Latest / One Universe, Two Books / Subboor Ahmad: On the Intersection of Science and Faith
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to One Universe Two Books, the NAS podcast that looks at the front boundary between science and religion. Many people think there should be a high wall built between them. At least on this podcast, we're open borders. I'm Scott Turner, I'm Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, and I'm joined today by my colleague Ian Oxnavad, who is Senior Fellow. For International Affairs and Security Studies at the NAS. Hello, Ian, and say hello to our guests. How are you, Scott? Happy to be here. Well, evolution is an enduring point of conflict between science and religion, and it's not surprising that it should be, really. Evolution is not just a scientific matter, a matter of evidence, but it also has important things to say about broader issues like who we are. Our relationship with nature and how we came to be. Of course, there are various viewpoints that come to bear on these questions, and in the Western tradition, these have generally come from the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Today we're lucky to have as our guest a British Muslim, Sabur Ahmad, who has been engaged in this very issue. How can our understanding be informed by religious perspective and vice versa? The best summary I can give here about Sabor is that he's a skeptic of the prevailing Darwinian idea, and he has most recently expressed this in a book, The Death of Neo Darwinism, which is available from Sapience Publishing. Sabor lives in London. He has a bachelor's degree in engineering and a master's degree in philosophy. And currently he's studying for his doctoral degree in the philosophy of biology. He's a prolific commentator on the Darwinian idea, and he's a pointed critic of the new atheism, which is hard to distinguish from the old atheism, old wine and new bottles, you know, that kind of thing. He also has a vibrant presence on YouTube, and he often likes to venture down to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park and engage with a whole range of Points of view on matters scientific and religious. He has some interesting things to say about the relationship between Islam and the other Abrahamic religions. I would describe Sabor as a happy warrior. I've been a guest on his podcast several times, and we've always come away friends, even as we disagree with this or that point. So without further delay, let's bring in our guest today, Sabor Ahmad. Welcome, Sabor, to our podcast One Universe Two Books. And welcome. we're really glad that you're here. again, I want to thank you for hosting me in London when I was there last week. we had a great conversation and I'm really glad we can return the favor to you to bring you on to our podcast. Okay, so you're in Pakistan right now. I think between the three of us we're covering about twelve time zones. So what are you doing in Pakistan? speaker-1: I'm just here on a family visit and it was a pleasure having you in London and meeting you face to face. I come to Pakistan regularly and I have a big family here. So, you know, I l I live in the north. I live not too far from Kashmir. So a beautiful mountain. So I love driving around these neck of the woods and just looking at nature and reflecting. So it's one of my pastimes. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, enjoy the family visit while you can. it's always good to get home to family. So I introduced you as a British Muslim, and when I visited you in London, you started our conversation with some questions about how I got to where I am today. let me turn the question back on you. how is it that you came to Where you stand today on variety of issues. speaker-1: Sure. I don't think it's possible to be a reflective person except that you're going to eventually think about evolution, because evolution is the gateway to understanding nature, whether we are coming from a religious background or a secular background. So when I was young, I used to actually collect beetles. and I found out later on that's the same thing that Darwin did. And I used to think a lot about design. I used to think about science and religion as well. And I remember at school, and I I went to school in North Oxford, I remember in school there was this type of narrative about science and religion that you get in in in most schools in the UK. And then as you go into university and later on in life you realize a lot of those dichotomies about science and religion are quite misleading. And it's a lot more complex as a relationship. So my entry into this arena was over several years. And in particular, I was inspired a lot by medieval thinkers. and I believe there's a lot to learn from those thinkers, although we sometimes think of them as you know outdated and you know just out of touch. so you have obviously Thomas Aquinas, you have Kant. you have Ghazali in the Middle East. You have a lot of these thinkers who reflect about nature and they reflect about certain things which nowadays we we kind of separate out all the different fields. So we have all the different subfields in science and subfields in philosophy. But back then there was what we would call today natural philosophy or natural philosophers. So They were polymaths. They were people who were reflecting about nature and reflecting about science and reflecting reflecting about religion at the same time. And I think we've lost that a lot. And in the modern context, I would be, you know, referring to people like Perry Marshall, who I think is a natural philosopher, right? And I do believe people like Dennis Noble and others are also you know, they they're merging philosophy and evolution. And there are others who let's just say they don't stick their flag in the in either camp about where they stand in terms of their beliefs, but they definitely reinvigorate ideas on teleology, on design, on these types of things, which I think are very important. And I think anyone who's a reflective person at some point in their life, they will come across across these questions. And it's good to have a a a myriad of views that you can actually showcase to people and we can argue you know for and against each one. And I think that's going to lead to a better culture rather than the sort of culture we've had over the last two, three decades