Science, Lies and...Other Stuff

Today, it is widely accepted among historians of science that religious belief (in particular, Christianity) has had a positive influence on the rise and development of modern science, since the late medieval period. This thesis is sometimes called the ‘Whitehead thesis’, because Alfred North Whitehead was one of the earliest prominent proponents of this view. This thesis is neatly summarised by science historian Gary Ferngren:

While some historians had always regarded the Draper-White thesis [see below] as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule. (Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, p. ix)

Whitehead’s view is in direct contrast to the ‘conflict thesis’ originally put forward by chemist John William Draper in his History of Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and historian Andrew Dickson White in his History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), both of which claimed that religion had retarded the advance of science. Historians of science now recognise that what Draper and White wrote was almost completely false – composed largely of historical exaggeration and fabrication of examples of conflict, while ignoring the positive aspects of the relationship between science and religion over the centuries.

A couple of years back, atheist polemicist and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne wrote a blog post entitled ‘Did Christianity (and other religions) promote the rise of science?’ (which I only read recently). This post attacked contemporary historians of science as ‘accomodationists’ to religion. Instead, he promoted the ‘conflict thesis’. This is not surprising, considering the number of atheist polemicists in the new atheist camp who have also chosen to ignore history – in the pursuit of ‘reason’ and ‘truth’, of course. In his article, Coyne gives eleven sub-arguments in support of his larger argument against the Whitehead thesis. Below I quote Coyne’s arguments word-for-word and respond to each of them. My responses are in dark blue.

Coyne writes:

1. Even were it [the Whitehead thesis] true, it doesn’t in any way support the truth claims of Christianity or any other religion.

True, but no one has ever claimed that the positive relationship between Christianity and science proves the core claims of Christianity. Rather, this historical point is used to refute the claim (commonly made by atheists, like Coyne) that science and religion are incompatible. This claim is frequently supported by appeals to the historical 'war' between science and theology. However, this 'conflict' or 'warfare' interpretation of the historical relationship between science and Christian theology is false, as the historical evidence shows. The rational defense of theism is called natural theology, not natural science. Atheists like Coyne frequently confuse the philosophical question of God's existence with scientific questions about the nature of physical reality and tend to assume that answering scientific questions about the structure and development of the universe will automatically lead to the expulsion of God. Because of this they tend to automatically assume that there cannot be any positive relationship, historical or philosophical, between the physical sciences and theology. It is this assumption that has driven the pseudo-historical claim that science and religion are at war.

2. Christianity was around for a millennium without much science being done; “modern” science really started as a going concern in the 17th century. Why did that take so long if Christianity was so important in fostering science?

Actually, Coyne asks an interesting historical question here – one that deserves further study. Part of the answer is that the technology necessary for certain types of scientific progress (e.g. in astronomy) did not exist until the late middle ages. Also, the Indian-Arabic numeral system, which was essential in order for the advances in calculus and other areas of mathematics made by Newton and others, did not come to Europe until the late 10th century. One of the earliest Christian scholars to advocate the use of the Indian-Arabic numeral system was Gerbert of Aurillac, who later went on to become Pope Sylvester II, nicknamed in his own lifetime 'The Scientist Pope' for his advanced knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. (See Nancy Marie Brown's The Abacus and the Cross, for an excellent biography of Gerbert.) Advances in mathematics after this period were essential for later scientific progress. Prior to this, mathematicians and scientists were limited by the Roman numeral system. (Note: Historians of science are not offering a single-cause explanation of the origins of science, when they explain the positive relationship between Christian theology and the rise of modern science. Rather, the theistic worldview of the earliest scientists, plus the availability of certain ideas, methods of reasoning and technologies made science possible.) 

Another part of that answer is that contemporary historians of science do not date the beginning of the scientific 'revolution' to the 17th century, as Coyne does, but, instead, have recently analysed crucial advances made during the High Middle Ages, such as the creation of universities in the twelfth century, the influx of Greek learning back into Europe from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, plus the advances mentioned above. So the origins of modern science can, instead, be dated from the 12th-14th centuries, not the 17th. As microbiologist and science journalist Alex Berezow and historian James Hannam point out in their critique of Coyne's article:

"Actually, historians start the Western scientific tradition with the “12th Century Renaissance” 500 years before Galileo. If you want to know why there were not many people doing natural philosophy before that, the answer includes words like “barbarian invasions,” “collapse of civilization,” “Huns,” “Goths,” and “Vikings.” The fact that some scientific knowledge survived the upheaval after the fall of the Roman Empire was largely due to the Church."

