SCIENTISTS AND RELIGION IN AMERICA
SCIENTISTS AND RELIGION IN AMERICA
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美国的科学家和宗教
DOI：
10.1038/scientificamerican0999-88
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发表时间：
1999
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
L. Witham
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
E. Larson;L. Witham
在华盛顿特区，距离波托马克河仅一箭之遥的地方，一座阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的铜像静静地躺在国家科学院旁边的花园里。还有比这个神话人物更适合象征美国最高科学家阶层的人吗？由于宗教遗产，爱因斯坦从纳粹德国的世俗恐怖中逃到了美国，他从未停止过对宗教的思考，并曾通过著名的否认上帝与宇宙玩骰子来挑战量子不确定性。然而，在晚年，他总结道：“在为道德善而斗争的过程中，宗教教师必须有放弃人格化上帝教义的地位。”现在，在千年之交，出现了一场致力于调和科学和宗教的运动。新书在物理学，生物学，甚至计算机信息理论方面向神致敬。去年，“科学发现上帝”登上了《新闻周刊》的封面，其他主要新闻杂志也采用了这一主题。更多的会议比以往任何时候都具有“两种认知方式”之间的对话。根据一份报告，美国高等教育现在拥有1,000门关于科学和信仰的学分课程，而60年代的学生可能早就在艰苦的条件下找到了一门。据说，年长的终身科学家觉得是时候见证他们曾经封闭或新发现的信仰了。然而，这场运动远非自发的。封面故事是在加州大学伯克利分校举行的一次大型研讨会之后，由坦普尔顿基金会赞助的“科学与精神探索”，该基金会的创始人、金融家兼慈善家约翰·坦普尔顿爵士对调和宗教信仰与现代科学非常感兴趣。他称之为“谦卑神学”，强调双方的党派人士都需要认识到他们认识方式的局限性，并为对方留下空间。邓普顿基金会还支持了许多关于这个主题的新大学课程，为学术论文设立现金奖励，并资助了无数其他学术讲座和会议-所有这些都旨在激发在谦卑神学框架内对科学与宗教之间关系的学术讨论。为了跟上时代的步伐，一些福音派新教组织--最著名的是资金充足的校园基督十字军东征--已经赞助了会议和大学讲座，就这个问题发表他们的观点。然而，在机构科学中，最聪明的男人和女人做他们的工作，轮子慢慢地转动，非常精细。对许多人来说，结果是对超自然现象的智力厌恶。即使科学找到了上帝，正如《新闻周刊》在本世纪新闻故事（如果属实）中报道的那样，科学家们会认识到它吗？查尔斯达尔文被誉为科学精神的典范。达尔文耐心地对他的进化论进行了20年的怀疑和检验，然后才发表了它。“我深深地感到，整个主题对人类的智力来说太深奥了，”他在晚年写道。“狗也可以推测牛顿的思想。让每个人都希望并相信他所能相信的。科学家们希望和相信什么？布林莫尔学院的心理学家詹姆斯·H.露芭在1914年和1933年，卢巴调查了美国生物和物理科学家对他所说的“基督教的两个中心信仰”的看法：一个受崇拜影响的上帝和一个来世。他坚持认为，没有这些“基本教义”，基督教就无法生存。
Astone’s throw from the Potomac River in Washing-ton, DC, a bronze statue of Albert Einstein reposes in a garden beside the National Academy of Sciences. Could there be a more fitting individual than this mythic figure to symbolize the highest echelon of scientists in America? Having fled to the US from the secular horrors of Nazi Germany because of his religious heritage, Einstein never ceased musing about religion and once challenged quantum uncertainty by famously denying that God plays dice with the universe. Late in life, however, he concluded,“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God.” Now, at the turn of the millennium, comes a movement bent on reconciling science and religion. New books hail the divine in physics, biology, even computer information theory. Last year “SCIENCE FINDS GOD” emblazoned the cover of Newsweek, and other leading newsmagazines picked up the theme. More conferences than ever feature dialogues between the “two ways of knowing.” By one report, US higher education now boasts 1,000 courses for credit on science and faith, whereas a student in the sixties would have long dug in hardscrabble to find even one. Scientists who are older and tenured, it is said, feel it is time to give witness to their once closeted or newly found faith. The movement is far from spontaneous, however. The cover stories followed a major symposium at the University of California at Berkeley,“Science and the Spiritual Quest,” underwritten by the deep pockets of the Templeton Foundation, whose founder, financier-philanthropist Sir John Templeton, is profoundly interested in reconciling religious belief with modern science. He calls it “humility theology,” emphasizing the need for partisans on both sides to recognize limits to their way of knowing and leave room for the other. The Templeton Foundation has also supported many of those new college courses on the topic, created cash awards for scholarly papers, and financed countless other academic lectures and conferences—all designed to stimulate scholarly discussion of the relationship between science and religion within the framework of humility theology. Striving to keep pace, some evangelical Protestant organizations—most notably the well-funded Campus Crusade for Christ—have sponsored conferences and collegiate lectures pitching their views on the subject. Yet in institutional science, where the brightest men and women do their work, the wheels grind slowly and exceedingly fine. For many, the result is an intellectual aversion to the supernatural. Even if science were to find God, as Newsweek reported in what would have been (if true) the news story of the century, would scientists recognize it? Charles Darwin is honored as an exemplar of the scientific spirit. Patiently, Darwin doubted and tested his theory of evolution for 20 years before he published it. He fretted even longer over religion before opting for agnosticism.“I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect,” he wrote late in life.“A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.” And what does the typical scientist hope and believe? An early pioneer who sought to answer that question was Bryn Mawr College psychologist James H. Leuba. In 1914 and again in 1933 Leuba surveyed American biological and physical scientists on their views regarding what he described as “the two central beliefs of the Christian religion”: a God influenced by worship, and an afterlife. He maintained that without these “fundamental dogmas” Christianity could not survive …