Faith in the Unseen

In recent years, the debate over science, reason, and religion has reached a peak (or a high plateau, depending on your perception of time scales) of intensity, breadth, and confrontational vigor. Hundreds of Web sites, blogs, and forums have sprung up, enabling the debate to rage day-to-day. But people will always want points of view to be encapsulated in portable form: books. This has meant big business for publishers. On one side, we have Dawkins, Hitchens, Shermer, Harris, and others arguing that the breach between religion on the one hand and science and reason on the other is absolute. On the other side of the debate are writers and polemicists such as Dinesh D’Souza, Shmuley Boteach, John Cornwell, and Alister McGrath, who claim either that science and religious faith, are compatible or (in the case of some individuals) that religion and reason go together, and science is simply wrong. This side is probably the more catholic (in the general sense), in that it comprises a range of opinions from fundamentalist creationism to “intelligent design” proponents and even some deistically inclined scientists. Faith in the Unseen is a contribution to the debate. Its author, who is a consultant cardiologist with numerous books on (variously) cardiology and religion under his belt, approaches the debate on the “faith” side as a religious man (he is a Muslim) with a strong background in science. The title of his manuscript places the emphasis on the key issue that stands between the scientific atheist side and the faith side: evidence, and the absence thereof. For fundamentalist believers, evidence (other than what is written in holy books) is simply not an issue. However, for the rational religious believer, it is a pivotal point and must be rationalized. One approach, which has been adopted by most theologians, is of “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA, for short) of naturalist and supernaturalist areas of thought. This is a position to which even some atheist scientists subscribe (for example, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who coined the term). What it means is that science and religion deal with fundamentally different things—the material and the spiritual—and should not attempt to intrude in each other’s territory. The author of Faith in the Unseen is not a subscriber to NOMA. He is of the unifying school that believes that science and religious belief can complement and harmonize with each other, in other words, that there is no fundamental contradiction between the two. The manuscript is a substantial and thoughtfully laid out package, as one would expect from an experienced author. This book is a work of scientific assertion in the light of Holy Scripture with a formal introduction, a short chapter in which the author discusses his premise. I find the men of all cast, color, creed, and culture of the modern era in an exceptionally vivacious stage, which immediately demands an attempt to reconcile religion with reason. I firmly believe that the day is not far off when the religion and science will discover mutual harmonies. An attempt to siphon off the insight of The Holy Scripture needs deep knowledge of modern science in its all districts and domains, besides having the true discernment of philosophy and the veridical knowledge of the Scripture. Thus, he sets out not only his philosophical premise but also his qualification to build upon it. Although he is deeply committed to Islam and approaches his subject primarily through the lens of Islam, he seeks to give an all-embracing perspective on religion, taking in not only the Abrahamic religions but also others, such as Hinduism. It is a very substantial work, and I cannot hope to engage fully with it in this brief appraisal. The manuscript is divided into substantial chapters each dealing with a major subject of faith and/or reason, and each chapter is subdivided into sections, which discuss various detailed aspects or examples. Some of the major subjects are: death and the afterlife; the philosophy of life; the notion of fate; religious and scientific ideas about origins and creation; Qur’anic vision and wisdom; and religious and scientific notions of time, ontology, and medicine. Of these individually large areas, probably the most substantial and comprehensively covered are those where religion and science are usually most inclined to clash: creation and time—in other words, biology and physics, each of which provides a fundamental challenge to traditional religious thinking. In each case, it is the religious (typically Qur’anic) perspective that takes precedence. For instance, the chapter on “Perfect Creation” provides a representative illustration of the author’s philosophical approach. The chapter opens with an account of the Qur’anic version of the origin of the cosmos, which the author argues is a rational anticipation of current scientific hypotheses and therefore represents the truth. Thus, there is no conflict between faith and science, because scientific knowledge and theory have already been prefigured in holy texts. At each point, his summaries of current scientific thinking are spot-on (he is, after all, a professional man of science), and his weaving of science with scripture is, to say the least, fascinating and engaging. Tone is important in books of this kind. Much of the friction in the science/religion debate has been attributed to the polemical tone of participants on both sides, who have been variously described as “shrill,” “strident,” and “intemperate.” None of these epithets apply to the author of Faith in the Unseen. He is measured, temperate, and good-humored throughout, undoubtedly reflecting his personal good nature and perhaps also his supreme confidence in his thesis. He is also very readable, with a flair for introducing accessible and pertinent examples