Journalists contemplate Science and Religion's role on health

I will be a fellow, which is supposed to be a gender-neutral tone for “a group of people who work together as peers in the pursuit of knowledge.” In this case, my peers will be nine other journalists who will spend much of the summer studying religion and science, courtesy of the John Templeton Foundation. For the record, I am one of three non-fellow fellows.

When we are not in seminars at Cambridge, each of us will go our separate ways to pursue independent projects. Mine has to do with studies about spirituality and health.

Scientists were already mapping changes in the brain during spiritual experiences (the temporal lobe may be the God spot) and studying the effects of prayer on healing (conflicting results). But the studies unveiled at UC Berkeley were quite specific: meditative and contemplative practices were increasingly associated with mental and physical well-being.

One presenter was alternately excited and cautious. “There are limits, but brain science, neuroscience, has tools at its disposal to measure the effects of these experiences that we so seek to understand,” he said.

Solomon Katz, principal investigator for the Spiritual Transformation Scientific Research program, flatly rejected suggestions that the academic deck might have been stacked in favor of the rosy findings. He said his motivation wasn't to declare spirituality good or bad, but to understand its implications as a scientist.

“It's too important,” said Katz, who also is an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a longtime advocate in the science-religion conversation. “We can't ignore this any longer. We ignore it at our peril because of the world today. It's a world beset with wars, a world beset with health problems, with environmental catastrophes. We have to do it honestly and openly and with all the resources we have available to us.”

The two disciplines weren't always enemies.

“Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics, spent as much time in the study of theology as of physics,” according to Celia Deane-Drummond, who teaches applied theology at the University of Chester in England. “The split between science and religion is a relatively modern occurrence over the past few hundred years.”

Dale Matthews, a physician who teaches at Georgetown University School of Medicine, also favors a truce.

“A new willingness to consider alternative healing practices and a growing civility between religion and medicine is in the air,” Matthews writes. “It's time to reunite these long-separated traditions of healing; to join hands, not swords.”

I came across Deane-Drummond and Matthews in my pre-fellowship reading. As I slogged through a stack of books and journal articles, I was struck by a couple things.

One is that the academic prose is thicker than a bowl of overcooked oatmeal (my kingdom for a simple declarative sentence).

The other is how many players in this movement live in both worlds.

Consider Fraser Watts, a psychologist, ordained minister in the Church of England and a lecturer at Cambridge. He also worked with me via e-mail to hone my project.

Watts describes the relationship between the brain and religion as the new frontier for explorers, kind of like “Star Trek,” only without William Shatner (who has gone over to the dark side, playing a lawyer in another TV series). “It is linked to the problem of how the brain gives rise to any kind of consciousness, which is perhaps one of the biggest mysteries left for science to solve,” he writes.

One of the grandfathers of this exploration is John Polkinghorne, an award-winning particle physicist and theologian (among his other accomplishments is that he was tapped to chair the British government's advisory committee on human genetics developments). Now in his 70s, Polkinghorne once said that when he turned his collar around (he's an Anglican priest), he didn't stop searching for truth.

He doesn't try to diminish the challenge of studying a discipline that believes in things unseen and one that demands proof. “Theology does not enjoy the luxury that experiment grants to science, of being able to deal with essentially controllable and repeatable experience,” he writes in “Belief in God in an Age of Science.”

Yet, he adds, “in both science and theology, the cental question is, and remains, the question of truth. We shall never attain a total grasp of it, but in both disciplines we may hope for a developing understanding of it.”

Don't get the impression that the two sides are going to be hugging and singing “Kumbaya” any time soon.

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scholar and best-selling author who's become the Elmer Gantry of atheists, thinks all this is mumbo jumbo. In his words, it's religion “masquerading as science in a cloying love feast of bogus convergence.”

Never one to understate his cause, Dawkins adds, “To an honest judge, the alleged marriage between religion and science is a shallow, empty, spin-doctored sham.”

And so I'm off. Not to be converted or persuaded, but to connect whatever dots are out there and see what picture emerges. I hope to share that picture with you when I return.

Over the last few months, I've received some interesting contributions to my reading list. Tom Hall, who lives in San Diego but finds himself on the road a lot because of his job, has plied me with magazine stories about science, religion and Cambridge. Bill Root, a professor at SDSU, gave me a 572-page book containing the sermons of John Tillotson, the late archbishop of Canterbury (at least one deals with his views on Creation).

In my other readings, I came across a particularly endearing story about Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA who later lived and died in San Diego.

In 1953, while at Cambridge, Crick was said to have entered a nearby pub and exclaim, “We have discovered the secret of life!” I don't expect to unlock such secrets. But I wouldn't mind finding that pub.

The ten distinguished journalists below are recipients of the fourth annual Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion. Selections from their current work in the field of science and religion will be posted.

Sandi Dolbee
Sandi Dolbee has been the religion and ethics editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1992. Her science-related stories have explored the intersection of spirituality and health, the ethical and social implications of the human genome project and embryonic stem cell research, as well as the brave new worlds of singularity, transplantation, and aid-in-dying. Twice in the last three years she won first place in the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year contest. She also is a past president of the Religion Newswriters Association, which represents journalists who cover religion for the secular media in the United States and Canada.

Tim Folger, Marc Kaufman, Michael McGough,Jeffery Paine,Mark Pinsky,Mark Vernon,Christine Whelan,Emily Yoffe,Jason Zengerle