CONFLICT BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE

CONFLICT

Strong agreement between people, groups that result of

angry argument

Disagreement between ideas and feelings.

SCIENCE

acknowledges reason, empiricism, and evidence

RELIGIONS

include revelation, faith and sacredness

Biologist Stephen Jay Gould, other scientists, and

some contemporary theologians hold that religion

and science are non-overlapping magisteria,

addressing fundamentally separate forms of

knowledge and aspects of life.

Scientists Francisco Ayala, Kenneth R.

Miller and Francis Collins see no necessary conflict

between religion and science. Some theologians or

historians of science, including John Lennox, Thomas

Berry, Brian Swimme and Ken Wilber propose an

interconnection between them.

IS THERE A CONFLICT?

There is no conflict between Christianity and science

itself. This is because the Christian worldview, which

believes that God created the world with natural 'laws'

and orderliness, is what undergirds the entire scientific

enterprise. For example, inductive reasoning and the

scientific method are based on the assumption of the

regularity of the laws of nature.

FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)

1. Conflict.  (Warfare)

The conflict model posits science vs religion and

claims that, a priori, either science OR religion is

true and the other is necessarily false.

FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)

2. The Independence Model (Separation)

This model assumes that each is an independent,

autonomous field of study or sphere of reality, with its

own unique rules and language. Science has very little

to say about religious beliefs, and religion has very little

to say about scientific study. 

“The natural sciences are concerned with asking the

‘How’ questions, where theology asks ‘Why’ questions” -

Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth.

FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)

3. The Dialogue Model (Respect)

A third position on the relationship between science

and religion is that they are best understood in

dialogue with each other. There are issues in both

religion and science which impinge upon each other

and the insights of each are important in reaching

truly human conclusions and responses

FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)

4. Integration (Harmony)

This model takes dialogue and conversation much further

and posits that the truth of science and religion can be

integrated into a more complete or full “whole”.

ROBERT K. MERTON

-focuses on English Puritanism and German Pietism as responsible

for the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th

centuries. He explains that the connection between 

religious affiliation and interest in science is a result of a significant

synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern

science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by

allowing science to identify the God influence on world and thus

providing religious justifications for scientific research.

HISTORY OF

SCIENCE

Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was witness to an

explosion of discoveries about the natural world — an explosion

known as the Scientific Revolution, in which modern science was

born. What emerged from this intellectual transformation of Europe

was the Enlightenment — an era marked by a supreme confidence

in the power of the rational mind together with an antipathy for

superstition and dogmatism. It became increasingly acceptable to

criticize Christian dogmas such as the Trinity or the role of the

sacraments.

DR. COLIN A. RUSSELL IN THE CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

- outlines the weakness of the conflict thesis as follows:

1) The thesis hinders the recognition of other

relationships between science and religion

2) it ignores the many documented examples of science

and religion operation in close alliance.

3) it enshrines a flawed view of history in which

“progress” or “victory” has been portrayed as inevitable.

DR. COLIN A. RUSSELL IN THE CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

4) It obscures the rich diversity of ideas in both science

and religion.

5) it engenders a distorted view of dispute resulting

from other causes than those of religion versus science

6) it exalts minor squabbles, or even differences of

opinion, to the status of major conflict

PROF. JOHN HEDLEY BROOKS’ SCIENCE AND RELIGION

To understand them, one has to see the local

contingent factors in order to understand the

particular social and intellectual situation and its

effects. 

WHAT IS IN CONFLICT?

Do we compare 'science' with:

Religion?

Christianity?

Theology?

The Bible?

WE SUGGEST:

Bible with nature (data)

Theology with theoretical science (method)

Exegesis with experimental science (interpretation)

SCIENCE:

METHOD OR

GOAL?

METHOD?

Explanation without recourse to miracle?

GOAL?

Trying to understand what really exists?

Methodologically, 'science' and 'exegesis' are very

similar. No distinctive method divides various

scholarly disciplines in such a way as to make

science unique.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE & CHRISTIANITY

As Brooke shows, the relations between the two have

been a complex mixture of the three models:

Conflict

Complementarity

Interaction

IS THEOLOGY NEVER RIGHT?

