Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion.

Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion by Chet Raymo (New York: Walker and Company, 1998); 288 pp.; $23.00 cloth.

Science and religion have long been in collision, driven by the seemingly relentless march of empiricism into realms that were once strictly theological territory. The origins of the universe, the nature of the self, the source of ethics-all these are now fair game for science, and often at the expense of traditional faiths.

It is fashionable (and politically correct) to portray this ongoing battle as a mutual accommodation. But, in reality, religion is doing most of the accommodating as the gaps in understanding that nourish God grow ever smaller.

For believers conversant with science, the concept of divinity has shifted considerably from the personal to the abstract; and for nonbelievers, any notion of the spiritual is likely to seem suspect. So it's not surprising that, for many seeking religious consolation, the advance of science-or, more broadly, naturalism--has forced a retreat to the easy fix of New Age nostrums: angels, aliens, and astrology. But science writer Chet Raymo shows there is a better way.

Those interested in how to integrate, not separate, science and spirituality will profit by Raymo's well-crafted book. Although each of us must find our own balance between skepticism and religious experience, Raymo makes a convincing case that they need not be incompatible. Wonder need not be extinguished by understanding and doubt; indeed, as we better appreciate both the vastness of the cosmos as given to us by astronomers (Raymo's favorite theme) and our perhaps ineradicable ignorance of its origins and destiny, wonder very well may grow. It may even culminate, as it does for Raymo, in frankly religious awe for the "god of the galaxies." (Some will part company with him here, since god, even in lower case, may be too burdened with theistic connotations to figure in a thoroughly modern spirituality-that is, one without spirits. But this is a minor quibble, since obviously no vision of the ultimate will please everyone.)

Raymo explores the reasons why so many of us cling to antique cosmologies or fall prey to pseudoscientific scams, concluding that much of our desire for transcendence is rooted in the fear of death. He says we should grow up, relinquish the quest for immortality, and find spiritual solace in what Catholic priest and historian Thomas Berry calls the "new story" of science.

This is not so paradoxical as we might imagine: our identification can shift from the personal I to the vast ground of being from whence we spring, revealed in telescopes and particle accelerators. Using his personal story of a lost Catholic faith transmuted into a reverential naturalism, Raymo makes it plausible that many, if not all, thinking adults can participate in what surely counts as a maturing of the spiritual impulse.

For those already in the naturalistic camp, Raymo's case for science, as opposed to wishful thinking, won't be revelatory, but his sharp dissection of New Age fads and resurgent fundamentalism is nevertheless instructive. He dispatches, compassionately but effectively, astrology, intercessory prayer, angels, creationism, the academic left's bungled critique of science, and even Vaclav Havel. Particularly telling (and amusing) is his run-in with John Mack, the Harvard-credentialed apologist for alien abduction theories, which ends with a college campus vigil for aliens that never show up. Score one for the skeptics.

Raymo even takes issue with some rather reputable scientists, remonstrating Stephen Hawking for supposing that his astrophysics might reveal "the mind of God" and Stephen Weinberg for the reductionistic hubris of imagining that we will ever have a "final theory." This is all to the good, since it would not do, in our quest for an authentic modern spirituality, to replace one false god with another. Science helps give rise to wonder but science, itself, is not to be worshipped.

Raymo's tone throughout is serious but never pompous, pedantic, or condescending to the "true believer" clinging to traditional certitudes. He wishes only to point the way out of the manifest contradiction between our increasingly scientific, empirical grasp of material reality and our uncritical acceptance of feel-good solutions to the problem of meaning.

The way out is not to dismiss objective understanding of nature in favor of myths that are in flat contradiction to our knowledge but, rather, to see that the awe-inspiring facts given by science (and the mysteries it will always leave open) are invitations to spiritual experience. Raymo shows us the way with a sure, skillful touch that will likely move all but the most confirmed religionist or crusty atheist.

Thomas W. Clark is a frequent philosophical contributor to the Humanist.