God?s sceptical storyteller

The Tablet Interview

Catherine Pepinster

Robert Winston, one of Britain?s best-known fertility doctors, has ventured into new territory with his latest television series and book, this time investigating God. He talks to Catherine Pepinster about doubt, certainty and his conflicts with Catholics

If you read the book of Genesis creation seems a wearying thing, especially the creation of human beings. On the sixth day, God created man and woman, and urged them to be fruitful and multiply. And on the seventh day, worn out with his exertions, God had a rest.

Robert Winston, on the other hand, doesn?t seem exhausted at all, and he?s been creating children, and helping men and women be fruitful and multiply, for more than 20 years. One of the first doctors in this country to work in the field of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), first Professor, and now Lord, Winston has become one of Britain?s best-known commentators on health and medicine. Now 65, he speaks regularly in the House of Lords, makes successful television series on medicine and also writes books on related subjects. The day I meet him he is in Sheffield where he has spent a fortnight attending graduation ceremonies at Sheffield Hallam University, where he is chancellor. As we talk over breakfast at a nearby hotel, he is interrupted several times by people who recognise him. His wife, Lira, later confides that it has become almost impossible to go on holiday and relax because he is recognised ?even in New Zealand?.

Television is to blame, of course, and Winston?s personality suits television. He has an easy, conversational style that helps him effortlessly explain difficult science, and is also happy to make use of TV gimmickry. But television really does make people seem larger than life, so when we meet, I am surprised at how small and slight he is, but with that distinctive shock of black hair and moustache. His manner is professorial, with a touch of showman and even Old Testament prophet.

The Old Testament is certainly something that means a great deal to Lord Winston. He is a practising Orthodox Jew. This interest in faith, combined with his enquiring scientific mind, have come together in a new book and television series, both entitled The Story of God. Not that they are confined solely to the Jewish faith; Winston offers a broad-brush sweeping account of history and the history of faith, and the extent of the relationship between religion and science. ?Some ideas endure,? he writes, ?and the most enduring idea of all is the idea of a supernatural dimension to our existence.?

His exploration begins with the primitive worship of our ancestors and finishes with a survey of faith in the modern world, taking in Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and most particularly the three Abrahamic, monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Above all, he is concerned with what he calls the Divine Idea ? the idea of a powerful, supernatural being or beings, which is articulated through religion which also provides us with a framework for living with its rules, as well as giving us answers about the problems of existence. The Divine Idea seems rather woolly, and is not the kind of God with which Catholics would be familiar. Winston?s God seems not, for example, to be omnipotent or interventionist.

I get the impression, early on in reading this book, that Robert Winston isn?t too keen on Catholicism. He rather caricatures it as having as its central focus a cannibalistic act, that it induces guilt, and suggests rather oddly that ?the personal aspect of the divine is revered in the form of the Virgin Mary?.

So what of this apparent antipathy to Catholicism? He immediately says he wishes to apologise, and had not meant to give such an impression. Rather than give a clear reason for it that one might expect from a Jewish writer ? that his people suffered so greatly at the hands of Catholics for so long ? he instead reasons that it was easier to attack Christians than Muslims. But not, he hastens to add, because he is too afraid to put the boot in, but because Muslims have so much to put up with already.

?If I have been hard on Catholicism, it was not really my intention in my book. Somebody asked me if being a Jew made it hard for me to be objective, but I argue that the reason why I am tough is obvious. I wrote a lot more about Christianity because it is very robust, while with Islam the situation in this country is very different. But I have a lot of respect for Catholic values.? By this he seems to mean an emphasis on the family and the dignity of life, but the sideswipes at Christianity keep coming in the book, with his account of Jesus which finishes with an attack on the evangelical proselytisers found in organisations such as Jews for Jesus.