This is rather unfair:

Nature (general revelation) provides enormous detail.

The Bible (special revelation) does not.

Nature keeps showing us new pages every few years,

as technology develops new instruments. We have had all of the Bible for centuries.

Still, if the Bible is what it claims to be, then we should see some evidence it is right about nature.

SOME EVIDENCE

Matthew Maury, 'pathfinder of the seas'

S. I. Mc Millen, None of These Diseases

John W. Montgomery, Evidence for Faith

Robert C. Newman, The Biblical Firmament

My PowerPoint Astronomy and the Bible

MATTHEW MAURY (1806-1873)

US Navy oceanographer, he was the first to recognize

oceans as system of circulating currents.

Got this idea from biblical picture of 'paths in the seas'

(Psalm 8:8).

Thinking through what a path does on land (makes travel

easier, faster), he began to investigate travel time by sea.

His massive examination of ships' logbooks led to

making charts for winds and currents.

Came to be called 'the pathfinder of the seas.

NONE OF THESE DISEASES BY S.I. MCMILLEN AND DAVID STERN

God had Moses record guidelines to protect againts

microorganisms long before they were known to

cause disease.

Contagion and Quarantine Leviticus 13:46

Cleanliness and spread of disease Numbers

Chapter 19

NONE OF THESE DISEASES BY S.I. MCMILLEN AND DAVID STERN

Circumcision and cancer Genesis 17:12 "For the

generations to come every male among you is eight days

old must be circumcised, including those born in your

household or bought with money from a foreigner-- those

who are not your offspring."

Life style and health Deu. 23: 12-13 -proper disposal of

human waste Ephesians 5: 17-18 "Therefore do not be

foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." 18 "Do not

get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be

filled with spirits.

EVIDENCE FOR FAITH BY: JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY MISTAKEN

Are the historical records of Jesus solid enough to

be relied on? -Do the resurrection accounts

establish Jesus claims of divinity?

THE BIBLICAL FIRMAMENT BY: ROBERT NEWMAN

often claimed that the mistaken about the nature of the

sky as solid dome.

it is true that belief in the sky as a solid dome was

common in the ancient world.

the early Greek philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus saw

the sky as a crystal sphere to which the stars were

nailed.

NEWMAN, ASTRONOMY AND THE BIBLE

Compares Bible with ancient ideas and modern

science re:

Size of the Universe

Number of Stars

Support of the Earth

Shape of the Earth

CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

Without claiming any intellectual superiority for the

scientists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods over

their ancient and medieval European predecessors or over

Oriental philosophers, one has to recognize as a simple

fact that 'classical modern science' arose only in the

western part of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries ....

from this point on, anyone with the necessary talent may

help build up science on solidly established foundations.

CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

Scientists from nations whose own culture did not

give birth to anything like modern science have

already made valuable contributions to it. Western

people who have lost all contact with the religion of

their forefathers continue in their scientific activities

the tradition inherited from them. R. Hooykas,

Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, 161

CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

The confrontation of Graeco-Roman culture with biblical religion

engendered, after centuries of tension, a new science. This

science preserved the indispensable parts of the ancient heritage

(mathematics, logic, methods of observation and experimentation),

but it was directed by different social and methodological

conceptions, largely stemming from a biblical worldview.

Metaphorically speaking, whereas the bodily ingredients of science

may have been Greek, its vitamins and hormones were biblical.

Hooykas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, 162

CREATION & MODERN COSMOLOGY

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the

power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He

has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to

conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over

the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians

who have been there for centuries. Robert Jastrow,

God and the Astronomers, 116.

SOME CONCLUSIONS

Yes, there has been conflict between science &

Christianity, just as there has been conflict within

Christianity and within science.

No, there is no need to see this as necessary conflict,

so long as one does not define science so as to rule

out the supernatural and miraculous in the history of

the universe.

UNIVERSITY OF

MAKATIPROF. TESSIE TAPIADOR

SAGADRACA

PREPARED BY: GROUP 5

Bautista, Christxia Bantilan, Karen

Carmona, Dennise Ysabel Eltanal, Gerald Liton, Kimberly Yago, Roselie

  III-H BSE Soc Stud