Friday January 26, 2007

Sir, – Steven Weinberg's endorsement of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins leaves unanswered most of the fundamental questions many readers must be asking. How is it that when theologians modify their views in accordance with fresh developments in scientific knowledge this represents a "retreat", whereas when scientists do the same it becomes an "advance? Why, if religion evolved as a means of providing tribal cohesion to palaeolithic hunter gatherers, was it not discarded when it became, as Dawkins holds, demonstrably harmful in its effect on human society? If theism has been so resoundingly discredited by the findings of biologists or cosmologists, how do biologists and cosmologists of equal eminence to Dawkins and Weinberg manage to remain believers? And if religious belief is on the point of vanishing in the face of Dawkins's works, why do he and his supporters wax so hysterical about its baneful influence?

Could it be that it is the difficulty of answering questions like these which leads Dawkins to evince so marked a preference for debating the issue with rednecks living thousands of miles away in the southern United States, rather than crossing the High to confront (say) Richard Swinburne or Michael Burleigh?

NIKOLAI TOLSTOY,
Court Close,
Southmoor,
nr Abingdon,
Berkshire.

Sir, – Steven Weinberg writes of a friend in Kansas who has founded a Flat Earth Society as a response to "intelligent design" ideas. He, and your readers, may not be aware that the President of the Flat Earth Society in Britain throughout the 1980s and 90s was the late Ellis Hillman, London County Council and Greater London councillor for Hackney, a Jewish Trotskyist, crypto-Anglo-Catholic socialist, expert on the Book of Esther and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and author of works on earthquakes and the London sewers. I am not sure that flat earth as an anti-fundamentalist weapon has a sound historical pedigree.

KENNETH LEECH,
89 Manchester Road,
Ashton-under-Lyne.

Sir, -Steven Weinberg issues an eloquent plea for non-experts to be allowed to express their opinions on philosophy and religion. Too bad that, in his last two books, he did not extend the same sense of charity to historians, philosophers and sociologists who offered non-expert commentary on the nature of physics. We might have then avoided the ongoing Science Wars.

STEVE FULLER,
Department of Sociology,
University of Warwick,
Coventry.

Sir, – Terry Eagleton did not say that "opinions on matters of philosophy or religion are only to be expressed by experts". He just sensibly observed that no scientist would take seriously someone's critique of biology based solely on familiarity with a chart of British birds. And isn't it time for evolutionary biologists to stop pontificating so crassly? Most people couldn't care less about evolution, but they are all concerned with questions of ethics; some find answers in religion, none in evolutionary biology. Well, not quite: Hitler was a Darwinian.

ADAM CZERNIAWSKI,
1 Monkswell Road,
Monmouth.

Sir, – I share Steven Weinberg's "disrespect" for religious certitude, which is a simulacrum of faith; but suggest that scientific certitude is barely less lethal. Just as we do not judge the value of science by nuclear weapons, pollution and junk food, we should not judge religion by its abuses. By all means criticize religious abuse.

And parish-pump theology (Terry Eagleton is taken to task for "sneering at" Dawkins's lack of theological training) is everyone's prerogative. But theological language is allusive, not exact: in Genesis 1 the sun and moon, distinguishing day and night, appear only on the fourth "day" of creation. Literalists, religious and atheist alike, find this infuriating. Scientific knowledge is part of a wider experience, of being human, that gives it value; and while science can help free us from religious tyranny, there is much in all religions, including Islam, that challenges science to make itself accountable to that wider experience.

JAMES RAMSAY,
St Barnabas Church,
Manor Park,
Browning Road,
London E12.

Sir, – The trouble with the campaign waged against religion by Richard Dawkins and, with modifications, reflected in Steven Weinberg's review of The God Delusion, is that it has little connection with what many religious people mean by their faith. Leaving aside the obstreperous diehards, both Catholic and Protestant, the great number of quieter Christians, who worship regularly and live out their faith unostentatiously in countless family and community settings, are likely to feel that the Dawkins debate passes them by. It does not concern a loyalty they recognize.

For us, the Christian religion centres on the figure of Jesus, a gospel of love and service, and a discipline of prayer. We are, we believe, intelligent in our use of the Bible and the Christian tradition; we are well aware of the scandalous wickedness and foolishness of Christians in the past and present, but are not thereby deterred from humbly treading what seems to us a wholesome and desirable way. And we bewail the decline, to our society's visible detriment, in the appreciation and absorption of the beauty and skills of Christian life and culture.