Note that the reason why Europe did not develop a scientific culture earlier has nothing to do with Christianity blocking intellectual progress, but to do with the political and economic upheaval of the early middle ages, which in turn was due largely to mass migration, climate change and plague. Along with Berezow and Hannam's article, I would also recommend to readers that they take a look at mathematician and historian James Franklin's article 'The Renaissance Myth', for a critique of the idea that there were no significant intellectual and technological advancements prior to the 'Renaissance' and Scientific 'Revolution'.

However, the reader should note that Coyne doesn’t ask his question seeking an answer. Rather, he is following the increasingly annoying trend in contemporary society to ask a question rhetorically, assuming that no answer could possibly be forthcoming. New atheists like Coyne use rhetorical questions all the time as a substitute for argument. Asking a rhetorical question often gives the appearance of having superior understanding, but it typically hides ignorance – in this case Coyne's historical ignorance. A rhetorical question is NOT an argument. An argument is an argument (obviously); questions serve a different function – to further inquiry and foster critical thinking. This misuse of questions is, perhaps, one of the few things that is 'new' about the new atheism; and, arguably, part of what makes the new atheism less intellectually interesting than the 'old' atheism of Nietzsche, Hume, etc. (Though, to be fair, Nietzsche also used rhetorical questions frequently, such as his famous quip that, if God inspired the New Testament writers '...why is it written in such awful Greek?' Apparently, he thought this an unanswerable objection.)

3. If you think of science as rational and empirical investigation of the natural world, it originated not with Christianity but with the ancient Greeks, and was also promulgated for a while by Islam.

This would not help the common atheist claim that science and religion are incompatible – rather it would show that science might be broadly compatible with a variety of religious belief systems, so I’m not sure why Coyne is making this argument. More importantly, if one does define science as the rational and empirical study of the natural (physical) world, then the ancient Greek world (and, sadly, the Medieval Islamic world, as well) did not conduct as much science as was done in late Medieval Europe. Empirical investigation of theories, with an emphasis on controlled experiment, was not that common in the ancient Greek world, and the greatness of the medieval Islamic world was that it combined the collective knowledge of Byzantium, North Africa and the former Persian empire, and wrote extensive commentaries on these works, e.g., Averroes commentary on the physics of Aristotle. Muslim scholars had access to the best scholarship in the world up to that point, in a time when Europe suffered a period (i.e., between 500-850) of cultural stagnation as the result of a variety of factors not associated with Christianity (political instability, widespread violence as the result of mass migration, disease, crop failure due to a decline in global temperature, etc.). 

However, it must be acknowledged that both ancient Greece and the medieval Arabic world contributed in several significant ways to the rise of modern science. I already mentioned the introduction of the Arabic numeral system to Europe, brought across Asia from India by Arabic traders and introduced to Europe through the medium of Arabic medieval scholarship - most likely via Andalusia. Islamic scholars also preserved ancient Greek and Greco-Roman learning, occasionally adding to it, particularly in the areas of philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. The ancient Greeks introduced to Western culture, among other things, the desire for the systematization of knowledge (exemplified in the works of Aristotle), which included not just the physical sciences, but logic, medicine, metaphysics, ethics, theology, etc. To acknowledge this fact is not to take away from the crucial contribution of medieval European culture. It seems to me that Coyne's argument here is little more than a red herring. You cannot take away an athlete’s medal on the grounds that that athlete has had significant assistance from a coaching team with a lot of experience. You cannot take away from the significance of (Christian) Europe’s contribution to the rise of science by pointing out that Christendom benefited from advances made by previous cultures. You can, however, acknowledge the significant contributions of those other cultures - and not just the ancient Greeks and medieval Islamic world, but also Byzantium, and - to a lesser extent - China and India, as well.

3. [Richard] Carrier makes the point that there was no scientific revolution in the eastern half of the Christian world. Why was that?

