Alan Cutler, "Science and Religion: 200 Years of Accommodation" (2005)

For the 17th-century founders of modern science--especially those in England such as Robert Boyle, John Ray, and Isaac Newton--the pertinent question was not whether science and religion could be reconciled. It was whether science and atheism could be reconciled, and the answer seemed to be a definitive no. The theistic beliefs of Boyle and his contemporaries predicted a rational order beneath the apparent chaos of nature, and, lo, that was what they found. We moderns cannot easily imagine the emotional and intellectual impact this must have had on these already religious men. At the sight of the intricate structure of an insect eye under his newfangled microscope, even the not especially pious Robert Hooke was moved. Anyone stupid enough to think such things were "a production of chance," he wrote, must be "extremely depraved" or "they did never attentively consider and contemplate the works of the Almighty" (1).

Thanks to Charles Darwin, we now can explain biological complexity in terms of a theory that does, in fact, rely on a measure of chance. But before Darwin, no such explanation was available. That nature reflected divine wisdom seemed obvious, at least among those who attentively considered and contemplated it, and out of this idea came a hybrid of science and religion called "natural theology." Natural theology is sometimes depicted as religion's desperate attempt to cling to the coattails of science. Although that description may fit in some cases, a little perspective is in order. At the time when Hooke peered through his microscope, what we now call science had produced few if any tangible benefits to society. Its virtuosos were more often satirized than lionized. (Hooke was mercilessly lampooned on the London stage as "Dr. Gimcrack.") Through the early years of modern science, the link with religion helped legitimize the investigation of nature as a serious and worthwhile endeavor.

In Before Darwin: Reconciling God and Nature, Keith Thomson chronicles the changing fortunes of natural theology from its first flowering in the work of John Ray to its fatal (or, depending on your point of view, near-fatal) encounter with Darwinian evolution. Thomson, an emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Oxford, focuses particularly on the work of English cleric William Paley. It is an apt choice not only because Paley's book Natural Theology is generally considered the definitive work in the genre, but because of the book's impact on one of its readers: the young Charles Darwin (2).

Although Paley was no scientist, he was a skilled logician and a zealous compiler of biological facts. He is most famous for the analogy of the watch, which appeared in the introduction of his book. Suppose one happened to find a watch upon the ground, he wrote. Would not its intricate mechanism imply "that the watch must have had a maker...who comprehended its construction, and designed its use"? Nature, so the argument went, is vastly more complex and perfect than any human contrivance. (Hooke's microscope had already revealed how pathetically crude even the finest needles were compared to the appendages of a common flea.) Reason leads us to the inevitable conclusion that nature must also have a maker, but one infinitely wiser and more skilled than a human watchmaker. In other words, not just a creator, but a Creator.

This is the argument from design, which philosophers have generally found unconvincing. But if Darwin, who encountered Paley's book as a student, was typical, most readers found the logic ironclad. "Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid," confessed Darwin in his autobiography. His enthusiasm was to fade, of course, with momentous consequences.

What Paley saw as the biggest threat to his brand of natural theology, Thomson notes, were the atheistic theories of evolution bandied about by Erasmus Darwin (Charles's grandfather) and other unorthodox thinkers. Paley's dispute with them did not exactly constitute a clash between science and religion, because these mystical ideas were scarcely more scientific than Paley's. And when Charles Darwin came up with a theory of evolution that did meet the standards of science, he probably borrowed as much from Paley as from previous evolutionists. Thomson argues persuasively that Darwin likely first encountered Thomas Malthus's grim statistics on population growth in Paley's book. But where Paley saw the weeding out of unfit variants as a force of stability, Darwin saw it instead as a mechanism of evolutionary change.

According to Thomson, it was principally Darwin's theory that, by removing the necessity of a designer, doomed natural theology. In this sense, Before Darwin is a fairly conventional Darwin-versus-the-theologians account of the relationship between science and religion. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce even makes his obligatory appearance to be smitten in debate by Thomas Henry Huxley. But Thomson shows that there is more to the story. Whereas most modern readers of Natural Theology probably don't venture much beyond the opening pages and the watch metaphor, Thomson sifts through Paley's entire argument. In looking for purpose and design in every aspect of the world, even human misery and the worst social inequality, Paley presented an image of God as a compassionless technocrat. Natural theologians had long been criticized for emphasizing God the Creator over God the Redeemer. Paley's book nowhere mentions Jesus. When Darwin grieved over the death of his beloved daughter at the age of ten, Paley's watchmaker God was cold comfort at best. It was this, as much as any intellectual argument, that undermined Darwin's Christian faith. Natural theology's theology was ultimately as unsatisfying as its science.

Thomson summarily dismisses the efforts of William Whewell and others to reconcile evolution and theology, stating flatly that "Although many tried, it was not possible to enlist natural selection on the side of the angels by construing it as the result of God-given natural laws." I wish the author had allowed Whewell, right or wrong, to say his piece. In a book subtitled "Reconciling God and Nature," evolution's friends across the aisle deserve the same consideration as its enemies.

Thomson devotes only a few pages to the modern-day incarnation of natural theology, the intelligent design movement. This is enough. The answers to their arguments are basically the same as the answers to Paley's. But that is what makes Before Darwin a timely book, as the perennial debates about science and religion go on and on.

References and Notes

     The quote appears in S. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996).
> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; W. Paley, Natural Theology: Or, Evidence of the Existence and Attributes <p>