Conflict between Christianity and Science

1. CONFLICT BETWEEN
CHRISTIANITY AND
SCIENCE

2. CONFLICT

Strong agreement between people, groups that result of
angry argument

Disagreement between ideas and feelings.
SCIENCE

acknowledges reason, empiricism, and evidence

3. RELIGIONS

include revelation, faith and sacredness

Biologist Stephen Jay Gould, other scientists, and
some contemporary theologians hold that religion
and science are non-overlapping
magisteria, addressing fundamentally separate
forms of knowledge and aspects of life.

4. 
Scientists Francisco Ayala, Kenneth R.
Miller and Francis Collins see no necessary conflict
between religion and science. Some theologians or
historians of science, including John Lennox, Thomas
Berry, Brian Swimme and Ken Wilber propose an
interconnection between them.

5. IS THERE A CONFLICT?

There is no conflict between Christianity and science
itself. This is because the Christian worldview, which
believes that God created the world with natural 'laws'
and orderliness, is what undergirds the entire scientific
enterprise. For example, inductive reasoning and the
scientific method are based on the assumption of the
regularity of the laws of nature.

6. FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND
RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)
1. Conflict. (Warfare)

The conflict model posits science vs religion and
claims that, a priori, either science OR religion is
true and the other is necessarily false.

7. FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND
RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)
2. The Independence Model (Separation)

This model assumes that each is an
independent, autonomous field of study or sphere of
reality, with its own unique rules and language. Science
has very little to say about religious beliefs, and religion
has very little to say about scientific study.

“The natural sciences are concerned with asking the
„How‟ questions, where theology asks „Why‟ questions” Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth.

8. FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND
RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)
3. The Dialogue Model (Respect)
A third position on the relationship between science and
religion is that they are best understood in dialogue with
each other. There are issues in both religion and science
which impinge upon each other and the insights of each
are important in reaching truly human conclusions and
responses

9. FOUR WAYS OF RELATING SCIENCE AND
RELIGION (IAN BARBOUR)
4. Integration (Harmony)

This model takes dialogue and conversation much further
and posits that the truth of science and religion can be
integrated into a more complete or full “whole”.

10. ROBERT K. MERTON

-focuses on English Puritanism and German Pietism as responsible
for the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th
centuries. He explains that the connection between religious
affiliation and interest in science is a result of a significant synergy
between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern
science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by
allowing science to identify the God influence on world and thus
providing religious justifications for scientific research.

11. HISTORY OF
SCIENCE

12. 
Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was witness to an
explosion of discoveries about the natural world — an explosion
known as the Scientific Revolution, in which modern science was
born. What emerged from this intellectual transformation of Europe
was the Enlightenment — an era marked by a supreme confidence in
the power of the rational mind together with an antipathy for
superstition and dogmatism. It became increasingly acceptable to
criticize Christian dogmas such as the Trinity or the role of the
sacraments.

13. DR. COLIN A. RUSSELL IN THE CONFLICT OF
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

- outlines the weakness of the conflict thesis as follows:

1) The thesis hinders the recognition of other
relationships between science and religion

2) it ignores the many documented examples of science
and religion operation in close alliance.

3) it enshrines a flawed view of history in which
“progress” or “victory” has been portrayed as inevitable.

14. DR. COLIN A. RUSSELL IN THE CONFLICT OF
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

4) It obscures the rich diversity of ideas in both science
and religion.

5) it engenders a distorted view of dispute resulting
from other causes than those of religion versus science

6) it exalts minor squabbles, or even differences of
opinion, to the status of major conflict

15. PROF. JOHN HEDLEY BROOKS’ SCIENCE AND
RELIGION

To understand them, one has to see the local
contingent factors in order to understand the
particular social and intellectual situation and its
effects.

16. WHAT IS IN CONFLICT?
Do we compare 'science' with:

Religion?

Christianity?

Theology?

The Bible?

17. WE SUGGEST:

Bible with nature (data)

Theology with theoretical science (method)

Exegesis with experimental science (interpretation)

18. SCIENCE: METHOD OR
GOAL?

19. METHOD?
 Explanation
without recourse to miracle?

20. GOAL?

Trying to understand what really exists?

Methodologically, 'science' and 'exegesis' are very
similar. No distinctive method divides various
scholarly disciplines in such a way as to make
science unique.

