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Course 19 · Lesson 2.1

Models of science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, integration

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Lessons in this course

Course 19 outline

Module 1: The Secular Age: Humanism and Naturalism

  1. What secular, secularism and secularization mean
  2. Secular humanism: its claims and its moral vision
  3. Philosophical naturalism and its alternatives
  4. Christian responses to naturalism and humanism

Module 2: Science, Evolution and Faith

  1. Models of science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, integration
  2. What the theory of evolution claims and what it does not
  3. Christian positions on creation and evolution
  4. The history of the conflict story and its critics

Module 3: Criticism of the Bible

  1. The rise of historical and literary criticism
  2. What critics claim about authorship, sources and development
  3. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant responses to criticism

Module 4: Truth, Relativism and Postmodernism

  1. What postmodernism is, and why the term is hard to define
  2. Truth, language and interpretation
  3. Moral relativism: descriptive, cultural and philosophical forms
  4. Christian responses to relativism and postmodern thought

Module 5: The Masters of Suspicion

  1. Marx on religion, ideology and economic life
  2. Nietzsche on Christianity, morality and the death of God
  3. Freud on religion as illusion
  4. The genetic fallacy, and when explaining the origin of a belief matters

Module 6: Power, Corruption and Morality

  1. Church, state and political power in history
  2. Institutional failure and abuse
  3. Critiques of Christian morality and how Christians reply
  4. Judging a faith by its failures: what follows and what does not

Module 7: Mind, Meaning and Nihilism

  1. Consciousness and the limits of materialism
  2. Meaning and purpose in secular and Christian thought
  3. Nihilism, despair and Christian hope

Module 8: Writing a Response

  1. Stating a challenge in its strongest form
  2. Building a structured response
  3. Conceding what is true in the critic’s case

All courses

Program / Course 19: Modern Challenges / Lesson 2.1

What you will learn

  • Name and describe the four models of the relation between science and religion associated with Ian Barbour.
  • Give an example of each model, drawn from history or from current debate.
  • Explain why each model has strengths and weaknesses.
  • Recognize which model a speaker is assuming.

The big idea

People who discuss science and religion often assume one picture of how the two relate without saying so. The physicist and theologian Ian Barbour proposed four: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. In conflict, one must win. In independence, each speaks about a different subject. In dialogue, the two raise questions for each other. In integration, they are combined into one account. No model is neutral, and Christians have held each of them. Knowing the four helps you hear what a speaker is really claiming.

Key terms

Conflict model
The view that science and religion make rival claims about the same ground, so that one must give way.
Independence model
The view that science and religion ask different questions and use different methods, so they cannot contradict each other.
Dialogue model
The view that science and religion are distinct but can inform each other, for example at their boundaries.
Integration model
The view that science and religion should be woven into one coherent worldview, as in natural theology or process theology.
NOMA
Non-overlapping magisteria, a phrase of the biologist Stephen Jay Gould for the independence model: science covers fact and religion covers value.
Concordism
The attempt to match the words of Scripture exactly to the findings of science.
Scientism
The belief that science is the only source of real knowledge. It is a philosophy and not a scientific result.

Background

Ian Barbour (1923 to 2013) held degrees in physics and in theology, and his book Religion in an Age of Science helped found the modern academic study of the field. He proposed the fourfold scheme in the 1990s. Later writers have refined it and some say it oversimplifies, but it remains a standard map. The reading assigned for this course from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses a similar framework.

The models are not a ranking. They describe positions people take, and a single person may use different models for different questions. A Christian physicist might hold independence for the question of what the Bible is for, dialogue for the origin of the universe, and conflict with a particular claim that science disproves God.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Conflict

The conflict model has two forms that are opposed to each other. In one, the scientific materialist says that science has shown religion false. In the other, the biblical literalist says that Scripture must be read as science, so modern science is false where it differs. Both agree that the two rivals cover the same ground and that one must lose.

Conflict is a lively story in the media. It has real examples, such as particular disputes over evolution in American schools. Historians argue that it fails as a general account of the past, as the next lessons will show.

Step 2: Independence

Independence says that the two never meet. Science tells how the heavens go and religion how to go to heaven, as a saying attributed to Galileo and Cardinal Baronio puts it. Gould argued for this in his book Rocks of Ages. Many Protestant and Catholic thinkers have valued it as a way to prevent faith from being used as bad science.

Its weakness is that Christianity makes claims about the world, such as that God created it and that Christ rose from the dead. These are not only about values. Critics say independence protects religion only by making it say less. Richard Dawkins, from the other side, denies that religion has a separate domain and says that God’s existence is a scientific question.

Step 3: Dialogue

Dialogue holds that the two are different but that they overlap in border questions. Why does the universe exist? Why are its laws fit for life? What is consciousness? Science raises these, and cannot answer them alone. Theology in turn must take account of what science says about the world, and may need to revise how it reads certain texts.

John Polkinghorne, a physicist who became an Anglican priest, is a leading example. This model has been popular among Catholic and Anglican writers. Its risk is vagueness: it can sound modest without saying what each side concedes.

