BARBOUR'S TYPOLOGIES AND THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE ON ISLAM AND SCIENCE

Abstract Despite various criticisms, Ian Barbour's fourfold classification of the possible relationships between religion and science remains influential. I compare Barbour's taxonomy with the theories of four authors who, in the last four decades, have addressed the relationship between science and religion from a Muslim perspective. The aim of my analysis is twofold. First, I offer a comparative perspective to the debate on science and Islam. Second, following Barbour's suggestion, I test the general applicability of his categories by comparing them with a discourse on science and religion that is not focused on Christianity. In the first section, I reconstruct Barbour's typologies, recalling some major objections to them, and arguing why despite the latter, Barbour's model is employed for the present analysis. I also reconstruct Barbour's parallel model for the relationships between different religions. In the second section, I reconstruct the discourse on science and religion developed by the Palestinian‐American scholar Ismail Raji al‐Faruqi. The third section is devoted to the ideas of the Persian‐American scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. In the fourth section, I examine the views of the Iranian author Mehdi Golshani. The fifth section reconstructs the theories of the Algerian author Nidhal Guessoum. In the final section, I argue that a generalized use of the “integration” concept to refer to the entire debate on Islam and science is unhelpful. While these positions do not appear to instantiate Barbourian integration of science and religion, they do move toward what Barbour (skeptically) describes as integration between religions.     

“THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF EXPERTS”: IN DEFENSE OF THE “ELITES” OF THE SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION DEBATE

This article takes a critical stance on John H. Evans's 2018 book, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science. Highlighting the significance of the book for the science‐and‐religion debate, particularly the book's emphasis on moral questions over knowledge claims revealed in social‐scientific studies of the American public, I also suggest that the distinction between the “elites” of the academic science‐and‐religion field and the religious “public” is insufficiently drawn. I argue that various nuances should be taken into account concerning the portrayal of “elites,” nuances which potentially change the way that “conflict” between science and religion is envisaged, as well as the function of the field. Similarly, I examine the ways in which the book construes science and religion as distinct knowledge systems, and I suggest that, from a theological perspective—relevant for much academic activity in science and religion—there is value in seeing science and religion in terms of a single knowledge system. This perspective may not address the public's interest in moral questions directly—important as they are—but nevertheless it fulfils the academic function of advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and self‐understanding.     

THE SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND APOPHATIC THOUGHT: EMPIRICAL BEING AS IKON

This essay is an interdisciplinary study of beauty that attempts to bridge the gap between religion/theology and science in some measure by drawing from Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500) a notion of being that I argue is consonant with the notion of the sense of the beautiful, which I develop using Steven Weinberg's and Werner Heisenberg's discussions of empirical beauty. I use the term ikon to refer concisely to Dionysius' theophanic notion of being, namely, that the beyond‐being is nonsubstantially present in being.     

The Conflict Between Religion and Science in Light of the Patterns of Religious Belief Among Scientists

Recent summaries of psychologist James H. Leuba's pioneering studies on the religious beliefs of American scientists have misrepresented his findings and ignored important aspects of his analyses, including predictions regarding the future of religion. Much of the recent interest in Leuba was sparked by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham's commentary in Nature (3 April 1997), “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith.” Larson and Witham compared the results of their 1996 survey of one thousand randomly selected American scientists regarding their religious beliefs with a similar survey published eighty years earlier by Leuba. Leuba's original studies are themselves problematical. Nonetheless, his notion that different fields of science have different impacts on the religion‐science relationship remains valid. Especially significant is his appreciation of religion as a dynamic, compelling force in human life: any waning of traditional beliefs does not mean a decrease in religious commitment but calls for a new spirituality in harmony with modern scientific teachings. Leuba's studies, placed in proper context, offer a broad historical perspective from which to interpret data about religious beliefs of scientists and the impact of science and scientists on public beliefs, and opportunity to develop new insight into the religion‐science relationship.     

