, the experimental method, conjecturing what might underlie the appearances, doing further testing, and so on and so on. And I think it's interesting that the kinds of clashes

that have been written about in this book, very interesting, I think, really originate in that period that in the earlier period, there wasn't a sense of clash. Somebody like Aquinas in the 13th century felt no tension between the Aristotelian signs received into the Western world from the Arabs and so on through contact through the Crusades and such like. No tension between that and the most orthodox kind of Catholicism. I want to come back on by rather carry on with Hillary Rose's point.

what you're saying it seems to me, crudely, is that Stephen Jay Gould's book is terrific as far as it goes, but in your view, science has changed now. So he's talking about a science that now, today, as we said here, isn't really going on to that extent anymore. Could you just develop that a bit more? Well, my trouble is, I mean, here's this formidable man, and I'm thinking, how am I going to tell him,

I think his view of science is romantic? Well, you've just said it. Because I think historically it's gone. That's a very clever way you do it. I'm trying to protect myself. But I mean, there is this sense that I feel this is a most wonderful thing. It's the same argument I have at home with Stephen Rosen. I say, look, the kind of science you love, and I want you and the other scientists to value this

and want to protect this, to keep it going as long as possible. But I hear the Yuggernaut of technoscience marching down the road with the human genome project, with information science, sort of transforming our society and culture as they go. Well, that's interesting. So how does it change the argument that he's proposing? Because this is much more tied up to the interests in a very direct way of industry and the state. It's much, much closer than it has historically been. Stephen Jay Gould, if you...

Obviously, you'll take Hillary Rose's point on board. Does it, and if so, how does it change your argument? But what I would say is that my notion of these non-overlapping magistrate is helpful in understanding that situation because the science of biotechnology, let's take a key example. Monsanto, now they have stopped in part for our agitation, was trying to develop a gene that would make seeds sterile, a totally immoral thing to do. The only conceivable purpose wasn't to help agriculture

was to force farmers to buy their seeds year after year, can save their own. Now, how do one analyze that? There is a science as a way to do that. it would have worked the decision not to do it and the pressure we put on them to stop their research, which thank goodness for the moment, thank God for the moment, has been successful, is a moral debate. And I think you have to separate those questions. The fact that it can be done genetically is one thing that you want to argue why it should not be done. You're in a different realm.

As we're talking about science and religion, it would be stupid not to refer to Galileo, which you do in your book, you take it on. It's a key. It's symbolic, important dispute. It's far more complicated. We know than it's... Can you tell us, Stephen J. Gould, what you draw from that? Because you go from that in your book to the present way in which the Catholic Church

deals with evolution. But can you just give us a take on how your notion can be seen in the Galileo urban dispute? The first thing you have to do is, as you said, to recognize how complicated the story is Galileo. don't want to be too much of a revisionist. Urban Dees made a very bad move. But you can understand why he did.

You're in the middle of the 30 years' war. Why does Galileo appear before the inquisition? He had to. The acquisition was the temporal authority of Rome at the time. The Pope was the temporal lord of that area of the world, as well as spiritual ruler. The point being that Galileo was an incredible hothead. He was right.

He never should have. He had an imprimatur to write that book. he had to do was write an honest dialogue between a Copernican and a Ptolemae, and his point would have carried anyway because the Copernican sister was better. Instead, he named the character who was to carry the Ptolemae an argument, Simplicio, and gave him arguments just as good as his name. Now, when Mafaio Barberini, his old friend, now Pope Urban Ith, read the book, he developed a sneaking suspicion, which might well have been true that Simplicio was meant to be his noble self, and Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Now, that's

simplistic too, but it does show that what you're dealing with at that time was an immediate political and courtly conflict. Now, within a generation, though, Gallo's books officially remained on the index. The church was perfectly happy with the Copernican system for two obvious reasons. First, hey, the earth does go around the sun, not vice versa. And secondly, as the Catholic Church, I think above all the Abrahamic religions, has always understood. there's no sense basing a theology on the way the world works, especially when our concepts of that's going to change. And that's why, for example, it's not widely understood the Catholic position on evolution

