COSMOLOGY AND HINDU THOUGHT

Abstract. This paper outlines some major ideas concerning cosmogony and cosmogony and cosmology that pervade the Hindu conceptual world. The basic source for this discussion is the philosophical literature of some of the principal schools of Hindu thought, such as VaiVaiśika, Sānkhya, and Advaita Vedānta, focusing on the themes of cosmology, time, and soteriology. The core of Hindu philosophical thinking regarding these issues is traced back to the Rk Vedic cosmogonical speculations, analyzed, and contrasted with the "views of the opponent." The relevance of the Hindu worldview for overcoming the conflict between science and religion is pointed out.     

“RELIGION AND SCIENCE” AS ADVOCACY OF SCIENCE AND AS RELIGION VERSUS RELIGION

Abstract. “Religion and science” often is understood as being about the relationship between two given enterprises, religion and science. I argue that it is more accurate to understand religion and science in different contexts differently. (1) It serves as apologetics for science in a religious environment. As apologetics for technology the role of religion‐and‐science is more ambivalent, as competing and contrary responses to modern technology find articulation in religious terms. (2) In the political context of the modern university, some invoke religion‐and‐science in arguing for a place of theology alongside the sciences. In this context, secular studies of religion are a major challenge, which is hardly addressed. (3) Within the religious communities, religion‐and‐science is a battleground between revisionist and traditionalist ways of understanding religion.     

PRAGMATISM,REALISM, AND RELIGION

Pragmatism is often thought to be incompatible with realism, the view that there are knowable mind‐independent facts, objects, or properties. In this article, I show that there are, in fact, realist versions of pragmatism and argue that a realist pragmatism of the right sort can make important contributions to such fields as religious ethics and philosophy of religion. Using William James's pragmatism as my primary example, I show (1) that James defended realist and pluralist views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion, and (2) that these views not only cohere with his pragmatism but indeed are basic to it. After arguing that James's pragmatism provides a credible and useful approach to a number of basic philosophical and religious issues, I conclude by reflecting on some ways in which we can apply and potentially improve James's views in the study of religion.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE KRAKÓW SCHOOL

This article outlines the contributions of the Kraków School to the field of science and religion. The Kraków School is a group of philosophers, scientists, and theologians who belong to the milieu of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. The members of the group are engaged in inquiries pertaining to the relationship between theology and various sciences, in particular cosmology, evolutionary theory, and neuroscience. The article includes a presentation of the historical background of the School, as well as its main original contributions pertaining to the history of the interactions between science and religion, the rationality and mathematicity of the universe, theology of science, and the role of logic in theology.     

THE ANIMAL BODY MULTIPLE: SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE INVENTION OF HALAL STUNNING

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly incommensurable realities can co-occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method.     

BURHOE AND SHAPLEY: A COMPLEMENTARITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. The development of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's philosophy of religion and science occurred in the shadow of the continuing dialogue about the place of science in American society. Like his friend and mentor, Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, Burhoe was distressed and intrigued by the troubled postwar relations between science and religion. Unlike Shapley, however, Burhoe sought to create a new modernism, a blend of religion and science that would allow each to develop and complement the other.     

IN DEFENSE OF PUBLICS: PROJECTION,BIAS, AND CULTURAL NARRATIVES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION DEBATES

John H. Evans's recent book Morals Not Knowledge is a timely argument to recognize broader social and cultural factors that might impact what U.S. religious publics think about the relationship between science and religion and their attitudes toward science and/or religion. While Evans's focus is primarily on what can be classed as moral issues, this response argues that there are other factors that sit within neither the older epistemic conflict model approach nor a moral conflict model approach that also merit further investigation. There is a significant need for further research that examines the social, psychological, (geo)political, and broader cultural factors shaping people's social identities in relation to science and religion debates. When undertaking such research, we need to be wary of creating a binary between scholarly and public space discourse. Social scientific research in this field should be led by public perceptions, attitudes, and views, not by concepts or frameworks that we project onto them.     

RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND NATURE: SHIFTS IN MEANING ON A CHANGING PLANET

Abstract This article explores how religion and science, as worlding practices, are changed by the processes of globalization and global climate change. In the face of these processes, two primary methods of meaning making are emerging: the logic of globalization and planetary assemblages. The former operates out of the same logic as extant axial age religions, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. It is caught up in the process of universalizing meanings, objective truth, and a single reality. The latter suggests that the processes of globalization and climate change break open any universalizing attempt at meaning onto a proliferation of different, evolving planetary contexts. Both science and religion are affected by these changes, and the ways in which they shape our understandings of and relationship to the rest of the natural world are changed.     

CHALLENGES,OPPORTUNITIES, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR A RENEWED PROGRAM IN THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

This is an introduction to the Symposium on “The New Scientific Study of Religion Moving On.” The introduction briefly indicates why the cognitive science of religion (CSR) needs re-evaluation. It subsequently gives an overview of the contributions of the symposium's articles.     

NATURE, REALITY, AND THE SACRED: A MEDITATION IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Many scientists now recognize the participation of the knower in the known. Not many admit, however, that scientists rely upon intuitions about reality commonly attributed to philosophy and religion: that sensory experience relates us to an order in nature congruent with our minds and of value congruent with our fulfilled being. Nature has disclosed itself to scientists—albeit fragmentarily—as power, life, order, and unity or meaning. In science these remain limit questions, raised but unanswered. In the unity of these qualities, assumed by science, the sacred begins to appear. Addressing the limit questions, not only of scientific but of human experience, is the province of philosophy and religion.     

THEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY: A CALL FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY ENRICHMENT

Today, there is a growing interest in interdisciplinary studies between theology and natural sciences. This article will reveal some “core” problems in this interdisciplinary relationship. It investigates how cosmic eschatology and natural sciences can benefit the most from each other while dealing with the scenarios which cosmology presents. Doing so, the main emphasis will be on rediscovering the impact of the Resurrection in Christian theology and the possibility of launching a dialogue between natural sciences and theology concerning the new heaven and the new earth.     

BELIEF, PRACTICE, AND RELIGION

Abstract. How to reconcile belief in God with the worldview generated by modern science is a concern for those who see such belief as the essence of religion. Some religious traditions emphasize correct behavior, including observance of ritual, more than belief. Others stress individual pursuit of inner tranquility without prescribing particular beliefs or rituals by which that is to be achieved. Theological issues relating to "the God question in an age of science" are relevant to Christians, whose religious emphasis is on right belief as necessary to personal salvation; but science does not raise such issues for religion generally.     

RETHINKING THE SECULAR: SCIENCE,TECHNOLOGY, AND RELIGION TODAY

Abstract. Contemporary tensions between science and religion cannot simply be seen as a manifestation of an eternal tension between reason and revelation. Instead, the modern secular, including science and technology, needs to be seen as a distinctive historical phenomenon, produced and still radically conditioned by the religious history of the West. Clashes between religion and science thus ought to be seen fundamentally as part of a dialogue that is internal to Western religious history. While largely agreeing with Caiazza's account of the “magical” understanding of technology, I suggest that this needs to be seen as part of a more fundamental drift in religion and culture away from canonical meanings to more “indexical,” pragmatic ones—but also that technology is still inflected by soteriological meanings that were coded into modern technology at its very inception in the early modern period. I conclude by arguing that a recognition of science and technology's grounding in Western religious history can make possible a more fundamental encounter with religion.     

