On the Third Day

"It’s called On the Third Day and it’s by Piers Paul Reid. It’s another thought experiment: What would happen if incontrovertible evidence was found of the human remains of Jesus in Jerusalem? i.e. a skeleton was found that could undoubtedly be identified as the Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified? Piers Paul Reid is a brilliant novelist with terrific imagination, and what he does is to look at the responses of different individuals and different groups of people to the discovery that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Yes, he was the most senior character and probably the person of the greatest integrity. Within the thought experiment, he felt life was no longer worth living. There are others who respond in different ways. There’s a younger scholar who takes more time to think it through and renounces his religious vocation. There are ecclesiastical authorities who just change the message so they can keep their power. There are Jewish authorities, there is even a Soviet subplot. “Another thought experiment: What would happen if incontrovertible evidence was found of the human remains of Jesus in Jerusalem?” It’s about two brothers, one of whom is in a celibate religious order and seeks to rethink everything. His brother is an utterly secular person who is hugely successful in his career and has made a great deal of money. He has an attitude to women that requires no relationship to last more than three months. That brother also rethinks things, and his character develops as the novel goes on. I suppose there are different kinds of religious inquiry. There’s a kind of inquiry that asks what must God be like. That sort of inquiry can embrace things that we deduce about the nature of God from science, what used to be called ‘natural theology.’ That was itself an actual experiment—not a thought experiment—that lasted a couple of centuries, and can conveniently go under the label of ‘deism.’ Deism, in this context, means a belief in a God who was responsible for the creation of the world, but has no further involvement in it. Theologians would say no revelation. The demise of deism was inherent in it, because you can’t relate to such a do-nothing god. It makes no sense to pray to him or anything like that. That sort of thinking, by itself, is not nearly enough, and is sterile. But the Christian faith is a faith of events. It has what is sometimes called the ‘scandal of particularity.’ It’s based on a narrative of God’s particular involvement with particular people at particular times in particular places. So the Hebrew Bible is about his involvement primarily in and around the land we now call Israel. Then, in the Greek Testament, that becomes much, much more specific with the birth and the life and the death of Jesus. A key component of that narrative is the resurrection of Jesus. If we have a faith that depends on those events and their lasting and enduring consequences, then it makes a great deal of difference whether or not those events took place. The resurrection of Jesus is by far the best attested miracle in history, and therefore it makes sense to think to yourself, what are the consequences of that not having happened? Piers Paul Reid doesn’t give you an answer, because it’s a novel. But within the freedom of creativity he says, ‘Well if you’re this sort of person, you might react that way, and if you’re another sort of person, you might react another way.’ Here are the different possibilities. He’s much too sensible a novelist to ask, ‘Where do you stand?’ — but you might find yourself asking that question as you read it. We didn’t actually think much about Richard Dawkins when we were writing the book. I suppose we would want him to come away very much better informed and knowing that there is another story, which is different from one that is popularly put about, and which has the distinction of being true. I cycle past his house every day because we’re almost neighbours. Our daughters were in the same class at school. His research career ended fairly soon after his doctorate. You won’t find many scholarly papers by him in peer reviewed international journals. But the public engagement of science is a hugely important activity and he started out his career absolutely brilliant at it. If you just confine yourself to the science in The Selfish Gene —I’ll let others judge how much of it is his own original thinking—I would certainly say that it was a brilliant exposition of what, at the time, was contemporary thinking about the theory of evolution. For that I admire and applaud him. If you’re going to engage in an argument with people that you disagree with—which is a healthy activity, at least at Oxford—you need to engage with the best and the strongest of their arguments and not the weakest of their arguments and still more not with a caricature of them. Of course you can find silly Christians — you can find silly believers in any faith, and I’m sad to say you can find adherents of any religion who do bad things. You’ve only got to read the newspapers to see that. But that’s not the way to engage with the best of what they’re saying. I think most people think that he’s utterly failed to engage with the best of the theology that is espoused by Christians whose minds are scientific. Many people feel that his books have, as time has gone by, shouted louder and louder with weaker and weaker arguments. I don’t know of any scholar who takes the arguments in his more recent books at all seriously, except, perhaps, in one or two cases to counter them. There have been books by people like Keith Ward, who is a very distinguished philosopher, who knows a lot of science, and Alister McGrath who is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion here. Actually my favourite answer to Richard Dawkins is by John Cornwell, who has written a lovely book entitled Darwin’s Angel: An Angelic Riposte to ‘The God Delusion.’ , in which the angel gives advice to Dawkins about how to think more clearly. John Cornwell is a great scholar and writes with a twinkle in his eye. He does it in a succinct but scholarly way. If I could have chosen a seventh book I would have chosen one by Dennis Alexander, who is a distinguished geneticist. It’s called Creation or Evolution: Do We have to Choose? It’s a book that carefully examines the relationship between the Biblical understanding of creation and modern scientific understanding of evolution. He’d be the first to say— and this is rather important when you think of Dawkins—that evolution is not one fixed thing that got set in stone in 1859 with Darwin. It’s a living, dynamic field of science with very exciting developments being made. He’s asking the question, ‘Do we have to choose between these two?’ and I’ll give you the answer now, no we don’t. He is a practising scientist with a much more distinguished research record than Richard Dawkins. He fully embraces Biblical teaching about creation as well as the ever richer theory of evolution as part of his intellectual toolbox as a practising biologist. You’ve put your finger on a key question. It’s a very important point and I’m glad you raised it. I talked a moment ago about what might be labelled ‘natural theology’ as taking you so far towards belief. But you need to go further than that, because you need the documentary records of particular events that have taken place. Now, supposing that someone through that process, or any other process for that matter, has come into a relationship with God, and supposing that their mind is scientifically inclined and they enjoy science and appreciate it. As they then learn more science—now I’m speaking very personally, but I think others would echo this—that becomes fuel for faith, because you’re learning more about the work of the Creator whom you already know. “As one learns more science, that becomes fuel for faith, because you’re learning more about the work of the Creator” You can think of an analogy of me enjoying Roger Wagner’s paintings, which I do. I could enjoy them just as anyone else could enjoy the paintings, they’re great works of art. But there’s an extra dimension of pleasure because I know the painter. And I think, ‘Oh these are Roger’s paintings!’ and I know something of his thinking that went into them, of why he did those things and his motivation and what he’s seeking to communicate. In fact, I understand him better now, from the paintings, than I would have just from talking to him. If you’ll allow that to be a little picture of what science is like for the person who knows God: there’s this extra dimension which enriches the relationship and gives an extra dimension of pleasure. Now, in my case, it happens to be through the physical sciences, because that’s the way my rather limited brain works. But I can well imagine, indeed I know it to be the case, that people in the life sciences who know God find a similar pleasure through their work. It’s different because the life sciences are different from the physical sciences and they require a different mindset and a different set of methodologies, different ways of thinking, different kinds of mathematics etc. Nevertheless, for all those differences, I think there are similarities. It doesn’t inevitably lead to belief in God. The very distinguished cosmologist, Martin Rees tells me that he does not believe in God. He’s written a book called Just Six Numbers , where he shows how very remarkable it is that these numbers are just right for carbon-based life as we know it, so that we are here and you and I are able to talk about it. He recognises that there is something very remarkable about this, without being led, in his case, to a belief in God. I think these things can be pointers, but they’re not knockdown arguments. For someone who for other reasons chooses not to believe in God, I don’t think they’ll by themselves persuade them to change their mind. But the more we learn about the universe the more amazing we find it to be, and for those who know God this gives added content to their worship."