Polkinghorne said in an interview that he believes his move from science to religion has given him binocular vision, though he understands that it has aroused the kind of suspicion "that might follow the claim to be a vegetarian butcher." He argues there are five points of comparison between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth: moments of enforced radical revision, a period of unresolved confusion, new synthesis and understanding, continued wrestling with unresolved problems, deeper implications. He suggests that the mechanistic explanations of the world that have continued from
Laplace to
Richard Dawkins should be replaced by an understanding that most of nature is cloud-like rather than clock-like. He regards the mind, soul and body as different aspects of the same underlying reality—"dual aspect monism"—writing that "there is only one stuff in the world (not two—the material and the mental), but it can occur in two contrasting states (material and mental phases, a physicist might say) which explain our perception of the difference between mind and matter." He believes that standard physical causation cannot adequately describe the manifold ways in which things and people interact, and uses the phrase "active information" to describe how, when several outcomes are possible, there may be higher levels of causation that choose which one occurs. Sometimes Christianity seems to him to be just too good to be true, but when this sort of doubt arises he says to himself, "All right then, deny it", and writes that he knows this is something he could never do.
On the existence of God Polkinghorne considers that "the question of the existence of God is the single most important question we face about the nature of reality" and quotes, with approval, Sir
Anthony Kenny: "After all, if there is no God, then God is incalculably the greatest single creation of the human imagination." He addresses the questions of "Does the concept of God make sense? If so, do we have reason for believing in such a thing?" He is "cautious about our powers to assess coherence", pointing out that in 1900 a "competent... undergraduate could have demonstrated the 'incoherence of quantum ideas. He suggests that "the nearest analogy in the physical world [to God] would be... the
Quantum Vacuum." He suggests that God is the ultimate answer to
Leibniz's great question "why is there something rather than nothing?" The atheist's "plain assertion of the world's existence" is a "grossly impoverished view of reality... [arguing that] theism explains more than a reductionist atheism can ever address.". He is very doubtful of
St Anselm's
Ontological Argument. Referring to
Gödel's incompleteness theorem, he said: "If we cannot prove the consistency of arithmetic it seems a bit much to hope that God's existence is easier to deal with," concluding that God is "ontologically necessary, but not logically necessary." He "does not assert that God's existence can be demonstrated in a logically coercive way (any more than God's non-existence can) but that theism makes more sense of the world, and of human experience, than does atheism." He cites in particular: •
The intelligibility of the universe: One would anticipate that evolutionary selection would produce hominid minds apt for coping with everyday experience, but that these minds should also be able to understand the subatomic world and general relativity goes far beyond anything of relevance to survival fitness. The mystery deepens when one recognises the proven fruitfulness of mathematical beauty as a guide to successful theory choice. •
The anthropic fine tuning of the universe: He quotes with approval
Freeman Dyson, who said "the more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming" and suggests there is a wide consensus amongst physicists that either there are a very large number of other universes in the
Multiverse or that "there is just one universe which is the way it is in its anthropic fruitfulness because it is the expression of the purposive design of a Creator, who has endowed it with the finely tuned potentialty for life." •
A wider humane reality: He considers that theism offers a more persuasive account of ethical and aesthetic perceptions. He argues that it is difficult to accommodate the idea that "we have real moral knowledge" and that statements such as 'torturing children is wrong' are more than "simply social conventions of the societies within which they are uttered" within an atheistic or naturalistic world view. He also believes such a world view finds it hard to explain how "Something of lasting significance is glimpsed in the beauty of the natural world and the beauty of the fruits of human creativity."
On free will Polkinghorne believes that
On creationism Following the resignation of
Michael Reiss, the director of education at the Royal Society—who had controversially argued that school pupils who believed in creationism should be used by science teachers to start discussions, rather than be rejected
per se—Polkinghorne argued in
The Times that "As a Christian believer I am, of course, a creationist in the proper sense of the term, for I believe that the mind and the purpose of a divine Creator lie behind the fruitful history and remarkable order of the universe which science explores. But I am certainly not a creationist in that curious North American sense, which implies interpreting Genesis 1 in a flat-footed literal way and supposing that evolution is wrong."
Critical reception Nancy Frankenberry, Professor of Religion at
Dartmouth College, has described Polkinghorne as the finest British theologian/scientist of our time, citing his work on the possible relationship between
chaos theory and
natural theology.
Owen Gingerich, an astronomer and former Harvard professor, has called him a leading voice on the relationship between science and religion. The British philosopher
Simon Blackburn has criticized Polkinghorne for using primitive thinking and rhetorical devices instead of engaging in philosophy. When Polkinghorne argues that the minute adjustments of cosmological constants for life points towards an explanation beyond the scientific realm, Blackburn argues that this relies on a natural preference for explanation in terms of agency. Blackburn writes that he finished Polkinghorne's books in "despair at humanity's capacity for self-deception." Against this,
Freeman Dyson called Polkinghorne's arguments on theology and natural science "polished and logically coherent." The novelist
Simon Ings, writing in the
New Scientist, said Polkinghorne's argument for the proposition that God is real is cogent and his evidence elegant.
Richard Dawkins, formerly
Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, writes that the same three names of British scientists who are also sincerely religious crop up with the "likable familiarity of senior partners in a firm of Dickensian lawyers":
Arthur Peacocke,
Russell Stannard, and John Polkinghorne, all of whom have either won the Templeton Prize or are on its board of trustees. Dawkins writes that he is not so much bewildered by their belief in a cosmic lawgiver, but by their beliefs in the minutiae of Christianity, such as the resurrection and forgiveness of sins, and that such scientists, in Britain and in the US, are the subject of bemused bafflement among their peers. Polkinghorne responded that "debating with Dawkins is hopeless, because there's no give and take. He doesn't give you an inch. He just says no when you say yes." In contrast to Grayling, science historian Edward B. Davis praises
Questions of Truth, saying the book provides "the kind of technical information... that scientifically trained readers will appreciate—yet they can be read profitably by anyone interested in science and Christianity." Davis concludes, "It hasn't been easy to steer a middle course between fundamentalism and modernism, particularly on issues involving science. Polkinghorne has done that very successfully for a generation, and for this he ought to be both appreciated and emulated." ==Published works==