The conflicts between science and religion:
A more detailed overview
Differences between science and religion:
Scientific findings and religious beliefs are normally quite
||Science deals with the study of nature, its forces, processes
and development. It is based on the analysis of evidence. It assumes,
as a working hypothesis, that processes and events happen due to
natural causes, not through divine intervention. It has rarely intrudes in
matters of morality, the existence and nature of deity, spirituality,
etc. However, this exclusion is in a state of flux as neuroscientists, biologists, physicists, cosmologists investigate topics like deriving moral codes, 1 how the universe started, etc.
||Religion deals with matters of faith. Its main basis is often
revelation from a deity -- either orally transmitted from generation
to generation, recorded in a sacred text, or revealed
to individuals through prayer. Most faith
groups teach of the existence of one or more deities who created
the universe, and continue to play a major role in managing it --
sometimes bypassing the laws of nature to create miracles. A main function of religion is to teach moral
principles, mankind's relationship to the god(s) or goddess(es),
behavior towards other humans, spiritual matters, etc.
The main battles between religion and science are in areas in which
Here, both often hold conflicting positions.
Many people feel that their own religious tradition is absolutely true,
whereas science and all other faiths are artificial and deeply flawed
belief systems, invented by error-prone humans. This attitude often fuels
religious conflict, sometimes escalating into mass
crimes against humanity and genocide. The result is that different
religious traditions battle each other, as well as disagree with the
findings of science.
Areas of overlap and conflict:
Some of the areas where science and religion overlap, and make
conflicting claims, are:
||Cosmology, geology, astronomy, etc. Many believers within the
conservative wing of Christianity claim that the earth is less than 10,000 years of age. They interpret the creation and
universal flood stories in the Biblical book of Genesis as being
literally true. 95% of scientists
reject a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. They believe
that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, that no world-wide
flood has happened, that humanity and other species evolved from a common ancestor, etc.
||Linguistics: Most conservative Christians claims
that the Tower of Babel story in the Biblical book of Genesis
describes precisely a past event in the Middle East in which humanity abandoned a single language.
separated into many different cultures, with various languages.
disagree that languages developed in this manner.
||Medicine: There are many conflicts in health related topics:
||Some faith groups promote methods
of healing using prayer and spiritual techniques that they believe are superior to modern medicine.
Physicians tend to disagree in the effectiveness of prayer.
faith groups teach that human personhood begins at the instant of conception. Upon this belief they base their
assertion that abortion is the killing of a human being -- a practice
than they feel should be seriously restricted. Others teach that life becomes
human life much later in pregnancy and that abortion is sometimes the least
immoral choice in certain circumstances.
||Some faith groups believe that only God gives life and only God
should take it away. They oppose physician
assisted suicide. Others believe that when a terminally ill person
is in intractable pain and wishes to die that physicians should be
allowed to assist them in dying.
||A common Pentecostal practice is "speaking in tongues"
where one believer will speak in what appears to be gibberish to the
casual observer, while another believer interprets the meaning of the
speech for the congregation. Pentecostals and
investigators have reached different conclusions over the significants of
speaking in tongues.
||Most theists believe that they can assess the will of God. The
sponsors of this web site have conducted a pilot study which appears
to indicate that determining God's will is not possible.
||Religious events: Various faith groups make certain claims
about historical events.
||One example is the belief by the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, that there
were three mass migrations from Palestine to North America circa
600 BCE. This belief has been rejected by essentially all non-Mormon archaeologists.
||Another is the Shroud of Turin which
many believers regard to be the burial cloth of Jesus. Many
scientists disagree, having dated its material to the middle ages.
||Human sexuality: Many conservative Christian groups teach
that homosexual behavior is not normal, unnatural, chosen, not genetically determined, and can be changed
through prayer and counseling. Researchers into human sexuality
generally believe that homosexual orientation is normal for a small
percentage of the human race, natural, not chosen, at least partly
determined by one's genes, and cannot be changed through prayer and
Generally speaking, in these areas of overlap:
||When religious claims
are evaluated using scientific methods, they are found to be false.
scientific claims are evaluated using the methods of faith, they are found to
The result is stagnation. Neither side can easily convince the other of
their truth. Sometimes, the conflict continues over centuries before being
resolved. Some conflicts, like abortion access, may be permanently irresolvable.
How each adapts to change:
Science and religion have different methods of adapting to change:
||Science generally welcomes change. Many false hypothesis are
proposed and later rejected or modified as new data becomes available.
This is the method by which science continually advances. It is ultimately
self-correcting. All scientific beliefs are subject to being falsified
if new evidence is uncovered. One example is the cause of stomach ulcers.