of you know new atheism and this this type of science versus religion narrative. speaker-0: yeah, so so just a a brief aside about your beetle hunting experience. I hope you never had repeated Darwin's experience of of having only two hands with three beetles, so he stuck he stuck a blister beetle in his mouth to his to his displeasure later. I don't know if you had any of that kind of experience, you know, but it's you know, when you talk about how how the culture has changed with respect to issues like design and and you know coherent function, things that have been impressing naturally historians, you know, since Aristotle really. When someone a who who's not a scientist asks me what it is I do, and I mention, well, you know, I I've written things on d on design in biology and purposefulness in biology and They look at me in astonishment and say, Well, is there any dispute actually about this? You know, and and and culturally that's one of the things that has impressed people intuitively, again, ever since Aristotle and probably the back to the pre-Socratics, you know, that if you look at life especially the living world, you see evidence of good design everywhere, you know. And you can define design quite objectively, as good match between structure and function and and you know animals or trees that are built according to good design principles that a say a mechanical engineer might come up with. And the people who ask me this are just astonished that we are actually disputing that, you know, and and and And that speaks to the kind of disconnect that you were describing between how we look at nature, how we understand nature, and how science, and I'm putting this in scare quotes, has come to insist that this is the only way that we can understand nature. and I know kind of where that came from. I don't think it's just the past twenty years or so. I don't think it's the new atheism that's that brought that in. It's been there since the mid nineteenth century, really, you know, ever since Darwin and and you know what is it about you know Darwin do think has has led to this this kind of break between what everyone understands intuitively about nature and what Darwinians say we have to, the only way that we can understand nature. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's a really important question. And you're definitely right about the history here. It's not just a few decades in the making, it goes back a few centuries. What makes a difference with Darwin, I believe, is that he provides, as Dawkins describes it, a a way of being an intellectually satisfied atheist. And I think a lot of the people who were around him at the time, they probably held on to. Some form of agnosticism or atheism before he came up with his mechanism. And his mechanism just came in at a time when there was a secularization of Europe. There was a general drift away from traditional Abrahamic values, and there was a modernization that was happening at the time as well. So I think a lot of factors came in together. And Darwin, if he Say existed in the 12th century or 13th century, probably would not have had that much of an impact in terms of at least atheism and secularism. He definitely would have had an impact in terms of obviously biological evolution, because biological evolution is you know, at least in its modern rendition, is largely dependent upon his thinking. So I think there's several historical trends which come together. And then you get this point of reflection. Peter Bowler's written some really interesting things about that at the turn of the 20th century and the sort of dialogues that were happening in the time in the biological domain. And also at the theological level, there was a lot of intersection interdisciplinary discussion amongst theologians about nature, about about religion, about what's what Darwin has actually proposed. So I think Darwin just maybe was the straw that broke the camel's back. And this was a a a type of change that was bound to happen due to perhaps just historical reasons. speaker-0: Yeah. yeah, so the the the question of how much Darwin is responsible for this is an an open one, I think. You know, the i if if you mentioned Peter Bowler and and and he has described some of the transformations that occurred around the so called eclipse of Darwinism at the around the beginning of the twentieth century. And The Darwinian idea was rescued by transforming it utterly into a strictly materialist sorting mechanism. this was where the prevalence of of genes and you know, the selection of genes took over from Darwin's own idea of natural selection of organisms or natural selection of of species. And along with that came a r a rise in a materialist reductionist point of view about evolution that I don't think Darwin fully shared. and so you know what what what happened between say the death of Charles Darwin and the emergence of the neo-Darwinian idea and the kind of materialist radically reductionist viewpoint of evolution that's that came out of the nineteen thirties. speaker-1: Yeah, I think this is a really interesting question, because you're right, Darwin did not hold on to these sorts of strict materialistic and atheistic beliefs. he was pretty adamant that nothing in his theory led to atheism. Nick Spencer's written a fantastic book on this, Darwin and God. And I think Ernst, not Ernst Heckell, was his name, known as Darwin's Bulldog. The name is speaker-0: Thomas Hunter. speaker-1: Huxley, that's right. That's right. So I believe Huxley and people like him managed to hijack the narrative. and I believe they were a lot more forceful with their atheism and their secularism and their materialism and their interpretation of evolutionary theory, which then somehow evolution became associated with secularism and atheism. so between the time of Darwin. And the modern synthesis, like you mentioned, there was an eclipse of Darwinism, there were other theories at the time. But I think by the hardening of the synthesis in the 1930s and 40s, I believe that the the people who were the pioneers at the time of that particular synthesis, they also did not hold on to these strictly atheistic or materialistic ideas. and I think the interpretation. of Darwinian theory in an atheistic light was more of a cultural phenomena phenomenon than a academic one. And I believe there was a big role that was played by these famous trials and that took place in you know America and elsewhere. And I think that's probably what led to this culture of associating evolution with atheism and then later on the sort of problems that we saw through decades later. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, the the you know, mentioned Huxley and of course Huxley was motivated by a desire to find places for an emerging class of professional scientists back then and and at least a big part of his campaign was to wrest control of the Oxbridge universities from the Anglican church and and basically professionalize the sciences. But there's another interesting parallel. I'd like to get your thoughts on around that that era, you know, the the the late nineteenth century was sa saw the rise of the of the progressive ideology and it started off with something called the social gospel, you know, that that it was a duty of of Christians and and and other religious people to to basically become activists for social good, and that meant enlisting the powers of government to be able to do that. That's the root of the progressive ideology. And and there was a strange transformation that took place around then. You know, it you went from a religiously motivated desire for social activism to basically a scientific motivation for social activism. this is where you see the emergence of strange phrases like Woodrow Wilson talking about the Darwinian constitution, with Lenin and Stalin talking about you know the societies and and economies as organisms that are subject to something like natural selection. And somehow or other, science became the new God. that's the in the social gospel, it wasn't God or Jesus anymore who was the motivator and the inspirer of this. It was science. Science was the leader. oftentimes without any well, without much evidence from science itself that it could answer many questions very well. so I'd like to get, the thoughts from both you, Savur and Ian, about about that. I is there validity to that? you know, did we see basically the rise of the new atheism being motivated by the transformation of of of science into our new God? speaker-1: I would like to hear from Ian first. speaker-0: Well, I have a question that relates to this. you know, it's it's interesting that atheism's always kind of a weird philosophical proposition because it implies the absence of of God, right? Well, we're pretty much, you know, all the Abrahamic faiths stipulate that God is the source. But atheism says that there really is no source. And scientifically, that's kind of almost an oxymoron because you can't scientifically prove the absence of something. If something never existed. It can't leave any evidence that there's no there's no evidence to analyze. So you're you're left with this sort of intellectual acrobatics trying to explain away things as opposed to trying to explain the cause of things. And it seems like, at least historically in natural philosophy, specifically, you know, if you think about medieval philosophy on Al-Andalus or Islamic Spain, you had all these Abrahamic philosophers talking about basically the same logical process of going back and reasoning the existence of God. Right. And atheism is is mod or new atheism, you know, I it which you talked about, is is interesting in that it seems to treat evolutionary biology as if it settles a metaphysical question about purpose and design as opposed to process once that purpose is already settled and that cause has already started. And it it seems to create this if then, you know, if evolution happened, therefore there is no God. And it seems to have this almost impossible logical breakdown built within it. So how do you how do you how do you wrestle with that? speaker-1: I really love the way you put it because there definitely was, firstly, in terms of the atheistic movement, more of a negation narrative than than affirming anything. And that that's one thing to speak about. And the second thing that you raised was obviously how they've used evolution as some sort of way solving metaphysical issues which are thousands of years old. So I think the the first thing to focus on is maybe when we look at The atheistic side and the way that they begin off with just negating things. what you what we find there is it's actually linked to epistemology, it's actually linked to the way that they look at the world. so in the beginning of the 20th century, the 1920s and 30s, we had the Vienna Vienna Circle with logical positivism, which later on became into today's scientism. And a lot of that was about denying other forms of knowledge and denying basically everything other than what can be mathematically proven or empirically observed. Obviously, this is absurd because most of our knowledge claims cannot be mathematically proven or empirically observed, including most of known history. there's a famous philosopher, Anthony Flew, who you know, he popularized this negation. type of narrative. his paper, Falsificate Theology and Falsification, he basically argues God died by a thousand cuts. So God is not this, God is not this, God is not this. Later on in life, he actually did come back to believing in God, but not religion. And the main reason he came to believe in God was actually DNA. So a strange thing that you find in the 20th century and early 21st century is that. a lot of the arguments being put up against faith, they're coming from that misunderstanding of a epistemology. And also on your point about how evolution is seen as something that can solve you know, a metaphysical issue, this is again because of the problem of scientism, which I think is still quite dominant in terms of at least the popular narrative. I mean, I'm sometimes watching popular TV programmes with my kids. And even in cartoons and other places, you get this type of scientism that if some if anybody needs to prove something, it needs to be scientific, right? And, you know, later on when people grow up and they're at university, they'll hear things like, you know, philosophy's been dead for a thousand years and hasn't actually done anything. so I think this this fundamental issue boils down to one, probably a specialization of knowledge that. You could be really specialized in a particular area, and that impacts the way that you look at the world, and you don't actually understand that you know there