LESLIE HOULDEN,
5 The Court,
Temple Balsall,
Solihull.

Sir, – Whatever the merits of Steven Weinberg's views about contemporary Islam and science ("A deadly certitude", January 19), it would seem that at a minimum he should get his historical facts right. It is dismaying that a renowned scientist who has campaigned for accuracy in the history of science should state without qualification that, after al-Ghazali (d. 1111), "there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries". Thus does Weinberg dismiss three or more generations of scholarship over the past hundred years that has brought to light the work of scores of Islamic scientists between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries who, among other things, proposed the pulmonary circulation, built the first large-scale astronomical observatories, conceived trigonometry as a separate discipline, constructed new calculating devices and maps of astonishing accuracy and sophistication, allowed for the possibility of a moving Earth, developed the mathematical and conceptual tools that were essential for the Copernican revolution, and made science and mathematics a part of the school (madrasa) curriculum. Given the considerable literature now available on these subjects, it is difficult to understand why Weinberg prefers ideologically based opinion to solid historical research.

F. JAMIL RAGEP,
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science,
Boltzmannstrasse 22,
14195 Berlin.

Friday February 02, 2007

Sir, – Steven Weinberg's review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion contains some inaccurate remarks about the history of Weinberg's discipline, mathematical physics. If the contemporary debate between religious thinkers and defenders of "scientific" conceptions of the world is to be constructive, we must recognize the historical specificity of the current positions. The fault lines of the raging debate about intelligent design, and related matters, may seem permanent, but the relation between science and religion was decidedly different during the era of modern physics's emergence. For instance, although contemporary physicists like Weinberg may now understand Sir Isaac Newton as having promoted a secular conception of natural phenomena and of their ultimate origin, this characterization reflects a decidedly anachronistic picture of Newton's own conception of his work.

Weinberg contends that Newton's theory of gravity in Principia mathematica challenged religion because it provided a natural explanation of various phenomena, such as the planetary orbits. But this was certainly not Newton's own understanding of his theory; indeed, in the first edition of the Principia, published in 1687, Newton argued that the solar system could only have been given its current configuration by the intervention of a wise and intelligent being.

Weinberg misrepresents Newton again when he contends that the "argument from design" was refuted by Newton's explanations of the world. In fact, Newton himself endorsed a version of the design argument, and in the very text in which he presents his explanations of natural phenomena. In the famous "General Scholium", added to the second edition of the Principia in 1713, Newton writes that "the diversity of created things" could only have arisen "from the ideas and the will of a necessarily existing being".

More generally, Newton made it clear that discussing God by analysing the phenomena of nature is a proper part of his natural philosophy. The task now confronting us, then, is to understand precisely why science and religion are understood as conflicting with one another, given their intertwining in the past.

ANDREW JANIAK,
Department of Philosophy, Duke University,
Durham, North Carolina 27708.

Sir, – This is to reply to comments (Letters, January 24) on my review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion ("A deadly certitude", January 19). F. Jamil Ragep, of the McGill Institute for Islamic Studies, disagreed with my statement that after the death of Abu Hamid al Ghazali in 1111, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries. In support, Ragep mentioned the development of trigonometry, but this was primarily the work of al-Battani (858-918) and al-Biruni (973-1048), long before al-Ghazali. He also mentioned the conception of a moving earth, and referred to mathematical and conceptual tools that were essential to the Copernican revolution. But Copernicus credited the idea of a moving earth to Pythagoras and (in a passage he subsequently deleted) to Aristarchus of Samos. The Muslim astronomer on whom Copernicus chiefly relied was alBattani, who died 200 years before al Ghazali.

There were talented Muslim scientists after al-Ghazali, but their work found no place in Islamic society. For instance, Ragep mentioned the discovery of the pulmonary circulation of the blood. I presume that he was referring to Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288). Al-Nafis did propose the pulmonary circulation of the blood, but his theory had no effect in the Islamic world, perhaps because for religious reasons he did not demonstrate its truth by the dissection of animals. Ragep also pointed to "the first large-scale astronomical observatories". There were great observatories in the Islamic world, used largely for predicting prayer times and the Muslim lunar months. In 1577, Taqi al-Din built an observatory in Istanbul comparable to Tycho Brahe's famous observatory in Denmark. But on the instigation of the Chief Mufti, al-Din's observatory was destroyed by a squad of janissaries, and had no impact on astronomy, while Brahe's observatory provided the data that made possible the work of Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton. It is too strong to say that there was no science at all in the Islamic world after al-Ghazali, but such science as there was led to nothing important. Certainly the great period of Islamic science came to an end around the twelfth century. Nor has it been revived. A 2002 survey by Nature identified just three areas of science in which Islamic countries excel: desalination, falconry and camel reproduction.