Step 4: Integration

Integration goes further. In natural theology, nature supplies evidence for God. In theologies of nature, doctrine is shaped by science. Process theology, which follows Alfred North Whitehead and is held by some Protestants but rejected by most Catholic and Orthodox theologians, rebuilds the doctrine of God around a scientific picture of a world in constant becoming.

A related form among Catholics and Orthodox is the unity of truth, the idea that all truth is God’s truth and that the harmony between faith and reason is to be expected. The risk of integration is that when science changes, a theology tied closely to it must change too, as happened with older arguments from the supposed perfection of the heavens.

  1. Which model is this speaker assuming?
  2. Does the speaker say who has the authority to decide the question?
  3. What would the speaker concede if the evidence went the other way?
  4. Is the claim one about nature, about meaning or about both?
  5. Are the terms religion and science being used for the best versions or the worst?
  6. Which model best fits my own views, and what does it cost me?

Examples

Conflict, scientific form

A popular author writes that now that biology explains life, there is no need for a Creator and no reason to pray. He treats religion as a failed scientific theory. (A constructed example.)

Independence

A pastor teaches that Genesis is about who God is and who human beings are, and has nothing to say about how old the earth is. A geologist in the same church measures rock layers. They never feel any tension. (A constructed example.)

Dialogue and integration

A physicist asks why the laws of nature are so mathematical and so fit for discovery, and finds in the question a hint of a rational Creator. Another scholar builds a full philosophy of nature around that hint. The first is dialogue, the second is closer to integration. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching since Vatican I holds that faith and reason cannot truly contradict, because the same God is the source of both. Pope John Paul II’s 1998 letter Fides et Ratio, and his 1996 message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, argue for dialogue and mutual respect. The Church also holds that science does not exhaust truth.

Orthodox

Orthodox theologians usually treat the created world as good, rational and knowable, and they have no tradition of hostility to science. Many emphasize that theology is about the knowledge of God through worship and that scientific study belongs to a different but not opposed task. Some Orthodox writers lean toward independence, and others toward integration through the idea of the world as sacramental.

Protestant

Protestants vary widely. Biblical literalists in the early twentieth century often lived in a conflict model. Many Reformed and evangelical scholars, drawing on Calvin’s idea that God accommodates himself to human understanding, favor dialogue. Liberal Protestant theologians have often preferred independence or integration. Because Protestants have no central authority, the differences are open.

Secular and scholarly views

Many scientists, including believers, favor independence as a rule of professional conduct. Others, such as Dawkins, assert conflict. Historians of science, including John Hedley Brooke, argue that the relation has been too complex for any single model. Philosophers continue to dispute whether religion makes claims that science can test.

Why it matters

A debate about evolution or about miracles can turn heated because each side assumes a different model without saying so. Naming the model slows the conversation down. It also shows that Christians are not required to choose between rejecting science and surrendering to it, and that the positions between are respectable.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: There are only two sides, science and religion.

Correction: Barbour’s scheme shows at least four models, and many positions lie between. Both science and religion are broad terms, and both include disagreements within themselves.

Misunderstanding: The independence model is the Christian position.

Correction: It is one Christian position among several. Others hold that doctrines of creation have implications for science, and that scientific findings can inform theology.

Misunderstanding: Barbour’s scheme is a scientific finding.

Correction: It is a classification, and scholars debate whether it is accurate or complete.

Knowledge check

List Barbour’s four models.

They are conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. In conflict, science and religion are rivals on the same ground. In independence, they speak about different subjects. In dialogue, they remain distinct but inform each other at the borders. In integration, they are combined into a single worldview, as in natural theology or process theology.

What is Gould’s NOMA?

NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria, is Stephen Jay Gould’s name for the independence model. He proposed that science covers the empirical realm of fact and theory, and religion covers questions of meaning and moral value. Critics say that Christianity makes factual claims, such as the resurrection, so the boundary is not so clean.

What is a weakness of the integration model?

If a theology is tied closely to a scientific picture, it can fall when the science changes. Older arguments from the supposed perfection of the heavens, for example, had to be revised. Another weakness is that integration may give science a veto over doctrines. Defenders reply that truth is one and that theology should adapt.

Why might one person hold different models for different questions?

Because science and religion touch many topics. A person might hold that Genesis is not meant to teach geology (independence), that the fine-tuning of the universe invites reflection (dialogue), and that one particular claim, such as a young earth, conflicts with the evidence (conflict). The models describe patterns, and people mix them.

Think it through

  1. Which model do you usually assume, and where did you learn it?
  2. What would be lost if religion made no claims about the physical world?
  3. What would be lost if religion could be overturned by any scientific finding?
  4. Which Christian doctrines make claims that overlap with science?

Independent assignment

Identify the model

In your notebook, find three public statements about science and religion (articles, interviews or sermons). For each, name the model it assumes and the evidence in the text. Then write 300 to 400 words saying which statement is fairest to both sides and why. Do not post it.

Further study