Another interesting question, though one that is somewhat misguided. Some significant advances in thought and scientific practice did actually occur in Byzantium during this period (and before), but those were later either lost or (more commonly) enveloped into Islamic culture after the conquest of Byzantium. Again, Berezow and Hannam point out: 

"What’s truly amazing is just how much science early Christians were doing. John Philoponus (c. 490 – c. 570) was one of the first Christian professors in Alexandria. Historians today are stunned by his achievements. As a Christian, Philoponus was happy to ditch pagan orthodoxy and start afresh. So he was the first to actually do the experiment of dropping stones, proving Aristotle wrong about falling objects. Alas, shortly after he died, Egypt was invaded by the Persians and then by the Arabs. Alexandria lost its status as an important center of learning, while the Byzantine Empire went into siege mode as it fought an existential struggle for survival. Not a great environment for science!"

So the question really is: Why did not a scientific revolution occur in the medieval Islamic world that inherited the intellectual corpus of eastern Christendom? Now, that is a truly tricky question to answer.

4. Another Carrier point: geometry was invented by polytheists (ancient Greeks); do we give polytheism credit for geometry, then?

Well, we give polytheists the credit (the one who actually invented geometry, that is), but not polytheism. Exactly, why the early Greeks began to investigate the world is unclear (mostly because we know comparatively little about pre-Socratic thinkers). We know that, in some cases, religious beliefs had ties to certain advances in thought - including the invention (or discovery?) or geometry. The polytheistic beliefs of these early thinkers may have helped inspire them, but it is also possible that it was the polytheistic culture that ultimately ensured that a true scientific movement did not originate in ancient Greece (as sociologist Rodney Stark has argued in his historical study For the Glory of God). I should also point out that a number of the greatest pagan thinkers were theists, rather than your typical pagan polytheists, e.g. Xenophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus (see David Conway's The Rediscovery of Wisdom for some details). 

Again, however, spreading some of the credit around does not take away from the crucial advances made in medieval Europe. More to the point, it is not surprising that some cultures made advancements prior to the rise of modern science, but what arose in late-medieval Europe was a system of thought and a systematic approach to the study of nature, not just particular advances. Ancient Greece's greatest and most enduring contributions to Western civilization were philosophical, rather than scientific.

5. Religion has of course also repressed the search for knowledge. Not only do we have the cases of Galileo and Bruno, but also the active discouragement of the use of reason by many church fathers, especially Martin Luther, who made statements like this: “Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” And freethinkers like Spinoza were regularly persecuted by religion (Judaism in his case.)

Luther also said: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.” and “so it is with human reason, which strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it”. The former quote is attributed to Luther when he was at the Council of Worms (note the reference to ‘clear reason’). One can multiply Luther quotes on ‘reason’ and find seemingly contradictory statements, if you choose to quote Luther out of context, as Coyne (and many other neo-atheists) do. Luther’s attitude toward reason was actually quite nuanced. A crucial point that needs to be made about Luther is that, when he criticises reason, it is inevitably in the context of noting the limits of reason or the corrupting effect that human sinfulness can have upon the intellect. This is an important issue to keep in mind when discussing Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) theological attitudes toward reason. The question of whether, and how much, human evil can corrupt the intellect (technically known as the 'noetic effects of sin' in theological circles) is of great importance in theological discussions of the relationship between faith and reason. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the Medieval philosopher-theologians, had a high view of human reason and argued that the noetic effects of sin did not prevent humans from reasoning to the existence of God or thinking through other philosophical and theological questions. Martin Luther took a more mixed view of the issue, believing that human evil frequently corrupts reason, making it impossible from humans to 'reach for' God without the divine reaching down to them first. He did not, however, view reason as totally useless or harmful, hence his reference to 'clear reason' in the quote above. If, at this point, the enlightened secularist, with his/her high view of reason, feels compelled to roll his/her eyes at the 'obvious superstition' of believing that human evil can corrupt the intellect, might I point out that the twentieth century gives ample evidence of the ways in which this is possible. Let me just mention a few names: Hitler, Stalin, Mao. These were not stupid or crazy men, they were men whose minds were filled with evil and false ideas.