is for those probably very positive. Now, again, it's a historical glitch because when Darwin published Piano, Piano, Pius I, the 9th, one of the more interesting figures in 19th century history was Pope. And although he had started out very liberally minded, he had become very embittered and conservative in part because his lands were taken away by the developing state of Italy. So he didn't like Darwinism and he issued his syllabus of errors. But the Pius XI.S. the 12th, again, not a favorite character of mine at all. Deeply conservative reactionary man, even he in this encyclical of 1950 made it clear that he didn't like evolution, but that he was not going to anathematize

it. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. Now, John Paul's a couple of years ago was much more positive and because, as I understand the Catholic position is not my world, it's very consonant with the argument I'm making that how the factual world is constituted is to be determined by science. What will be your comment on that, Presolode? I think a couple of things. I mean, one is that the story of Galileo is interesting for all sorts of reasons, but one is that it actually diminishes the difference between older science and science now,

which was what Hillary was concerned with earlier on. Because in fact, what it's a reminder of is that science is always set within a context in which purposes and personalities feature, and it's always had its patrons. And part of that story was a story about a conflict of strong personalities. Galileo determined to put himself into this position, another figure Cardinal Bernamine trying to get him out of it

and giving him every chance and so on. So it's a very complicated case. What I'd think about the more general lesson about how a religion might regard scientific development is this. It has to embed, it seems to me, science within a broader account. It can't simply say, well, okay, let's partition this. You do your bit, I'll do my bit, and then, you know, we can talk occasionally and so on. The religious ambition is to understand reality in its totality.

So do you think that science can, at any time, tell us all the material facts about nature? Well, I mean, to the extent, of course, the limitations of human power and so on, It may tell us all about the material fact, yes. And what other fact? I wouldn't. Well, I mean, that's where we began with the notion of facts here. If we think, for example, of something like anthropology, let's move away from, say, physics and chemistry.

Let's think about the science or sciences of human nature, trying to understand what human beings are. Well, that has various aspects as physiology. But, of course, physiology has to be linked up with psychology. Psychology has to be linked up with some story of human beings as artistic creators, as moral agents and so on. So just as the different sciences have to be embedded within an ever-increasingly larger story,

including a social science, so I'd say all of that has to be embedded within a religious worldview. So that's how I see them as related. Hillary Rose, what do you draw from the Galileo versus Pope Urban and the recent Pope's statement accepting evolution by Roman Catholicism? Is this not an illustration of what Stephen Jay Gould is?

I think it works beautifully. So I want to go around the back and pick up Stephen's point about Monsanto because in order for us, and I like to use the word we, in order for us to defeat Monsanto, it meant overthrowing the Judeo, the Christian Judeo belief

in the supremacy of man and that everything should be subordinate to man, a belief which has been extremely convenient, both of the church. Man, I think, was a very gender, being in that sense. I don't think it meant universal human beings. I think it did mean man. And this has been very convenient for scientists because it's enabled them, particularly as biologists, to research on other species, often with considerable violence. And I think

the defeat of Monsanto actually reflects a move culturally to establish a different relationship to nature and one that was not forged either from within, you know, the general reductionist view of science, nor is it forged from within the Judeo-Christian domination of nature thesis. So I think it's something historically new. And in the defeat of Monsanto, Stephen's example, not mine, we're talking about people struggling to develop a new morality in our relationship to nature. And I think that's incredibly important. I don't

think we owe too much to the church from it, some church people, true, some scientific people, true. But I think it comes from a willingness to try and recreate ethics. So you think that the argument moved on? With respect to the particular example, I don't see it that way because stopping the research on forcing seeds to be sterile is, to me, a moral victory because the only possible rationale was Monsanto making more money. It didn't help farmers.