21. HISTORY OF SCIENCE & CHRISTIANITY
As Brooke shows, the relations between the two have
been a complex mixture of the three models:

Conflict

Complementarity

Interaction

22. IS THEOLOGY NEVER RIGHT?
This is rather unfair:
Nature (general revelation) provides enormous detail.

The Bible (special revelation) does not.
Nature keeps showing us new pages every few
years, as technology develops new instruments.
We have had all of the Bible for centuries.
Still, if the Bible is what it claims to be, then we
should see some evidence it is right about nature.


23. SOME EVIDENCE

Matthew Maury, 'pathfinder of the seas'

S. I. Mc Millen, None of These Diseases

John W. Montgomery, Evidence for Faith

Robert C. Newman, The Biblical Firmament

My PowerPoint Astronomy and the Bible

24. MATTHEW MAURY (1806-1873)

US Navy oceanographer, he was the first to recognize
oceans as system of circulating currents.

Got this idea from biblical picture of 'paths in the seas'
(Psalm 8:8).

Thinking through what a path does on land (makes
travel easier, faster), he began to investigate travel time
by sea.

His massive examination of ships' logbooks led to
making charts for winds and currents.

Came to be called 'the pathfinder of the seas.

25. NONE OF THESE DISEASES BY S.I.
MCMILLEN AND DAVID STERN

God had Moses record guidelines to protect againts
microorganisms long before they were known to
cause disease.

Contagion and Quarantine Leviticus 13:46

Cleanliness and spread of disease Numbers
Chapter 19

26. NONE OF THESE DISEASES BY S.I.
MCMILLEN AND DAVID STERN

Circumcision and cancer Genesis 17:12 "For the
generations to come every male among you is eight
days old must be circumcised, including those born in
your household or bought with money from a foreigner-those who are not your offspring."

Life style and health Deu. 23: 12-13 -proper disposal of
human waste Ephesians 5: 17-18 "Therefore do not be
foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." 18 "Do
not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
Instead, be filled with spirits.

27. EVIDENCE FOR FAITH BY: JOHN WARWICK
MONTGOMERY MISTAKEN

Are the historical records of Jesus solid enough to
be relied on? -Do the resurrection accounts
establish Jesus claims of divinity?

28. THE BIBLICAL FIRMAMENT BY: ROBERT
NEWMAN

often claimed that the mistaken about the nature of the
sky as solid dome.

it is true that belief in the sky as a solid dome was
common in the ancient world.

the early Greek philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus saw
the sky as a crystal sphere to which the stars were
nailed.

29. NEWMAN, ASTRONOMY AND THE BIBLE
Compares Bible with ancient ideas and modern
science re:

Size of the Universe

Number of Stars

Support of the Earth

Shape of the Earth

30. CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

Without claiming any intellectual superiority for the scientists
of the Renaissance and Baroque periods over their ancient
and medieval European predecessors or over Oriental
philosophers, one has to recognize as a simple fact that
'classical modern science' arose only in the western part of
Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries .... from this point
on, anyone with the necessary talent may help build up
science on solidly established foundations.

31. CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

Scientists from nations whose own culture did not give
birth to anything like modern science have already made
valuable contributions to it. Western people who have
lost all contact with the religion of their forefathers
continue in their scientific activities the tradition inherited
from them. R. Hooykas, Religion and the Rise of
Modern Science, 161

32. CHRISTIANITY AS A BASIS FOR MODERN SCIENCE

The confrontation of Graeco-Roman culture with biblical religion
engendered, after centuries of tension, a new science. This
science preserved the indispensable parts of the ancient heritage
(mathematics, logic, methods of observation and
experimentation), but it was directed by different social and
methodological conceptions, largely stemming from a biblical
worldview. Metaphorically speaking, whereas the bodily
ingredients of science may have been Greek, its vitamins and
hormones were biblical. Hooykas, Religion and the Rise of
Modern Science, 162

33. CREATION & MODERN COSMOLOGY

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power
of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has
scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to
conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the
final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who
have been there for centuries. Robert Jastrow, God and
the Astronomers, 116.

34. SOME CONCLUSIONS

Yes, there has been conflict between science &
Christianity, just as there has been conflict within
Christianity and within science.

No, there is no need to see this as necessary conflict, so
long as one does not define science so as to rule out the
supernatural and miraculous in the history of the
universe.

35. UNIVERSITY
OF
MAKATI
PROF. TESSIE TAPIADOR
SAGADRACA

36. PREPARED BY: GROUP 5
Bautista, Christxia
 Bantilan, Karen
 Carmona, Dennise Ysabel
 Eltanal, Gerald
 Liton, Kimberly
 Yago, Roselie


III-H BSE Soc Stud