Nikolai Tolstoy asked why, if religion is harmful, it has not been discarded, and why some eminent scientists are religious. I would think that the promise of life after death is sufficiently attractive to account by itself for the survival of religion, even among eminent scientists. But surveys show that religious belief is far less prevalent among scientists than in the whole population.

Several letters sided with Terry Eagleton's quip, that for Dawkins to write on theology is akin to "someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is The Book of British Birds". I had better explain more fully why I disagree with Eagleton's comparison. Biology is a real science. It has agreed methods for settling arguments and correcting errors by reason and experiment. No one today seriously disputes the pulmonary circulation of the blood, or the germ theory of disease. Of course there are still open questions in biology, but research in biology is cumulative; so much has already been learned, and the techniques for learning more require so much technical training that issues in biology really have to be left to experts. In contrast, disagreements in theology go on forever, with no way of ever settling anything, which is not surprising since it does not deal with anything real. For the same reason, unlike biological discoveries, theological doctrines lead to nothing useful. As a phenomenon of intellectual history, theology, like astrology, deserves careful study, but as a body of knowledge, again like astrology, it is not worth taking seriously. It is precisely the experience of working in a real science that best qualifies Dawkins to see the hollowness of theology.

James Ramsay says that "theological language is allusive, not exact". Both he and Leslie Houlden eloquently describe their religion as a way of life, but I can't tell from their letters if they think it has anything definite to say about the supernatural. If not, then Ramsay and Houlden provide a further example of the welcome decline of religious certitude in the West.

STEVEN WEINBERG,
Department of Physics,
University of Texas at Austin,
Austin,
Texas 78712.

Friday February 09, 2007

Sir, – There are ongoing non sequiturs and contradictions in Steven Weinberg's letter. Leaving aside the lack of any demonstration that Islam causes more destruction than either Christianity or science -surprisingly for a scientist, he has not produced any data -I turn instead to his arguments about "Islamic" opposition to science.

Weinberg dismisses the discoveries of al- Nabis on a (speculative) account of their reception rather than on their value, and "Islamic" astronomy likewise on account of the use to which it was put, whereas his defence of science rests on the reality of the object or validity of the method. He would not, I venture, spurn the compass on the grounds that it may be used to determine the direction of Mecca.

He extrapolates illegitimately from outsider surveys about current research priorities in Islamic countries to validate non-time-specific generalizations about Islamic propensities as a whole; the term "Islamic" is used indiscriminately to mean "set of dogmas"; "current social systems in which this set of dogmas is accepted"; "immutable cultural predicament".

If a Muslim makes discoveries which are destroyed by other Muslims, Weinberg immediately takes the destroyers not the maker to be more representative of "Islam" (witness his account of Taqi-al-Din); this is then juxta- posed to a Western narrative of consequential progress while analogous narratives of Western scienticide remain untold.

Having judged Islamic science in terms of its outcome, he dismisses theology because of the alleged immateriality of its object. But materiality is immaterial to meaning. To refute the existence of Mickey Mouse would be no grounds for denying his importance. On the other hand, sociology of religion does deal with plenty of realia, and yet Weinberg's attitude to it resembles that analogized by the Professor of Cultural Theory, only Eagleton is too generous: the British Book of Birds contains more authentic knowledge than Weinberg's sociology.

Weinberg then proceeds to claim that biology's focus on materiality is a guarantee of its utility. This rests on a basic confusion of "object" with "material object", and of material sources with concrete benefits.

He ends with a conditional, to wit that if two of his critics, one of whom lives in London E12, have nothing definite to say about the supernatural, they provide a further example of the welcome decline of religious certitude in the West. Even if this wide open door were closed -let us close it, for who has anything definite to say about the supernatural? -it would tell us nothing. Rather, it would have us accept three parts for three wholes: belief for certitude; two people for billions of others; and finally, and most glaringly, E12 for "the West".