It didn't help agriculture. But I'm not opposed in principle to the modification of plants in a directed way that's beneficial to humans and hurting any. body, for example, the ability to put vitamin A into rice, which can now be done through genetic engineering, is going to save hundreds of thousands of children's lives in Asia every year. And that, to me, is a triumph because of its moral benefits, though the technology is not dissimilar from the Monsanto's killer seed case, which to me was using the same technology for immoral purposes, which is, again, why I think the moral questions have to be made separate

from the factual ones. But the moral question in that, I mean, you have delineated a position which I think is quite often articulated, but there are a huge group of people who actually are very, very uneasy about the very fast manipulation of nature and how should we do this?

I mean, should we do it? And these questions, I mean, as a natural scientist, you don't feel this particular concern. You feel it's okay to do it. And I would say, yes, that's because you're happy with the Christian Judeo tradition. If you're actually part of, I think, the new Green movement, there's a much greater feeling about stewardship, responsibility to nature, a much greater concern should we do these things to nature.

And I think that comes out of a different sort of construction of ethics. But I think that's a different issue, and that doesn't make any sense to me for another reason. I think what we're up against is an old problem. Anytime you develop a powerful technology, it can get you into trouble as well as it can be beneficial, atomic technology being the obvious prior example, and therefore we have to be very careful about the moral and social uses,

but I wouldn't try and invent a different ethic that says we should never, in principle, manipulate nature because nature's manipulating itself all the time. bacterial genes pass the other species. John Holden, can I come to you? Do you think that this talk of morality and ethics is dependent on religion, that without a religion you practice Roman Catholicism, without one of the great world religions or a form religion,

there is not the stern morality which enables us to behave in, in the ways that Stephen J. Goose described on the Monsanto issue, for instance. I think this is a terrifically important and very deep question. I mean, it's interesting that Stephen characterises religion whenever he... I mean, he's a great deal to say about science. When he turns to talk about religion, by and large religion gets glossed as something like morality. And I'm not suggesting that it doesn't, that morality isn't important to religion, but there are other things as well. Now, this question, but the question you ask about, you know, if you like the old one, can there be morality without religion?

If you take religion away, what will you be left? I think there can be morality without religion. The question is a different one. What morality will there be when you take away, say, the Judeo-Christian central concepts? You see, I'd contest this characterization of the concerns of science, this idea that there's what you get out of the Judeo-Christian world. view is this idea of man is sovereign manipulating the earth for his own purposes and so on. What you get out of that

tradition are several things and to some extent they're in conflict. But the notion of stewardship that was mentioned actually originates in the Judeo-Christian idea and all the way through it's not a modern notion if you think of somebody like Francis Hussisi and that concern with nature you know, brother, son, sister, moon

and so on. That rhetoric if you like that kind of green ecological concern with creation as something that we have to, you know, tend to and be respectful of and so on, and that to interfere with it is to play God. That's precisely a religious notion. So I think I'd want to contest, first of all, the idea that Christianity is a rather bad guy in this. It seems to me it's been both bad and good.

There's different voices. And then secondly, to go on to say that when we look at religion in relation to morality, the question is not so much can there be morality without religion, but if you take away something like the religious structure, what kind of morality are you left with? and my fear there is that that degenerates a contract, basically. Well, if you're right, that would be extraordinarily impoverished. I mean, I can't envisage a world which is entirely without religion,

as it seems to be one of the things which is remarkably persistent. It changes its form. You know, we have different religious groups. It seems to be something which is likely for chunks of any invisible human society to continue. But that said, I don't think, I mean, I think there's a lot of lovely anthropological research, particularly in the area of the new genetics, which interests me enormously, where you can actually see people making very complicated ethical choices where religion plays an extremely small part in their decision-making. And that seems to be something which is new and is

interesting. Stephen Jay Gould, do you think that science could threaten religion in a way that's not conceived of, as it were, in your philosophy? That is to say, given John Holden's Roman Catholicism, he has said, I read this, that were the bones of Christ to be discovered and proved to be the bones of Christ, then that would severely cast the most severe, crucial, final doubts on your religion. Now, let's say that is theoretically possible.