ATHENS,JERUSALEM, AND THE ARRIVAL OF TECHNO‐SECULARISM

Abstract. Western civilization historically has tried to balance secular knowledge with revealed religion. Science is the modern world's version of secular knowledge and resists the kind of integration achieved by Augustine and Aquinas. Managing the conflict between religion and evolution by containing them in separate “frames,” as Stephen J. Gould suggested, does not resolve the issue. Science may have displaced religion from the public square, but the traditional science‐religion conflict has become threadbare in intellectual terms. Scientific theories have become increasingly abstract, and science has been attacked from the left as a source of objective knowledge. However, technology, not science, has displaced religious belief, a phenomenon I call techno‐secularism. Robert Coles's suggestion that secularism is a form of doubt inevitably attached to religious belief, and William James's reduction of religious experiences to psychological states, evaluating them according to their “cash value,” are unhelpful. Technology enables us to remake our environment according to our wishes and has become a kind of magic that replaces not just revealed religion but also theoretical science. Techno‐secularism has an ethical vision that focuses on healthful living, self‐fulfillment, and avoiding the struggles of human life and the inevitability of death.     

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

Abstract. I explore the contributions of Ibrahim Moosa, a Muslim legal scholar, to a Muslim‐Christian dialogue on religion and science. Moosa begins from the context of Shari'a, Islamic law, and not from the usual issues of the religion‐science dialogue. Beginning as it does from a legal tradition, the approach suggests a perspective on science and religion that is particular to Islam and provides insight into how an authentic dialogue between Muslims and Christians would proceed—and thereby an alternative model for a religion‐science dialogue.     

A REPLY TO ANNE KULL,EDUARDO CRUZ,AND MICHAEL DeLASHMUTT

In my reply to the essays by Anne Kull, Eduardo Cruz, and Michael DeLashmutt, I turn first to Cruz's charge that my use of “the sacred” is at odds with a growing religious studies mainstream that understands religion in secular terms. I suggest that this latter approach has its own problems, deriving partly from its neglect of the political, constructed nature of the category of “religion.” Second, in relation to Cruz's suggestion that my lack of attention to explanation compromises my claim to be social scientific, I defend a broader understanding of the human sciences and explore the relationships between understanding, critique, and history, and between sociology and theology. Third, reflecting on DeLashmutt's suggestion that I neglect the way that technical invention provides a glimpse of divine creativity, and the myth making that goes on around technology in vehicles such as science fiction, I argue that such issues have to be approached in a radically historical way. I conclude by identifying three challenges: to explore more deeply how technological objects form part of human being‐in‐the‐world, to show how my approach might offer practical resources for assessing technological and environmental developments, and to expand my analysis to include non‐Western religious traditions.     

BETWEEN PHYSICALISM AND MENTALISM: PHILIP CLAYTON ON MIND AND EMERGENCE

Abstract. Philip Clayton's work on emergence is a valuable contribution to the fields of religion, science, and philosophy. I focus on three narrow but extremely important areas of Clayton's work. First, Clayton deems that Terrence Deacon's emergence theory is difficult to accept because it is constructed from thermodynamics, thereby rendering it unable to address phenomenological issues. I examine Deacon's theory and show that development from a physics base is warranted. Furthermore, Clayton does not convincingly demonstrate that such a constructive approach is necessarily incapable of attending to mental phenomena or offer an alternative that explains the causal power of a physically nonconstructible mental realm. Second, I argue that Clayton's notion of emergentist supervenience for comprehending the mental/physical relation is unnecessarily redundant and problematic in relation to causal power. Third, I explore Clayton's alternative use of agent causation to make sense of mental properties having causal power in the world. His effort to resolve emergence difficulties by appealing to phenomenology receives primary attention. Clayton's use of emergence theory is an important contribution to the religion‐and‐science community, and I encourage further dialogue on the exchange that Clayton commences.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM OR THEOLOGICAL HUMANISM?

