Introducing Science and Religion

First of all, there was conflict in this affair but it was conflict not between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, but between real human beings in a complex and turbulent environment. A conservative, post-Reformation, defensive Church was trying to assert its authority against an (admittedly, occasionally arrogant) layman who was trying to insist on his interpretation of the Bible. This was also a conflict between religious individuals. For Galileo faith was of paramount importance, as he understood what he was doing as discovering God’s order in the universe, and it appears that he felt no internal conflict about what he was doing. The conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about the authority to perceive truth; the threatening thing that Galileo did was attempt to defend his scientific views biblically.18 In the end he was condemned not for his views but because he would not toe the line over the Church’s teaching ban.

This is a view that goes back to St Augustine, but it does have a small number of modern-day adherents.

A recent Gallup poll found that 40 per cent of American adults thought that humans were made by God in their present form rather than by any process of evolution,30 and in the UK a 2011 poll found that 31 per cent of Christians think that six-day creationism should be taught in state school science

calls ID ‘grievously poor theology’, where God is not the loving creator, but a controlling engineer, guilty of micromanagement.33

The new atheists and the YE creationism/ID proponents are on a quest to present simplistic views of the world, and do so in an aggressive battle which has less to do with science than it does with other political agendas, whether they are materialist or religious. But the Conflict Model has vast appeal, because it is easy to understand and does well in a media-driven world which is too impatient to listen to nuance and detail.

science deals with facts, religion deals with values and ultimate meaning. This means that they only come into conflict when these distinct boundaries are crossed or disregarded.

contrast, science is a separate sphere of activity which examines external events in the world and, by definition, tries to remove any personal experience from its activiti

The astronomer Arthur Eddington recounts a parable that illustrates the way in which the Independence Model works in practice. A man is studying deep-sea life using a net with three-inch mesh. After bringing up repeated samples, the man concludes that there are no deep-sea fish less than three inches in length. Our methods of fishing, Eddington suggests, determine what we can catch and the ordered reality such fishing produces is a perception produced by the observation method. Science and religion go fish in this world for their knowledge using different sized nets.3

life or giving ethical value to something. Religious language, however, has a different function: it recommends a way of life, discussing attitudes and morals, and it is connected with ritual too. This approach says nothing about the intrinsic value of the subjects, but is instead a way to understand religion and science as being separate and independent pursuits.

His principle is called NOMA: non-overlapping magisteria. The magisterium of science covers the facts of the universe and theories about how the universe operates, while the magisterium of religion covers questions of ultimate meaning and value.