are other fields of knowledge and there are other ways of looking at the world, there's other ways of arriving at knowledge. And this does actually impact the way that some approaches are executed in biology, right? So when when people come with this reductive mindset and they they look at an organism. and they assume from the get-go that you cannot have top-down causation, everything has to be bottom-up causation, then you get this type of gene-centric, dominant narratives in in biology. But then when you have the likes of, for example, the third way of evolution and and the academics involved in that project, you know, they would be looking at the same scientific data, but because they're not blinded by this type of reductive thought, they're willing to look at things. From a holistic perspective, from a totally different paradigm, and using the same data, they can arrive at a radically different explanation of the biological phenomena that they're both studying. So I think the root cause of a lot of these things is a misunderstanding of our epistemic hierarchy in terms of what we value as being foundational. and you'll also find this, you know. on on in terms of online discourse, when there's a lot of back and forth between believers and pe people who lack faith, a lot of things do boil down to basically scientist or or a type of logical positivism which makes people see the world in a particular way. speaker-0: Yeah, the the the the idea that that science has become basically the the fault position for all thinking about nature, you know, n no matter what question that you're asking, I think is a sign of this replacement of of of God or what however you want to define that, some kind of overarching principle. to use Daniel Dennett's derogatory phrase, skyhooks, you know, that are you know, you can't have any skyhooks that that will guide evolution or function or any of these other kinds of things. And of course when you read even in popular culture, the the word science is always capitalized, you know, like you would capitalize Allah or God. So it's become a kind of default position in our in our culture. that's you know you know, that religious people are out there somewhere and you're obviously thinking about it wrong, so we don't need to engage with you. and of course one of the things that you do, Sabor, is you are out there engaging with them quite quite pointedly. not maliciously, you know, but and and you see this a lot on your YouTube channel when you go down to speakers corner and engage with people as well. So y how do you counter this this notion that that that there's no religious or religiously inspired way of thinking about it that that cannot even be considered as part of normal discourse about nature. I you know, what's your argument against that when you're confronted with someone at Hyde at Hy in Hyde Park that's that's dispute disputing what you're saying? speaker-1: Yeah. I think I think there's different ways of approaching this. I like to sometimes go to the historical angle because a lot of the arguments made against belief in God start off from a historical point. We have this narrative that there was an an an era of reasons and an era of religion, and you have reason which dominated after the Renaissance, which is why we had a flourishing of the sciences. And I think it's important to break down this narrative. you know, there's famous episodes like Galileo's persecution. And that's been put into this, you know, this particular narrative of science versus religion when it wasn't actually that simple. Galileo was actually a believer, and a lot of the pioneers of science in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, were actually believing Christians. and prior to them, they were believing Muslims in in the Islamic world, Muslims, Christians and Jewish people working together in terms of being at the forefront of science. So it's important to break these things down from a historical perspective and you know challenge some of these classical narratives. Peter Harrison's done some fantastic work. in in terms of the the history of naturalism and science and religion and and breaking down these sorts of narratives. So that's one particular angle you can use the historical angle. Another angle that could be used is the philosophical one. So we could speak about different levels of explanation. So science is a mechanical explanation, but it's not an explanation which deals with the metaphysics. So If we can see a bird flying, we can explain its flight using drift, using Banoy's theorem, using you know the basics of aerodynamics, but it doesn't mean there's a complete explanation of that bird or the nature of that bird or the the goal-directedness that's built within its nature. so from the from a philosophy point of view, it's important to show that science has limits. not in a way to undermine science, but actually show this is the beauty of science, and science can change, and science has its place, and it's a wonderful domain of knowledge, but it's not it's not the sum of all total totality. so another angle as well I like to use, and this is something I don't use that often, although this is something I'm more inclined to use nowadays, it's actually the spiritual angle. I think deep down human beings are spiritual. deep down we we have a lot of deep-seated beliefs which do not sit well with materialism. We have a conscious experience. many people they feel there's something more to themselves than the physical. I've had conversations with atheists who basically were not entirely atheistic. they believed there was something. They believed there was something beyond the material world. recently, about two years ago, I hosted a discussion between William Dembski and Michael Roos. And to my surprise, Michael for the first time in his career admitted to doubting materialism because of consciousness. And I believe that this obviously Michael's not a spiritual person or religious person in any way, but I believe this is a doorway to Challenging materialism from a experiential perspective, which I think is something quite spiritual. and I think a lot of the a lot of the narratives around fur around our subjective experience and and explaining away consciousness, the works of Dennis and others, it just hasn't dealt with the core issue. And I think a lot of people still feel there's