D. Brian Austin.  The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith: Religion and Science for the 21^st Century.  Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, Incorporated, 2000. 

A common assumption of contemporary western culture is that science and religion are antagonists, and that while science is an objective source of knowledge whose content is verifiable and certain, religion is merely a subjective endeavor whose tenets are inescapably speculative, uncertain, and thus of questionable value.  In his text, The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith, D. Brian Austin of Carson-Newman College seeks to dispel this strong dichotomy between science and religion.  Austin is convinced that a clear shift has occurred in the epistemology of science away from a smug assurance that our concepts fully (even adequately) convey the nature of the physical universe toward a more humble assessment of the human capacity to understand the world.  Drawing from the insights of Bergson, Nietzsche, Whitehead, and Peirce, Austin argues that human concepts are always interpretations--ever imprecise, ever incomplete (19-34).  Further, there is mounting evidence that a genuine randomness persists at all levels of the physical universe--from subatomic (quantum) occurrences, to the emergence of unpredictable structural patterns in systems that are far-from-equilibrium, to the immense diversity of biological organisms, to the incredibly complex electro-chemical nexus that constitutes the human nervous system.  Randomness is real (37-56).  In light of the limited (perspectival) nature of human understanding and the genuine randomness of the physical universe, an epistemologically and metaphysically (or at least physically) grounded uncertainty pervades all human knowledge, including the enterprise of natural science.  Our knowledge is always imprecise and our world is ever-changing, unpredictable, open to creative novelty.  Subsequently, our beliefs are never certain.

These claims are reinforced by Austin’s endorsement of the notion that human life and conceptualizations are inescapably future-oriented.  Drawing on existentialist and pragmatist themes (particularly the insights of Charles Peirce), Austin declares that the human self largely is  defined by its future-oriented projects and that the meaning of our concepts greatly is defined in terms of how such ideas potentially impact our future actions, in terms of the practical (and future) consequences that such concepts entail.  In light of the future-orientation of human selfhood and concepts, and in the face of the genuine randomness, unpredictability, and openness of the universe, all human endeavors, including science, are laden with uncertainty and risk.  Indeed, the risk involved in attempting to conceptualize and confirm scientific claims is, at an elementary level, the same as the risk involved in personal and religious commitments (59-74).  Clearly, then, an affinity surfaces between religion and science, one deriving from the inset limitations of the human condition and from the wondrous openness of reality as a whole.  Each discipline seeks truth and must exercise faith and risk in obtaining it.

Austin attempts to avoid both relativism and dogmatism by appealing to the Peircean concept of a future-looking realism.  In Austin’s words, for Peirce, “[t]he truth about any matter is the beliefs that would be held by the committed inquirers when all the trials are done, when all of the experiments have been run (167).”  Thus, “[t]ruth never escapes sign-existence; it resides, even in the end, as signs in the minds of the community of inquirers (167-168).”  This means that there is truth, that our concepts move us toward truth, but this truth resides somewhere between the quagmire of subjectivism and the mountainous facade of dogmatism.  Austin calls for epistemological humility, both on the part of science and religion.  He is intolerant toward both naturalistic and religious dogmatists who pontificate their positions as if they possessed a God’s-eye-view of The Truth.  Austin writes concerning those engaged in the naturalistic evolution-creationist debates: 

Both camps share an enormous confidence that their words are accurately, even literally, descriptive of some reality beyond their own minds and that their beliefs are somehow immune to the limitations of linguistic expression . . . .  Their extreme confidence that their words and equations literally and comprehensively convey fixed truths about the universe, born more of a deadly blend of wishful thinking and fear of the fuzzy than of a careful analysis of the ways that words and other symbols actually refer to their objects, is a lasting legacy of modernity’s Cartesian dreams of certainty (124-125).

For Austin, we are best off simply to admit the limits of our knowledge and to be open to the inherent riskiness of all human knowledge and activity.  On the other hand, we may exercise the hope that we can and do move toward the truth in our scientific and religious inquiries. 

Austin’s work is a splendid read, informative, thought-provoking, and lyrical.   As with any text of limited pages and restricted focus, weaknesses may be found.  For example, one might wish for a fuller description of the implications of his epistemology for the integration of scientific and religious insights–a shortcoming perhaps readily overcome by a second volume by Austin.  Further, and a related matter: the precise nature and role of divine revelation could use some fleshing out.  Austin suggests that truth, including religious truth, is ultimately a function of the ever-future-oriented community of inquirers, and that while The Truth may never fully be procured, we (as religious inquiries) may well be moving toward verisimilitude.  Left unexplained is the precise role to be played by Christian scripture and tradition in this on-going emergence of and grasping for religious truth. 

Reviewer:

Michael Robinson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Cumberland College, Williamsburg, Kentucky.  Dr. Robinson is the author of Eternity and Freedom (University Press of America, 1995).