Relationship Between Religion and Science
The relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the demarcation problem, which in philosophy attempts to draw the line between science and nonscience. Some scholars, like Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, argue that the two are interconnected. Others like Stephen Jay Gould and the National Academy of Sciences take the view that each occupy a separate nonoverlapping magisterium.
According to this view, statements about the physical world made by science and religion rely on different methodologies. Science relies on the scientific method as a body of techniques used for investigating natural phenomena. To be termed scientific, a claim must be based on observable, empirical, and measurable evidence, which is subject to systematic principles of reasoning. In contrast, much of Christianity relies on Biblical inspiration, a doctrine in Christian theology concerned with the divine origin of the Bible and what the Bible teaches.
Skeptics argue that the various biblical statements are at odds with scientific knowledge, particularly with regard to its claims regarding the origin of the cosmos, astronomy, and biological evolution. The "Conflict thesis" is the argument that religion and science are at constant warfare with one another. This is exemplified by such examples as the persecution of Galileo Galilei, the public debate between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the John Scopes trial, and the current controversy between the teaching of evolution and creationism.
Religious text themselves can be the subject of scholarly inquiry via Biblical criticism.
Read more about this topic: Science And The Bible
Famous quotes containing the words relationship between, relationship, religion and/or science:
“There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)
“From infancy, a growing girl creates a tapestry of ever-deepening and ever- enlarging relationships, with her self at the center. . . . The feminine personality comes to define itself within relationship and connection, where growth includes greater and greater complexities of interaction.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else’s morality.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone
That science may have staked the future on?
He seems to say the reason why so much
Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)