I should also point out that Luther was not a 'church father', a term that Coyne clearly does not understand. The term 'church father' refers to a group of early Christian writers whose thinking shaped Christian theology, e.g. Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesaria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, John of Damascus, etc. Considering the formative influence of these thinkers, one would think that Coyne would wish to quote them in support of his claim, but he does not, instead referring only to Luther, who lived many centuries later. The truth is that early Christian thinkers debated extensively the relationship between faith/revelation and reason, with some church fathers criticising Greek learning and other defending it. In the end those who held to a high view of human reason, and its importance, won out over those who took a more fideistic view. This high view of reason continued throughout the middle ages, with the occasional controversy, but those who took a more rationalistic view of faith, e.g., Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, typically won the disputes. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, these debates began anew among Protestant theologians, with reason, again, having its strong defenders. 

If Coyne were at all familiar with the history of Christian thought (which he is not) he would know that many of the greatest Christian thinkers had a high view of reason. Paul, Origen, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, William of Ockham (admittedly, less so than some others), John Calvin, etc. all held reason in high regard. It would be safe to say that – throughout the history of ancient and medieval Christianity – there was a culture of respect for rational thought. Sure, there are obvious counter-examples, but one can pick out obvious counter-examples to every major historical trend. That doesn’t prove the trend false, it just shows that history is highly complex and that some individuals don’t always follow historical trends.

Another point: Coyne’s quote comes from among Luther’s later writings. It might be ungracious to say so, but in later life Luther went a little nuts, as the result of growing paranoia (because so many people wanted him dead) and decades of chronic illnesses. Late Luther (as opposed to Early Luther) was not a healthy man, and it’s a bit cheap for atheists to quote him exclusively – particularly when they quote him out of context - instead of studying his thought more fully.

Richard Dawkins tried a similar trick in The God Delusion, and was rightly chastised by theology historian Alister McGrath (who certainly has a much greater understanding of Luther’s views than Dawkins or Coyne ever would). McGrath noted, in response to Dawkins:

What Luther was actually pointing out was that human reason could never fully take in a central theme of the Christian faith—that God should give humanity the wonderful gift of salvation without demanding they do something for him first. Left to itself, human common sense would conclude that you need to do something to earn God's favor—an idea that Luther regarded as compromising the gospel of divine graciousness, making salvation something that you earned or merited.

In other words, Luther’s comment (at least the one quoted by Dawkins) was in the context of discussion over the role of good works in salvation. McGrath continues:

Dawkins's inept engagement with Luther shows how Dawkins abandons even the pretense of rigorous evidence-based scholarship. Anecdote is substituted for evidence; selective Internet trawling for quotes displaces rigorous and comprehensive engagement with primary sources. In this book, Dawkins throws the conventions of academic scholarship to the winds; he wants to write a work of propaganda and consequently treats the accurate rendition of religion as an inconvenient impediment to his chief agenda, which is the intellectual and cultural destruction of religion. It's an unpleasant characteristic that he shares with other fundamentalists. (The Dawkins Delusion?, pp. 23-24)

Ditto for Coyne. It is clear that Coyne has taken this quote out of context, off the internet. Actually, Coyne’s quote is not a direct quote at all, but an amalgam of a variety of quotes he probably took off a Wikiquotes page that provides no context for the quotes. (My own Luther quotes above were taken from the same page, just to show how easy it is.)

Finally, Coyne mentions Galileo and Bruno. Bruno was not a scientist and he wasn’t burned at the stake in the cause of science. One might as well say that William Tyndale is a martyr to science, since the Catholic church wanted him dead as a heretic. (He was ultimately burned at the stake - after being strangled to death - on the order of Henry VIII, in England, for translating and distributing the Bible in English.) The Catholic church’s practice of burning (or otherwise persecuting) ‘heretics’ was appalling - whether or not they were actually heretics. None of this, however, is linked to science, which was generally treated as a discipline of great value by Christian thinkers, even if they occasionally disagreed with or were sceptical about the conclusions of certain controversial scientists. As for Galileo, this case is much more complicated than polemicists like Coyne know – again because they are ignorant of the historical details. See here and here for more accurate accounts of what happened to Galileo.