something a lot more. to it than what we we're being told. So I think there's all these different angles. And one of the other things I do like to you know speak about as well when it comes to the rise of secularism and the the rise of materialism as well is the need for people of faith to come together to counteract the the spread of secularism and atheism because of the way that it diminishes family values. So that's a sociological angle I like to use. so one of the things which I've noted here in the United Kingdom is that over many, many decades, people have lost Christian values, which, I would say the Abrahamic values, the Islamic values and Jewish values, and family values are being lost because of the rise of scientific materialism. And what does it lead to? It leads to all sorts of so social ills. And you know, we have we have certain thinkers in Europe now Who talk about, the decline of the European civilization or the Western civilization and and pointing out that actually a lot of it's linked to a loss of faith. And they've said words to the effect that, you know, we need a revival of faith as long as someone else does it, because obviously they don't want to they don't want to believe themselves. And I think from that angle, the sociological angle, it becomes a lot more emotive and it becomes a lot more real for people because spirituality isn't just something which is abstract but it has real life consequences. one of the things that you alluded to earlier was about social movements and how they were initially founded upon faith and then later on they were found founded upon science or something like this. Well the the the same sort of thing is happening at a micro level you know in in in the supermarkets, in the schools, in every place we go, basic morals. people are asking, okay, we are expected to believe that these are values that are correct and right, but what does scientific materialism lead to? It just leads to nihilism, right? so you know it it it's it's almost like when David Stove you know wrote in Darwinian fairy tales that from a A Darwinian perspective is just you versus the postman and the hospitals are the survival of the unfittest, and we are paying our taxes for these people and you know these types of narratives. I think the chaos that comes along, or the randomness rather, that comes along with Darwinian theory, it actually imports itself into the moral domain and it erodes away society at its core, which is one of the reasons why I believe that. There's a lot of reasons why Muslims and and Christians in particular, because they're the two dominant faiths in the world, they should work on common solutions to these types of ills. So I also use this sociological angle when I'm speaking to people on the other side. And it depends on, you know, who you're speaking to, because you know, horses for horses, people are impacted by different things. speaker-0: Yeah. He starts off by talking about Darwinism as a universal acid, you know, this mythical substance that could eat through anything. And and of course people have rarely asked the question, well, how far do we want the universal acid to to eat, you know, and it's as you said, there's no logical barrier between it eating all the way down to societies and to and to people and all the kinds of values that that hold our societies together. And it's you know, I I I'm not sure that scientists for all their pretensions for being the brights, have really thought this whole thing through. You know, in our modern discourse about religions and their place in society, there's a lot of talk of how different Christianity and Judaism and Islam are, as if they're some how competing faiths. But you've had some interesting things to say about that not being true. that that that there's a lot of room for well there's a lot of common ground between them that that that could be very, very helpful, not only socially, but also scientifically. And so this is kind of a two-part question here. first part is do you see anything in the faith of Islam and its relationship to science that's really much different from the from say the Christian or the or the Jewish critique of evolution? Is there any difference? And then The follow up question that I want to ask and just pose right now is that you have some interesting thoughts about about how the Abrahamic faiths should be actually united around a common cause and that we're missing a big opportunity by not doing that. speaker-1: Yeah, sure. I'll ask I'll answer, I think, the second question first before I speak about Islam and evolution. When it comes to the Islamic discourse on science and religion, it's actually very similar to the discourse that you find amongst medieval Christian thinkers and their engagement with the sciences. So this idea that you have a book of revelation which is God's Word, and you have a book of Revelation, which is God's Word, the world, God said be and is. these are ideas that you find amongst medieval Christian thinkers and medieval Muslim thinkers. In fact, you can find a lot of similarities between, say, Thomas Aquinas and someone like Rhazali in the Islamic world. So I think in terms of how these faiths are in relation to science. There is a lot of similarities. And I think the reason the similarities are there is for the obvious reason that they all three, all three of them go back to basically the same belief in God, in Abraham and Noah, in these prophets, in you know, right and wrong, and the these types of these these societal structures which we all still the three faiths shared. So I think there isn't a fundamental difference. When it comes to their relationships with science. Although historically there's been different trajectories in terms of the faiths because of geographic reasons. So, for example, you would find that in the Islamic world, so for example, in Islamic Spain, you would have an advancement of the sciences while there was darkness in medieval Europe. And then later on, you'd find the inverse relationship where there's a darkness in the Islamic world and a revival in medieval Europe. And I believe a lot of the revival revival was linked to Christianity. so it's not the case that you see both faiths at the same time excelling in the sciences. so I believe that in terms of their understanding of the relationship between nature and God and levels of