In recent years, the philosopher of science Michael Ruse, who has distinguished himself as one of the foremost experts on Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, has increasingly turned his attention to issues concerning religion, spirituality, and science. Although such a development might not be surprising—after all Ruse has been engaged in debates over science and Creationism since his famous 1981 testimony in McLean v. Arkansas—what is surprising is his sympathetic approach to Christianity. Unlike the “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom have gained notoriety for their diatribes against organized religion and Christianity, Ruse has written a number of books that demonstrate a careful and thoughtful engagement with the tradition. Although it would be a mistake to suggest that Ruse has “seen the light” or has found some of that ol’ time religion, his writings Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (2001), The Evolution‐Creation Struggle (2005), and Evolution and Religion: A Dialogue (2008) reveal a nuanced attempt to do justice to the historical, philosophical, and theological issues surrounding the relationship between religion and science.

In his latest book, Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science (2010), Ruse develops many of the themes and issues introduced in Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? In this earlier work, Ruse focused on the alleged antinomy of evolution and Christianity and argued that evolutionary theory is not only compatible with nonfundamentalist versions of classical Christianity; but that many of the traditional Christian worries, such as attempts to address the problem of evil, can actually be addressed by a Darwinian understanding of human nature. Continuing the trajectory of his earlier project, Ruse broadens his perspective in his latest book: instead of focusing on evolution and religion; he addresses the more general question of whether Christian faith can be reconciled with modern science. As his subtitle Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science suggests, Ruse adopts the Kantian strategy of highlighting the limits of science, showing that there are questions concerning origins, mind, morality, and ultimate purpose that science does not answer, and concludes that such questions are nevertheless meaningful enough to invite a religious response.

As it turns out, however, Ruse's latest argument for the independence of science and religion generates a number of problems that render it unsatisfactory for both the scientist and believer. First, despite his own objections to the kind of “God of the gaps” arguments used by defenders of Intelligent Design, his own strategy for identifying those questions that are beyond the limits of science seems to raise the “God of the gaps” problem in a new form. Second, what Ruse offers as evidence for the limits of science is better construed as evidence for deep disagreements among scientists and as such does not support his claims about the limits of science. Third, in aiming to establish their independence, Ruse subordinates religion to science. The problem is that this subordination of religion to science generates a tension between the two that Ruse leaves unresolved. Finally, his support of traditional theology as a mode of religious understanding might cause concern for those who believe that certain kinds of theological reflection are at odds with scientific thinking. The worry is that the habit of accepting certain kinds of theological strategies, such as the appeal to mystery, might lead to habits of thinking antithetical to genuine scientific inquiry.

Machines and Organism: Metaphors and Their Limits

In the first four chapters, Ruse sets the stage for his analysis and argument by providing a selective history of science, which aims to show how certain root metaphors have both framed the agenda and set the limits of scientific inquiry (Ruse 2010, 11–116). He tells a familiar story that begins with the ancient Greeks who viewed the cosmos as a living thing and adopted organism as their root metaphor. As Ruse observes, although we might want to distinguish the external teleology articulated by Plato in his Timaeus from Aristotle's internal teleology, it is clear that that both shared the same root metaphor and insisted that nature is governed by purposes and values (pp. 25–31). Throughout the Middle Ages, the organism metaphor inherited from the Greeks was developed in more detail and reinterpreted by thinkers such as John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas to bring it into agreement with Christian beliefs and doctrine (pp. 33–36). Ruse's narrative continues with the rise of modern science, particularly the astronomical theories of Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei, which eventually led thinkers to give up Aristotelian appeals to final causality and to focus exclusively on the identification of efficient causes (p. 41). The final result was the adoption of the root metaphor of the “world as machine” that epitomized Isaac Newton's and Robert Boyle's investigations of the physical world (pp. 45–53), but was eventually extended to include the world of living things (pp. 54–84). Ruse includes a discussion of the vitalist reaction to mechanism and notes the ambivalence of later philosophers such as Immanuel Kant who, though committed to a Newtonian mechanistic view of nature, adopted teleological thinking as a regulative principle for understanding living things: although we do not observe design in nature, we treat it “as if” it were governed by purposes (pp. 62–65). Finally, Ruse brings his story to a close by examining the triumph of mechanism, first in what he calls the “artifact mechanism” of Charles Darwin, who seems to use such language in his discussion of adaptation (p. 77), and finally in contemporary developments such as cognitive science and evolutionary psychology where the machine metaphor for understanding human beings as “thinking machines” reigns supreme (pp. 106–16).