Berezow and Hannam note, in response to Coyne's comment here:

"It is truly amazing how many alleged instances of Christianity holding back science turn out to be completely bogus. Legends that the Church banned zero, fought lightning rods or anesthesia, excommunicated Halley’s Comet, and forbade human dissection all turn out to be false. The most widely cited example – the persecution of Galileo – was as much about politics as science. (Galileo purposefully insulted the Pope, which was not a wise move. For more on Bruno, the trial of Galileo, and a whole lot more, see James Hannam’s book, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution.)"

6. There was and still is, of course, opposition to science by Christians. The greatest opponent of biology’s greatest theory—evolution—has always been Christianity. 

Firstly, considering the fact that Darwinian evolution was first conceived centuries after the rise of modern science, any conflict that may occur between Darwinism and the book of Genesis cannot really be used to refute the historical point that Christianity had a significant positive influence on the rise of modern science. To suggest an intrinsic centuries-long historical conflict between science and Christianity because of Darwin is clearly anachronistic. (This was the mistake made by Draper and White.)

Secondly, the main argument made by historians is that belief in a Creator-God had a strong positive influence on the rise of modern science. Obviously, not every aspect of historical Christian belief has to be consistent with current trends in modern science in order for this claim to be true.

7. If religion promulgated the search for knowledge, it also gave rise to erroneous, revelation-based “scientific” conclusions that surely impeded progress. Those include creation ex nihilo, the Great Flood, a geocentric universe, and so on.

It is true that Christians promoted ideas that turned out to be false – the Global Flood. However, the geocentric view of the universe originated in ancient Greece, not in Christendom, and the Christian world accepted the geocentric model initially because of the authority of Ptolemy and Aristotle. One might accuse Christians of that period of sometimes uncritically accepting Greek ideas handed down to them, but not of originating those ideas in order to 'prove' the Bible true. Again, a quote from McGrath:

The biblical exegesis and theological analysis of that period [medieval period] tend to reflect the unconscious incorporation of Aristotelian ideas on the basis of the implicit assumption that they were “correct”. As a result, there was intense resistance to new approaches to biblical interpretation which called these settled Aristotelian propositions into question. Through a subtle and largely unconscious process or reasoning, a text was originally interpreted in the light of Aristotelian presuppositions subsequently became regarded as proof of these Aristotelian presuppositions. (A Scientific Theology, vol. 1, pp. 49-50)

Medieval theologians' acceptance of geocentrism was not ‘revelation-based’, but based on the science of the time. The science was wrong, so the theologians were wrong. It happens.

Additionally, creation ex nihilo appears to have been confirmed, rather than refuted, by modern science, as William Lane Craig has argued. Coyne is simply letting his materialist bias get the better of him here, assuming the truth of ideas he should actually be arguing for.

One last point: There is a fundamental difference between accepting and defending false ideas and models and being ‘anti-science’. Many false ideas have been promoted in the history of science. To conclude that promoting false ideas and models is always anti-scientific would mean that every generation of scientists has been anti-scientific in some respect. In fact, using this definition of 'anti-science', it is highly likely that scientists today - including Coyne and other 'scientific atheists' - are promoting anti-scientific ideas. Who knew that Coyne was actually 'anti-science'? Of course, the idea that modern scientists are 'anti-science' would be received as a ludicrous claim by Coyne himself. Coyne really needs to think through the implications of his arguments. 

8.  Early scientists were Christians, at least in the west, because everyone was a Christian then.  You would have been an apostate, or burnt at the stake, had you denied that faith.  If you’re going to give Christianity credit for science, you have to give it credit for nearly everything, including art, architecture, music, and so on.

Might I ask in response: So, if there was/is a fundamental conflict between science and religion, then why did science arise at all at that time, if ‘everyone was a Christian then’? Surely this would have prevented the rise of modern science, if Coyne’s ‘conflict thesis’ was correct. But it did arise in a Christian culture, and that cannot be dismissed as accidental, as Coyne seems to be trying to do. It is not simply that early scientists happened to be Christians, but that the culture in which early science arose was Christian, that is historically significant here. Because of the prominence of certain aspects of Christian thought, early scientists were inspired to study the universe. What we do know is this: (1) Medieval Europe was Christian, (2) early scientists were inspired by their religious beliefs in their search of scientific knowledge, (3) there is no evidence that, were society dramatically different at the time (i.e., more secular), science would have originated anyway – or perhaps originated earlier.

