Conflict and Compatibility: Some Thoughts on the Relationship between Science and Religion

Scholarly studies of the science and religion question tend to take their cue from the subjective attitudes of individual writers. A potentially more useful approach focuses instead on the logical relationship between scientific and religious statements. Such a strategy generates two main types: a compatibilist model concerned only to show that religious and scientific claims are mutually consistent and an integrationist model that posits a strong correlation between theological and scientific language. Investigation of the two models' strengths and weaknesses suggests that a compatibilist approach is more consistent with the way in which Christian language is deployed on the ground.