Given the triumph of the “machine metaphor,” where is there any room for God, religion, or spirituality, let alone the traditional God and the beliefs of orthodox Christianity? After all, orthodox believers claim that the world was created ex nihilo by an infinite Being who is perfect in every way: all‐powerful, all‐knowing, and all‐loving. Moreover, according to this story, this Being did not manufacture mere “thinking machines” but rather spiritual beings created in the divine image and invited to fellowship and communion. And despite the fact that these spiritual beings have “fallen” into sin by their own free will, God has provided a remedy by sending his Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for sin and to pave the way for eternal life by raising him from the dead. The promise for orthodox believers is that all who have faith are destined to share in this eternal life with God.

Although Ruse has no patience at all with fundamentalist forms of Christianity, whose literalist interpretations of the Bible have been used to defend what he sees as the bankrupt agenda of Creationism, he has developed a reputation for the tremendous respect and even sympathy he has for the traditional picture of Nicene Christianity. Appealing to a careful and nuanced interpretation of the defenders of the tradition, ranging from Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth, Ruse sets out to show that orthodox Christianity is compatible not only with evolution, a point that he argued at length in his earlier book Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?, but also with all of modern science.

Ruse's Argument

So how does Ruse develop his case for the compatibility of orthodox Christianity and modern science? In Kuhnian fashion, Ruse suggests that although paradigms and root metaphors set the agenda for inquiry by providing a heuristic that defines problems and yields insights, they are limited. The two major root metaphors that have defined the shape and scope of inquiry throughout the history of Western science, organism and mechanism, have been very helpful in illuminating some issues, but often at the expense of others. As Ruse sees it, even though the machine metaphor has won the day in modern science, there are still legitimate questions, what one might call “limiting questions” (Toulmin 1950, 204–21), which science, at least with the current mechanistic metaphor, does not address: “This restricting of the questions, this putting on the blinders, is also true of the big metaphors, the root metaphors, including the machine metaphor. We have looked in detail at the triumphs. Now raise the other side, not so much the failures but the areas where the metaphor does not go and where the scientist therefore is not led. I want to argue that there is a set of problems that are genuine, but that are not touched by the metaphor. On them, the metaphor is silent” (Ruse 2010, 119).

Since it is possible that the root metaphor leaves unanswered some interesting and meaningful questions, Ruse suggests that traditional Christians can make room for faith by identifying those areas that might lend themselves to a religious response. Ruse is cautious and acknowledges that not everyone will agree with him in his identification of those problems that escape the domain of science. But as Ruse sees it, there are four main areas where mechanistic science comes up short and which deserve our attention: the question of origins, the foundations of morality, the “hard problem” of consciousness, and the question of meaning and purpose in human life.

Origins.    Although Ruse agrees that modern cosmology has answered and will continue to answer many of our questions concerning the Big Bang, he believes that what Adolf Grünbaum has called the Primoridial Existential Question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” has no scientific answer (p. 120). But even though he maintains that there is no scientific answer to the question, this does not mean that it is meaningless. Acknowledging that there are philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Edwards who have argued that Primoridial Existential Question is not a genuine one, Ruse is happy to endorse it and to suggest that the classic First Cause Argument, while not proving God's existence, at least makes it intelligible (p. 121). As Ruse sees it, the Christian who wishes to answer the limiting question about ultimate origins by appealing to a “necessary being” is perfectly entitled to do so. Although there might be a whole host of metaphysical worries that need to be resolved regarding, for example, the status of this “necessary being,” these are not scientific worries. So in the last analysis, argues Ruse, the traditional Christian who wishes to invoke God, the necessary being, as an answer to Primoridial Existential Question need not worry that this belief will conflict with science (p. 129).

Morality.    Another area in which Ruse identifies limiting questions that invite a religious response is the area of morality. With respect to this question, is it worth reminding ourselves that Ruse himself has gone on record for endorsing ethical skepticism in the area of metaethics. According to Ruse, moral behavior and emotions are adaptations best explained by natural selection, but in the end there are no ultimate scientific or moral justifications for our moral beliefs (Ruse 1998, 250–58). All this might at first glance sound like bad news, especially to believers, but Ruse once again assures us that the Christian can take advantage of limiting questions in the area of metaethics by appealing to the nature and will of a perfectly good God. Now, although the believer's first inclination here might be to appeal to some sort of Divine Command Theory, Ruse is quick to remind us that command approaches to theological ethics run afoul of the Euthyphro Dilemma. If an action is right because God wills it, then we have the problem that God's command might render actions such as rape and murder morally obligatory. If, on the other hand, God wills an action because it is morally right, then there is a moral standard independent of God (p. 210).

In order to avoid this problem, Ruse recommends that the religious believer endorse the kind of Natural Law approach defended by Thomas Aquinas (p. 211). Unlike appeals to divine command, Aquinas, who follows Aristotle in this regard, grounds moral requirements in human nature. In principle, claims Ruse, there is no reason why this general approach to theological ethics need to conflict with science. Of course, one must exercise caution here. Since the study of human nature is in fact one of the central areas of scientific inquiry—the domain of psychology, sociology, and anthropology—Ruse is quick to add that science might have something to say when it comes to substantive moral claims (pp. 212–14). The possibility of revision is always open. Yet surprisingly, Ruse's views here are quite conservative: aside from philosophers’ worries about such dilemmas as the trolley problem, he suspects that on the whole believers and unbelievers will agree on most issues (p. 214). So, if the believer wishes to appeal to Natural Law to answer those limiting questions raised by metaethics, so be it. Ruse himself endorses ethical skepticism, but the believer is free to affirm a Natural Law ethics without worrying that these beliefs will conflict with science.

Mind.    Another area of contention among scientists and philosophers involves questions concerning the human mind. Now, although scientists and philosophers have reached some consensus in their rejection of substance dualism, there is much disagreement when it comes to what David Chalmers has called the “hard problem” of consciousness (pp. 133–40). Some thinkers such as Daniel Dennett argue, pace Chalmers, that there is no particularly hard problem here and that consciousness can be explained as he himself claims to do in his well‐known Consciousness Explained (1991). Others, more sympathetic to the kinds of worries that Chalmers raises about qualia, agree that even though we can be optimistic about “easy” questions regarding cognitive functioning, the question of consciousness might call for a radically different kind of science. Yet, others have followed Colin McGinn who raises the skeptical possibility that our minds are so constituted that the “hard problem” of consciousness might lie forever beyond our reach (pp. 178–80). Once again this kind of disagreement might sound like bad news, but as Ruse suggests, it provides the traditional Christian a perfect opportunity to appeal to the traditional doctrines of the soul as a response to limiting questions about the mind. In addition, Ruse once again suggests that believers might find resources in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose Aristotelian emphasis on the unity of body and soul conforms not only to contemporary science, which rejects dualist models of the mind, but also to the psychosomatic view of persons affirmed in the Bible. In the final analysis, claims Ruse, the Christian who affirms traditional teachings about the soul is responding to questions beyond the limits of science. There should be no worry about conflict.

Purpose.    Finally, when it comes to what traditional theology calls “eschatological” questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of human life, Ruse once again assures the Christian that there is room for traditional beliefs to the extent that they answer limiting questions not addressed by science. According to the traditional Christian picture, human beings do have an ultimate purpose: they were created in the image of God to enjoy everlasting fellowship in divine communion. Since Ruse believes that science cannot and does not speak to questions about meaning and purpose, Christian beliefs clearly fall outside its domain.

