“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.     

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.     

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.     

“The End of Faith?” Science and Theology as Process

Abstract : A spate of recent books would claim that science's only role vis a vis theology is to discredit it. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, credits religious faith as the source of much of the violence in today's world. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, views religion as, at best, a profound misunderstanding, and at worst a form of madness. Both find an antidote to such irrationality in science. To Harris and Dawkins religion is a body of accumulated knowledge. However, religion can also be thought of as a process, one based on experience, questions, and results. One group that has systematized such a process is the Society of Friends, or Quakers. The Quaker tradition shows that it is quite possible for religion to rest on experience and questioning, and for these to form the basis for an active and involved faith, one that need never reject science and its findings, but will temper their use with the best wisdom that can be gained from personal and communal experience.     

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.     

ASSESSING THE FIELD OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: ADVICE FROM THE NEXT GENERATION

The field of science and religion is undergoing a transition today requiring assessment of its past movements and identifying its future trajectories by the next generation of science and religion scholars. This essay provides such assessment and advice. To focus efforts on the past, I turn to Ian Barbour's own stock taking of the field some forty years ago in an essay entitled “Science and Religion Today” before giving some personal comments where I argue that much of the field has traditionally focused on the conversation between Christianity and the natural sciences. At present, however, we are beginning to see that the future of the conversation lies beyond the dialogue between the natural sciences and Christianity. I suggest that the future dialogue will and ought to expand in several directions: (1) into non‐Christian religions and theology, (2) into the human sciences, (3) into science and technology Studies, and (4) into the humanities more broadly.     

THE SCOPE AND IMPLICATIONS OF MORALS NOT KNOWLEDGE

I greatly appreciate the opportunity provided by the editor of Zygon to further develop the ideas in my book Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science in conversation with four critical commentaries. It is an honor to have one's work focused upon so intently, and I greatly appreciate the time and effort of the critics. The book was quite intentionally written as a provocation, an attempt at agenda setting, and as a call for changing the thinking of the entire religion and science academic community. In my previous writings I have kept close to the data, allowing myself at best mid‐level conclusions, but this book is a foray into the abstraction and inevitable lack of precision required for high‐level generalization. I hope that it continues to be generative of debate.     

MORALITY THROUGH INQUIRY,MOTIVE THROUGH RHETORIC: THE POLITICS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE EPOCH OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

In an epoch marked by the threat of global warming, the conflicts between science and religion are no longer simply matters that concern only intellectual elites and armchair philosophers; they are in many ways matters that will determine the degree to which we can meet the challenges of our times. John H. Evans's Morals Not Knowledge represents an important provocation for those committed not only to using scientific method as a resource for making moral judgments but also to creating political alliances with religious constituencies. In this important work, Evans argues that most conflicts between science and religion do not concern a clash between two contradictory ways of knowing, but rather a clash over our moral responsibilities and ultimate values. In my response to his work, I suggest that integrating both John Dewey's pragmatic understanding of the moral situation and Kenneth Burke's rhetorical interpretation of motives helps bolster Evans's cause and provides support for a political movement that aims to bridge the divide between science and religion in the epoch of the Anthropocene.     

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF CHRISTOPHER SOUTHGATE: INTRODUCTION

This article is an introduction to the special issue of Zygon in honor of Christopher Southgate. Over the years he has made many significant contributions to the field of science and religion, and contributors have gathered to celebrate him on his sixty‐fifth birthday. This introduction includes some biographical background and an outline of the issue's contents.     

THE AIMS OF TYPOLOGIES AND A TYPOLOGY OF METHODS

Typologies like Ian Barbour's have been widely used—and critiqued—in religion-and-science. Several alternatives have been proposed by, for example, John Haught, Willem Drees, Mikael Stenmark, and Shoaib Ahmed Malik. However, there has been a surprising deficit in discussion of what we wish typologies to do in religion and science in the first place. In this article, I provide a general analysis of typologies in religion-and-science by (1) providing a classification of existing typologies as conclusion- or concept-oriented; (2) showing that typologies are used, or expected to be used, as first-order categorizations of how religion and science are related and as second-order classifications of scholars/scholarly works; (3) discussing several aims which we might want typologies to achieve in their second-order usage; and (4) presenting a new kind of typology focused on the methods used by scholars which achieves those aims in a unique way.     

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.     

A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories.     

