Faith, Values, and the Scientific Enterprise
This conference, entitled Faith, Values, and the Scientific Enterprise, was held at Exeter University as part of the annual science festival of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The first session was Are GM Crops the Will of God? Obviously the Bible has nothing specific to say about GM crops; so is it possible to discern what might be God’s Will regarding them? Should we be trying to create them? Some people might say that GM is “unnatural,” but all farming is unnatural. If we lived on what grows naturally, we’d be eating weeds. Are we usurping God’s role by creating GM varieties or are we co-creating, working with Him? We do not seem to worry about using GM techniques for medical reasons. So they cannot be wrong in principle. Pragmatically, there remains the question of risk. Are GM crops safe? Government scientists assure us that only safe crops will be licensed. But do we trust government scientists? Nothing is ever completely safe and no-one can say that no problems will ever arise from any technology. Then there is the question of freedom. Are we free to choose whether we eat GM food or is it mixed in our food without our knowledge or consent? Can GM crops “infect” conventional crops through spread of pollen or seeds? Government has promised the public that it will not license GM crops without our consent, but it has also promised the EU that it will not prohibit GM crops which scientists advise are safe. Finally, is GM good news for the poor? Will GM crops enable us to feed the hungry or will they limit the ability of poor farmers to grow cheap crops and make the whole world dependent for its food on a few multinational corporations?
Morning worship was a meditation on Psalm 19. The person who conducted it said to me afterwards that we do not these days seem to have enough about God’s work in Creation in our services. I wonder whether that is because we have given up singing psalms as too difficult. Maybe we need to sing more creation hymns. A lot of our hymns are more about salvation and social justice than creation. He also stressed the need for thanksgiving, We don’t say the General Thanksgiving* often enough. We feel better when we feel thankful. Do we remember that Eucharist means thanksgiving and the Eucharistic Prayer is the Great Thanksgiving and that is why it is the Prayer of Consecration?
Next, we looked at God after Darwin: Evolution and the Question of Divine Providence. Some Christians refuse to believe in evolution on the grounds that it conflicts with the Bible. Many more are quite prepared to believe that Genesis is not meant to be a lesson in history or biology and that God may well have created the world through a process of evolution. They may still, however, feel uncomfortable about certain questions. If we are the point of creation, why did the Universe exist for billions of years before life appeared and why is there so much of it that is inhospitable to life? In terms of the evolution of living things, chance mutation and the survival of the fittest have only created us after millions of years of nature red in tooth and claw, pain and waste. Why didn’t God create a perfect world from the start and save the growing pains? One possible answer is that, if the world had been perfect from the beginning, it would have been in no way different from God. We wouldn’t have existed and neither would anything else. The price of our distinctiveness, our individuality, is freedom, the chance to go wrong and suffer, as well as the chance to go right and flourish. Nevertheless, everything is moving to a future state, greater than the start, greater than it could have been without going through the process that we are going through now, a process which includes pain and failure as well as success. This future state – the omega point – is guaranteed in God, though beyond anything we can now conceive. Complexity, consciousness and unity seem to be its distinguishing marks.
The next subject was Working Out Our Own Salvation? – Medicine, Technology and Christian Ethics. This picked up themes from the other two sessions. The world as we know it is good, but not perfect. As Christians, we see the world as God’s Creation. We are not nature-worshippers, who think that science, engineering, technology somehow violate Mother Earth. We are not afraid to make use of the world we have or our God-given brains in deciding how we may use it. On the other hand, we are answerable to God for creation. We are not to destroy or abuse it. We are not to be selfish or greedy in using up its resources. We are not so timid that we can never take a risk. Neither are we guilty of the hubris that believes we are in control. There is a place for wisdom as we consider whether or not to use new technologies, such as medical procedures requiring human embryos.
Under Blue Skies, Creativity and Cost-Effectiveness, we had a whirlwind tour of the world of research and grant-making bodies. How do we foster curiosity, inventiveness and creativity? These things are part of our essential humanity and we are denying what we are if we squash them. It is essential to our own personal development that we have scope to develop our creativity. The future needs people who can invent solutions to the problems the human race faces. But research is expensive. It takes time and money. How do we free up resources for pure research when there is so much needing our time and attention now? If we make public money available to researchers, how much control should government exercise? Without control, the money might be wasted. Too much control might destroy creativity. If we are to advance, we have to be brave enough to make mistakes!
The final discussion raised a lot more issues, reflecting the range of interests and experience of the people present. We finished with a tremendous conference dinner and returned home with plenty to think about.
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