explanation, all these types of things. I think there's there's a lot of similarities there. theologically, obviously the religions are very distinct. so it's not a case where I'm saying that all these religions I believe in some sort of perennialism or you know all religions being one. They are distinct, but there's a lot of similarities. And I think in the world today, it's so easy for us to just focus on the differences or focus on certain historical Episodes, whether it be you know, colonization or the crusades or the Islamic conquest of Chris of the Christian Middle East. so I think it's it's better to move past those historical narratives and to look at the world today, a world in which I think Islam and Christianity are facing a common challenge in terms of the secularization of the world. I mean, if you look at post-World War II, a lot of geopolitics is dominated by institutions. And a lot of these in institutions, like for example, the United Nations, they are s secular institutions and they're based on a type of secular manifesto. The first president of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, was Julian Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley, who, you know, Julian was a avid atheist, a philosopher, a biologist, and he played a role in the modern synthesis. And he openly mocked God. And he wanted the spread of evolutionary humanism, right? His famous book in 1930s, Religion Without Revelation, was an insight into his thinking where he wanted a world which moves away from Islam and Christianity and all these types of faiths towards this secular secular religious perspective. and this is something which is not, you know, it's it's it's not unknown in acad academia. you know, Mary Midgley, Michael Roos, they've also speak spoken about evolution as a religion. And I think this is a common challenge for Muslims and Christians. In regards to your first question about is there a is there a difference in terms of the approach of Muslims and Christians when it comes to evolution, I think there's certain Barriers or certain lines in terms of our theology, which we both share. so we both believe that we have a God who is active in the world. So we have a belief in a type of divine action, and we believe that that divine action is compatible largely, most Muslims and Christians believe it's largely compatible with science. We believe that. A scientific explanation does not negate a theological explanation. And I mean, today there there is, I would say, a movement, more so in the Christian world than in the Islamic world, where you do have a type of you know, I I wouldn't say can I say a concession, but but maybe a watering down among In in certain Christian quarters of traditional Christian beliefs. And I believe one of the reasons for that is because of how long Christianity has engaged with evolutionary theory. So you will find people who are willing to give up certain theological beliefs in order to accommodate Darwinian evolution, and you will find that that's not the case in the Islamic world, probably because Muslims haven't engaged with evolution in the way that Christians have. what you'll find amongst in fact a lot of even Islamic responses to evolution, they're largely dependent upon the works of Christians. So I think theologically there's lots of things that they they both share. And I think it's also to do with tradition. So for example, and I'm not saying I'm I'm I I'm set in this view, but I believe when it comes to Catholics, I believe that Muslims have more in common with Protestants in terms of their response to evolution than Catholics, because I feel that with the Catholic Church and the way that they have you know, in in the modern times responded to evolutionary theory, they've given up maybe more territory than other Christian denominations. And I think the the Islamic world is maybe got more similarity. with certain Protestant traditions like the Reform tradition. and I'm I'm trying to remember exactly the words of one of the edicts given by one of the popes that you know basically words to the effect of accepting evolutionary theory for everything except the human mind, right? and that's that's something which I think a lot of a lot a lot of maybe even Catholics aren't aware of, but it's actually one of the the the edicts of of the church. So I think there's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of room to work together. And there's also another another aspect which which is a relevant difference between Islam and Christianity in that Muslims believe the Quran is the literal word of God and the Quran is an authority and A lot of Christians, for them, they understand that the Bible is a historical text which came together over many centuries. And so they don't have that literalist understanding and commitment to scripture in the same way that Muslims do. I mean, some Christians do, but I think a lot of Christian theologians they don't have that. There's an interesting paper that's written by Van der Brink. It's called Vexed Issues in Islam and Christianity. And in that paper, he goes over certain case studies. and one of the one of the things that he points out is different in Islam and Christianity is their commitment to scripture. So I think that's one of the one of the differences. But when it comes to at least a belief in God. the commitment to some form of teleology and design. I think there's a lot of convergence in terms of the ideas of Muslim Christian thinkers. speaker-0: Yeah, your point that that the Protestant denominations are probably more open to these kinds of discussions in the Catholic Church, you know, there there there's an interesting parallel there, you know, that that the rise of of of Christian fundamentalism, for example, was over disputes about the authoritarian word of the Catholic Church versus you know going to the text of the of the book and to interpret it and discuss it. And so, you know, maybe the Protestant faiths are are more in line with the kind of skeptical nature of that science should be aspiring to, you know. But I think the challenge goes the other way as well. You know, you know, scientists they and this is a byproduct of the kind of reductionist materialist viewpoint. Science really has a problem with the concept of mind. You know, we don't know what it is, we don't know what's behind it. And you know, the