The historical relations between science and religion have been the focus of considerable study over the past thirty years and the verdict is now in: there has been no enduring warfare between science and religion. The present consensus among historians is that there is no consistent pattern of historical relations between science and religion. If there is a single word that might characterize past relationships it is 'complexity'.
One reason for this complexity is that the disciplines were arranged very differently in the past and up until the nineteenth century there were no clear cut boundaries between what we would now call ‘science’ and religion. Medieval thinkers, for example, tended to classify theology as one of the sciences. From their perspective, speaking of a conflict between science and theology could only result from some kind of conceptual confusion, since theology was a science. Subsequently, in the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton (1642-1726/7) would declare that discussion of God was an integral part of the business of scientific investigation.
The very idea of a 'law of nature', when first proposed in the seventeenth century, was not a mere metaphor, but was regarded as a divinely authored rule that natural objects were compelled to obey... virtually all the key figures of the scientific revolution were devout Christians. Most would have found any talk of an inevitable science-religion conflict deeply puzzling
http://www.theologie-naturwissenschaften.de/startseite/leitartikelarchiv/conflict-myth.html
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_The myth is thus fuelled on one side by religious conservatives who oppose evolution and on the other by Darwinian fundamentalists who think that science and religion are intrinsically incompatible. Amongst the latter group are those who believe, sincerely but mistakenly, that science is the solution to religiously inspired violence and to the ‘clash of cultures’. The myth also confirms a belief in our own intellectual superiority, and the conviction that we are more advanced in every way than our superstitious forebears._
ReplyDeleteGood read.