Loyal Rue's book Religion Is Not About God (2005) is a polemic for religious naturalism. In it Rue sets up a general model of religion based on principles of scientific materialism, tests his model against five historical religions, and speculates on the future of religion. He claims that in the West, modern science and pluralism threaten the moral authority of Christianity in facing the environmental crisis, which is fueled by a rival metareligion, consumerism. He concludes that an ecological Doomsday is likely, following which a new religion will arise: religious naturalism. I challenge Rue's account at three levels, from the standpoint of theological humanism. First, as a philosopher of religion, Rue cannot carry through his scientific materialist explanation of religion. The first‐person experience of consciousness escapes such an account. Second, as a myth maker, Rue unifies the evolutionary epic retrospectively, where the evidence is thin, and projects the future overconfidently. Third, as a theologian, Rue is wrong to equate God and Nature.     

THE JOURNEY BEYOND ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

Abstract. John Caiazza's essay raises important controversial issues regarding the contemporary debates between science and religion. His arguments are largely presented in a dichotomous and rather adversarial mode with which I strongly disagree. Unable to present a detailed counterargument in this brief reflection, I ask, What is being spoken about, and who is speaking? What is meant by science and religion here? Neither term can be taken as a unified, essentialist category; both comprise many historical layers, possess numerous internal complexities, and invite a diversity of interpretations. I refer to the science of China, India, and the ancient Near East, all of which have fed into modern science, so that the sciences cannot be restricted to those of the modern West. Nor can religion be limited to the religious beliefs and practices of Western Christianity. I discuss the position/location/context of the author‐ Caiazza's as well as my own‐ after introducing Hans‐Georg Gadamer's idea of the “fusion of horizons,” which provides a rich vein for enhancing the debate between science and religion. To expand the respective horizons of their dialogue it will be important to move away from an adversarial, exclusionary spirit to a more collaborative and communicative framework that allows for the development of new ideals, new questions, new ways of knowing, and an ethical and socially responsible stance more centered on human needs and concerns. We may have to build an altogether new Athens and Jerusalem for this.     

SCIENTISM AND TECHNOLOGY AS RELIGIONS

Abstract. Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point.     

THE PHYSICALIZED MIND AND THE GUT‐BRAIN AXIS: TAKING MENTAL HEALTH OUT OF OUR HEADS

As it becomes increasingly plausible that the mind–brain is explicable in naturalistic terms, science‐and‐religion scholars have the opportunity to engage creatively and proactively with facets of brain‐related research that better inform our understanding of human well‐being. That is, once mental health is recognized as being a whole‐body phenomenon, exciting theological conversations can take place. One fascinating area of research involves the “gut–brain axis,” or the interactive relationship between the microbiome in the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., gut bacteria), the central nervous system, and mental health. A growing body of literature explores the immensely significant interactions between the gut microbiome and mental health issues involving depression, anxiety, gene expression, and stress responses. One's mental health does not occur in a disembodied state, but in a complex physical environment that is strongly influenced by environmental factors, many of which we can control. This article argues that science‐and‐religion can welcome scientific research in this area, creatively incorporating such insights into a theology of mental health and physical well‐being.     

WONDER OPENS THE HEART: POPE FRANCIS AND LISA SIDERIS ON NATURE,ENCOUNTER, AND WONDER

This article argues that Pope Francis's invocations of wonder can speak to and at times challenge Lisa Sideris's recent contributions to the interdisciplinary discussion of wonder, science, and religion. Although the importance of wonder to Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato si’ is acknowledged, it has not been widely recognized that wonder is implicated in and forms connections between multiple concepts and postures acknowledged as defining marks of Francis's papacy: coming out of oneself, encountering others, going to the margins; aversion to doctrinal rigidity; compassion, mercy, tenderness, and humility; to name a few. These defining concepts and stances resonate strongly with certain views on wonder, ethics, and ecology recently articulated by Lisa Sideris. In Francis, however, one finds a more affirming treatment of science‐based wonder and a response to Sideris's criticism of theistic wonder.     

Comments on the Sacred,the Search for Significance,and Means/End Relationships

This is a comment on Pargament's article Of Means and Ends: Religion and the Search for Significance. It is based on a long collaboration with Pargament. Agreement is expressed with the central thesis, namely that psychology has long struggled with whether it shall be concerned with facts or values. The psychology of religion clearly reflects this debate. The difference between science and religion needs to be understood for the psychology of religion to fully develop. Pargament's interest in studying ways in which people appropriate religion is affirmed. The search for significance as an overarching value is seen to be the central focus of life to which religion addresses itself. It is clear that both the use of religion by persons and the study of that use are grounded in value judgments. Means and ends do not exist apart from one another.     