the the basic question for science boils down to how do you do science, how do you study nature when nature has a mind of its own? And you know, this is really kind of the fundamental I I think difference of opinion between strict materialism and or scientists who are strictly materialist and others who are more or less open to the concept of mind. You know, you you don't have to have a belief in a particular idea of God or the deity to accept that, gosh, you know, maybe there is some mindedness that's permeating nature, especially living nature. We're coming to the end of our time here, Sabor. Ian, what questions do you sorry, did you speaker-1: Could could I add one? Yeah, I wanted to add something which this is just something I've been reflecting about, and I thought it's relevant to to our discussion. In terms of Aquinas' fifth way, it it's there's there's been this modern revival because of the extended evolutionary synthesis and these ideas about Evo Devo and niche construction, all these types of things. And what I found interesting is that certain Catholic thinkers are actually not only saying that evolution is compatible with their theology, they're also saying that their theology can inform evolutionary theory, right? So what what I'm referring to here is, for example, the works of Marius Tabachek. he he argues that these these classical categories that we actually have. So in terms of Thomas Aquinas, he argues that we have the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. And these causes, they they give us a paradigm to work with when looking at nature, which actually is scientifically fruitful. And interestingly. Some thinkers, like your colleague Dennis Noble, he's argued about the fruitfulness of purpose in physiology and how this has been a research heuristic which has led to a lot of scientific findings. So, what we find is not only is it a case that religions have to respond to evolution, but sometimes there is a confidence that theology can actually Inform science and make science better. And I think some of these ideas are worth exploring. And it's a paradigm shift on the idea that science was held back by religion when we actually have this this type of thinking. The other thing which I wanted to add was that at the end of the day, science is a moral imperative. If you ask anyone Why are you doing science? They're either going to say to make the world a better place, to make people more healthy, to understand the world better because we value truth. So it's not just about just doing science for the sake of science. There is something axiological here, there's something value-laden here. And I believe that that comes through faith. recently I interviewed Justin Barrett. And Justin Barrett has written a book about how faith, and in his case Christianity, is a fuel for scientific endeavor rather than something holding back science. So I think some of these things should also be highlighted in our contemporary discourse because these are important conversations, and I believe that the other side should understand that these this is our way of approaching. the these discussions. We're not it's not just about responding to their, allegations against us. it's it's it's us confidently arguing for why our faith can actually be a catalyst, a point of inflection for scientific discovery. speaker-0: Yeah, the common f thing there is how do we deal with the concept of mind? You know, is there mind behind the origin and workings of the universe? Is there mind behind the or origins and workings of life? And that's the common ground, I think, that we're where you know have this interesting boundary between science and religious faith. Ian, you had some questions to to ask. I I think we might have cut you off. So Burr and I are talking our heads off here. No, no, no. It's it's good listening to it. I'm thinking you know, I was I was an Arabic major in undergrad and I read a fair amount of philosophy from the classical era. And you know, these these thinkers like Ibn Rushd, you know, they openly wrestled with trying to reconcile revelation with Aristotelian natural philosophy, for example. And I'm thinking, h what can we draw from that sort of approach today? Because it seems like A lot of atheists, including scientists who may have been atheists, but they don't want to admit that they're starting to doubt that, even though it seems like they are, and some of the work that they are doing over t as time goes on. How do scientists or empiricists of faith, how do we hold our hands open to that, to them, as we ask questions and try to actually create new work? Because it seems like that's the follow-up, logical follow-up question to how do we bridge this gap? How do we actually do this in a way that welcomes them to come along and sort of inquire with us as we know that there is a God? speaker-1: Brilliant question. And one thing I like to do is I like to not make categorical statements. So when it comes to, for example, teleology, people automatically assume this is linked to God. and we can say, well, you can have a teleological goal directedness within organisms. Which is perfectly compatible within natural naturalism. So it's about lowering their gods by by saying it's not just about this idea that if we say there is design in nature and it's not apparent design, it is real design. It doesn't mean necessarily that we are calling towards a particular religious tradition or we are saying there necessarily has to be a God because of this. I mean, that may be a position we hold or not hold, but it's not the case that we Are trying to use these things to say that, right, this is the necessary conclusion from what we have actually discovered. The other thing I think, which is a good way of approaching this, is it's not so much about the belief in naturalism or theism or pantheism or whatever. It's it's more to do with here on this planet, what is a better research heuristic. And is it better for us to give up reductive thinking, mechanistic thinking, because it's led to cul de sacs, it's led to the human genome project and you know these types of things where there's a gene for each particular function and we have missed out on the fact that we have all of these diseases which are now being understood from a holism perspective, from an expression perspective? I go back to, you know. Something recently I've