Theory as a Tool in the Social Scientific Study of Religion and Martin Riesebrodt's The Promise of Salvation

No single paradigm or debate currently orients the social scientific study of religion. Because of this, those engaged in the multidisciplinary study of religion find that a public conversation is often difficult. In this article and the Forum it introduces, we explore Martin Riesebrodt's recently published book, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Responding to the inadequacies of secularization paradigms, rational choice models, and postmodern criticism, Riesebrodt proposes an approach that ideal‐typically reconstructs the subjective meanings of institutionalized religious practices (liturgies). These subjective meanings center on the prevention and management of crises—social, natural, and bodily—through appeal and access to superhuman powers. This pragmatic emphasis on the superhuman defines religion as a distinct sphere of social action transhistorically and transculturally. Riesebrodt's theory creates new analytical possibilities, especially for understanding the modern resurgence of religion under conditions of secularization.     

METANEXUS 2007: THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

This essay is William Grassie's valedictory remarks at the Metanexus Institute's 2007 Annual Conference. Grassie asks what is wrong with religion, what is wrong with science, and why the constructive engagement of the two holds the key to setting things right. He cites Sir John Templeton and others to make his case and proposes a new curriculum for general science education that uses the history of nature as a mnemonic and context for promoting better science literacy and the incorporation of science into our cultural traditions.     

EMIL BRUNNER REVISITED: ON THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION,THE IMAGO DEI,AND REVELATION

This article aims at a constructive and argumentative engagement between the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and philosophical and theological reflection on the imago Dei. The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner argued that the theological notion that humans were created in the image of God entails that there is a “point of contact” for revelation to occur. This article argues that Brunner's notion resonates quite strongly with the findings of the CSR. The first part will give a short overview of the CSR. The second part deals with Brunner's idea of the imago Dei and the “point of contact.” The third and final part of the article outlines a model of revelation that is in line with Brunner's thought and the CSR. The aim of this article is to show how the naturalistic methodology of the CSR provides a fertile new perspective on several theological issues and thereby enriches theological reflection.     

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.     

MUTUAL ENHANCEMENT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE EPIPHANY PHILOSOPHERS

This article describes some key features of the distinctive approach to issues in science and religion of the Epiphany Philosophers (EPs), and introduces a set of articles from a recent meeting. The objective of the EPs is not merely to establish harmonious coexistence between science and religion. Rather, they are dissatisfied with both, and have a reformist agenda. They see science as unduly constrained by arbitrary metaphysical assumptions, predominantly of an atheist kind, and wish to see it liberated from such constraints. They are also interested in the potential contribution of contemplative enquiry to scientific research. They see no reason why science should not engage with the transcendent, but they do not support any simplistic argument from scientific research to religious belief. They wish to see an approach to religion that is rooted more firmly in the contemplative path.     

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE AND THE HISTORY OF A RELIGIOUS FUTURE

Andrew Dickson White played a pivotal role in constructing the image of a necessary, and even violent, confrontation between religion and science that persists to this day. Though scholars have long acknowledged that his position is more complex, given that White claimed to be saving religion from theology, there has been no attempt to explore what this means in light of his overwhelming attack on existing religions. This essay draws attention to how White's role as a historian was decisive in allowing him to posit a future for religion purified of dogma by science. It argues, furthermore, that this effort is better understood as religious innovation, rather than a plea for strictly secular science. In so doing it hopes to lay the foundation for a more fruitful historical treatment of White, and a range of other figures whose devotion to science has otherwise been difficult to grasp.     

THE ATHENS/JERUSALEM TEMPLATE AND THE TECHNO‐SECULARISM THESIS—KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD

Abstract. The publication of my article “Athens, Jerusalem, and the Arrival of Techno‐secularism” (2005) in Zygon was followed by twenty‐one responses, most of them critical. In this essay I reply by clarifying the earlier one, separating out its two major theses: the Athens/Jerusalem template and the techno‐secularism thesis. The Athens/Jerusalem template is a typology that provides a historical basis for understanding why religion/science conflicts persist by showing that the contrasts between intellectual knowledge and revealed knowledge are permanent features of Western cultural history. Postmodern criticisms often have a negative edge, rejecting “canonical” accounts but not presenting alternative explanations. Historical context is helpful in understanding religion/science conflicts, which continue to exist. The present cultural situation is that technology is replacing religion—and science—as the dominant condition and theory of our culture. Evidence for the techno‐secularism thesis can be seen in the nature of electronic entertainment, which invades the silence required for religious contemplation and obscures the scientific laws that are the basis for the new technology.