I should point out that Newton and other early scientists were not religious 'just because everyone was religious' as Coyne (and numerous other atheist polemicists) have argued. If that were the case, then Newton would just have been a nominal Christian - i.e., he would have admitted to being a Christian, but would have had very little intellectual interest in his own religion or any interest in defending it. That is what being a 'cultural Christian' is, and there have been plenty of those throughout history - including in Galileo and Newton's time. In reality, though, Newton was an avid defender of theism against the sceptics of his day, and had an active intellectual interest in his Christian beliefs. Again, as Berezow and Hannam point out:

 "What is truly interesting is how many great scientists were intensely religious, even by the standards of their own time. Johannes Kepler’s scientific manuscripts include him breaking spontaneously into prayer. Blaise Pascal is as famous for being an apologist for Christianity as he is a mathematician and physicist. Isaac Newton was so religious he spent more time on biblical chronology than physics. Michael Faraday was a member of an ascetic group called the Sandemanians. And these are just a handful of examples. There are many more."

In fact, Neil deGrasse Tyson has recently (erroneously) argued that Newton was too religious, and that his religiosity retarded his scientific curiosity. Coyne makes a similar claim (see below). It seems then that new atheists want to have it both ways: Newton, and others like him, were only religious because 'everyone was religious then' (in other words, his religiosity was cultural, rather than personal or intellectual), but then they want to claim that Newton was 'too religious', blaming Newton's (alleged)  scientific failings on his theistic beliefs. This is bad history.

Coyne further objects: “If you’re going to give Christianity credit for science, you have to give it credit for nearly everything, including art, architecture, music, and so on.” Yes, exactly. Finally, Coyne says something sensible, and he (bizarrely!) thinks it’s an argument against the positive influence of Christianity! Christianity has had a tremendous positive influence upon most aspects of European culture, and not just those mentioned by Coyne above. In fact, there has been a plethora of excellent books published in recent decades making this point, including Tom Holland's Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, Edward Grant's God and Reason in the Middle Ages, James Hannam's God's Philosphers, Seb Falk's The Light Ages, David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, Rodney Stark's For the Glory of God.

9.  Islam began as a science-supportive regime, but lost its impetus when the faith around the 16th century when religious authorities began repressing a “western” mode of inquiry. This anti-Western attitude may explain the minimal achievements of science in modern Islamic nations.

Which, if true, has nothing to do with the relationship of science and Christianity. All Coyne's comment here does is to help give at least a partial explanation of why science didn’t originate in the Middle East – authoritarian figures began to suppress rational inquiry. (One suspects that politics was also playing a key role here, considering the interrelationship between politics and theology in the Islamic world was even stronger that the corresponding relationship between politics and theology in Europe.) Does Coyne think that this is an argument against the positive influence of Christianity on the rise of science? If so, then he is very confused. Perhaps he thinks that the authoritarian repression of thought is the hallmark of all religions at all time everywhere, so that religion and science are incompatible. If so, his previous comments about the contributions of Islamic thinkers to science would be false. Again, we find that Coyne hasn’t really thought through the implications of his argument.

10. At present nearly half of science [sic] are atheists, and the argument that religion motivates science can no longer stand. The major achievements of science, including relativity, evolution, and modern molecular biology, were achieved by non-theists. Indeed, Jim Watson told me that his and Crick’s drive to find the structure of DNA was largely motivated by a desire to show that the “secret of life”—the replicating molecule that serves as a recipe for bodies—was pure chemistry, with not a trace of the divine in it.

Relativity was discovered by Einstein, who did actually believe in God, contrary to the claims of neo-atheists like Richard Dawkins and Coyne. As Einstein put it:

I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. (Cited in Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion, p. 48. Emphasis added.)

And

My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. (The Quotable Einstein, p. 195-6)

It is clear, then, that Einstein himself reasoned that belief in a rational Super-Intellect (God) is still necessary to explain the orderliness of the cosmos, as Newton argued some 300 years earlier, Aquinas some 700 years earlier, and Aristotle some 2200 years earlier. Einstein is not, of course, the only major theistic scientist of the twentieth century to have reasoned in this way. (Note that Einstein's argument is philosophical and distinct from the historical claim that Christian theism helped to inspire the rise of modern science.)