ALEX DRACE-FRANCIS,
School of History,
University of Liverpool,
9 Abercromby Square,
Liverpool.

Sir, – Steven Weinberg writes (Letters, February 2) that "disagreements in theology go on forever, with no way of ever settling anything, which is not surprising since it does not deal with anything real. For the same reason, unlike biological discoveries, theological doctrines lead to nothing useful".

On Weinberg's first point, there are plenty of examples in Christian history of theological disagreements which, often after very long periods of time, have been settled. I would refer him for example to the disputes in the early centuries over the human-or-divine nature of Christ, and over the Trinity. When he says that these do not deal with anything "real", he uses this word in the very narrow nominalist sense of something which can be subjected to scientific investigation.

Life would be a poor prospect indeed if there were no other reality, such as love.

On his second point, one can understand an atheist thinking that theology leads to nothing useful (as if "usefulness" were the only criterion that matters). But if one believes, for example, in the Christian view of life, death and salvation, then the findings of theology can most certainly be described as "useful".

ALAN PAVELIN,
172 Leesons Hill,
Chislehurst,
Kent.

Friday February 16, 2007

Sir – My contribution to the Weinberg business is that of an atheist medieval historian whose favourite dictum of all time is number 182 of the 207 propositions current in the Paris Arts Faculty, condemned in 1277 by Bishop Etienne Tempier: "Quod nihil plus scitur propter scire theologiam" -"That nothing more is known by knowing theology". Neat, lapidary, intolerant.

HOWARD KAMINSKY,
Department of History,
Florida International University,
University Park ,
Miami,
Florida 33199.

Sir, – Andrew Janiak (Letters, January 31) takes me to task for a remark in my review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (January 19), to the effect that Newton's physics presented a challenge to religion. Janiak is quite right in his comments about Newton, who as is well known was deeply religious, though heterodox. But my remark was not about Newton, but about Newton's laws, or if you like, Newtonianism. It is not uncommon for the founder of a scientific theory to be unreceptive to its implications; Planck, Einstein and Schroedinger all had trouble accepting quantum mechanics in its final form. The impact of Newtonianism on religious opinion after Newton is well illustrated by Voltaire, who welcomed Newtonianism, and by John Hutchinson, who deplored it.

STEVEN WEINBERG
Department of Physics,
University of Texas at Austin,
Austin,
Texas 78712.

Sir, – Because he regards Copernicus as a hero of "real" science, Steven Weinberg takes him at his word that he got the idea for a heliocentric system from the ancient philosopher Pythagoras (Letters, January 31).

But all Copernicus had of Pythagoras was an ambiguous sentence about the sun as the centre -no theory, much less mathematics. The intellectual atmosphere of the sixteenth century made it fashionable to cite the ancients, but (as Professor Ragep has pointed out, Letters, January 26) several generations of modern scholars have uncovered the unfashionable roots of Copernican astronomy - including theory and mathematics -in the medieval West and, yes, in the post-Ghazali Islamic world.

Conversely, because he regards Islamic science as leading to "nothing important", Weinberg dismisses the institutions and findings of Islamic astronomy, because they were aimed at "predicting prayer times and the Muslim lunar months".

Professor Weinberg has apparently not read Copernicus's work. In his dedicatory letter to Pope Paul III, he expresses the hope that his new astronomical system will benefit the Church, and particularly mentions the ecclesiastical calendar.

In both East and West, those interested in the operations of nature worked within systems of belief and power in which religion played a significant role. To present one tradition as tainted and the other as clean is to misrepresent the actual history of both these complex traditions. Given the current epidemic of misunderstanding, mistrust and armed conflict, this is more than an academic error.

JOAN CADDEN
Department of History,
University of California Davis,
California 95616.

Friday February 23, 2007

Sir, – In his letter of February 2, Steven Weinberg responds to critical remarks made by several correspondents following his review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.

Weinberg gives what amounts to a summary of the scientific method with the implication that it is the only way of arriving at the knowledge of reality and the discovery of "truth". According to Weinberg's thesis, theology, unlike biology, does not settle arguments or correct errors by way of "reason and experiment". This conclusion also seems to support his statement that theology does not "deal with anything real".