CAN PERSONALITY UNDERPIN ATTITUDES TO BOTH SCIENCE AND RELIGION?

Drawing on Peter Harrison's argument that individuals should be attributed a central role in analyses of the relationship between science and religion, this article proposes that an understanding of personality can help us better appreciate a person's attitudes to both science and religion. Rather than seeing an individual's attitudes to these two topics as separate, if sometimes overlapping, parts of their lives, it is suggested that both may result from psychological drives and sometimes from the same psychological drive. Two contrasting case studies are employed to illustrate this proposal. First, Paul Dirac who, it is argued, was on the autistic spectrum, a personality profile that is often linked to both mathematical physics and atheism. By contrast, Michael Faraday's scientific practice and his commitment to a specific form of Christianity were underpinned by his need for security, as assured by the God‐given laws that operated in both the physical and moral domains.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION: AN ORIGINS STORY

In recent scholarship, the science and religion debate has been historicized, revealing the novelty of the concepts of science and religion and their complex connections to secularization and the birth of modernity. This article situates this historicist turn in the history of philosophy and its connections to theology and Scripture, showing that the science and religion concept derives from philosophy's earlier tension with theology as it became an academic discipline centered in the medieval, then research university, with the centrality of Scripture changing under the influence of historical criticism. Looking at Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Schleiermacher on theology and Scripture's connection to science, it offers a new framework for theorizing science and religion as part of the history of philosophy.     

THE CONTINUING INTERACTION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Stephen I Gould's notion of non‐overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is neither experientially supported nor rationally justifiable. Influence flows between science and religion, as when evolutionary thinking encouraged theology to adopt a kenotic view of the Creator's act of allowing creatures to be and to make themselves. Alleged simplistic dichotomies between science and religion, such as motivated belief contrasted with fideistic assertion, are seen to be false. Promising topics in the currently vigorous dialogue between science and religion include relational ontology, eschatological credibility, and ethical issues relating to advances in human genetics.     

RETHINKING THE PAST AND ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Abstract. John Caiazza presents the current technoculture as the latest development in the ongoing conflict of science and religion that began with Tertullian in the third century. I argue that his presentation is historically inaccurate, because for most of Western history science and religion interacted with and cross‐fertilized each other. Contrary to Caiazza's misleading presentation, Western thought did not follow the dichotomous model polemically posed by Tertullian. I take issue with Caiazza's portrayal of postmodernism and his claim that technology is the foundation of an inherently secularist culture. I conclude by highlighting certain ethical challenges engendered by the prevalence of new technologies and present the dialogue of science and religion as uniquely qualified to address these challenges.     

SCRIPTURAL REASONING AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

This essay explores of the relationship between religion and science using Max Weber's insights into the philosophy of social science, C. S. Peirce's philosophy of religion and the Qur’anic treatment of material reality. The Weber‐Peirce‐Qur’an conversation opens up the possibility of a (social) scientific affirmation of religion and a religious affirmation of science. Scriptural Reasoning (SR) has already demonstrated that it is capable of creating “mutual ground” between the different religious traditions. This exploration of the exchange between SR and the social sciences suggests that SR has the potential of contributing to the creation of mutual ground between the religious traditions and the “secular” academy.     

Environmental Decline and the Rise of Religion

Abstract. Historically, crises have spawned deliberate, widespread efforts to change a culture's worldviews. Anthropologists have characterized such efforts as “revitalization movements” and speculated that many of the world's religions, including Christianity, arose through revitalization. Some responses to the planet's environmental crisis share the characteristics of both a revitalization movement and an incipient religion. They call for a science‐based cosmology and an encompassing reverence for nature, and thus differ from responses to environmental decline offered by traditional religions. As environmental problems deepen, historical precedent suggests that religious shifts in affected cultures may follow.