So in that sense, the science, as it were, destroying religion, in terms of John Holden's religion, is a possibility. What do you say to that, Steve Jacob? See, I would say that my character's, of religion is admittedly an idealized one that is not satisfactory to many people for whom the practice of religion is a very serious one. Indeed, for many millions of people, this is

more true in my country that Europe is largely a post-religious society, let's face it, America, which is a completely incomprehensible bizarre nation, has this enormous majoritarian claim for important belief. Now, I do acknowledge that. that for many people who practice religion, factual claims that were previously asserted, are very important. There are millions of people in America, and they're actually a politically powerful lobby, which is not true here, for whom religion is the literal reading of the book of Genesis, whatever that means.

But in any event, they believe the Earth's 10,000 years old, and that God created life in six days of 24 hours each, and that's a factual claim that happens to be wrong. So for them, their concept of religion is intimately embedded within a whole set of factual claims that are false and science can show to be false. But again, I think that's a – I don't mean to be arrogant about it, but I think that's a misconstruction of the aims and meaning of religion. And science cannot conflict with the better construction of religion, which is indeed not only morality because atheists can be highly moral people. trust I have myself. Well, I would like to just take on a point that was made earlier that, and you make it yourself in this book, very clearly you say, look, I'm a scientist and my views of science are clear, and I'm a protagonist of science, and my heroes of Darwin and so. Therefore, when I'm talking about religion, I'm suspect on this.

So I'm going to try to tell you why I'm suspect and what my position is on this. So can you develop the sentence that you put in the book, that science cannot have anything to say about the morality of morals, for instance. You are defining what you see, would I just like a hardening up of, the magisterium of religion from your point of view. I agree with Dr. Haldane that I slighted because it's not a world I know as well as the world of science,

but I never meant to say that it's simply a study of morality. It's a consideration of all questions about meaning in that spiritual sense. We do need to struggle with why we're here, and factual science is not going to help us in the moral dimensions of that, and traditionally those kinds of discussions have gone on in the magistrate of religion.

And look, facts are relevant. That is, it is important to understand that the earth is billions of years old that the human body evolved in a material sense in a contingent world where it didn't have to be that way, where there are not vectors of progress leading inevitably to us. That's an important factual. basis, but it doesn't enjoin any particular moral decision. Science cannot go beyond what I might call

the anthropology of morals. That is, science can study the different belief systems of people throughout the world, and they may find common features. And you can even argue, perhaps, some of those common features are there for good Darwinian reasons. That's never going to help you with a moral question. Just suppose you discovered, for example, the vast majority of human societies think that it's okay under a certain set of circumstances to kill others. That doesn't mean, it is right. It may have been a useful behavior when we were stone-wielding small groups of hunter-gatherer peoples.

So the fact that there might be anthropology of morals is only a factual gathering of information to decide whether we then ought to be behaving that way requires a different kind of discussion. John Holden. I think I'd like to make the challenge from the side of religion a bit tougher because it seems to me you provide relatively easy case. The strategy is this is to show that science and religion are not in conflict.

And then somebody says, but that can't be right, kind of. Let's have a look at what religious believers say. Then the examples we get are ones of say these creation fundamentalists, to which the response is well, of course, what they say is both false and silly. And of course, many religious believers will cheer along with that.

What I think one needs to look at are the tougher cases from your point of view. Because among the things religious believers typically believe in, and I don't mean those sort of fundamentalist believers, are things like the power of petitionary prayer, the idea that, you know, speaking to God, engaging God in prayer, can make a difference

to the way the world operates. Another thing they believe in are miracles. A third thing that they tend to believe in is some kind of sacred history, that if you look at the narrative of history, humor, or human time, and so on, that the way the world has gone, that it wouldn't have gone if there weren't

in the providence in the background and so on. And then if you turn to Christianity, a fourth thing that they believe is the incarnation, the idea that God entered into the material, verse. Now, I suppose this is a question, but I think I can guess at the answer. My suspicion is that when those come on to the scene, it's not going to be so easy for you to suggest the reconciliation, because it does seem to me that these are going to start to be counter explanatory claims, perhaps. At that point, I just become very ironic and say, all right, I don't happen to believe in the

immaculate conception of Mary, for example, but that's not a scientific question. I will leave that to you to debate whether or not Mary was conceived without sin and free of the taint of Adam, because that's not a question science can adjudicate. In any case, Catholic Church debated for a couple thousand years by Guy Piano, no, no, I talked about before, proclaimed it, and fine. But I think that way about the phenomenon of miracles. I cannot say, as a scientist, that miracles define technically as suspensions of natural law for a moment don't happen.

