Author: Bernard Haisch
Publisher: Weiser Books
Price: .95/£15.99
Isbn: 9781578633746

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently described Creationism and Intelligent Design as “category errors” because they confuse mutually incompatible methods of understanding the Universe. Science is good at the physical (what’s here, how it got to be like it is and what it does), while religion is best suited to the metaphysical (who are we, what is it all for and how do we relate to it, that kind of stuff). Try and tackle one with the other and it’s like trying to open a tin of soup with a spanner.

Pretty much the same objection can be made about any attempt to link science to religion – not that it actually stops people trying.

The latest to step up to this sticky wicket is Bernard Haisch, an astrophysicist with a long and credible track record in research, which would bring one to hope that he would at least address the matter with some scientific rigour.

Some hope…

What is it about this area that seems to make everyone leave their brains on the hall table when they step into the fray?

The preface is based on a misunderstanding of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory; he seemingly believes it was simply dreamed up to account for the anthropic principle (why the Universe seems exactly tuned for our existence), whereas it came about as a legitimate mathematical interpretation of the physics, and was only later alighted on as a possible explanation for the anthropic principle.

Elsewhere he fails to differentiate between a plausible extrapolation from the data and a belief system, comes up with his own version of Darwinism and is happy to dismiss ideas on the grounds that he finds them “morally repugnant”. Well, I find genocide morally repugnant, but I haven’t noticed it becoming any less real… I could go on, but will spare you the tedium.

Admittedly, Haisch isn’t banging on about one of the usual science/religion hybrids, but rather telling us about his own theory for reconciling the two, or at least that’s what he says he’s setting out to do.

In fact, he spends his 150 or so pages collecting the usual grab-bag of mystic-friendly scientific ideas and chewing them over from his own particular viewpoint without ever coming up with a final summation that could be called a theory, or even a hypothesis.

This is just a supremely egotistical “this is what I think” rummage through science, coupled with some personal reminiscence, which roughly boils down to the idea that we are all one with God and science is revealing the way he does things. This is hardly new.

Why anyone would want to spend time, let alone money, on reading such self-centred tosh is beyond me.