However, much the same can be said of the study of literature, art, political science, the understanding and interpretation of history, much of psychology, anthropology, sociology and, of course, philosophy. Is Weinberg seriously prepared to dismiss all these fields of study, most of which have been at the core of Western civilization since Homer and Plato, in the same cavalier manner in which he dismisses theology? Weinberg ignores Adam Czerniawski's letter with its apparently flippant quip about Hitler, though actually it points to an important truth about Nazism -ie, that its ideological components included eugenics and Social Darwinism, which were direct (if illegitimate) descendants of evolutionary theory. Perhaps, using Dawkins's logic, we should start talking about evolutionary theory as the root of evil.

ANDREW MICHALSKI,
26b Walton Crescent,
Oxford.

Sir, – Steven Weinberg (Letters, February 14) reduces Newtonianism to Newton's laws; but why was Sir Isaac's religion somehow less Newtonian than his science? What Weinberg takes to be the true Newton is merely what interests him most about the man, which is like saying bananas are the true fruit because they are my favourite. And his Manichean parable of good atheists promoting science against bad believers won't wash: Newton's science gained ground in England mainly with the support of liberal Protestants who felt it would buttress their cause. As John Cadden helpfully notes, science and religion were symbiotic, not locked in conflict down the ages.

ALEX DRACE-FRANCIS,
School of History,
University of Liverpool,
9 Abercromby Square,
Liverpool.

Friday March 09, 2007


Sir, – I have previously replied (Letters, February 2 and 9) to comments on my review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. That response evoked further comments, to which I now respond.

Alex Drace-Francis (Letters, February 9) objects to my use of two earlier letters to illustrate what I called "the welcome decline of religious certitude in the West". He claims I was using two people as representatives of billions. No, I cited these two letters only as examples, not as proof of anything. Fortunately, Drace-Francis has now increased my statistical sample by 50 per cent; he asks "who has anything definite to say about the supernatural?", thereby providing one more example of the welcome decline of religious certitude in the West.

Alan Pavelin (Letters, February 9) counters my statement that "disagreements in theology go on forever, with no way of ever settling anything", claiming that disputes over the Trinity have been settled. Since he refers to these as disputes in the early Church, I suppose he means that they were settled at early church councils. But they were not settled even for later Christians, much less for the rest of us. To take just one Christian example: Newton though devoutly religious did not believe in the Trinity. Pavelin should talk to today's Unitarians. About the utility of theology, it does indeed seem useful to those who think its teachings are true, but it does not exhibit any utility of the sort that could convince those who doubt its truth.

Both Drace-Francis and Joan Cadden (Letters, February 16) take me to task for my remarks about Islamic science. Drace-Francis objects to my negative remarks about the reception of scientific work in the Islamic world after the twelfth century, arguing that this should not detract from our admiration of individual Muslim scientists. Indeed it should not -I have already acknowledged that there were talented Muslim scientists after the twelfth century. My point was that, in part because of the influence of religious leaders like Al-Ghazali, Islamic society was no longer receptive to scientific discovery after the twelfth century. Drace-Francis also blames my use of "outsider surveys about current research priorities in Islamic countries". Does he want me to use only insider surveys? One of the great things about scientific research is that one can judge its quality objectively from outside, concluding for instance that Islamic countries now do not produce important scientific discoveries. There was no "extrapolation" in my remark; I was simply noting sadly that the decline in Islamic science since the twelfth century has not been reversed.

Cadden raises again the narrow issue of whether Copernicus was helped by work done after the twelfth century by Muslim astronomers. It is true that Copernicus used mathematical devices similar to those introduced after 1200 by Al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir, but there is not the slightest hard evidence that Copernicus learned about this mathematics directly or indirectly from any Islamic source. Several scholars (including Mario di Bono and Owen Gingerich) have doubted it. The latest Islamic astronomer cited in De Revolutionibus flourished before 1200, and followed Aristotle's earth-centred cosmology. No medieval Islamic astronomer ever proposed that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the mathematics of Al-Tusi and Al-Shatir was not essential to this idea. I do agree with Cadden that Copernicus probably did not get much help from the Pythagoreans either; their theory was very different from his.

In any case, I am not interested in identifying scientific "heroes" (Cadden's word), whether Islamic or Christian or pagan, but in learning about the influence of religion on the acceptance of science, and vice versa. But this should be done without assuming in advance that the results will be equally flattering to all cultures.

STEVEN WEINBERG,
Department of Physics,
University of Texas at Austin,
Austin,
Texas 78712.

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