Under the Microscope: Atheism is currently in a vigorous campaigning mood, writes Prof William Reville.
Books promoting atheism and attacking religion are published regularly - eg The God Delusionby Richard Dawkins, God is Not Greatby Christopher Hitchens, Breaking the Spellby Daniel Dennett. A new internet organisation called The Brights (www.the-brights.net) is dedicated to "promoting a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural and mystical elements".
Atheists are fully entitled to promote their views, but not, as many do, to propose science as the answer to everything. Proselytising atheists such as scientist Richard Dawkins claim that nothing exists beyond matter and energy, and that, since science is the only way to understand matter and energy, science is the only route to true knowledge and science will eventually answer all questions. If that campaign were to succeed it would saddle science with responsibilities it could not fulfil. This would soon become clear to all, precipitating a backlash against science.
The purpose of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, geology and mathematics) is to discover how the natural material world works. Science does not deal with the purpose of life, values, ethics, and, by definition, it is silent on the supernatural. A persistent myth promoted by atheists is that science and religion are fundamentally at odds with each other. This is simply untrue. Science and religion occupy largely separate but complementary spheres.
Religion has no competence to explain the mechanisms that underpin the natural world (this is where the creationists go wrong) and science has no competence to explain the purpose or value of human life, or to adjudicate on morality or ethics (of course scientists as individuals must struggle with these questions). Science is silent on God, but this does not mean, as many atheists propose, that science denies the existence of God. Carpentry is entirely silent on magnetism, but we cannot conclude therefore that carpentry denies the existence of magnetism!
Consider an example of science in action. Biology shows that human life begins at conception when a sperm from the father fuses with an egg from the mother to form an embryo. This initiates a continuous line of development from embryo through to pensioner. Science does not pronounce on the "value" of the human entity at any point on this continuum, and so we have the debate over when "full human life", deserving legal protection, begins. Although it cannot decide the matter, science can certainly help one to make a decision on this question, and it helps me (and some other scientists) to decide that full human life starts at conception.
However, many other scientists, in possession of the same scientific facts, conclude that full human life does not begin until later along the continuum of development. Clearly science alone doesn't provide a universally acceptable answer to this important question of value, nor to many other questions of value. To ask science to adjudicate on these questions would be to ask it to perform tasks it is incapable of performing.
THERE IS NO RIGOROUSlogical proof for either the existence or non-existence of God. Belief or non-belief in God calls for faith. Some people find the evidence that points towards God impressive but not strong enough to lead all the way to God. They add an element of faith to complete the journey and to opt for God. Others (agnostics) note that the available evidence alone is not strong enough to allow a safe decision either way on God and they simply leave it at that. Atheists find the evidence that points away from God persuasive, but not conclusive, and they add an element of faith to opt for, well, nothing. Atheism is also a faith.
Nevertheless, proselytising atheists enthusiastically mock religious faith. Dawkins describes religious faith as follows: "Faith means blind trust in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence." This again is untrue. Mainline Christian tradition does not call for belief in God in the absence of evidence. The Christian position on faith is expressed by the theologian WH Griffith Thomas: "It commences with a conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence; it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and it is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct."
Dawkins could learn from Marxism about the consequences of overloading an ideology with inappropriate responsibilities. Marxists believe that their materialistic, atheistic analysis is scientific and provides the only correct recipe for organising society. The analysis is useful and, in many respects, Marxism was a brave experiment, but it was asked to carry too many burdens it simply couldn't lift. Marxism behaved like a fundamentalist religion and opposed the practice of other religions where it held sway.
We can now look back on the history of the best part of 100 years when a substantial fraction of the world's population lived under 'scientific' atheistic communism. It is largely a very sad history and was characterised by unprecedented atrocities, lack of freedom and economic privation, supervised by Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot and others. This is documented in the book The Black Book of Communismby Stephane Courtois and others (Harvard University Press, 1999), where the total number of victims is estimated at 85 million to 100 million - far more than those murdered under Nazism. So much for the Bright's vision of a world "free from supernatural and mystical elements".
• William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Public Awareness of Science Officer at UCC - understandingscience.ucc.ie.