I suspect they don't. But if they did, I couldn't study them anyway. So I'm going to leave that domain aside. They don't seem to make much of an impact on human history anyway. And prayer? Prayer is the placebo effect is one of the most powerful ones we know. I have no doubt that prayer is immensely beneficial for many people. I don't think it changes the character of the world.

That can be scientifically adjudicated. But again, I would say for those for whom it is necessary to think that it does, it's outside the realm of society. I'll let them be. Stephen didn't Golton actually measure the power of prayer? Many people have tried. And he actually came to the conclusion that it didn't work. Of course. It's one of his more delicious experiments.

Yes, you study, since you, what he did was to assume it since kings are prayed for more often than ordinary folks. If it works, kings will live better. I'm not simplifying. And they don't. But let's get back to the domain of religion. Hillary, you have said that you thought that for chunks of a few, you would use the word chunks of the future, you thought there would be a religious, component in human nature you thought it'd be around and you would worry if the if morality disappeared

now I think I mean people will say um where are the pillars for morality where's the instructions for morality where is it coming from one of the passages in stephen jay gore's book that I particularly like was his description I like it's a strange word given how moving it was was the Huxley that was reaction to the death of his son and and he is discovering, rediscovering or asserting of morality in the face of Christian consequences of that, as it were. Now, where do you, where will you plant your morality as an atheist, although you think even an atheist is too strong a word, you're an indifferent really to go back to me? Yes, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you know, it's impossible to consider any circumstances under which I could believe in the power of prayer. or any of these other, I mean, or gods or any of these things.

I mean, they just see... It's easy measurements with play, but I actually think that Stephen Jay Gould idea about the placebo effect, which we know is tremendously powerful. Experiment after experiment. Oh, yes. If Golden had done the placebo effect in Sela Pri, he'd have been very surprised indeed about the effect

he can have, as we know, in the most extraordinary cases. Put that aside. What is your morality going to be based on it, or need it be based on nothing? No, my morality is. will be based on people's relationships with one another and how they think about one another. So mine will be a morality from below.

Like if Pol Pot thought about one another? No, no. I don't think Paul Pot was thinking too much about one another. I think Pol Pot was thinking very substantially about Pol Pot. I see ethics as connected to politics, but not actually equatable with them. And if you're going to discuss Pol Pot in a useful way, you've got to enter into the realm of politics. but ethics which I see as having a less somehow in a sense both broader and a much smaller agenda

in that discussions of the polis fit in between very big ethical statements and very grounded ones. I'm interested in very grounded ethics of how we live our lives in a day-to-day way and I see those as coming out of our lives and that we're passing through a new sort of post-religious period particularly in Britain. I'm sorry to hang on to Pol Pot but I'm going to.

Right. The fact is that people... We're going to talk politics. No, we're not talking politics. We're talking morality. We're talking Thomas Hobbes. Life is nasty, brutish and short. Now that seems to me to be ethics

as much as every bit as much as any political dimension. I'm just asking if... Religion says for better and for worse and has done, you behave like this. You act like this. Now then, without religions, I'm asking you. Who is saying that? Are we saying it to each other?

And I'm choosing the example of people who choose not to say it to each other, who choose to behave in a way totally differently from that of which you would approve, which all of us would approve. So I'm just saying where is the basis for this? Is the one? Maybe there didn't even be one, I don't know. Well, you always have to consider power. And what Pol Pot had was power.

I mean, the British used to talk about we have the Gatling gown and you have not. Now, and that's, after all, part of the history of the church. Sometimes the spiritual church was very, very closely allied with huge secular power. And typically in those circumstances, things got a bit dodgy, unethical rather frequently. I think that the question that was asked about what can be the basis for morality seems to be a tremendously important one. And not just in this kind of intellectual debate, but for our future, how policy is going to be shaped and so on. I think that unless one has more than the notion of fair dealing, then morality will just degenerate down into a kind of contract with one another.