For decades, physicians treated patients with ulcers by using
long-term stress relief programs,
permanent dietary changes and continuing medication to reduce stomach
acid. They achieved only moderate success. Then an Australian doctor
proved that many forms of stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium
that could be eliminated with a single shot of antibiotics. He single-handedly
triggered a revolution in patient treatment.
||Religious beliefs, particularly those based on a sacred text, change
much more slowly. In fact, many faith groups stress the unchangeable
nature of their beliefs. There are three main methods by which
religions modify their teachings. In Christianity, for example:
||Some Biblical passages that were once considered to be literally true
are now interpreted symbolically. Heaven is no longer considered to be somewhere "up there." Hell is no longer believed to exist inside the earth. Over the past
century, Bible passages that describe torture methods
inflicted on Hell's inhabitants (worms, pain, flogging, heat, thirst,
darkness, unbearable heat and flames)
have been downplayed and often treated as symbolic. Hell is now
viewed as being isolated from God.
||Some Biblical passages are ignored. We no longer execute
prostitutes. Sections of the Bible that condoning and regulate slavery
are rarely if ever quoted. The Bible contains dozens of passages that are profoundly
immoral by today's secular and religious standards of
behavior. These verses are largely ignored today.
||Still other passages are interpreted as perhaps being valid for the
culture and age for which they were written, but not binding in a different
society or era. Male control over women, treating wives as property, restrictions on female
ordination, prohibiting women from certain professions, etc. have being
largely rejected as sexist, at least by mainline and liberal
Change eventually happens. Most people no longer believe that:
||The earth is flat.
||The sun goes around the earth.
||Lightning and thunder are caused by Satan and his demons.
||Mental illness, epilepsy, etc. are caused by demonic possession.
||God expects that a certain number of children will die young; thus we should not inoculate our children against childhood diseases.
But there are still many points of major conflict between science and
religion. In each case, only one will eventually win public support. The
historical record indicates that religion wins very few of these disputes.
Stages in conflicts between science and religion:
In 1898, Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), a professor and co-founder of Cornell
University, wrote a rather notorious book called
"A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom." 1 He tracked many religiously-based conflicts, and showed that
they often take decades or even centuries to resolve. Although his book exhibits
a heavy -- sometimes vicious -- bias and opposition against religion, he did document a
pattern in these conflicts: they often go through eight
stages before being finally resolved:
- Some individual or group will propose a new belief system that is in conflict with
established religious beliefs. The official religious institutions generally ignore this.
- A growing number of people will start to disagree with church teaching.
- Churches issue statements which condemn the proposal, citing Biblical passages as
justification for their stance.
- Support for the proposal continues to grow among the public.
- Churches issue statement pointing out that belief in the proposal negates the entire
Christian message, or attacks a fundamental Christian principle.
- Public support continues to grow.
- Churches begin to ignore the proposal, and sometimes ignore the Biblical passages that it once
quoted in opposition to the new idea.
- Many decades or centuries later, churches may incorporate the proposal into their
Since the advent of the modernist/fundamentalist divide in Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
religious liberals have tended to readily accept scientific findings and
incorporate them into their theology and morality. Thus White's eight step
process now mainly applies to religious conservatives.
The theory of evolution is a classic case. "A scientific theory of
evolution [was] first proposed by Charles Bonnet (1720 - 1793)...The theory was
developed by Charles Lyell (1797 - 1874)." 2 But
there was minimal theological reaction until Charles Darwin published the Origin
of Species in 1859. At the present time, evolution of the species has been
accepted by the Roman Catholic church, by liberal Christian denominations and by many
mainline faith groups. Some have integrated the theory of evolution into their
educational programs. Conservative Christians generally retain belief in one of the literal interpretations of the
biblical creation story in Genesis.
Of course, there are many scientific theories that never pass through these
five steps. Psychological hoaxes like the recovered
memory movement, multiple personality disorder,
abuse in former lifetimes, etc. are introduced, gain some acceptance, and
collapse due to lack of evidence, typically within two decades. Eugenic and
race-based quasi-scientific theories similarly did not endure.
Related menus on this web site:
- A.D. White, "A history of the warfare of science with theology in
Christendom," Prometheus Books, (1896; Reprinted 1993) Read
reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
- Irving Hexham & Karla Poewe, "New religions as global
cultures: Making the human sacred," Westview, (1997), Page 96. Read
reviews or order this book
- Sam Harris, "The moral landscape: How science can determine human values," Simon and Schuster, (2011). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
Copyright © 1999 to 2012 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Latest update: 2012-JUN-14
Author: B.A. Robinson