Science and Religion: Christian and Muslim Perspectives

Introduction

Introduction DAVID MARSHALL This volume is a record of the eighth Building Bridges seminar, on the theme ‘‘Science and Religion: Christian and Muslim Perspectives,’’ convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury and held from June 16 to 18, 2009, at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. The seminar, following an established Building Bridges pattern, consisted of a day of public lectures followed by two days of private sessions attended just by seminar participants, a group of Muslim and Christian scholars from several different nations. The opening address given on the first day by Archbishop Rowan Williams is included in this volume as ‘‘Building Bridges in Istanbul.’’ After some remarks on the Building Bridges dialogue process, he briefly introduces the seminar’s theme, insisting that the histories of both Christianity and Islam show that it is ‘‘a complete falsehood to suggest that there is an intrinsic hostility between the scientific worldview and religious faith.’’ The public lectures that then followed offered wide-ranging accounts of broad themes in the interface between science and religion, past and present; edited versions of some of these lectures are included in part I (‘‘Surveys’’). In his essay ‘‘Science and the Christian Tradition: A Brief Overview,’’ John Hedley Brooke notes that for historians of science ‘‘there is a wonderful richness and diversity in the relations between different sciences and different religious traditions. There is no such thing as the relationship between science and religion and there has certainly been no such thing as the relationship between science and Christianity. It has been constructed and reconstructed in many different ways within different Christian traditions and in many different social and political contexts.’’ Brooke demonstrates this richness and diversity in a survey stretching from the church fathers to the modern era. xi xii  introduction In his essay ‘‘Science and Religion in the History of Islam’’ Ahmad Dallal makes the similar point that the work of Muslim scientists in the classical period was ‘‘a complex phenomenon that does not lend itself to single track and static explanations.’’ He demonstrates how the need to determine the qibla or direction for prayer raised acute questions about the relationship between mathematical knowledge and religious authority. ‘‘The significance of the qibla debate is that precise epistemological discussions filtered down to the most sensitive matter of prayer, raising in no uncertain terms the question of intellectual authority within Islam’s most sacred space.’’ Dallal goes on to consider the work of three significant Muslim thinkers working in the interface between scientific and religious concerns: al-Bı̄rūnı̄, al-Ghazālı̄, and Fakhr alD ı̄n al-Rāzı̄. With Denis Alexander’s essay ‘‘Science and Religious Belief in the Modern World: Challenges and Opportunities,’’ the focus moves to more recent debate. He identifies three streams of thought—postmodernism, the so-called New Atheism, and fundamentalism—in each case exploring both the challenges raised for the dialogue between science and religious belief as well as the opportunities offered. Alexander concludes by echoing the sentiments of the Christian evolutionary biologist Francis Collins, who describes his work as a scientist as ‘‘a work of discovery which can also be a form of worship.’’ The focus of the private sessions on the second and third days of the seminar was the study of texts, chosen after consultation with a number of participants , which were first introduced through short plenary presentations and then discussed in small groups. Part II, ‘‘Texts and Commentaries,’’ gives a selection of the texts discussed, together with the presentations introducing them and questions for further reflection. Proceeding in chronological sequence, the first texts to be considered are from the Bible and the Qur’ān. The inclusion of scriptural texts did not arise from a view that they are in some literalist sense ‘‘about science and religion’’ but rather out of a concern to identify fundamental scriptural bearings toward God’s creation that it seemed important to consider. Because of its focus on the first chapter of the book of Genesis, Michael Welker’s lecture is included at this point, following the commentary by Ellen Davis on the biblical texts. Mustansir Mir provides comments on the Qur’ānic texts. After these scriptural texts we progress to classical Christian and Islamic authors, looking at passages from Basil of Caesaraea, Gregory of Nyssa, and introduction  xiii Augustine of Hippo (with commentary by Emmanuel Clapsis), and al-Ghazālı̄ and Ibn Rushd...