12/15/2021 – Four Ways of Relating Science and Religion
Science. Religion. Can we even use those two words in the same sentence? Maybe yes and maybe no. Let’s take a look at four classic models and see what you think. This is TenOnReligion.
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This episode is based on the first part of Ian Barbour’s book, Religion in an Age of Science: Volume I which describes four ways of relating religion and science: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. In a minute we’re going to go through them and see what you think is the best way. Ian Barbour, by the way, was professor of science, technology, and society at Carleton College for some 30 years and was awarded the very prestigious Templeton Prize in 1999. So, basically, he’s a smart guy. Now there’s one quick problem here I have to mention, and that is, a lot of what Barbour means by religion is Christianity, and specifically, a historically Christian understanding of who or what God is. Despite that, he does throw in occasional references to other religions. But you have to understand that when this was originally written in 1990, there had been an ongoing debate in the United States between Christianity and science for around 70 years, and Barbour is trying to relate to the history of this issue as well as move the conversation forward in a big way, which he does extraordinarily well in this book.
So here we go. The first way of relating science and religion is what Barbour labels as conflict. The two sides are scientific materialism and biblical literalism. Scientific materialists asserts that the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge and that matter + energy = the fundamental reality of the universe. These are two hugely philosophical claims that most scientists probably don’t realize are highly debatable. To suggest that the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge is an epistemological claim. Epistemology is the philosophical idea of how we come to know what we know. The second idea regarding the fundamental reality of the universe is a metaphysical claim, or as some philosophers would call it, an ontological claim trying to answer the question, what exists? The scientific materialist believes that science starts from observable data which can be reproducible in a public way, available for anyone to see. Because religious beliefs lack specific public data such as experimental testing and evaluative criteria, religion is not acceptable to the scientific materialist.
Biblical literalism has had a long history which has sort of gone back and forth in different eras. An early church leader named Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries held that when there appears to be a conflict between demonstrated scientific knowledge and a literal reading of the Bible, the Bible should be interpreted metaphorically, as in the creation narrative in the early part of Genesis. Medieval writers during the Middle Ages acknowledged diverse literary forms and levels of truth in scripture, and they gave figurative and allegorical interpretations to many problematic passages. Biblical literalism played a huge part in the condemnation of Galileo in 1616 regarding astronomy. The problem was Galileo’s theories conflicted with a literal interpretation of some scriptural passages, and his theories called into question the Aristotelian system that the church had adopted, so it was an authority issue. In Darwin’s day in the 1800’s, evolution was taken by some groups as a challenge to scripture. In the 1900’s, the Roman Catholic church and most of the mainline Protestant denominations have held that scripture is the human witness to the primary revelation, which occurred in the lives of the prophets and the life and person of Christ. Many traditionalists and evangelicals insist on the centrality of Christ without insisting on the infallibility of a literal interpretation of the Bible. But smaller fundamentalist groups and a large portion of some major denominations in the United States, such as the Southern Baptists, have maintained that scripture is inerrant throughout. In the Scopes trial in 1925, it was argued that the teaching of evolution in the schools should be forbidden because it was contrary to scripture. However, in the 1980’s, the U.S. District Court ruled that “creation science” is not legitimate science. It concluded that the scientific community should decide the status of scientific theories. It was shown that proponents of creation science had not even submitted papers to scientific journals, much less had them published, so if they weren’t scientists actively involved in the scientific academic community, they couldn’t claim to invent a scientific theory called creation science.
The problem with the religion side was that absolutist positions led to intolerance and attempts to impose particular religious views on others in a pluralistic society, which clearly violates religious freedom since not all religious adherents of even the same religion held the same views regarding religion and science. The problem extends to both sides. The training of scientists seldom includes any exposure to the history and philosophy of science or any reflection on the relation of science to society, to ethics, much less to religious thought. On the other hand, religious leaders have little familiarity with science and are often hesitant to discuss controversial subjects in their respective places of worship.