The book and television series are a roller-coaster ride. Religion?s origins in man?s fears about death; its links with fertility rites; sacrifice, human and otherwise; the growth of worship and ritual; its role in social control, the forming of community, and in offering consolation are all here. Given that religion means greater cohesion and stricter moral codes, which tend to produce greater co-operation, a shared religion, he suggests, appears to offer evolutionary advantage.

No wonder, then, that people need God. ?It is not God who invented us, but we invented God,? says Winston.

One of the most common notions in modern society is that scientists and believers are in perpetual conflict, no doubt a view re-inforced by the assaults on religion by the biologist and fundamentalist atheist Richard Dawkins. Robert Winston, however, does not believe there has to be a conflict between believers and science. ?They are both valid systems for looking at the universe. People think of science as the truth and as certain. It is not at all. Rather, as we learn about science, it poses more questions. Take physics: we are much less clear than we would once have been. We have now identified that 95 per cent of the universe can?t be explained at all. We still have to answer these questions: who are we, where are we going, what are we for? Doubt is very important.? Winston?s account of God ? a sprawling, sweeping history of man?s belief systems ? confirms just how unusual secular society, as it has developed in Britain, happens to be. But as the work of the sociologist Grace Davie reveals, the key characteristic of modern Britain is that there is belief without belonging, a trend that fascinates Winston. ?It is clear that what people have moved away from is not so much God but organised religion.?

Winston himself seems to have moved the other way. After a traditional Jewish upbringing, he rejected much of his religious background for about 10 years, from university onwards, returning to it later. But his return seems rather more about the culture and the community ? the belonging ? than about belief. He seems to find Jewish culture almost entrancing, with its customs, its rituals, its strong emphasis on family, as well as its literary heritage. This is a man who reads his religious scripts in the original language and is on good terms with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

This welcome framework for life, he suggests, gives him much in common with many Catholics, but the framework religion provides can sometimes feel very rigid. ?The conflict is there in Islam: there is a stamp of authority.? As a scientist he says he is heavily influenced by this religious framework. One senses that Jews are perhaps a little more comfortable with science than other believers: Freud and Einstein come to mind. Why would this be so? As far as medicine is concerned, he thinks it has much to do with the Jewish concern with healing. ?The healer must try to heal. You have a responsibility for the life put in your hands.? But of course when it comes to the work of Robert Winston, medicine is much more than healing. It is about creating life as well. And this is where things get tricky in the relationship between Lord Winston and the Catholic Church.

His work in the field of IVF is, he says, highly influenced by his Jewishness, and he believes this helps him to sympathise with the objections of Catholics to embryo research. ?Donor gametes is a really important issue for a Jew. For a Jew not to know his genetic parent is a real problem.?

That may be so, but that does not detract from the fact that the Church objects to IVF on the grounds that it shows a lack of respect for human life, particularly if it involves the disposal of unused fertilised eggs. This, however, does not stop Catholics desperate for children seeking the help of specialists like Lord Winston. ?I would try and interpret their Christian values through my Jewish values. I would say talk to your priest, and we will fertilise fewer eggs.?

But the polite conversations and sympathy in the consulting room are only one side of the story. Winston is bitter about times when, he says, Catholics picketed his offices, wrote abusive letters, and attempts at debate were fruitless. ?The reason why the Churches are so empty?, he says, his breakfast now forgotten in his agitation, ?is that they are very poor at adapting to modern knowledge. They talk shallow nonsense to a highly literate society.?

Yet Lord Winston and his Catholic critics do share a concern that the regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, is unsatisfactory in its procedures. Winston believes that these procedures can be arbitrary, and are flawed to a degree that requires the authority?s way of operating to be reviewed. In the past 12 months there have been growing calls for a national bio-ethics committee not only from leading Catholics, but also from Winston?s good friend the Chief Rabbi. Perhaps a Jewish capacity for community, humour and friendship might bring Lord Winston and some of his Catholic opponents to find some common ground after all.

The Story of God by Robert Winston is published by Bantam Press.

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