Now what can the more be? Well, it seems to me an ennobling self-conception is what's called for, an account of what it is to be a human and to live a good human life. That's what is required if we're going to raise ourselves above the kind of situation, which is at some age we fall into. Now, that notion of an ennobling self-conception is one that religion has provided, but not religion uniquely. But I do think that it gives it a certain form,

because it has built into it the idea of transcendence and the idea of completion. And it's very difficult to see how there could be any secular counterpart of those. And without that in opening self-conception, then I think we are left with that question hanging what future has mankind without religion. Stephen Jay Gail. There won't be a secular counterpart to that in one sense,

but you don't need belief in a conventional supreme being to have it either there's a moral dimension in all human lives, I'm afraid we have to bite the bullet and allow that there simply is not a way in which we can agree upon an external and universal basis of ethical behavior. It's just the nature of the enterprise. Indeed, the religions don't agree among themselves, so there's not going to be answers there either. I take refuge in something David Hume said a long time ago when he was examining the same question, coming to that reluctant conclusion that can't be a logical or universal basis for ethics,

namely, luckily, thank goodness, there seems to be what one might call a moral sense, just as we have other senses. There is a consensus that we can reach. But looking at the history of the 13th century. It preserves us. It's a consensus that's probably simply based on what you need to believe, like the golden rule in order to still be here. So when the Pau-Pots in the world emerge, you're not going to convince them logically.

You've got to have to convince them by struggle. That's why we have penal systems. why we still fight wars for all their tragedies. Would you agree with that, however? Yeah, I would, but, I mean, in a sense, I would also see against what John was arguing that you could only get these ethical accounts and, you know, an alternative of a different kind of human being.

I mean, socialism and Marxism, particularly, had a very strong belief in a different view of human nature. And you read the early Marx, there's this sort of beautiful account of how, under certain social conditions, we will have beautiful new human nature. and this was a compelling vision, you know, which some of us have subscribed to very, very dearly. And this was an alternative view of how we became good people.

I mean, totally in contradiction to Hobbes. And this was a compelling vision for a great part of the back end of the 19th, great chunks of the 20th century. It ended, in many ways, as gruesomely as various of the religion. I mean, it would appear that when political theory gets too close to the state, it becomes rather unfortunate. The same was when religion gets too close to the state, it becomes a rather unfortunate. Well, Marx's vision, of course,

was a partly religiously inspired one. I mean, what Marx is doing, in a sense, is taking the Jewish notion of sacred history and the idea of a purpose and point in the evolution of events and casting that in a secular idiom, dialectical materialism takes over from the dialectic of spirit. But you might say that, as it were, its fate was the result of its hubris,

that it tried to substitute precisely because they tried to substitute for religion to give a secular equivalent of that transcendent aspiration, it failed and that whenever human beings try to do that, they'll end up in the same position, face down in the mud. Can I conclude what for me has been an absorbing discussion

by asking Stephen Jay Gould, do you think it's the same impulse that drives physicists to complete string theory as drives theologians to prove the existence of God? In some very broad sense, I suspect it is. We're such a crazy, curious species.

That's why we're so interesting. Do the most terrible things to each other. And yet there is this substrate that one can only deem admirable. We are, as Samaid puts it, this little creature wondering why in the vastness of the heavens we're here and what it's all about. And we've got this dandest desire to find out. Science is a way of finding out in a factual sense. What religion seeks, may not be factually resolvable,

but it's a similar set of questions. Why are we here? What's it all about? What can we do? How can we make it better? That is the most noble part of our nature, and I think we should do everything we can to nurture it because there's some very ignoble parts as well.

Hilbury Rose, Stephen Jay Gould, and John Haldon. Thank you very much. Next week, as part of the victorious season, I'll be discussing the British Empire and its effect on knowledge with Richard Drayton, Ziazada, and Maria Misra. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast.

You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4.