Next, independence. Barbour frames this as contrasting methods and differing languages. Science is based on human observation and reason and Christian theology is based on divine revelation, but not so much that the text becomes an idol. In this view, the Bible must be taken seriously but not literally. Scripture is not itself revelation; it is a fallible human record witnessing to revelatory events. The center or means of divine activity was not the dictation of a text, but the lives and persons of these various communities. The biblical writings reflect multiple interpretations of these events, and we must acknowledge the human limitations of their authors and the cultural influences on their thought. Their opinions concerning scientific questions reflect the prescientific speculations of ancient times. Theological formulations must be statements about the transformation of human life by a new understanding of personal existence. Barbour cites Langdon Gilkey’s main points, such as, science asks objective “how” questions and religion asks personal “why” questions. Or, science has to do with quantitative predictions tested experimentally while religion has to do with symbolic and analogical language because God is transcendent.
They are differing languages which are unrelated because their functions are totally different. Scientific language asks carefully delimited questions about natural phenomena and religious language recommends a way of life to encourage allegiance to particular moral principles. We should not expect either language to do jobs for which they were not intended to do.
The problem with the independence model is that we cannot remain content with a plurality of unrelated languages if they are languages about the same world. If we seek a coherent interpretation of all experience, we cannot avoid the search for a unified world view. If science and religion were totally independent, the possibility of conflict would be avoided, but at the same time the possibility of constructive dialogue and mutual enrichment would also be ruled out. Do we not experience life in wholeness and interconnectedness before we develop particular disciplines to study different aspects of it? According to Barbour, the answer seems obvious.
Third, dialogue is possible since there are related boundary questions and methodological parallels. At its boundaries science raises religious questions that it cannot answer. In pressing back to the earliest history of the cosmos, astronomy forces us to ask why those particular initial conditions were present. Limit-situations in science include ethical issues in the uses of science and presuppositions or conditions for the possibility of scientific inquiry. If theology is the study of reality as a whole; reality is an unfinished process whose future we can only anticipate since it does not yet exist. There is a limit question of openness to the future based on confrontation with death and even basic trust of others. What is the nature and extent of the authority of tradition in religion? This goes for any religion in this case, not just Christianity.
There are also methodological parallels. In science, this can be shown with Thomas Kuhn’s famous idea of paradigm shifts. In the choice between paradigms, there are no rules for applying scientific criteria. Their evaluation is an act of judgment by the scientific community. An established paradigm is resistant to falsification. The same goes for religion. The interpretation of the data in religious traditions is even more paradigm-dependent than in the case of science. There is a greater use of ad hoc assumptions to reconcile apparent anomalies which are only temporary and specific, so religious paradigms are even more resistant to falsification.
It’s clear that there is personal judgment and theory-laden data in both fields. In religion the data for a religious community are its scriptural records and its history of religious experience and the interpretation of both tend to change radically over time. One of Barbour’s criticisms of this model is that the methodological issues tend to be somewhat abstract and therefore of more interest to philosophers of science and philosophers of religion than to scientists or theologians and religious believers.
Last, integration. Barbour describes three categories here: natural theology, theology of nature, and a systematic synthesis. In natural theology, arguments for the existence of God are based entirely on human reason rather than on historical revelation or religious experiences. In the development of science, new evidence does not make a theory certain. Instead, a theory has initial plausibility, and the probability that it is true increases or decreases with the additional evidence, so one could argue, that certain religious theories, such as theism, are more probable than not. But even if that were the case, this does not lead to personal religion and few if any people have actually acquired their religious beliefs or converted by such arguments.
Theology of nature holds that some traditional religious doctrines need to be reformulated in the light of current science. Science and religion are relatively independent but with some areas of overlap in their concerns. The starting point of theological reflection is past and present religious experience, together with a continuous interpretive tradition and in this respect perhaps not all that different from science.
But what about a more systematic synthesis? A more systematic integration can occur if both science and religion contribute to a coherent world view elaborated in a comprehensive metaphysics. Barbour cites process philosophy as one option. Process thinkers understand God to be the source of novelty and order. Creation is a long and incomplete process. God elicits the self-creation of individual entities, thereby allowing for freedom and novelty as well as order and structure. But the problem here is does any religious community desire to be equated with a metaphysical system like process philosophy? It’s complicated and most religious adherents don’t really think of their religious faith in those terms.
So, these are the four models Barbour described – conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. Which do you think is the best model and why? Leave a comment below. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.