What about the Christian belief that this promise involves “eternal life?” If there is any belief that seems to conflict with science, it is the belief that human beings live forever. Ruse reminds us that the belief in immorality was a fairly late development in Jewish thought, and that when it does appear in the Book of Daniel it does not involve the Platonic belief in eternal disembodied souls, but rather the belief in a personal resurrection of the body (p. 225). At first glance, this might seem to make matters worse for Ruse's case: disembodied immortal souls are bad enough; but if anything would seem to count as an offense to modern science, it is the belief in immortal bodies. Ruse reassures the believer, however, that this need not be the case. One can salvage the traditional Pauline claim in 1 Corinthians 15 by suggesting that the resurrected body does not dwell in the physical natural world, but rather in another dimension. Since the resurrection world involves another dimension, science has nothing to say about it, one way or another: “If the claim were being made that, say, somewhere elsewhere in the universe we shall find Saint Paul and Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Charles Darwin—as mind alone or with bodies also—then as a scientist, one might be skeptical. But this is not the claim. It is rather that there is another dimension of existence where resurrected bodies exist—or minds, if that is all. It is the place of the spiritual body. As such, I doubt that science can lay a finger on the idea” (p. 228).

Before turning to a critique of Ruse's argument, it is important to point out that he devotes an entire chapter (pp. 149–80) to assess how these limiting questions might be addressed by those scientists, philosophers, and theologians who have attempted to resuscitate the organism metaphor. As Ruse points out, since the nineteenth century and Friedrich Schelling's attempt to work out a Naturphilosophie (pp. 150–54), both believers and nonbelievers have, on a variety of grounds, expressed a deep dissatisfaction with the machine metaphor and have defended instead a return to organism. Ruse sees an attempt to return to this model, for example, in the work of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin who argue against the reductionism implicit in the mechanism metaphor and opt for a more holistic approach to evolution (p. 155). More recently, thinkers such as Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin have revived the organism metaphor by stressing the importance of the kind of self‐organization that gives us “order for free” (pp. 157–60). Among those interested in philosophy of mind, Ruse points to the emergentism developed by George Henry Lewes, C. D. Broad, Samuel Alexander, and others (pp. 160–65). One might add that this paradigm has been recently revived by Philip Clayton, who is not only one of the movement's most eloquent spokespersons, but also a philosopher of religion who has identified emergentism as providing an important perspective for Christian theology. Finally, Ruse discusses the appropriation of the organism metaphor by James Lovelock, famous for his defense of the Gaia Hypothesis—that the Earth is itself best understood as an organism—and ecofeminists such as Caroline Merchant, both of whom have provided yet another paradigm for articulating and defending an environmental ethic (pp. 165–68).

Those sympathetic to the organism metaphor might complain that in assessing its resources for addressing the four fundamental issues; origins, morality, mind, and purpose, Ruse appears to give this model such short shrift. With respect to the question of ultimate origins, we should not be surprised that the organism metaphor is silent since the ancient Greeks, who first developed the model, believed in an eternal cosmos—though, of course, we can still always ask why there is an eternal universe rather than none (pp. 168–69). With respect to questions of morality and value, Ruse concedes that the organism metaphor seems to possess more resources for answering our questions. But even though it might provide grounds for the idea of intrinsic value in nature and for the idea that the world might increase in value as it grows, one might still ask limiting questions, e.g., “why is this something a thing of great value?” (p. 170). In the case of mind, Ruse observes that it might seem that the organism metaphor might provide a better model for understanding the mind; but even here, one can ask the question of why consciousness should emerge in the first place (p. 171). Finally, on the level of ultimate purpose, it might first appear that the organism metaphor should leave no questions unanswered since it is inherently teleological, and yet we can always ask whether there is an ultimate purpose for this world of purposes (p. 172).

Since the organism metaphor, like the machine metaphor, does leave some important questions unanswered, one might wonder why Ruse does not explore it in more detail. Ruse sums up his verdict by confessing that it does not seem that the organism metaphor does any real work that is not already done by the machine metaphor. So although he claims that the organism metaphor possesses a “certain richness” and “that it makes good sense as an overall world picture” (p. 176); there is no reason for science to give up on the machine metaphor that, as Ruse suggests, continues to do the “heavy lifting” (p. 175).

Critique of the Argument

“God of the gaps” redux?    First, it goes without saying that Ruse has officially gone on record as rejecting any and all theological positions that appeal to “God of the gaps” arguments. Indeed, his ongoing crusade against all varieties of Creationism and Intelligent Design theory are based on his insistence that it is a mistake to invoke God as an explanation to fill the gaps left by science. For example, after offering his critique Michael Behe's infamous Irreducible Complexity Argument in Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?, Ruse sums up his concerns by suggesting that Behe's argument fails because it is just another “God of the gaps” argument: “The sad truth is that Behe is in the same boat as those physicists we dismissed earlier. He has offered us a freshened‐up version of the old “God of the gaps” argument for the Deity's existence. A Supreme Being must be invoked to explain those phenomena for which I cannot offer a natural explanation. But such an argument proves only one's ignorance and inadequacy” (Ruse 2001a, 122).