EXPERIENCING AND INTERPRETING NATURE IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. I trace three paths from nature to religious interpretation. The first starts from religious experience in the context of nature; examples are drawn from nature poets, reflective scientists, and exponents of creation spirituality. The second,„Natural Theology”uses scientific findings concerning cosmology or evolution to develop an argument from design–or alternatively to defend evolutionary naturalism. The third,„Theology of Nature”starts from traditional religious beliefs about God and human nature and reformulates them in the light of current science. I point to examples of each of these paths in papers by other participants in this symposium, and suggest that all three paths can contribute to the task of relating science and religion today.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN LATIN AMERICA: DEVELOPMENTS AND PROSPECTS

The state of the debate surrounding issues on science and religion in Latin America is mostly unknown, both to regional and extra‐regional scholars. This article presents and reviews in some detail the developments since 2000, when the first symposium on science and religion was held in Mexico, up to the present. I briefly introduce some features of Latin American academia and higher education institutions, as well as some trends in the public reception of these debates and atheist engagement with it in Mexico and Argentina. The primary conclusion of this article is that, even though the discussion is new to Latin American academic circles, it is gaining traction and will certainly grow in the coming years.     

SOME WAYS EMERGING ADULTS ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

This article addresses how the field of religion and science will change in the coming decades by analyzing the attitudes of emerging adults (ages 18–30). I first present an overview of emerging adulthood to set the context for my analysis, especially highlighting the way in which emerging adults find themselves “in between” and in an “age of possibilities," free to explore a variety of options and thus often become “spiritual bricoleurs." Next, I expand on how a broadening pluralism in emerging adult culture changes both the conversation of “religion and science,” on one hand, and the locus for their interaction on the other. In the third section, I address the question of whether there exists a consensus view of how to relate religion and science. Paradoxically, though 18–30‐year‐olds perceive that there is conflict between science and religion, they personally endorse collaboration or independence. Finally, I draw conclusions for practitioners and theorists.     

ROBERT J. RUSSELL'S ESCHATOLOGICAL THEOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF COSMOLOGY

The main title of Robert J. Russell's Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science catches the substance of the essays; the subtitle his methodological vision. The mutualis modest as far as the influence from theology on science goes; in no way is Russell curtailing the pursuit of science. Driven by intellectual honesty, he holds that in the end religious convictions will have to stand the test of compatibility with scientific knowledge. And as a Christian he believes core beliefs of Christianity, reformulated as needed, will be able to stand this test. The essays address the origin and contingency of our universe in relation to belief in creation, and his proposal for noninterventionist objective divine action. For him a stumbling block is natural evil; the evolutionary intelligibility of evil falls short of what would be desirable theologically. As steps toward an adequate eschatology Russell seeks to develop a more complex understanding of temporality, and proposes to understand the resurrection of Jesus as the First Instantiation of a New Law of the New Creation. This area is more in tension with current science, but that could be expected when one moves from creation to redemption. Within his self-imposed boundaries, these essays are well informed and well argued, and together they provide a sincere and sustained research program.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION: MOVING BEYOND THE CREDIBILITY STRATEGY

Reeves condemns the recruitment of scientific methods by representative theologians to lend credibility to their theological claims. His treatment of Nancey Murphy's use of Lakatosian research programme methodology is focused on here, and his proposal that science and religion scholars might act as “historians of the present” to advance the field is explored. The “credibility strategy” is set in historical context with an exploration of some of the science and religion field's original commitments and goals, particularly in terms of the emphasis on rationalism and corresponding neglect of the imagination, and the value of more creative input in promoting better dialogue between science and religion is highlighted.     

RELIGION IS EASY,BUT SCIENCE IS HARD … UNDERSTANDING McCAULEY'S THESIS

Robert N. McCauley's new book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (2011) presents a new paradigm for investigating the relationship between science and religion by exploring the cognitive foundations of religious belief and scientific knowledge. McCauley's contention is that many of the differences and disagreements regarding religion and science are the product of distinct features of human cognition that process these two domains of knowledge very differently. McCauley's thesis provides valuable insights into this relationship while not necessarily leading to a dismissive view of theology or religious belief. His paradigm allows the research lens to focus on cognitive differences in processing scientific versus religious information and the important role of automatic, unconscious, and intuitive cognitive processes in understanding both the natural and supernatural worlds.