Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion - Review

By Chet Raymo. Walker and Company, New York, 1998. ISBN 0802713386. 288 pp. Hardcover, $23.

Let me begin by saying I think all skeptics ought to read this volume, and that is intended as high praise indeed. For one thing this book is written clearly and in a prose that often achieves a lyrical quality. Raymo, a physics professor, firmly rejects the mythical and supernatural, yet argues there need not be any conflict between science and religion.

At the end of the twentieth century, man). educated people who want to believe there is more to the world than naturalistic materialism, or who grew up with a firm belief in a God, face a problem. There is a religious hole in their lives, for none of the images of God comfortably mesh with what science and reason tell us about the nature of the world or how the cosmos began and evolved.

Raymo divides the world into "skeptics," who follow and accept science and the scientific picture of reality, and "true believers," whose worldview includes the nonrational, angels, ghosts, miracles, and other both religious and secular supernatural. He does not deny the sense of make-believe that allows us to understand a child's need for Santa Claus or fairies. In adults this same sense of wonder allows an appreciation of poetry, fiction, and theater. In contrast, "The True Believer retains into adulthood at, absolute faith in some forms of empirically unverifiable make-believe (such as astrology or the existence of immortal souls)" (p. 13).

Raymo is clearly on the side of science, on the side of skeptics who demand rational evidence for their conclusions. He quotes Newton's restatement of William of Ockham's principle (1295-1349), "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearance" (p. 107). This is the defining difference between skeptic and true believer. He describes the enterprise we call science as organized skepticism. In other words, Raymo throws out not only mythical baggage, from astrology to UFOs, but also religion, ranging from creationism to the stable in Bethlehem and the tablets of stone on Mount Sinai, as well as prayer, with all the tribal myths, scriptures, and church traditions. These may have represented the best knowledge of their time, but they have been superseded by the scientific story of the universe. To proclaim that "God did it" in order to explain natural phenomena is not merely contrary to science, but the end of search and investigation.

Raymo considers research a kind of mystical calling, an undertaking in which we interrogate God, His works and His intentions. Like many people, Raymo views the natural realities science has uncovered as more miraculous than those claimed by religion. He examines the role of DNA, noting that the entire DNA string, about three feet long, is curled up in a cell no more than fifteen micrometers across. Compared to that, what is so miraculous about the Turin Shroud, even if it really was the burial doth of a first-century prophet?

While Raymo is quite clear that the scientific world view is incompatible with traditional religion, he has no patience with the sort of scientist who expects scientific theories to explain the ultimate meaning of the universe. He insists there is no end to knowledge, no final closure to research, no closure where science explains a theory of everything.

But science, skepticism, tolerance, and belief in progress need not be alien to spiritual understanding and ethical behavior. "it is the thesis of this book that these qualities must bc associated with any religion that will lead us out of our present spiritual malaise and provide a satisfactory moral compass for our inevitably scientific and technological future" (p. 162). He sees no reason why religion cannot come to terms with the scientific understanding of the cosmos, Earth, or the nature of humans.

The Hebrew scriptures tell us God created humans from the slime of the earth, and such is our understanding of what happened through geological history. But to say God fashioned man from dust, like a potter throws a clay pot on a wheel, "is a lovely story, but in its charming anthropomorphism vastly underestimates the power and process of God" (p. 181).

The God of the spiraling powers resides in nature beyond all metaphors, beyond all scriptures, beyond all "final theories." It is the ground and source of our sense of wonderment, of power, of powerlessness, of light, of dark, of meaning, and of bafflement. It is the God whose history began with the first human who experienced awe, contingency, fear. It is the God of mystics of all cultures and creeds. We stand on the shore of knowledge and look out into the sea of mystery and speak his name. His name eludes all creeds and all theories of science. He is indeed the "dread essence beyond logic." (p. 214)

Ultimately, Raymo's God is beyond words as well. Raymo speaks of research as a sacred process, of the capacity for wonder at the existence of the cosmos, of the worlds, the stars, and the galaxies as a form of worship. He comments on the famous deep-space photograph taken by the Hubble space telescope as looking deep into the soul of the night. We see a breathtaking snowstorm of galaxies in living color, the most distant not long after the beginning of the universe. Since the beginning of religion wise men have asked, "What is the use of praying if God does not answer?" "In this wonderful image of more than a 1,000 galaxies, caught by a magnificent instrument lofted into space by a questioning creature, God answers" (p. 244).