Coyne is correct that roughly half of all scientists today are non-theists, but that also means that almost half are still theists. This is despite the claims of influential atheist and agnostic scientists throughout the 19^th and 20^th century that science has killed religion – and despite the dramatic changes in Western culture that has produced strong hostility toward Christianity (and religious belief in general) in areas of society like academia, the media and popular culture. 

Also, atheist scientists today live in the shadow of the great scientific advances of the past, and have a great cultural and intellectual debt to theistic scientists of the past – many of whose scientific and philosophical assumptions they have adopted while rejecting the worldview (i.e., theism) that provided the rational foundation for such assumptions. Certainly, an atheist today can recognize the practical benefits of the scientific method, but that doesn’t disprove the point that science originated within a Christian culture and was inspired by Christian beliefs.

Many atheists today accept without question the orderliness and rational intelligibility of the universe, but a materialist view of nature struggles (in fact, in my view, completely fails) in its attempt to explain why the universe should be orderly and rational at all. ‘That’s just the way it is – a brute fact!’ is the most common response, or ‘The universe popped into existence without a cause and the orderliness of the universe developed after that!’ is another, or ‘It just had to be that way, there is no explanation beyond that!’ is a third. None of these explanations would have impressed the founders of modern science. Such answers would more likely have led to scepticism about the orderliness and rational intelligibility of the universe. If any philosophy is anti-science, then materialism is anti-science. As Richard Swinburne put it:

What is a law of nature? (This is not an issue faced by any of my critics.) To say that it is a law of nature that all bodies behave in a certain way…is, I suggest, just to say that every body of physical necessity behaves in that way…And it is simpler that this uniformity arises from the action of one substance [God], which causes them all to behave in this way, rather than to suppose that all bodies behaving in the same uniform way is an ultimate brute fact. (‘Design Defended,’ Think, Spring 2004, p. 14.)

Even Charles Darwin struggled to explain the orderliness of the world without reference to God:

[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility or conceiving of this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause, having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man… (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, pp. 92-3)

Darwin was, of course, an agnostic, but not because he solved this problem. Rather it was because of the problem of evil (particularly the death of his daughter) that challenged his belief in God. Interestingly, then, Darwin acknowledged that the world which science studies demands inference to a First Cause, his reason for doubting theism being primarily non-scientific – a moral objection to a God that would allow evil to exist. Atheists may object that Darwin’s theory provides the strongest argument against theism, but Darwin’s reasoning above goes beyond the biological origin of species to the ‘immense and wonderful universe’, which cannot be explained by Darwinism. Richard Dawkins’ dreams (expressed in The God Delusion) of a theory in physics that would act as Darwin’s theory does in biology are just that – dreams. Why? Because any scientific theory would have to pre-suppose a more fundamental level of orderliness (science, after all, is about explaining things in terms of 'laws of nature'). That orderliness would still require explanation, and (as Darwin and Einstein noted) the only truly plausible explanation – that is one that does not ultimately rely on ‘chance’ or 'physical necessity' or ‘nothing’, none of which are particularly rational as ultimate explanations – is ‘a First Cause, having an intelligent mind’. Note, again: This is a philosophical argument that is distinct from the historical issue here.

Finally, I should point out, in response to the reference to Watson and Crick, that Coyne and Watson (and apparently Crick, too) have a very crude understanding of philosophical theology and of science itself. Science studies that structure and development of the physical cosmos. The methods of science are tailored to study this physical structure only. As such, science cannot answer such questions as: 'Is there a God?' or 'Do I have an immortal soul?' Those are philosophical questions. So the idea that a scientific description of DNA somehow excludes the possibility of the existence of God or proves a materialistic worldview is just confused. The same confusion continues in Coyne's eleventh objection.