been thinking about this is linking back to a a conversation at the beginning of the 20th century with not with the beginning of sorry the modern synthesis. So you know you have Dobsky saying that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution, right? And nowadays we have this narrative, and it's been popularized by the likes of Michael. Levin that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of design. Now Michael Levin doesn't actually from to the best of my knowledge believe in God. He is from everything that I've seen of him, he's just a standard scientist looking at the world from a naturalistic perspective. There is nothing strange that he is referring to as spiritual, but he believes there is genuine design and he believes in this design paradigm which is going to be fruitful for scientific discovery. And he believes that design is an empirical reality. It's not just a metaphysical a priori belief that you import into the scientific domain. Now, pointing out people like Levin and you know showing that just because they are conceding to design etiology and these types of things, In the scientific discourse does not mean automatically that he's going to bring you know creationism into the scientific classroom. that there's no that's a that's a non-secretal. There's no there's no link between the two. The other thing which I like to also do is I like to show people that there is a myriad of views, and we need to have tolerance in terms of people's views, although we may disagree with them, in fact. This is something that Darwin is a good example of. He himself did not believe in God, but Asa Gray, someone who was very close to him, did. Charles Kingsley did, George Romanes did. And he was full of praise of them. And he was actually referring to them in his letters as people who could believe in God and also believe in his theory. And, you know, that type of spirit we can also find today. We can find people who they believe in God and they believe in evolution, and there's people who believe in God and they believe in evolution with conditionals. There's certain types of evolution that they do not accept. They do not accept the evolution of the mind, or do they do not accept the evolution of I mean in the in the Islamic discourse we call it adamic exceptionalism or human exceptionalism, this idea that humanity has something very special about it which makes it very distinct. genetically, genealogically to the rest of creation. There's there's a type of human exceptionalism, right? So it's possible to hold on to these views without actually saying we are going to be anti-science. and a lot of this I believe is an issue of going back to scientism and logical positivism. When we start treating science as the only domain of knowledge and we do not allow philosophical or theological reflection, then we end up in these type of models. Alista Alistair McGrath's book, Territories of Human Reason, is an interesting way of looking at the world. I mean, I don't agree with him totally in in terms of the way that he he demarcates certain domains, because you know, I I I don't believe in the non-overlapping magisteria of of Stephen Jay Gould. I I believe there is a a hierarchy magisteria. It there's a Homer as opposed to a Noma. But you know that that's a separate matter. But the point is, you know, these discussions are fruitful and we should have them over the coffee table without you know pointing fingers and saying, you know, you guys are just religious bigots trying to use scientific vagueness to bring religion back into the discourse. And you know, we need to be a lot more mature and nuanced about these discussions. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, Sabor, we're at the end of our time t today. thank you so much for joining us. it was a really interesting discussion for both Ian and I. thank you very much. And also thank you for taking time away from your family visit to come be with us for an hour or so. we really appreciate it and and we'll give you the chance to get back to your family. speaker-1: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure speaking to both of you. speaker-0: You Well, that was interesting. the thing that struck me most about our conversation with Sabur Ahmad was the commonality that he sees in the interface of science and religion among the three Abrahamic faiths. and we sort of skirted up to what I think is probably the main c main point of commonality, which is What do you do about the concept of mind? when you when you look at religious figures, the very concept of gods, at least as it's been interpreted in late Christianity, is that there's a mind at work behind the structure and organization of the universe and and you know that that's has supposedly been banished from our study of the living world by the Darwinian idea. But you know What if mind or sorry, what if life itself has a mind of its own? You know, how do you study that scientifically? And that's something that I think the world of science is still grappling with. Ian, your thoughts. Well, yeah, I think it what he what he's talking about sort of underscores what we've seen with previous guests in that we have a need to sort of re engage the science you know, and the and the people scientists of faith Need to re-engage the science. And what he's doing with these debates with different people in the public sphere, I think, is almost a model in how to do that. And you know, because we've seen empirically where when you take a take out the Abrahamic sort of metaphysics, you wind up with a materialism that has ramifications far beyond science and into the political sphere and the social sphere where very bad things can happen. And what i he's he's pointing a direction where I think not enough Christians it's it go, certainly, and where there's also grounds for collaboration between the three faiths. Yeah, I agree. So on that hopeful note, I think we'll close out this episode of One Universe Two Books. thanks for joining us today. just one final thing to mention is that the National Association of Scholars is a membership organization. if you enjoyed our conversation today and you're already a member, well thanks very much for your ongoing support. And if you enjoyed it, and even if you didn't enjoy it, and you're not a member, please consider Joining us. Okay, until next time, so long.