One serious question raised by Ruse's own argument in Science and Spirituality concerns the status of the kinds of limiting questions to which he appeals in his attempt to articulate the separate domains of science and religion. Given his repudiation of “God of the gaps” type arguments, it might seem that he requires a way to determine, in principle, which kinds of questions cannot be answered by science. After all, if it were to turn out that today's unanswerable question became tomorrow's answerable, indeed answered, question, then the threat of the “God of the gaps” would re‐emerge.

A strictly Kantian solution to this problem would be based on the claim that there are certain questions that are, in principle, beyond the scope of science. Kant himself, of course, drew this distinction by invoking his infamous but problematic distinction between the realm of the phenomena and noumena, the appearance and the thing‐in‐self. But there have been less drastic ways of attempting to articulate the domain of science, such as the many failed attempts in the twentieth century to formulate a demarcation criterion appealing, for example, to verifiability or falsifiability (Laudan [1983] 1996). Such routes, of course, are not open to Ruse who has famously and for good reasons repudiated his own earlier attempts in McLean v. Arkansas to articulate the proper domain of science by appealing to demarcation criteria.

What then is Ruse's alternative? Since there is no way to rule out a priori the possibility that today's unanswerable question might become tomorrow's answerable question, Ruse concedes that what might count as a limiting question is always open to change. In other words, there is no magic recipe to distinguish once and for all those questions within the province of science from those that are beyond its limits because those questions are always changing:

… there are certain areas that modern science not only does not answer but, as it is at the moment, does not even speak to. I am not saying that it could never speak to the areas—things like the previous century's work on the notion of life make me unwilling to make absolute statements—but I do not think that it does speak to them at the moment. It is not a question of trying and failing. It is more one of not being in the conversation. I shall argue that the Christian's claims fall within these areas, and so the Christian can, legitimately, try to speak to them.” (pp. 182–83)

This is a crucial admission and one that seems to pose a problem for Ruse's argument. On the one hand, he rightly wants to guard against any attempt to define the domain of science by appealing to principles that might smack of demarcation criteria. On the other hand, he wants to avoid at all costs the appearance of a “God of the gaps” argument: he is on record for rejecting them on the grounds that they are “science stoppers” (Ruse 2001b). The problem is that there seems to be no way to avoid being impaled on one of these horns. Which horn is Ruse forced to choose? He seems to be forced to choose the “God of the gaps” in a new form: if what the Christian today assumes to be beyond the scope of science might turn out to be mainline science tomorrow, then today's article of faith might become the conclusion of tomorrow's “God of the gaps” argument.

In response to my worries, Ruse might claim that his argument does not run afoul of the “God of the gaps” problem because the Christian's beliefs are not intended to be explanations in the first place. If they are not intended to be explanations, then they do not compete with science. And if they do not compete with science, then there is no “God of the gaps” problem. For example, in response to the worry that miracles appear to conflict with science by offering supernatural explanations, Ruse is quick to point out that this need not be the case. In fact, he goes out of his way to distinguish the illicit appeal to miracles we find in arguments for Intelligent Design, which is pretending to do the work of science, from the religiously legitimate appeal to miracles by the religious believer (p. 207). But here again, Ruse's response raises a number of questions that deserve our attention. First, on what basis do we determine what constitutes a legitimate appeal to miracles and how exactly are such legitimate appeals to be distinguished from the illicit appeal to miracle made in Intelligent Design arguments? Second, the claim that religious beliefs are not intended as scientific explanations need not depend on claims about the limits of science. Other arguments, for example those inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work, might appeal to the suggestion that science and religion simply involve different “language games” or “forms of life” (Phillips 1976) without invoking any extra considerations about the limits of science. Now such views are quite familiar and have been subject to much criticism over the years (Proudfoot 1985, 200–12); but if one accepts them, then anyone who wants to establish the independence of science and religion can do so without relying on an argument appealing the limits of science.