Book review: The Sacred Depths of Nature (Ursula Goodenough)
- From: Anthony Campbell <ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Mar 2007 11:55:05 GMT
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Ursula Goodenough
THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE
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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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Ursula Goodenough is a biologist. Although she describes
herself as a non-theist, she believes that religion is very
important and indeed she attends the Trinity Presbyterian
Church, where she sings in the choir, recites the liturgy and
prayers, and generally participates in the religious life. She
is thus at one far end of the atheistic spectrum, opposite to
that occupied by people such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
She loves traditional religions, she tells us.
In this short book, which she compares to a Lutheran Daily
Devotional booklet, she provides twelve chapters which are
intended to illustrate her view of how a scientific
non-supernatural understanding of nature can sustain a spiritual
outlook. Her position is that science and spirituality do not
contradict each other and indeed are mutually reinforcing.
Each chapter offers a simple introduction to a scientific idea,
aimed chiefly at readers with a minimal background in science.
Starting with the formation of the earth, we move to the origins
of life and the genetic code. There follows an explanation of
how proteins are transcribed from DNA and how enzymes function
to facilitate this process. Other chapters look at how
multicellularity arose and how evolution works. Then come
discussions of awareness and consciousness, emotions and
meaning, sex and sexuality, multicellularity and death, and
speciation.
On the basis of this scientific survey the author derives some
religious principles which she thinks should be acceptable to
those of all religious backgrounds. We can, she believes feel
gratitude, though this need not be to a personal God. We can
feel reverence towards the sacredness of life. And we can feel
faith in the continuity of human life.
Humans need stories - grand, compelling stories - that help
to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos. The Epic of
Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our
search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature,
our place, our context.
The book is an eloquent presentation of what Goodenough calls
religious naturalism and I think that many readers will find
this satisfying. It will not appeal to those who regard
religion as the enemy, nor will it work very well for those who,
unlike the author, find religious ritual meaningless. This seems
to be a temperamental difference.
There is also an objection of another kind to Goodenough's
thesis. It has been discussed by Thomas Nagel in a recent essay,
Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, in which he
points out that the evolutionary perspective "probably makes
human life, like all life, meaningless, since it makes life a
more or less accidental consequence of physics." I don't think
Goodenough really provides an answer to this objection, but her
book is still an interesting take on the religion-science issue.
28 March 2007
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%T The Sacred Depths of Nature
%A Ursula Goodenough
%I Oxford University Press
%C Oxford
%D 1998, 2000
%G ISBN-13 976-0-19-513629-6
%P xxi + 197pp
%K science, religion
%O paperback edition
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