11. All progress in science, whether ancient or modern, came from ignoring or rejecting the idea of divine intervention. Even if theories were inspired by thoughts of God, they were substantiated or disproven by tacitly assuming a godless universe—that is, by employing methodological naturalism. Religion has only impeded that kind of investigation and, in fact, has never come up with a theory on its own that had scientific credibility.  Newton, for instance, couldn’t explain regular planetary motion, and had to invoke divine intervention (so much for God helping science!) until Laplace came along and showed that orbital irregularities could be explained in a purely naturalistic way. (As Laplace supposedly replied to Napoleon, who had read Kepler’s book on celestial mechanics and inquired about the absence of God in that tome, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”)

Actually, progress in science started with the assumption of one great ‘divine intervention’ – creation ex nihilo. It was the belief that the universe was created by a rational Intelligence that inspired early scientists to seek out rational explanations of the cosmos. This, clearly, is not an example of ‘methodological naturalism’. I should point out that there is a big difference between the common sense approach of attempting to explain ordinary natural events (e.g. planetary motion) as the result of other natural events, and the metaphysical assumption that God doesn’t exist and that the universe just exists, unexplained by anything beyond itself. Actually, what Coyne is trying to do here is to turn a common sense methodological principle (explain natural events by appeal to natural things) into a grand metaphysical system (nature is all that exists). You can’t get one from the other. A methodological principle does not a metaphysical system make. Again, Coyne shows his ignorance (this time of philosophy).

Coyne is talking about miracles, of course, not just creation. I must confess a certain scepticism about the miraculous, myself. (Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has defended the rationality of belief in miracles and responded to the alleged contradiction between laws of nature and miracles.) Despite my personal scepticism, I must admit that, historically, belief in miracles has never led to the retardation of science. Well, what about the example of Newton, cited by Coyne, which had to be corrected by Laplace? Actually, Laplace was not the first to criticise Newton’s inference to God, here. Theologians contemporary to Newton criticised him first – on theological grounds. They pointed out that to assume that every few hundred years God would need to intervene in order to fix the problem of Mercury's motion clearly implies that God had made an elementary blunder in designing the solar system. “Clearly it is better theology to argue that we don’t yet know why Mercury behaves as it does, than to reduce God to a mechanic endlessly fixing his own flawed creation.” That was their reasoning, anyway. Neither Laplace (nor methodological naturalism) was needed to make the point. More importantly, Newton did actually attempt to solve the problem, but lacked the mathematical tools to do so - tools that were available in Laplace's day. (As noted above Neil deGrasse Tyson made a similar argument to that made by Coyne. See Australian astronomer Dr. Luke Barnes' interesting critique of Tyson's erroneous historiography: Parts One and Two.) Coyne is curiously silent on the topic of Newton's attempts to resolve the problem, giving the false impression that Newton just threw his hands up and cried 'God did it!' But this is not what happened. Again, historical ignorance trumps evidence and clear reasoning in Coyne's polemic.

When he mentions 'methodological naturalism', Coyne is, of course, talking about the philosophy of science - not science, nor history. Philosophical discussion of the methods and boundaries of science - and its relevance to the existence of God - is distinct from the history of science and religion. So, Coyne has actually, at the end of his critique, moved beyond historical argumentation without recognizing this shift. It is fascinating how new atheists change the subject mid-argument and think that this improves their argument somehow. Coyne shifts the discussion from the purely historical claim that late-Medieval Christian theology had a strong - positive - causal influence on the rise of modern science to a philosophical discussion on the boundaries of scientific inquiry, in the process implying that 'methodological naturalism' in contemporary science excludes the possibillity of theistic beliefs having a positive influence on the rise of modern science. The two subjects are, however, distinct.

Coyne is not the only new atheist to use changing subjects mid-argument as a rhetorical tactic. For example, see Sam Harris' debate with William Lane Craig on the ontology (grounding) of morals. Harris started off alright, defending his thesis that science can provide a solid basis for moral reasoning. Craig, then, pointed out several fundamental flaws in Harris' argument. Harris quickly began to move off topic, attacking religion for the evils it has committed. But the (historical) acts of religion are a completely separate issue from the (metaphysical) grounding of morals. Religion might historically have been awful and have justified (or been perverted to justify) evil acts, and yet it could still be true that the only possible rational way of grounding morality is within a theistic worldview, as Craig argued. Whether Harris shifted topics consciously or not - in order to avoid Craig's critique - this 'shifting the goalposts' does seem to be a common tendency among new atheists. 

For some philosophical discussions of the relationship of science and religion I would recommend Alvin Plantinga's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and William Lane Craig's article at his website. For a historical discussion of the same relationship I suggest you read some of these articles by historian James Hannam.