Owen Gingerich - Science and Religion

Science and Religion

Since he is a theist as well as a historian of science and a cosmologist, Gingerich has been asked several times to comment on matters concerning the interplay between science and faith. One of these, Intelligent design, he calls an issue with “immense incomprehension from both the friends and foes.” On the one hand, he says that it is unfortunate that there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction among its critics that I.D. is simply Young Earth creationism in disguise. On the other hand, he says that, while I.D. supporters make a good case for a coherent understanding of the nature of the cosmos,

they fall short in providing any mechanisms for the efficient causes that primarily engage scientists in our age. I.D. does not explain the temporal or geographical distribution of species, or the intricate relationships of the DNA coding. I.D. is interesting as a philosophical idea, but it does not replace the scientific explanations that evolution offers.

Gingerich believes “there is a God as a designer, who happens to be using the evolutionary process to achieve larger goals – which are, as far as we human beings can see, self-consciousness and conscience.” He has written that “I ... believe in intelligent design, lowercase ‘i’ and ‘d’. But I have trouble with Intelligent Design – uppercase ‘I’ and ‘D’ – a movement widely seen as anti-evolutionist.” He indicated that teleological arguments, such as the apparent fine tuning of the universe, can count as evidence, but not proof, for the existence of God. He said that “a common-sense and satisfying interpretation of our world suggests the designing hand of a superintelligence.”

Accepting the common descent of species, Gingerich is a theistic evolutionist. Therefore, he does not accept metaphysical naturalism, writing that

Most mutations are disasters, but perhaps some inspired few are not. Can mutations be inspired? Here is the ideological watershed, the division between atheistic evolution and theistic evolution, and frankly it lies beyond science to prove the matter one way or the other. Science will not collapse if some practitioners are convinced that occasionally there has been creative input in the long chain of being.

Gingerich’s beliefs have sometimes resulted in criticism from young earth creationists, who dissent from the view that the universe is billions of years old. Gingerich has responded, in part, by saying that “the great tapestry of science is woven together with the question ‘how?’” while the biblical account and faith “addresses entirely different questions: not the how, but the motivations of the ‘Who’.”