Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Whose Science and Whose Religion? Reflections on the Relations between Scientific and Religious Worldviews

  • Published:
Science & Education Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Arguments about the relationship between science and religion often proceed by identifying a set of essential characteristics of scientific and religious worldviews and arguing on the basis of these characteristics for claims about a relationship of conflict or compatibility between them. Such a strategy is doomed to failure because science, to some extent, and religion, to a much larger extent, are cultural phenomena that are too diverse in their expressions to be characterized in terms of a unified worldview. In this paper I follow a different strategy. Having offered a loose characterization of the nature of science, I pose five questions about specific areas where religious and scientific worldviews may conflict—questions about the nature of faith, the belief in a God or Gods, the authority of sacred texts, the relationship between scientific and religious conceptions of the mind/soul, and the relationship between scientific and religious understandings of moral behavior. My review of these questions will show that they cannot be answered unequivocally because there is no agreement amongst religious believers as to the meaning of important religious concepts. Thus, whether scientific and religious worldviews conflict depends essentially upon whose science and whose religion one is considering. In closing, I consider the implications of this conundrum for science education.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. It must be confessed, that even if there is no possible collision between science and ultimate concerns in principle, there may be significant ones in practice. People’s ultimate concerns, and more generally their values or prejudices, certainly can alter the way they interpret scientific evidence. The theoretical issue at play here is whether it is possible either in principle or in practice to separate epistemic and non-epistemic values. My account requires one to believe that these values are at least largely separable in principle.

  2. There are many scientifically informed philosophers who think materialism has its limits. Among them are McGinn, Chalmers and Jackson.

  3. Readers familiar with the philosophy of mind literature will note that this argument closely parallels standard arguments for the irreducibility of consciousness, qualia and other varieties of subjective mental states. See, e.g., Jackson 1982; Nagel 1974

  4. Some philosophers and scientists have argued that this sort of inference is not in fact fallacious and that we can get genuine normative claims about of “evolutionary ethics (Ruse and Wilson 1986). Such arguments seem to me to be weak. For a rebuttal of such claims, see Kitcher 2006.

  5. Scientific research may be able to help us think about how to achieve our moral ends, but it cannot show us what those ends should be. For instance, there has been a good deal of research of late on the science of happiness, and such research may tell us how we can most efficiently maximize people’s happiness. But such research, however good, cannot establish the fundamental moral claim that we ought to seek to maximize people’s happiness.

  6. There may be universal moral standards or presuppositions, but these are not the same as the presuppositions of science. Similarly, there may be universal human similarities in our subjective experiences, but subjective evidence can still not be shared in the sense demanded by science.

References

  • Ayer AJ (1952) Language, truth and logic. Dover, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbour IG (1997) Religion and science: historical and contemporary issues, revised edition. Harper Collins, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford WK (2001) The ethics of belief. In: Burger AJ (ed) The ethics of belief. Dry Bones Press, Roseville, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R (2006) The God delusion. Houghton Mifflin, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett D (2006) Breaking the spell: religion as natural phenomenon. Viking, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud S (1967) Moses and monotheism. Vintage Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud S (1965) New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Norton, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gauch H (2007) Science, worldviews and education. Sci & Edu (this issue) doi:10.1007/s11191-006-9059-1

  • Gopnik A, Meltzoff AN, Kuhl PK (1999) The scientist in the crib: minds, brains, and how children learn. William Morrow & Co., New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ (1997) Nonoverlapping magisteria. Natural History 106(2):16–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume D (1777) Enquiries concerning human understanding and concerning the principles of morals, third edition with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch, Clarendon Press, Oxford

  • Jackson F (1982) Ephiphenomenal qualia. Philosophical Quarterly 32:127–136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • John Paul II (pope): 1996, 1996-last update, Message to the pontifical academy of sciences: on evolution: magisterium is concerned with question of evolution for it involves conception of man. Message delivered to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 October 1996 [Homepage of Eternal Word Television Network], [Online]. Available: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM [Access Date: 2007, 2/21]

  • Kitcher P (2006) Four ways of “biologicizing” ethics. In: Sober E (ed) Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, 3rd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 575–586

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacy H (1996) On relations between science and religion. Science & Education 5(2):125–141

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mahner M, Bunge M (1996) Is religious education compatible with science education? Science & Education 5(2):101–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mahner M, Bunge M (1996) The incompatibility of science and religion sustained: a reply to our critics. Science & Education 5(2):189–199

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCauley R (2000) The naturalness of religion and the unnaturalness of science. In: Keil F, Wilson R (eds) Explanation and cognition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 61–85

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel T (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83:435–450

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pius XII (pope) (1999) 1999-last update, Humani Generus: (Concerning some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine). Encyclical promulgated on 12 August 1950 [Homepage of Eternal Word Television Network], [Online]. Available: http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P12HUMAN.HTM [Access Date: 2007, 2/19]

  • Polkinghorne J (1986) One world: the interaction of science and theology. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruse ME, Wilson EO (1986) Moral philosophy as applied science. Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 61:173–192

    Google Scholar 

  • Settle T (1996) Applying scientific open mindedness to religion and science education. Science & Education 5(2):125–141

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tillich P (1957) Dynamics of faith. Perennial Classics, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson EO (1998) Consilience: the unity of knowledge. Vintage Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy & Religion, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Stuart Glennan

Authors
  1. Stuart Glennan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stuart Glennan.

Additional information

My thinking on the relation between religion and science has profited immensely from my interactions with my colleagues from both sides of Butler’s department of Philosophy and Religion. I especially thank Chad Bauman, James McGrath, Tiberiu Popa and Paul Valliere for comments on an earlier draft of this paper

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Glennan, S. Whose Science and Whose Religion? Reflections on the Relations between Scientific and Religious Worldviews. Sci & Educ 18, 797–812 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-007-9097-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-007-9097-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation