Nineenth century allegorical statue of the Congress Column, Belgium depicting Freedom of Education
Freedom of education is the right for parents to have their children educated in accordance with their religious and other views, allowing groups to be able to educate children without being impeded by the nation state.
The European forum for freedom in education was formed in 1989 and has 69 members across 13 countries. Their official demands include a need for autonomy to students and teachers. It also establishes the importance of diversity in education, to allow parents the choice of sending their child to a school that aligns with their views.
The Netherlands
In
the Netherlands, a political battle raged throughout the nineteenth
century over the issue of the state monopoly on tuition-free education.
It was opposed under the banner of "freedom of education" and the separation of church and state. The Dutch called it the "school struggle". The Dutch solution was the separation of school and state by funding all schools equally, both public and private from 1917. The freedom of education resulted in the establishment of many new school types in the total spectrum of education in the Netherlands. New methods of education were introduced inspired by ideals on education (like those of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Jenaplan).
Schools were also funded based on religion. After the influx of workers
from Islamic countries, Islamic schools were introduced. In 2003, in
total 35 Islamic schools were in operation. However, a study in 2015 showed that the introduction of new schools for secondary education
appeared difficult. Local communities, including existing local
schools, resisted the introduction of new schools, for instance by
delaying the procedure to find a location for a new school.
Presently, freedom to teach religion in schools is a protected
right, both for individuals or groups to teach, and for an individual to
learn. While this plainly means children, it can also be interpreted to
apply to parents' rights to have their valued beliefs or principles
taught to the child.
There have been issues around limiting the abilities of religious
schools within the Netherlands. This includes serious threats to orthodox Jewish and Islamic schools'
ability to enjoy this freedom. Following a general change in attitudes
within the Netherlands there has been controversy surrounding balancing
the freedom of education with the other rights of non-discrimination
that might be seen, particularly towards women in many conservative
Islamic schools.
Most religious schools in the Netherlands have also since stopped
acting within their own subset of institutions, thus lessening their
power within the education system. Combined with the growth in
diversity, and an overriding importance of non-discrimination, the
ability for religious groups with conservative views in the Netherlands
to educate their children in the manner that they were has been
tarnished.
France
On 23 November 1977, the Constitutional Council ruled freedom of education was among the fundamental freedoms enschrined in the Constitution, basing on the 1882 Ferry Act.
However, on August 13, 2021, even though some legal analysts
posited this disposition would be overturned, the Council ruled it
wasn't unconstitutional to submit homeschooling to a regime of
authorisation.
Situation in Europe (2013)
A University of Amsterdam
study of 2013 ranked six member states by their parallel education (the
ability to voluntary create a religious denomination which can be
aided/impeded through funding) to give an indication of the freedom of
groups and individuals to instill their religious beliefs through
education. The conclusions are listed below.
Denmark
Denmark
achieved a high rating. Denmark’s constitution requires a duty of
education, but not one aimed at the school. This creates an option for private education or home-school.
Private schools receive a subsidy that covers approximately 3/4 of the
costs. Over the last ten years, Denmark has raised its level of
supervision of these schools and the obligations on the schools to
regulate themselves.
The Netherlands
The Netherlands achieved a high rating; religious schools in the Netherlands which are private are funded equally to public schools
and are subject to the same regulations. Well over half of the
Netherlands' schools are built on the grounds of a religion. The Dutch constitution (article 23)
protects freedom of education and means the government must hold
private and state schools equally. While private schools need to employ
proper teachers, they may select their teachers or pupils based on their
spiritual beliefs or values.
Ireland
Ireland
received a high rating. 95% of primary and 57% of secondary Irish
schools are denominational, though this number is decreasing. Education
is supported predominantly by Catholic but also Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim institutions and trusts. There are also Irish language
schools for parents who want to teach their children through the
national language, as a vast majority of the population of Ireland
speaks English. Compared with the rest of the continent, religious
educational groups have had strong levels of freedom, and have been able
to establish schools that receive considerable State funding.
Italy
Italy
received a medium rating. Religious schools in Italy are private, which
can request to become treated like public schools. If they achieve
this, they will be under the same rules as public schools. They can
receive funding, but in most successful instances it was only Catholic
schools managed by Catholic groups, the dominant religion in the
country.
Spain
Spain
received a medium rating. In theory Spain's constitution protects the
right to create a school based upon a certain belief. However, in
practice, establishing schools for minority groups
can be problematic mostly due to the availability of resources. Fewer
than ten schools in the country actually educate religious minority
groups.
Sweden
Sweden
received a high rating. The freedom of Swedish private schools is equal
to that of state schools. While religious schools can select their own
staff or students, the national regulations clearly state what can and
cannot be omitted from teaching, such as gender.
Rules surrounding dress or behaviour are allowed provided they comply
within the general law. The ability to teach a notably Islamic
curriculum is restricted, however, which meant that the rating of Sweden
came close to being downgraded to medium.
North America
United States
Around 17% of schools in the United States are faith-based. However, America does not offer families any public support to attend such schools routinely.
Public schools are required by certain state laws to educate
their students in a secular manner so as not to endorse any specific
religion. However, most public schools in the US have become more
responsive to a variety of dietary requirements, such as nut-free or
vegetarian options, and children are allowed to be exempt from
activities that would normally be inconsistent with their religious
teachings.
However, despite there being no constitutional pressures on the
freedom of parents to choose education, the American society still
opposes religious education in some states. Negative news reporting combined with the general attitude of American
citizens places pressure upon parents who want to send their children to
religious private schools. Though private schools are a great source of religious education for
those who do not share the same views and opinions, joining a private
school may not be the same option.
South America
Religious freedom of schools is supported through the Constitution of many South American countries. In Chile,
funds are provided to both state and private schools at all ages. There
is no non-Catholic teaching in most schools within this region,
however. While there is still some frequency of religious discrimination in South America, the legal and societal restrictions have been overcome through a combination of influence by the Vatican, the spread of Protestantism
and Constitutional change. Freedom of education through a belief
outside the Christian faith still remains a contested issue throughout
South America.
Africa
The South African
Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms section 15 allows for
observance of religious observances in State or private schools,
provided they are compliant with other laws.
Australia
There is legal support for free and open religious education within the Australian public schooling system,
but its actual application is very rare. However, there is also
support for a "confessional" method of religious education which has
been commonplace since the 19th century. This method lets churches visit
to give religious lessons in schools. There are also many Islamic and Jewish schools throughout the country, with a strong presence in New South Wales and Victoria. The Australian government provides funding to private schools, over half of which are faith based.
Asia
Israel
Israel currently offers a growing number of Haredi
and Arab schools, as well as special private schools that reflect
certain beliefs of parents, or are based around a foreign country
curriculum, for example, Jerusalem American International School.
Despite this, the success rate of Haredi students at the national level
is significantly low. Israel also operates an Arab education system for
their minority, including lessons on their own culture and history to
support Arab parents. However, there have been allegations of better
funding directed towards the Jewish education system. One report
suggested that the Israeli government spends $192 per year on each Arab student, compared to $1,100 per Jewish student. A 2001 Human Rights Watch
report claimed Arab school students were getting an inferior education
from fewer resources and poorly constructed institutions.
Arab countries
Women
in the Arab world may still be denied equality of opportunity, although
their disempowerment is a critical factor crippling the markets of the
Arab nations to return to the first pitch of global leaders in star
commerce, teenage learning and pop culture, according to a new United
States-sponsored report in 2012. Education in the Arab World
has made progress over the past decade. However, the quality of
education remains poor, many children still leave primary education
prematurely and illiteracy rates are relatively high, according to a new
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) report.
Educational and academic freedom
The Right to Education initiative described educational freedom as the "liberty
of parents to ascertain religious as well as moral education of their
children in accordance with their beliefs to choose schools aside from
public institutions." The State must respect this freedom within public education.
Educational freedom includes the right of all people to institute and
guide institutions that adhere to the State’s minimum standards in
learning. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (General
Comment 13) stipulates that the State must guarantee this right does
not cause excessive disparities of educational opportunity for certain
groups in society. Academic freedom
pertains to the autonomy of academic community members to practice,
develop, and communicate knowledge and ideas through research, teaching,
dialogue, documentation, production, and writing either jointly or
individually. Academic freedom calls for the independence of higher
education entities. A contemporary interpretations of 18th-century political philosophers
have argued that freedom in education indicates the need for parents to
become accountable for the education of their children and that
governments do not possess authority or capability to force families and
individuals or finance the education of students directly or
indirectly. These concepts have been used by self-claimed parents rights groups to
ban certain books or prohibit discussion of certain topics in public
schools or to call for the government to give families money to send
their kids to private school if they don't like something that is being
taught in the public school.
Many fields of scientific research
in the Soviet Union were banned or suppressed with various
justifications. All humanities and social sciences were tested for
strict accordance with dialectical materialism.
These tests served as a cover for political suppression of scientists
who engaged in research labeled as "idealistic" or "bourgeois". Many scientists were fired, others were arrested and sent to Gulags. The suppression of scientific research began during the Stalin era and continued after his death.
The ideologically motivated persecution damaged many fields of Soviet science.
In the mid-1930s, the agronomistTrofim Lysenko started a campaign against genetics and was supported by Stalin. If the field of genetics' connection to Nazis wasn't enough, Mendelian genetics was also suppressed due to beliefs that it was "bourgeoisie science" and its association with the priest Gregor Mendel due to hostility to religion because of the Soviet policy of state atheism.
In 1950, the Soviet government organized the Joint Scientific Session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, the "Pavlovian session". Several prominent Soviet physiologists (L.A. Orbeli, P.K. Anokhin, Aleksey Speransky [ru], Ivane Beritashvili)
were accused of deviating from Pavlov's teaching. As a consequence of
the Pavlovian session, Soviet physiologists were forced to accept a
dogmatic ideology; the quality of physiological research deteriorated
and Soviet physiology excluded itself from the international scientific
community. Later Soviet biologists heavily criticised Lysenko's theories and pseudo-scientific methods.
Cybernetics was also outlawed as bourgeois pseudoscience during Stalin's reign. Norbert Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics was condemned and translated only in 1958. A 1954 edition of the Brief Philosophical Dictionary
condemned cybernetics for "mechanistically equating processes in live
nature, society and in technical systems, and thus standing against
materialistic dialectics and modern scientific physiology developed by Ivan Pavlov". (However this article was removed from the 1955 reprint of the
dictionary.) After an initial period of doubts, Soviet cybernetics took
root, but this early attitude hampered the development of computing in the Soviet Union.
Since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography treated the party line and reality as one and the same. As such, if it was a science, it was a science in service of a specific political and ideological agenda, commonly employing historical negationist methods. In the 1930s, historic archives were closed and original research
was severely restricted. Historians were required to pepper their works
with references – appropriate or not – to Stalin and other
"Marxist-Leninist classics", and to pass judgment – as prescribed by the
Party – on pre-revolution historic Russian figures.
Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as, officially, they never happened. Translations of foreign historiography were often produced in a
truncated form, accompanied with extensive censorship and corrective
footnotes. For example, in the Russian 1976 translation of Basil Liddell Hart's History of the Second World Warpre-war purges of Red Army officers, the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, many details of the Winter War, the occupation of the Baltic states, the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Western Allied
assistance to the Soviet Union during the war, many other Western
Allies' efforts, the Soviet leadership's mistakes and failures,
criticism of the Soviet Union and other content were censored out.
At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, read a letter by Arnold Chikobava criticizing the theory. He "summoned Chikobava to a dinner that lasted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. taking notes diligently." In this way he grasped enough of the underlying issues to oppose this
simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over
Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work in the field was a small
essay, "Marxism and Linguistic Questions."
Special and general relativity were a matter of controversy among the Soviet scientists since 1920. Some of them argued that this theory is grounded in Machism (acutely criticized by Vladimir Lenin in his Materialism and Empiriocriticism), others were a group of so-called "mechanists" (see Mechanists and dialecticians controversy [ru]),
later "Young Stalinists" joined the ranks of the relativity theory. At
the same time a considerable number of prominent Soviet physicists
defended the relativity theory. The attacks on the relativity theory
intensified in 1949 under the auspices of the struggle against the
"physical idealism" in the work of Leonid Mandelstam. Initially Sergey Vavilov,
President of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, managed to
defend Mandelstam, but in 1952 the political attacks on "reactionary
Einsteinianism" intensified further. This pseudoscientific campaign
sizzled after the death of Stalin.
Although initially planned, the process of "ideological cleansing" in physics did not go as far as
defining an "ideologically correct" version of physics and purging those
scientists who refused to conform to it, because this was recognized as
potentially too harmful to the Soviet nuclear program. During 1949-1951 there was "antiresonance campaign" against the theory of resonance, during which scientists who supported it were accused of "cosmopolitan" sympathies and repressed. As Anna Krylov writes on the perils of ideological intrusion into science, "Stalin rolled back the planned campaign against physics and instructed Beria
to give physicists some space; this led to significant advances and
accomplishments by Soviet scientists in several domains. However,
neither Stalin nor the subsequent Soviet leaders were able to let go of
the controls completely. Government control over science turned out to
be a grand failure, and the attempt to patch the widening gap between
the West and the East by espionage did not help. Today Russia is hopelessly behind the West in both technology and quality of life."
After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized". In 1920s a position had formed in the Soviet Union that historical materialism
is in fact Marxist sociology, and the major discussion was whether to
use the terms "sociology" and "historical materialism" synonymously or
to abandon the term "sociology" altogether and consider it to be an
anti-Marxist bourgeois science. From 1930s to 1950s, the independent discipline of sociology virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Even in the era where it was allowed to be practiced, and not replaced by Marxist philosophy, it was always dominated by Marxist thought;
hence sociology in the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc
represented, to a significant extent, only one branch of sociology: Marxist sociology. With the death of Joseph Stalin and the 20th Party Congress in 1956, restrictions on sociological research were somewhat eased, and finally, after the 23rd Party Congress in 1966, sociology in Soviet Union was once again officially recognized as an acceptable branch of science.
Reliability of data
The
quality (accuracy and reliability) of data published in the Soviet
Union and used in historical research is another issue raised by various
Sovietologists. The Marxist theoreticians of the Party considered statistics as a social science; hence many applications of statistical mathematics were curtailed, particularly during the Stalin era. Under central planning, nothing could occur by accident. The law of large numbers and the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov and Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research.
As with all Soviet historiography, reliability of Soviet statistical data varied from period to period. The first revolutionary decade and the period of Stalin's dictatorship
both appear highly problematic with regards to statistical reliability;
very little statistical data was published from 1936 to 1956 (seeSoviet Census (1937)). The reliability of data improved after 1956 when some missing data was
published and Soviet experts themselves published some adjusted data for
Stalin's era; however the quality of documentation deteriorated.
While on occasion statistical data useful in historical research might have been completely invented by the Soviet authorities, there is little evidence that most statistics were significantly
affected by falsification or insertion of false data with the intent to
confound the West. Data was however falsified both during collection – by local
authorities who would be judged by the central authorities based on
whether their figures reflected the central economy
prescriptions – and by internal propaganda, with its goal to portray
the Soviet state in most positive light to its very citizens. Nonetheless, the policy of not publishing, or simply not collecting,
data that was deemed unsuitable for various reasons was much more common
than simple falsification; hence there are many gaps in Soviet
statistical data. Inadequate or lacking documentation for much of Soviet statistical data is also a significant problem.
Theme in literature
Vladimir Dudintsev, White Garments (1987), a fictionalized story about Soviet geneticists working during the Lysenkoism era
In statistics, the frequency or absolute frequency of an event is the number of times the observation has occurred/been recorded in an experiment or study. These frequencies are often depicted graphically or tabular form.
Types
The cumulative frequency is the total of the absolute frequencies of all events at or below a certain point in an ordered list of events.
The relative frequency (or empirical probability) of an event is the absolute frequency normalized by the total number of events:
The values of for all events can be plotted to produce a frequency distribution.
In the case when for certain , pseudocounts can be added.
Depicting frequency distributions
Histogram of travel time (to work), US 2000 census
Different ways of depicting frequency distributions
A frequency distribution shows a summarized grouping of data
divided into mutually exclusive classes and the number of occurrences in
a class. It is a way of showing unorganized data notably to show
results of an election, income of people for a certain region, sales of a
product within a certain period, student loan amounts of graduates,
etc. Some of the graphs that can be used with frequency distributions
are histograms, line charts, bar charts and pie charts. Frequency distributions are used for both qualitative and quantitative data.
Construction
Decide
the number of classes. Too many classes or too few classes might not
reveal the basic shape of the data set, also it will be difficult to
interpret such frequency distribution. The ideal number of classes may
be determined or estimated by formula: (log base 10), or by the square-root choice formula where n
is the total number of observations in the data. (The latter will be
much too large for large data sets such as population statistics.)
However, these formulas are not a hard rule and the resulting number of
classes determined by formula may not always be exactly suitable with
the data being dealt with.
Calculate the range of the data (Range = Max – Min) by finding the minimum and maximum data values. Range will be used to determine the class interval or class width.
Decide the width of the classes, denoted by h and obtained by (assuming the class intervals are the same for all classes).
Generally the class interval or class width is the same for all
classes. The classes all taken together must cover at least the distance
from the lowest value (minimum) in the data to the highest (maximum)
value. Equal class intervals are preferred in frequency distribution,
while unequal class intervals (for example logarithmic intervals) may be
necessary in certain situations to produce a good spread of
observations between the classes and avoid a large number of empty, or
almost empty classes.
Decide the individual class limits and select a suitable
starting point of the first class which is arbitrary; it may be less
than or equal to the minimum value. Usually it is started before the
minimum value in such a way that the midpoint (the average of lower and
upper class limits of the first class) is properly placed.
Take an observation and mark a vertical bar (|) for a class it belongs. A running tally is kept till the last observation.
Find the frequencies, relative frequency, cumulative frequency etc. as required.
The following are some commonly used methods of depicting frequency:
A histogram is a representation of tabulated frequencies, shown as adjacent rectangles or squares
(in some of situations), erected over discrete intervals (bins), with
an area proportional to the frequency of the observations in the
interval. The height of a rectangle is also equal to the frequency
density of the interval, i.e., the frequency divided by the width of the
interval. The total area of the histogram is equal to the number of
data. A histogram may also be normalized displaying relative frequencies. It then shows the proportion of cases that fall into each of several categories, with the total area equaling 1. The categories are usually specified as consecutive, non-overlapping intervals of a variable. The categories (intervals) must be adjacent, and often are chosen to be of the same size. The rectangles of a histogram are drawn so that they touch each other to indicate that the original variable is continuous.
Bar graphs
A bar chart or bar graph is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths
proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted
vertically or horizontally. A vertical bar chart is sometimes called a
column bar chart.
Frequency distribution table
A frequency distribution table is an arrangement of the values that one or more variables take in a sample.
Each entry in the table contains the frequency or count of the
occurrences of values within a particular group or interval, and in this
way, the table summarizes the distribution of values in the sample.
This is an example of a univariate (=single variable) frequency table. The frequency of each response to a survey question is depicted.
A different tabulation scheme aggregates values into bins such that
each bin encompasses a range of values. For example, the heights of the
students in a class could be organized into the following frequency
table.
Height range
Number of students
Cumulative number
less than 5.0 feet
25
25
5.0–5.5 feet
35
60
5.5–6.0 feet
20
80
6.0–6.5 feet
20
100
Joint frequency distributions
Bivariate joint frequency distributions are often presented as (two-way) contingency tables:
Two-way contingency table with marginal frequencies
Dance
Sports
TV
Total
Men
2
10
8
20
Women
16
6
8
30
Total
18
16
16
50
The total row and total column report the marginal frequencies or marginal distribution, while the body of the table reports the joint frequencies.
Interpretation
Under the frequency interpretation of probability, it is assumed that the source is ergotic,
i.e., as the length of a series of trials increases without bound, the
fraction of experiments in which a given event occurs will approach a
fixed value, known as the limiting relative frequency.
The term frequentist was first used by M. G. Kendall in 1949, to contrast with Bayesians, whom he called "non-frequentists". He observed
3....we may broadly distinguish two main attitudes. One takes
probability as 'a degree of rational belief', or some similar idea...the
second defines probability in terms of frequencies of occurrence of
events, or by relative proportions in 'populations' or 'collectives';
(p. 101)
...
12. It might be thought that the differences between the
frequentists and the non-frequentists (if I may call them such) are
largely due to the differences of the domains which they purport to
cover. (p. 104)
...
I assert that this is not so ... The essential distinction
between the frequentists and the non-frequentists is, I think, that the
former, in an effort to avoid anything savouring of matters of opinion,
seek to define probability in terms of the objective properties of a
population, real or hypothetical, whereas the latter do not. [emphasis
in original]
Applications
Managing
and operating on frequency tabulated data is much simpler than
operation on raw data. There are simple algorithms to calculate median,
mean, standard deviation etc. from these tables.
A frequency distribution is said to be skewed when its mean and median are significantly different, or more generally when it is asymmetric. The kurtosis of a frequency distribution is a measure of the proportion of extreme values (outliers), which appear at either end of the histogram. If the distribution is more outlier-prone than the normal distribution it is said to be leptokurtic; if less outlier-prone it is said to be platykurtic.
Letter frequency distributions are also used in frequency analysis to crack ciphers,
and are used to compare the relative frequencies of letters in
different languages and other languages are often used like Greek,
Latin, etc.
The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout
history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science
and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" (from the studies of "natural philosophy") and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been
characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and
"mutual independence", among others.
Both science and religion are complex social and cultural endeavors that may vary across cultures and change over time. Most scientific and technical innovations until the scientific
revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions.
Ancient pagan, Islamic, and Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Roger Bacon, often credited with formalizing the scientific method, was a Franciscan friar and medieval Christians who studied nature emphasized natural explanations. Confucian thought, whether religious or non-religious in nature, has held different views of science over time. Many 21st-century Buddhists view science as complementary to their beliefs, although the philosophical integrity of such Buddhist modernism has been challenged. While the classification of the material world by the ancient Indians and Greeks into air, earth, fire, and water was more metaphysical, and figures like Anaxagoras questioned certain popular views of Greek divinities, medieval Middle Eastern scholars empirically classified materials.
Events in Europe such as the Galileo affair of the early 17th century, associated with the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, led scholars such as John William Draper to postulate (c. 1874) a conflict thesis,
suggesting that religion and science have been in conflict
methodologically, factually, and politically throughout history. Some
contemporary philosophers and scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Peter Atkins, and Donald Prothero subscribe to this thesis; however, such views have not been held by historians of science for a very long time.
The
concepts of "science" and "religion" are a recent invention: "religion"
emerged in the 17th century in the midst of colonization, globalization
and as a consequence of the Protestant reformation. "Science" emerged
in the 19th century in the midst of attempts to narrowly define those
who studied nature.[6][19] Originally what is now known as "science" was pioneered as "natural philosophy".
It was in the 19th century that the terms "Buddhism", "Hinduism", "Taoism", "Confucianism" and "World Religions" first emerged. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science (scientia) and religion (religio)
were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues, never
as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge.
The 19th century also experienced the concept of "science"
receiving its modern shape with new titles emerging such as "biology"
and "biologist", "physics", and "physicist", among other technical
fields and titles; institutions and communities were founded, and
unprecedented applications to and interactions with other aspects of
society and culture occurred. The term scientist was coined by the naturalist-theologian William Whewell in 1834 and it was applied to those who sought knowledge and understanding of nature. From the ancient world, starting with Aristotle, to the 19th century, the practice of studying nature was commonly referred to as "natural philosophy". Isaac Newton's book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(1687), whose title translates to "Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy", reflects the then-current use of the words "natural
philosophy", akin to "systematic study of nature". Even in the 19th
century, a treatise by Lord Kelvin and Peter Guthrie Tait's, which helped define much of modern physics, was titled Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).
It was in the 17th century that the concept of "religion"
received its modern shape despite the fact that ancient texts like the
Bible, the Quran, and other texts did not have a concept of religion in
the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in
which these texts were written. In the 19th century, Max Müller noted that what is called ancient religion today, would have been called "law" in antiquity. For example, there is no precise equivalent of "religion" in Hebrew,
and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national,
racial, or ethnic identities. The Sanskrit word "dharma", sometimes translated as "religion", also means law or duty. Throughout classical India, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions.
Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between "imperial law" and
universal or "Buddha law", but these later became independent sources of
power. Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of "religion" since
there was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its
meaning, but when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in
1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
The development of sciences (especially natural philosophy) in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, has a considerable foundation in the works of the Arabs who translated Greek and Latincompositions. The works of Aristotle
played a major role in the institutionalization, systematization, and
expansion of reason. Christianity accepted reason within the ambit of
faith. In Christendom, ideas articulated via divine revelation were assumed to be true, and thus via the law of non-contradiction,
it was maintained that the natural world must accord with this revealed
truth. Any apparent contradiction would indicate either a
misunderstanding of the natural world or a misunderstanding of
revelation. The prominent scholastic Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologica concerning apparent contradictions:
"In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to observed, as Augustine teaches (Gen. ad lit.
i, 18). The first is, to hold the truth of Scripture without wavering.
The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a
multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation,
only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with
certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of
unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing." (Summa 1a, 68, 1)
"In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as
we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are
sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In
such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand
on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly
undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle
not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its
teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to
that of Sacred Scripture." (Gen. ad lit. i, 18)
In medieval universities, the faculty for natural philosophy and
theology were separate, and discussions pertaining to theological issues
were often not allowed to be undertaken by the faculty of philosophy. Natural philosophy, as taught in the arts faculties of the
universities, was seen as an essential area of study in its own right
and was considered necessary for almost every area of study. It was an
independent field, separated from theology, and enjoyed a good deal of
intellectual freedom as long as it was restricted to the natural world.
In general, there was religious support for natural science by the late
Middle Ages and a recognition that it was an important element of
learning.
The extent to which medieval science led directly to the new
philosophy of the scientific revolution remains a subject for debate,
but it certainly had a significant influence.
The Middle Ages laid ground for the developments that took place in science, during the Renaissance which immediately succeeded it. By 1630, ancient authority from classical literature and philosophy, as
well as their necessity, started eroding, although scientists were
still expected to be fluent in Latin, the international language of Europe's intellectuals. With the sheer success of science and the steady advance of rationalism, the individual scientist gained prestige. Along with the inventions of this period, especially the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg,
allowing for the dissemination of the Bible in vernacular languages.
This allowed more people to read and learn from the scripture, leading
to the Evangelical movement. The people who spread this message concentrated more on individual agency rather than the structures of the Church.
In the 17th century, founders of the Royal Society largely held conventional and orthodox religious views, and a number of them were prominent Churchmen. While theological issues that had the potential to be divisive were
typically excluded from formal discussions of the early Society, many of
its fellows nonetheless believed that their scientific activities
provided support for traditional religious belief. Clerical involvement in the Royal Society remained high until the
mid-nineteenth century when science became more professionalized.
Albert Einstein
supported the compatibility of some interpretations of religion with
science. In "Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium" published by
the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to
the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York in 1941, Einstein stated:
Accordingly, a religious person is
devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and
loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require
nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same
necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion
is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely
conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and
extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according
to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible.
For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and
outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.
Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human
thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and
relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the
well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all
be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been
described.
The
kinds of interactions that might arise between science and religion
have been categorized by theologian, Anglican priest, and physicist John Polkinghorne:
(1) conflict between the disciplines, (2) independence of the
disciplines, (3) dialogue between the disciplines where they overlap and
(4) integration of both into one field.
"Not only is science corrosive to religion; religion is corrosive to
science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural
non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that
we have within our grasp. It teaches them to accept authority,
revelation and faith instead of always insisting on evidence."—Richard Dawkins
According to Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C and Avelina Espinosa, the historical conflict between evolution and religion is intrinsic to the incompatibility between scientificrationalism/empiricism and the belief in supernatural causation/faith. According to evolutionary biologistJerry Coyne,
views on evolution and levels of religiosity in some countries, along
with the existence of books explaining reconciliation between evolution
and religion, indicate that people have trouble in believing both at the
same time, thus implying incompatibility. According to physical chemistPeter Atkins, "whereas religion scorns the power of human comprehension, science respects it." Planetary scientistCarolyn Porco
describes a hope that "the confrontation between science and formal
religion will come to an end when the role played by science in the
lives of all people is the same played by religion today." Geologist and paleontologistDonald Prothero has stated that religion is the reason "questions about evolution,
the age of the earth, cosmology, and human evolution nearly always
cause Americans to flunk science literacy tests compared to other
nations." However, Jon Miller, who studies science literacy across nations,
states that Americans in general are slightly more scientifically
literate than Europeans and the Japanese. According to cosmologist and astrophysicistLawrence Krauss, compatibility or incompatibility is a theological concern, not a scientific concern. In Lisa Randall's
view, questions of incompatibility or otherwise are not answerable,
since by accepting revelations one is abandoning rules of logic which
are needed to identify if there are indeed contradictions between
holding certain beliefs. Daniel Dennett
holds that incompatibility exists because religion is not problematic
to a certain point before it collapses into a number of excuses for
keeping certain beliefs, in light of evolutionary implications.
Evolutionary biologistRichard Dawkins
is openly hostile to religion because he believes it actively debauches
the scientific enterprise and education involving science. According to
Dawkins, religion "subverts science and saps the intellect". He believes that when science teachers attempt to expound on evolution,
there is hostility aimed towards them by parents who are skeptical
because they believe it conflicts with their own religious beliefs, and
that even in some textbooks have had the word 'evolution' systematically
removed. He has worked to argue the negative effects that he believes religion has on education of science.
According to Renny Thomas' study on Indian scientists, atheistic
scientists in India called themselves atheists even while accepting that
their lifestyle is very much a part of tradition and religion. Thus,
they differ from Western atheists in that for them following the
lifestyle of a religion is not antithetical to atheism.
Criticism
Others such as Francis Collins, George F. R. Ellis, Kenneth R. Miller, Katharine Hayhoe, George Coyne and Simon Conway Morris
argue for compatibility since they do not agree that science is
incompatible with religion and vice versa. They argue that science
provides many opportunities to look for and find God in nature and to
reflect on their beliefs. According to Kenneth Miller, he disagrees with Jerry Coyne's assessment
and argues that since significant portions of scientists are religious
and the proportion of Americans believing in evolution is much higher,
it implies that both are indeed compatible. Elsewhere, Miller has argued that when scientists make claims on
science and theism or atheism, they are not arguing scientifically at
all and are stepping beyond the scope of science into discourses of
meaning and purpose. What he finds particularly odd and unjustified is
in how atheists often come to invoke scientific authority on their
non-scientific philosophical conclusions like there being no point or no
meaning to the universe as the only viable option when the scientific
method and science never have had any way of addressing questions of
meaning or God in the first place. Furthermore, he notes that since
evolution made the brain and since the brain can handle both religion
and science, there is no natural incompatibility between the concepts at
the biological level.
Karl Giberson argues that when discussing compatibility, some
scientific intellectuals often ignore the viewpoints of intellectual
leaders in theology and instead argue against less informed masses,
thereby, defining religion by non-intellectuals and slanting the debate
unjustly. He argues that leaders in science sometimes trump older
scientific baggage and that leaders in theology do the same, so once
theological intellectuals are taken into account, people who represent
extreme positions like Ken Ham and Eugenie Scott will become irrelevant. Cynthia Tolman notes that religion does not have a method per se partly
because religions emerge through time from diverse cultures, but when
it comes to Christian theology and ultimate truths, she notes that
people often rely on scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to
test and gauge what they experience and what they should believe.
The conflict thesis,
which holds that religion and science have been in conflict
continuously throughout history, was popularized in the 19th century by John William Draper's and Andrew Dickson White's
accounts. It was in the 19th century that relationship between science
and religion became an actual formal topic of discourse, while before
this no one had pitted science against religion or vice versa, though
occasional complex interactions had been expressed before the 19th
century. Most contemporary historians of science now reject the conflict thesis in its original form and no longer support it. Instead, it has been superseded by subsequent historical research which has resulted in a more nuanced understanding. Historian of science, Gary Ferngren, has stated: "Although popular
images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of
Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that
Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour,
while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or
attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind
as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule."
Most historians today have moved away from a conflict model,
which is based mainly on two historical episodes (Galileo and Darwin),
toward compatibility theses (either the integration thesis or
non-overlapping magisteria) or toward a "complexity" model, because
religious figures were on both sides of each dispute and there was no
overall aim by any party involved to discredit religion.
An often cited example of conflict, that has been clarified by
historical research in the 20th century, was the Galileo affair, whereby
interpretations of the Bible were used to attack ideas by Copernicus on heliocentrism. By 1616 Galileo
went to Rome to try to persuade Catholic Church authorities not to ban
Copernicus' ideas. In the end, a decree of the Congregation of the Index
was issued, declaring that the ideas that the Sun stood still and that
the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy
Scripture", and suspending Copernicus's De Revolutionibus
until it could be corrected. Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of
heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless
at the center of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and
moves. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions. However, before all this, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo
to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in a book, and to be
careful not to advocate heliocentrism as physically proven since the
scientific consensus at the time was that the evidence for heliocentrism
was very weak. The Church had merely sided with the scientific
consensus of the time. Pope Urban VIII asked that his own views on the
matter be included in Galileo's book. Only the latter was fulfilled by
Galileo. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of
the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,
was often portrayed as an unlearned fool who lacked mathematical
training. Although the preface of his book claims that the character is
named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, Simplicio in Italian), the name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". Unfortunately for his relationship with the Pope, Galileo put the words
of Urban VIII into the mouth of Simplicio. Most historians agree
Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to
his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly,
nor the physical Copernican advocacy. Galileo had alienated one of his
biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome
to defend his writings.
The actual evidences that finally proved heliocentrism came
centuries after Galileo: the stellar aberration of light by James
Bradley in the 18th century, the orbital motions of binary stars by
William Herschel in the 19th century, the accurate measurement of the
stellar parallax in the 19th century, and Newtonian mechanics in the
17th century. According to physicist Christopher Graney, Galileo's own observations
did not actually support the Copernican view, but were more consistent
with Tycho Brahe's hybrid model where that Earth did not move and
everything else circled around it and the Sun.
British philosopher A. C. Grayling,
still believes there is competition between science and religions in
areas related to the origin of the universe, the nature of human beings
and the possibility of miracles.
Independence
A modern view, described by Stephen Jay Gould as "non-overlapping magisteria"
(NOMA), is that science and religion deal with fundamentally separate
aspects of human experience and so, when each stays within its own
domain, they co-exist peacefully. While Gould spoke of independence from the perspective of science, W. T. Stace viewed independence from the perspective of the philosophy of religion. Stace felt that science and religion, when each is viewed in its own domain, are both consistent and complete. They originate from different perceptions of reality, as Arnold O. Benz points out, but meet each other, for example, in the feeling of amazement and in ethics.
Science and religion are based on different aspects of
human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence
drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based
observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually
must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation.
Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend on empirical evidence, is
not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and
typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not
a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by
science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address
aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to put
science and religion against each other create controversy where none
needs to exist.
According to Archbishop John Habgood,
both science and religion represent distinct ways of approaching
experience and these differences are sources of debate. He views science
as descriptive and religion as prescriptive. He stated that if science and mathematics concentrate on what the world ought to be,
in the way that religion does, it may lead to improperly ascribing
properties to the natural world as happened among the followers of Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. In contrast, proponents of a normative moral science take issue with the idea that science has no
way of guiding "oughts". Habgood also stated that he believed that the
reverse situation, where religion attempts to be descriptive, can also
lead to inappropriately assigning properties to the natural world. A
notable example is the now defunct belief in the Ptolemaic (geocentric) planetary model that held sway until changes in scientific and religious thinking were brought about by Galileo and proponents of his views.
According to Ian Barbour, Thomas S. Kuhn asserted that science is made up of paradigms that arise from cultural traditions, which is similar to the secular perspective on religion.
Michael Polanyi asserted that it is merely a commitment to universality that protects against subjectivity
and has nothing at all to do with personal detachment as found in many
conceptions of the scientific method. Polanyi further asserted that all
knowledge is personal and therefore the scientist must be performing a
very personal if not necessarily subjective role when doing science. Polanyi added that the scientist often merely follows intuitions of "intellectual beauty, symmetry, and 'empirical agreement'". Polanyi held that science requires moral commitments similar to those found in religion.
Two physicists, Charles A. Coulson and Harold K. Schilling, both claimed that "the methods of science and religion have much in common." Schilling asserted that both fields—science and religion—have "a
threefold structure—of experience, theoretical interpretation, and
practical application." Coulson asserted that science, like religion, "advances by creative
imagination" and not by "mere collecting of facts," while stating that
religion should and does "involve critical reflection on experience not
unlike that which goes on in science." Religious language and scientific language also show parallels (cf. rhetoric of science).
Clerks studying astronomy and geometry (France, early 15th century)
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The religion and science community consists of those scholars
who involve themselves with what has been called the
"religion-and-science dialogue" or the "religion-and-science field." The community belongs to neither the scientific nor the religious
community, but is said to be a third overlapping community of interested
and involved scientists, priests, clergymen, theologians and engaged
non-professionals. Institutions interested in the intersection between science and religion include the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, the Ian Ramsey Centre, and the Faraday Institute. Journals addressing the relationship between science and religion include Theology and Science and Zygon. Eugenie Scott
has written that the "science and religion" movement is, overall,
composed mainly of theists who have a healthy respect for science and
may be beneficial to the public understanding of science. She contends
that the "Christian scholarship" movement is not a problem for science,
but that the "Theistic science" movement, which proposes abandoning
methodological materialism, does cause problems in understanding of the
nature of science. The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 to further the discussion between "natural theology" and the scientific community. This annual series continues and has included William James, John Dewey, Carl Sagan, and many other professors from various fields.
The modern dialogue between religion and science is rooted in Ian Barbour's 1966 book Issues in Science and Religion. Since that time it has grown into a serious academic field, with academic chairs in the subject area, and two dedicated academic journals, Zygon and Theology and Science. Articles are also sometimes found in mainstream science journals such as American Journal of Physics and Science.
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga
has argued that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between
science and religion, and that there is deep conflict between science
and naturalism. Plantinga, in his book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism,
heavily contests the linkage of naturalism with science, as conceived
by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and like-minded thinkers; while
Daniel Dennett thinks that Plantinga stretches science to an
unacceptable extent. Philosopher Maarten Boudry, in reviewing the book, has commented that he resorts to creationism and fails to "stave off the conflict between theism and evolution." Cognitive scientist Justin L. Barrett,
by contrast, reviews the same book and writes that "those most needing
to hear Plantinga's message may fail to give it a fair hearing for
rhetorical rather than analytical reasons."
Integration
As
a general view, this holds that while interactions are complex between
influences of science, theology, politics, social, and economic
concerns, the productive engagements between science and religion
throughout history should be duly stressed as the norm.
Scientific and theological perspectives often coexist peacefully.
Christians and some non-Christian religions have historically
integrated well with scientific ideas, as in the ancient Egyptian technological mastery applied to monotheistic ends, the scientific advances made by Muslim scholars during the Ottoman Empire and mathematics under Hinduism and Buddhism.
Even many 19th-century Christian communities welcomed scientists who
claimed that science was not at all concerned with discovering the
ultimate nature of reality. According to Lawrence M. Principe, the Johns Hopkins University
Drew Professor of the Humanities, from a historical perspective this
points out that much of the current-day clashes occur between limited
extremists—both religious and scientistic fundamentalists—over a very
few topics, and that the movement of ideas back and forth between
scientific and theological thought has been more usual. To Principe, this perspective would point to the fundamentally common respect for written learning in religious traditions of rabbinical literature, Christian theology, and the Islamic Golden Age, including a Transmission of the Classics from Greek to Islamic to Christian traditions which helped spark the Renaissance.
Religions have also given key participation in development of modern
universities and libraries; centers of learning & scholarship were
coincident with religious institutions—whether pagan, Muslim, or
Christian.
A fundamental principle of the Baháʼí Faith is the harmony of religion and science. Baháʼí scripture asserts that true science and true religion can never be in conflict. `Abdu'l-Bahá,
the son of the founder of the religion, stated that religion without
science is superstition and that science without religion is
materialism. He also admonished that true religion must conform to the
conclusions of science.
Buddhism and science have been regarded as compatible by numerous authors. Some philosophic and psychological teachings found in Buddhism share points in common with modern Western scientific and philosophic thought. For example, Buddhism encourages the impartial investigation of nature (an activity referred to as Dhamma-Vicaya in the Pali Canon)—the principal object of study being oneself. Buddhism and science both show a strong emphasis on causality. However, Buddhism does not focus on materialism.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, mentions that empirical scientific evidence supersedes the traditional teachings of Buddhism when the two are in conflict. In his book The Universe in a Single Atom
he wrote, "My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic
belief that as in science, so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of
reality is pursued by means of critical investigation." He also stated,
"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims
in Buddhism to be false," he says, "then we must accept the findings of
science and abandon those claims."
Among early Christian teachers, Tertullian (c. 160–220) held a generally negative opinion of Greek philosophy, while Origen (c. 185–254) regarded it much more favorably and required his students to read nearly every work available to them.
Earlier attempts at reconciliation of Christianity with Newtonian mechanics appear quite different from later attempts at reconciliation with the newer scientific ideas of evolution or relativity. Many early interpretations of evolution polarized themselves around a struggle for existence. These ideas were significantly countered by later findings of universal patterns of biological cooperation. According to John Habgood, the universe seems to be a mix of good and evil, beauty and pain, and that suffering
may somehow be part of the process of creation. Habgood holds that
Christians should not be surprised that suffering may be used creatively
by God, given their faith in the symbol of the Cross. Robert John Russell has examined consonance and dissonance between modern physics, evolutionary biology, and Christian theology.
Christian philosophersAugustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) held that scriptures can have multiple interpretations on certain areas
where the matters were far beyond their reach, therefore one should
leave room for future findings to shed light on the meanings. The
"Handmaiden" tradition, which saw secular studies of the universe as a
very important and helpful part of arriving at a better understanding of
scripture, was adopted throughout Christian history from early on. Also the sense that God created the world as a self operating system is
what motivated many Christians throughout the Middle Ages to
investigate nature.
Modern historians of science such as J.L. Heilbron, Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein, and Ted Davis have reviewed the popular notion that medieval
Christianity was a negative influence in the development of civilization
and science. In their views, not only did the monks save and cultivate
the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but
the medieval church promoted learning and science through its
sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew
rapidly in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Saint Thomas Aquinas,
the Church's "model theologian", not only argued that reason is in
harmony with faith, he even recognized that reason can contribute to
understanding revelation, and so encouraged intellectual development. He
was not unlike other medieval theologians who sought out reason in the
effort to defend his faith. Some modern scholars, such as Stanley Jaki, have claimed that Christianity with its particular worldview, was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science.
David C. Lindberg states that the widespread popular belief that
the Middle Ages was a time of ignorance and superstition due to the
Christian church is a "caricature". According to Lindberg, while there
are some portions of the classical tradition which suggest this view,
these were exceptional cases. It was common to tolerate and encourage
critical thinking about the nature of the world. The relation between
Christianity and science is complex and cannot be simplified to either
harmony or conflict, according to Lindberg. Lindberg reports that "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the
coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free
(particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation
wherever they led. There was no warfare between science and the church." Ted Peters in Encyclopedia of Religion
writes that although there is some truth in the "Galileo's
condemnation" story but through exaggerations, it has now become "a
modern myth perpetuated by those wishing to see warfare between science
and religion who were allegedly persecuted by an atavistic and
dogma-bound ecclesiastical authority". In 1992, the Catholic Church's seeming vindication of Galileo attracted much comment in the media.
A degree of concord between science and religion can be seen in
religious belief and empirical science. The belief that God created the
world and therefore humans, can lead to the view that he arranged for
humans to know the world. This is underwritten by the doctrine of imago dei. In the words of Thomas Aquinas,
"Since human beings are said to be in the image of God in virtue of
their having a nature that includes an intellect, such a nature is most
in the image of God in virtue of being most able to imitate God".
During the Enlightenment,
a period "characterized by dramatic revolutions in science" and the
rise of Protestant challenges to the authority of the Catholic Church
via individual liberty, the authority of Christian scriptures became
strongly challenged. As science advanced, acceptance of a literal
version of the Bible became "increasingly untenable" and some in that
period presented ways of interpreting scripture according to its spirit
on its authority and truth.
After the Black Death in Europe, there occurred a generalized
decrease in faith in the Catholic Church. The "Natural Sciences" during
the Medieval Era focused largely on scientific arguments. The Copernicans, who were generally a small group of privately
sponsored individuals, were deemed Heretics by the Church in some
instances. Copernicus and his work challenged the view held by the
Catholic Church and the common scientific view at the time, yet
according to scholar J. L. Heilbron, the Roman Catholic Church sometimes
provided financial support to the Copernicans. In doing so, the Church did support and promote scientific research
when the goals in question were in alignment with those of the faith, so
long as the findings were in line with the rhetoric of the Church. A case example is the Catholic need for an accurate calendar. Calendar
reform was a touchy subject: civilians doubted the accuracy of the
mathematics and were upset that the process unfairly selected curators
of the reform. The Roman Catholic Church needed a precise date for the
Easter Sabbath, and thus the Church was highly supportive of calendar
reform. The need for the correct date of Easter was also the impetus of
cathedral construction. Cathedrals essentially functioned as massive scale sun dials and, in
some cases, camera obscuras. They were efficient scientific devices
because they rose high enough for their naves to determine the summer
and winter solstices. Heilbron contends that as far back as the twelfth
century, the Roman Catholic Church was funding scientific discovery and
the recovery of ancient Greek scientific texts. However, the Copernican
revolution challenged the view held the Catholic Church and placed the
Sun at the center of the Solar System.
Science and religion are portrayed to be in harmony in the Tiffany window Education (1890).
Perspectives on evolution
In recent history, the theory of evolution has been at the center of some controversy between Christianity and science. Christians who accept a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation find incompatibility between Darwinian evolution and their interpretation of the Christian faith. Creation science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for a literal reading of the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and attempts to disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the geological history of the Earth, cosmology of the early universe,
the chemical origins of life and biological evolution. It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and falsify the scientific evidence for evolution. It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United
States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide. In 1925, The State of Tennessee passed the Butler Act,
which prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution in all schools
in the state. Later that year, a similar law was passed in Mississippi,
and likewise, Arkansas in 1927. In 1968, these "anti-monkey" laws were
struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional, "because they established a religious doctrine violating both the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution."
Most scientists have rejected creation science for several
reasons, including that its claims do not refer to natural causes and
cannot be tested. In 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled that creationism is religion, not science, and cannot be advocated in public school classrooms. In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel reported that "Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students" Creationism.
Theistic evolution
attempts to reconcile Christian beliefs and science by accepting the
scientific understanding of the age of the Earth and the process of
evolution. It includes a range of beliefs, including views described as evolutionary creationism,
which accepts some findings of modern science but also upholds
classical religious teachings about God and creation in Christian
context.
While refined and clarified over the centuries, the Roman Catholic position on the relationship between science and religion is one of harmony, and has maintained the teaching of natural law as set forth by Thomas Aquinas. For example, regarding scientific study such as that of evolution, the church's unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution,
stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution
are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation,
and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual
component of human origins. Catholic schools have included all manners
of scientific study in their curriculum for many centuries.
Galileo once stated that "The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." In 1981, Pope John Paul II, then leader of the Roman Catholic Church,
spoke of the relationship this way: "The Bible itself speaks to us of
the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us
with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct
relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture
wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order
to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology
in use at the time of the writer".
Pope Francis, in his encyclical letter Laudato si', affirms his opinion that "science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can
enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both".
Influence of a biblical worldview on early modern science
According to Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
from the 19th century, a biblical world view affected negatively the
progress of science through time. Dickinson also argues that immediately
following the Reformation
matters were even worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and
Calvin became as sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. For
instance, when Georg Calixtus
ventured, in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief
that "the waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle
upheld by a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical. Today, much of the scholarship in which the conflict thesis was
originally based is considered to be inaccurate. For instance, the claim
that early Christians rejected scientific findings by the Greco-Romans
is false, since the "handmaiden" view of secular studies was seen to
shed light on theology. This view was widely adapted throughout the
early medieval period and afterwards by theologians (such as Augustine)
and ultimately resulted in fostering interest in knowledge about nature
through time. Also, the claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was flat was first propagated in the same period that originated the conflict thesis and is still very common in popular culture. Modern scholars regard
this claim as mistaken, as the contemporary historians of science David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers
write: "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who
did not acknowledge [earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate
circumference." From the fall of Rome to the time of Columbus, all major scholars and
many vernacular writers interested in the physical shape of the earth
held a spherical view with the exception of Lactantius and Cosmas.
H. Floris Cohen argued for a biblical Protestant, but not excluding Catholicism, influence on the early development of modern science. He presented Dutch historian R. Hooykaas'
argument that a biblical world-view holds all the necessary antidotes
for the hubris of Greek rationalism: a respect for manual labour,
leading to more experimentation and empiricism, and a supreme God that left nature open to emulation and manipulation. It supports the idea early modern science rose due to a combination of Greek and biblical thought.
Oxford historian Peter Harrison
is another who has argued that a biblical worldview was significant for
the development of modern science. Harrison contends that Protestant
approaches to the book of scripture had significant, if largely
unintended, consequences for the interpretation of the book of nature. Harrison has also suggested that literal readings of the Genesis
narratives of the Creation and Fall motivated and legitimated scientific
activity in seventeenth-century England. For many of its
seventeenth-century practitioners, science was imagined to be a means of
restoring a human dominion over nature that had been lost as a
consequence of the Fall.
Historian and professor of religion Eugene M. Klaaren
holds that "a belief in divine creation" was central to an emergence of
science in seventeenth-century England. The philosopher Michael Foster
has published analytical philosophy connecting Christian doctrines of
creation with empiricism. Historian William B. Ashworth has argued
against the historical notion of distinctive mind-sets and the idea of
Catholic and Protestant sciences. Historians James R. Jacob and Margaret C. Jacob have argued for a linkage between seventeenth-century Anglican intellectual transformations and influential English scientists (e.g., Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton). John Dillenberger and Christopher B. Kaiser have written theological surveys, which also cover additional interactions occurring in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Philosopher of Religion, Richard Jones, has written a philosophical
critique of the "dependency thesis" which assumes that modern science
emerged from Christian sources and doctrines. Though he acknowledges
that modern science emerged in a religious framework, that Christianity
greatly elevated the importance of science by sanctioning and
religiously legitimizing it in the medieval period, and that
Christianity created a favorable social context for it to grow; he
argues that direct Christian beliefs or doctrines were not primary
sources of scientific pursuits by natural philosophers, nor was
Christianity, in and of itself, exclusively or directly necessary in
developing or practicing modern science.
Oxford University historian and theologian John Hedley Brooke wrote that "when natural philosophers referred to laws
of nature, they were not glibly choosing that metaphor. Laws were the
result of legislation by an intelligent deity. Thus the philosopher René Descartes
(1596–1650) insisted that he was discovering the "laws that God has put
into nature." Later Newton would declare that the regulation of the
solar system presupposed the "counsel and dominion of an intelligent and
powerful Being." Historian Ronald L. Numbers stated that this thesis "received a boost" from mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern World
(1925). Numbers has also argued, "Despite the manifest shortcomings of
the claim that Christianity gave birth to science—most glaringly, it
ignores or minimizes the contributions of ancient Greeks and medieval
Muslims—it too, refuses to succumb to the death it deserves." The sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University, argued in contrast that "Christian theology was essential for the rise of science."
Protestantism had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis there was a positive correlation between the rise of Puritanism and ProtestantPietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other. The Merton Thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory
that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and
improvement in experimental techniques and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in 17th-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values. In his theory, Robert K. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism
as having been responsible for the development of the scientific
revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. Merton explained that the
connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to
study God's influence on the world and thus providing a religious
justification for scientific research.
Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science. Other scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution.
Reconciliation in Britain in the early 20th century
In Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-twentieth-century Britain, historian of biology Peter J. Bowler argues that in contrast to the conflicts between science and religion in the U.S. in the 1920s (most famously the Scopes Trial),
during this period Great Britain experienced a concerted effort at
reconciliation, championed by intellectually conservative scientists,
supported by liberal theologians but opposed by younger scientists and
secularists and conservative Christians. These attempts at reconciliation fell apart in the 1930s due to increased social tensions, moves towards neo-orthodox theology and the acceptance of the modern evolutionary synthesis.
The
historical process of Confucianism has largely been antipathic towards
scientific discovery. However the religio-philosophical system itself is
more neutral on the subject than such an analysis might suggest. In his
writings On Heaven, Xunzi espoused a proto-scientific world view. However, during the Han Synthesis the more anti-empirical Mencius was favored and combined with Daoist skepticism regarding the nature of reality. Likewise, during the medieval period, Zhu Xi argued against technical investigation and specialization proposed by Chen Liang. After contact with the West, scholars such as Wang Fuzhi
would rely on Buddhist/Daoist skepticism to denounce all science as a
subjective pursuit limited by humanity's fundamental ignorance of the
true nature of the world.
The Jesuits from Europe taught Western math and science to the
Chinese bureaucrats in hopes of religious conversion. This process saw
several challenges of both European and Chinese spiritual and scientific
beliefs. The keynote text of Chinese scientific philosophy, The Book of Changes (or Yi Jing) was initially mocked and disregarded by the Westerners. In return, Confucian scholars Dai Zhen and Ji Yun found the concept of phantoms laughable and ridiculous. The Book of Changes outlined orthodoxy cosmology in the Qing, including yin and yang and the five cosmic phases. Sometimes the missionary exploits proved dangerous for the Westerners.
Jesuit missionaries and scholars Ferdinand Vervbiest and Adam Schall
were punished after using scientific methods to determine the exact time
of the 1664 eclipse. However, the European mission eastward did not only cause conflict.
Joachim Bouvet, a theologian who held equal respect for both the Bible
and the Book of Changes, was productive in his mission of spreading the
Christian faith.
After the May Fourth Movement, attempts to modernize Confucianism and reconcile it with scientific understanding were attempted by many scholars including Feng Youlan and Xiong Shili.
Given the close relationship that Confucianism shares with Buddhism,
many of the same arguments used to reconcile Buddhism with science also
readily translate to Confucianism. However, modern scholars have also
attempted to define the relationship between science and Confucianism on
Confucianism's own terms and the results have usually led to the
conclusion that Confucianism and science are fundamentally compatible.
Saraswati is regarded as goddess of knowledge, music, arts and science.
In Hinduism, the dividing line between objective sciences and spiritual knowledge (adhyatma vidya) is a linguistic paradox. Hindu scholastic activities and ancient Indian scientific advancements were so interconnected that many Hindu scriptures
are also ancient scientific manuals and vice versa. In 1835, English
was made the primary language for teaching in higher education in India,
exposing Hindu scholars to Western secular ideas; this started a renaissance regarding religious and philosophical thought. Hindu sages maintained that logical argument and rational proof using Nyaya is the way to obtain correct knowledge. The scientific level of understanding focuses on how things work and
from where they originate, while Hinduism strives to understand the
ultimate purposes for the existence of living things. To obtain and broaden the knowledge of the world for spiritual
perfection, many refer to the Bhāgavata for guidance because it draws
upon a scientific and theological dialogue. Hinduism offers methods to correct and transform itself in course of
time. For instance, Hindu views on the development of life include a
range of viewpoints in regards to evolution, creationism, and the origin of life within the traditions of Hinduism.
For instance, it has been suggested that Wallace-Darwininan
evolutionary thought was a part of Hindu thought centuries before modern
times. The Shankara and the Sāmkhya did not have a problem with the theory of
evolution, but instead, argued about the existence of God and what
happened after death. These two distinct groups argued among each
other's philosophies because of their texts, not the idea of evolution. With the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species,
many Hindus were eager to connect their scriptures to Darwinism,
finding similarities between Brahma's creation, Vishnu's incarnations,
and evolution theories.
Samkhya, the oldest school of Hindu philosophy
prescribes a particular method to analyze knowledge. According to
Samkhya, all knowledge is possible through three means of valid
knowledge
Nyaya, the Hindu school of logic, accepts all these 3 means and in addition accepts one more – Upamāna (comparison).
The accounts of the emergence of life within the universe vary in description, but classically the deity called Brahma, from a Trimurti of three deities also including Vishnu and Shiva,
is described as performing the act of 'creation', or more specifically
of 'propagating life within the universe' with the other two deities
being responsible for 'preservation' and 'destruction' (of the universe)
respectively. In this respect some Hindu schools do not treat the scriptural creation myth
literally and often the creation stories themselves do not go into
specific detail, thus leaving open the possibility of incorporating at
least some theories in support of evolution. Some Hindus find support
for, or foreshadowing of evolutionary ideas in scriptures, namely the Vedas.
The incarnations of Vishnu (Dashavatara) is almost identical to the scientific explanation of the sequence of biological evolution of man and animals. The sequence of avatars starts from an aquatic organism (Matsya), to an amphibian (Kurma), to a land-animal (Varaha), to a humanoid (Narasimha), to a dwarf human (Vamana), to 5 forms of well developed human beings (Parashurama, Rama, Balarama/Buddha, Krishna, Kalki) who showcase an increasing form of complexity (Axe-man, King, Plougher/Sage, wise Statesman, mighty Warrior). In fact, many Hindu gods are represented with features of animals as
well as those of humans, leading many Hindus to easily accept
evolutionary links between animals and humans. In India, the home country of Hindus, educated Hindus widely accept the
theory of biological evolution. In a survey of 909 people, 77% of
respondents in India agreed with Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and 85 per cent of God-believing people said they believe in evolution as well.
As per Vedas, another explanation for the creation is based on the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and aether.
The Hindu religion traces its beginnings to the Vedas. Everything that
is established in the Hindu faith such as the gods and goddesses,
doctrines, chants, spiritual insights, etc. flow from the poetry of Vedic hymns.
The Vedas offer an honor to the sun and moon, water and wind, and to
the order in Nature that is universal. This naturalism is the beginning
of what further becomes the connection between Hinduism and science.
From an Islamic standpoint, science, the study of nature, is considered to be linked to the concept of Tawhid (the Oneness of God), as are all other branches of knowledge. In Islam,
nature is not seen as a separate entity, but rather as an integral part
of Islam's holistic outlook on God, humanity, and the world. The
Islamic view of science and nature is continuous with that of religion
and God. This link implies a sacred aspect to the pursuit of scientific
knowledge by Muslims, as nature itself is viewed in the Qur'an as a
compilation of signs pointing to the Divine. It was with this understanding that science was studied and understood
in Islamic civilizations, specifically during the eighth to sixteenth
centuries, prior to the colonization of the Muslim world. Robert Briffault, in The Making of Humanity,
asserts that the very existence of science, as it is understood in the
modern sense, is rooted in the scientific thought and knowledge that
emerged in Islamic civilizations during this time. Ibn al-Haytham, an ArabMuslim, was an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—hence understanding the scientific method 200 years before Renaissance scientists. Ibn al-Haytham described his theology:
I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.
With the decline of Islamic Civilizations in the late Middle Ages and
the rise of Europe, the Islamic scientific tradition shifted into a new
period. Institutions that had existed for centuries in the Muslim world
looked to the new scientific institutions of European powers. This changed the practice of science in the Muslim world, as Islamic
scientists had to confront the western approach to scientific learning,
which was based on a different philosophy of nature. From the time of this initial upheaval of the Islamic scientific
tradition to the present day, Muslim scientists and scholars have
developed a spectrum of viewpoints on the place of scientific learning
within the context of Islam, none of which are universally accepted or
practiced. However, most maintain the view that the acquisition of knowledge and
scientific pursuit in general is not in disaccord with Islamic thought
and religious belief.
During the thirteenth century, the Caliphate system in the Islamic Empire fell, and scientific discovery thrived. The Islamic Civilization has a long history of scientific advancement;
and their theological practices catalyzed a great deal of scientific
discovery. In fact, it was due to necessities of Muslim worship and
their vast empire that much science and philosophy was created. People needed to know in which direction they needed to pray toward to
face Mecca. Many historians through time have asserted that all modern
science originates from ancient Greek scholarship; but scholars like
Martin Bernal have claimed that most ancient Greek scholarship relied
heavily on the work of scholars from ancient Egypt and the Levant. Ancient Egypt was the foundational site of the Hermetic School, which
believed that the sun represented an invisible God. Amongst other
things, Islamic civilization was key because it documented and recorded
Greek scholarship.
The Ahmadiyya movement emphasize that "there is no contradiction between Islam and science". For example, Ahmadi Muslims universally accept in principle the process
of evolution, albeit divinely guided, and actively promote it. Over the
course of several decades the movement has issued various publications
in support of the scientific concepts behind the process of evolution,
and frequently engages in promoting how religious scriptures, such as
the Qur'an, supports the concept. For general purposes, the second Khalifa of the community, Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad says:
The Holy Quran
directs attention towards science, time and again, rather than evoking
prejudice against it. The Quran has never advised against studying
science, lest the reader should become a non-believer; because it has no
such fear or concern. The Holy Quran is not worried that if people will
learn the laws of nature its spell will break. The Quran has not
prevented people from science, rather it states, "Say, 'Reflect on what
is happening in the heavens and the earth.'" (Al Younus)
Jainism
Biology
Jainism classifies life into two main divisions those who are static by nature (sthavar) and those who are mobile (trasa).
Jain texts describes life in plant long before Jagdish Chandra Bose proved that plants have life. In the Jain philosophy the plant lives are termed as 'Vanaspatikaya'.
Jain theory of causality holds that a cause and its effect are always identical in nature and an immaterial entity like a creator God
cannot be the cause of a material entity like the universe. According
to Jain belief, it is not possible to create matter out of nothing. The universe and its constituents– soul, matter, space, time, and natural laws have always existed (a static universe, similar to that proposed by the steady state cosmological model).
Surveys on scientists and the general public
Scientists
Distribution of Nobel Prizes by religion between 1901 and 2000
Between 1901 and 2000, 654 Nobel prize laureates belonged to 28
different religions. Most (65%) have identified Christianity in its
various forms as their religious preference. Specifically on the
science-related prizes, Christians have won a total of 73% of all the Chemistry, 65% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, and 54% in all Economics awards. Jewish descent (including Jewish atheists) have won 17% of the prizes in Chemistry, 26% in Medicine, and 23% in Physics. Atheists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers (does not include Jewish atheists) have won 7% of the prizes in Chemistry, 9% in Medicine, and 5% in Physics. Muslims have won 13 prizes (three were in scientific categories).
According
to a global study on scientists, a significant portion of scientists
around the world have religious identities, beliefs, and practices
overall. Furthermore, the majority of scientists do not believe there is
inherent conflict in being religious and a scientist and stated that
"the conflict perspective on science and religion is an invention of the
West" since such a view is not prevalent among most of scientists
around the world. Instead of seeing religion and science as 'always in conflict' they
rather view it through the lenses of various cultural dimensions to the
relations between religion and science. In an international study, very few scientists stated that scientific
training or knowledge played a role in any declines in personal
religiosity.
Europe
According
to a study from 2023 "30–39% of Western-European researchers identify
with “some religious affiliation”. "30–37% of scientists identify as
non-believers or atheists, and an additional 10–28% as agnostic (with
wide geographical differences)".
United States
In 1916, 1,000 leading American scientists were randomly chosen from American Men of Science
and 42% believed God existed, 42% disbelieved, and 17% had doubts/did
not know; however, when the study was replicated 80 years later using American Men and Women of Science in 1996, the results were very much the same with 39% believing God exists, 45% disbelieved, and 15% had doubts/did not know. In the same 1996 survey, for scientists in the fields of biology,
mathematics, and physics/astronomy, belief in a god that is "in
intellectual and affective communication with humankind" was most
popular among mathematicians (about 45%) and least popular among physicists (about 22%).
In terms of belief in God among elite scientists, such as "great
scientists" in the "American Men of Science" or members of the National
Academies of Science; 53% disbelieved, 21% were agnostic, and 28%
believed in 1914; 68% disbelieved, 17% were agnostic, and 15% believed
in 1933; and 72% disbelieved, 21% were agnostic, and 7% believed in
1998. However Eugenie Scott
argued that there are methodological issues in the study, including
ambiguity in the questions such using a personal definition of God
instead of broader definitions of God. A study with simplified wording
to include impersonal or non-interventionist ideas of God concluded that
40% of "prominent scientists" in the US believe in a god.
Others have also observed some methodological issues which impacted the results.
A survey conducted between 2005 and 2007 by Elaine Howard Ecklund of University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
of 1,646 natural and social science professors at 21 US research
universities found that, in terms of belief in God or a higher power,
more than 60% expressed either disbelief or agnosticism and more than
30% expressed belief. More specifically, nearly 34% answered "I do not
believe in God" and about 30% answered "I do not know if there is a God
and there is no way to find out." In the same study, 28% said they believed in God and 8% believed in a higher power that was not God. Ecklund stated that scientists were often able to consider themselves spiritual without religion or belief in god. Ecklund and Scheitle concluded, from their study, that the individuals
from non-religious backgrounds disproportionately had self-selected into
scientific professions and that the assumption that becoming a
scientist necessarily leads to loss of religion is untenable since the
study did not strongly support the idea that scientists had dropped
religious identities due to their scientific training. Instead, factors such as upbringing, age, and family size were
significant influences on religious identification since those who had
religious upbringing were more likely to be religious and those who had a
non-religious upbringing were more likely to not be religious. The authors also found little difference in religiosity between social and natural scientists.
In terms of perceptions, most social and natural scientists from
21 American universities did not perceive conflict between science and
religion, while 37% did. However, in the study, scientists who had
experienced limited exposure to religion tended to perceive conflict. In the same study they found that nearly one in five atheist scientists
who are parents (17%) are part of religious congregations and have
attended a religious service more than once in the past year. Some of
the reasons for doing so are their scientific identity (wishing to
expose their children to all sources of knowledge so they can make up
their own minds), spousal influence, and desire for community.
A 2009 report by the Pew Research Center found that members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) were "much less religious than the general public," with 51%
believing in some form of deity or higher power. Specifically, 33% of
those polled believe in God, 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher
power, and 41% did not believe in either God or a higher power. 48% say they have a religious affiliation, equal to the number who say
they are not affiliated with any religious tradition. 17% were atheists,
11% were agnostics, 20% were nothing in particular, 8% were Jewish, 10%
were Catholic, 16% were Protestant, 4% were Evangelical, 10% were other
religion. The survey also found younger scientists to be "substantially
more likely than their older counterparts to say they believe in God".
Among the surveyed fields, chemists were the most likely to say they
believe in God.
Elaine Ecklund conducted a study from 2011 to 2014 involving the
general US population, including rank and file scientists, in
collaboration with the AAAS. The study noted that 76% of the scientists
identified with a religious tradition. 85% of evangelical scientists had
no doubts about the existence of God, compared to 35% of the whole
scientific population. In terms of religion and science, 85% of
evangelical scientists saw no conflict (73% collaboration, 12%
independence), while 75% of the whole scientific population saw no
conflict (40% collaboration, 35% independence).
Religious beliefs of US professors were examined using a
nationally representative sample of more than 1,400 professors. They
found that in the social sciences: 23% did not believe in God, 16% did
not know if God existed, 43% believed God existed, and 16% believed in a
higher power. Out of the natural sciences: 20% did not believe in God,
33% did not know if God existed, 44% believed God existed, and 4%
believed in a higher power. Overall, out of the whole study: 10% were
atheists, 13% were agnostic, 19% believe in a higher power, 4% believe
in God some of the time, 17% had doubts but believed in God, 35%
believed in God and had no doubts.
In 2005, Farr Curlin, a University of Chicago Instructor in Medicine and a member of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics,
noted in a study that doctors tend to be science-minded religious
people. He helped author a study that "found that 76 percent of doctors
believe in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife."
Furthermore, "90 percent of doctors in the United States attend
religious services at least occasionally, compared to 81 percent of all
adults." He reasoned, "The responsibility to care for those who are
suffering and the rewards of helping those in need resonate throughout
most religious traditions.". A study from 2017 showed 65% of physicians believe in God.
Other or multiple countries
According
to the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture's report on 1,100
scientists in India: 66% are Hindu, 14% did not report a religion, 10%
are atheist/no religion, 3% are Muslim, 3% are Christian, 4% are
Buddhist, Sikh or other. 39% have a belief in a god, 6% have belief in a god sometimes, 30% do
not believe in a god but believe in a higher power, 13% do not know if
there is a god, and 12% do not believe in a god. 49% believe in the efficacy of prayer, 90% strongly agree or somewhat
agree with approving degrees in Ayurvedic medicine. Furthermore, the
term "secularism" is understood to have diverse and simultaneous
meanings among Indian scientists: 93% believe it to be tolerance of
religions and philosophies, 83% see it as involving separation of church
and state, 53% see it as not identifying with religious traditions, 40%
see it as absence of religious beliefs, and 20% see it as atheism.
Accordingly, 75% of Indian scientists had a "secular" outlook in terms
of being tolerant of other religions.
According to the Religion Among Scientists in International
Context (RASIC) study on 1,581 scientists from the United Kingdom and
1,763 scientists from India, along with 200 interviews: 65% of U.K.
scientists identified as nonreligious and only 6% of Indian scientists
identify as nonreligious, 12% of scientists in the U.K. attend religious
services on a regular basis and 32% of scientists in India do. In terms of the Indian scientists, 73% of scientists responded that
there are basic truths in many religions, 27% said they believe in God
and 38% expressed belief in a higher power of some kind. In terms of perceptions of conflict between science and religion, less
than half of both U.K. scientists (38%) and Indian scientists (18%)
perceived conflict between religion and science.
According to Elaine Ecklund's research on 1,293 atheist
scientists from the US and UK, a majority of atheist scientists came
from a nonreligious upbringing and never had a religious affiliation.
Also, fewer than half of the atheist scientists who were exposed to
religion in their youth said science played a role in them becoming an
atheist.
Global studies which have pooled data on religion and science from
1981 to 2001, have noted that countries with greater faith in science
also often have stronger religious beliefs, while less religious
countries have more skepticism of the impact of science and technology.
Other research cites the National Science Foundation's
finding that America has more favorable public attitudes towards
science than Europe, Russia, and Japan despite differences in levels of
religiosity in these cultures.
Other cross-national studies have found no correlations
supporting the contention that religiosity undermines interest in
science topics or activities among the general populations globally.
Cross-cultural studies indicate that people tend to use both
natural and supernatural explanations for explaining numerous things
about the world such as illness, death, and origins. In other words,
they do not think of natural and supernatural explanations as
antagonistic or dichotomous, but instead see them as coexisting and
complementary. The reconciliation of natural and supernatural explanations is normal
and pervasive from a psychological standpoint across cultures.
Europe
A
study conducted on adolescents from Christian schools in Northern
Ireland, noted a positive relationship between attitudes towards
Christianity and science once attitudes towards scientism and creationism were accounted for.
A study on people from Sweden concludes that though the Swedes
are among the most non-religious, paranormal beliefs are prevalent among
both the young and adult populations. This is likely due to a loss of
confidence in institutions such as the Church and Science.
Concerning specific topics like creationism, it is not an
exclusively American phenomenon. A poll on adult Europeans revealed that
40% believed in naturalistic evolution, 21% in theistic evolution, 20%
in special creation, and 19% are undecided; with the highest
concentrations of young earth creationists in Switzerland (21%), Austria
(20%), Germany (18%). Other countries such as Netherlands, Britain, and Australia have experienced growth in such views as well.
United States
According
to a 2015 Pew Research Center Study on the public perceptions on
science, people's perceptions on conflict with science have more to do
with their perceptions of other people's beliefs than their own personal
beliefs. For instance, the majority of people with a religious
affiliation (68%) saw no conflict between their own personal religious
beliefs and science while the majority of those without a religious
affiliation (76%) perceived science and religion to be in conflict. The study noted that people who are not affiliated with any religion,
also known as "religiously unaffiliated", often have supernatural
beliefs and spiritual practices despite them not being affiliated with
any religion and also that "just one-in-six religiously unaffiliated adults (16%) say their own religious beliefs conflict with science." Furthermore, the study observed, "The share of all adults who perceive a
conflict between science and their own religious beliefs has declined
somewhat in recent years, from 36% in 2009 to 30% in 2014. Among those
who are affiliated with a religion, the share of people who say there is
a conflict between science and their personal religious beliefs dropped
from 41% to 34% during this period."
In a 2024 Pew research center report, only 35% of "nones"
(atheist, agnostics, and nothing in particular on religious affiliation)
believe that the natural world is all there is, while the majority of
nones (63%) believe there are spiritual things beyond the world; and the
majority of nones (56%) also believe there are some things that science
cannot explain.
The 2013 MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins examined the
views of religious people in America on origins science topics like
evolution, the Big Bang, and perceptions of conflicts between science
and religion. It found that a large majority of religious people see no
conflict between science and religion and only 11% of religious people
belong to religions openly rejecting evolution. The fact that the gap
between personal and official beliefs of their religions is so large
suggests that part of the problem, might be defused by people learning
more about their own religious doctrine and the science it endorses,
thereby bridging this belief gap. The study concluded that "mainstream
religion and mainstream science are neither attacking one another nor
perceiving a conflict." Furthermore, they note that this conciliatory
view is shared by most leading science organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
A study was made in collaboration with the AAAS collecting data
on the general public from 2011 to 2014, with the focus on evangelicals
and evangelical scientists. Even though evangelicals make up only 26% of
the US population, the study found that nearly 70 percent of all
evangelical Christians do not view science and religion as being in
conflict with each other (48% saw them as complementary and 21% saw them
as independent) while 73% of the general US population saw no conflict
either.
According to Elaine Ecklund's 2018 study, the majority of
religious groups see religion and science in collaboration or
independent of each other, while the majority of groups without religion
see science and religion in conflict.
Other lines of research on perceptions of science among the
American public conclude that most religious groups see no general
epistemological conflict with science and they have no differences with
nonreligious groups in the propensity of seeking out scientific
knowledge, although there may be subtle epistemic or moral conflicts
when scientists make counterclaims to religious tenets. Findings from the Pew Center note similar findings and also note that
the majority of Americans (80–90%) show strong support for scientific
research, agree that science makes society and individual's lives
better, and 8 in 10 Americans would be happy if their children were to
become scientists. Even strict creationists tend to have very favorable views on science.
According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Forum,
"while large majorities of Americans respect science and scientists,
they are not always willing to accept scientific findings that squarely
contradict their religious beliefs." The Pew Forum states that specific factual disagreements are "not
common today", though 40% to 50% of Americans do not accept the
evolution of humans and other living things, with the "strongest
opposition" coming from evangelical Christians at 65% saying life did
not evolve. 51% of the population believes humans and other living things evolved:
26% through natural selection only, 21% somehow guided, 4% do not know. In the U.S., biological evolution is the only concrete example of
conflict where a significant portion of the American public denies
scientific consensus for religious reasons. In terms of advanced industrialized nations, the United States is the most religious.
A 2009 study from the Pew Research Center on Americans
perceptions of science, showed a broad consensus that most Americans,
including most religious Americans, hold scientific research and
scientists themselves in high regard. The study showed that 84% of
Americans say they view science as having a mostly positive impact on
society. Among those who attend religious services at least once a week,
the number is roughly the same at 80%. Furthermore, 70% of U.S. adults
think scientists contribute "a lot" to society.
A 2011 study on a national sample of US college students examined
whether these students viewed the science / religion relationship as
reflecting primarily conflict, collaboration, or independence. The study
concluded that the majority of undergraduates in both the natural and
social sciences do not see conflict between science and religion.
Another finding in the study was that it is more likely for students to
move away from a conflict perspective to an independence or
collaboration perspective than towards a conflict view.
In the US, people who had no religious affiliation were no more
likely than the religious population to have New Age beliefs and
practices.
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