Religion: Helping or Hindering Science? By Paul H. Carr, web page www.MirrorOfNature.org Institute of Religion in an Age of Science Conference, Star Island off Portsmouth, NH Monday, 4 August 2014, 3:30 PM Is religion fostering or impeding the development of science? We have made progress since 1600, when the church burned Dominican Giordano Bruno at the stake in Rome for religious heresy and believing that the stars were like our sun with planets. In 2010, Dominican Francisco Ayala, a Spanish evolutionary biologist, won the $1.6 million Templeton Prize for affirming life’s spiritual dimension. Nevertheless biblical literalists, who oppose Darwinian evolution, recently built the $26 million Creation Science Museum in Kentucky. It is located in the part of the United States known as the evangelical epicenter, which has the lowest family income and educational attainment of any region. Main-line denominations have, on the other hand, fostered education and the development of science by founding colleges and universities. I will share other religious contributions, including the green-evangelical question: What car would Jesus drive?

1. Religion:
Helping or Hindering Science?
By Paul H. Carr
web page: www.MirrorOfNature.org

2. Religion: Helping or Hindering Science?
1.Religion hinders the development of science.
2.Religion helps
3.Religion both helps and hinders.
Reconciling Differences Between:
Region, Education, and Worldviews
WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP

3. • In 1584, Dominican monk Giordano Bruno envisioned the
stars as "countless suns with countless earths, all rotating
around their suns.”
• In 1995, the Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier
Queloz announced the first discovery of a planet orbiting a
star similar to our sun (51 Pegasi). On Feb 2, 2011, NASA
announced 1200 planet candidates.

4. PTOLEMY 150 A. D. COPERNICUS 1543
From The Bones of Copernicus by Dennis Danielson, “American Scientist,” Jan-Feb 2009

5. When Bruno found that proceedings were being initiated
against him for new ideas such as these, he fled from his
native Naples, Italy to Protestant Geneva.
Bruno’s search for intellectual freedom led him to France,
England, and Germany. Homesick, he accepted a patron’s
invitation to return to Italy. Their relationship soured
shortly thereafter, and Bruno was imprisoned for seven
years during his lengthy trial.

6. The Roman Inquisition finally condemned Bruno for heresy;
he refused to recant and was burned at the stake in 1600.
Bruno had published about 20 books.

7. This monument to Bruno was erected in 1889 at the
place he was executed, Campo de Fiori in Rome.

8. • In 1992, Pope John Paul said the Roman Catholic
Church had erred in condemning Galileo.
• He expressed "profound sorrow" and acknowledged
error in Bruno's condemnation to death.

9. In contrast to Bruno, Dominican monk Francisco Ayala was born
in Spain in 1934 and ordained in 1960. The next year he came to the
US where he earned a Ph. D. at Columbia University in
evolutionary biology. He has been President of Sigma Xi and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science and was
recently awarded the $1.6M Templeton Prize for progress in
spiritual reality. Ayala believes that religion and science offer
complementary windows for viewing the world.

10. Evolution, Creationism,
& the Battle to Control America's Classrooms
by Michael Berkman Eric Plutzer (2010)
• "Who should determine whether evolution is taught
in the schools and how it is taught? Evolution,
Creationism, and the Battle to Control America's
Classrooms is a thorough investigation of the relative
roles played by school boards and the political
process, by scientists, and by school teachers. You
may be surprised by the answers."
• -Francisco J. Ayala, University of California, Irvine

11. Data was collected from 926 nationally representative
participants in the National Survey of High School Biology
Teachers
• 17 % of teachers surveyed did not cover human
evolution at all in their biology class, whereas a
majority of teachers (60%) spent between 1 and 5
hours of class time on it.
• Many teachers among the 60 % that kept evolution
instruction brief explained they wanted to avoid
confrontation with students and parents who believe in
creationism. In many cases, their own knowledge was
also limited.
•At the opposite extreme, 13 % of teachers explicitly endorse creationism or intelligent
design.
•5% percent reported that they support creationism in passing or when answering students'
questions.

12. CHALLENGE
•Just over 40% of Americans still identify
with the idea that God created human
beings pretty much in their present form
at one time within the last 10,000 years or
so.
• Some 49% of those surveyed, however,
believe that humans evolved.

13. Does economics impact our acceptance of
evolution?
Biblical literalists raised $26 M to build the Creation
Science Museum in Petersburg, KY
Museum brings the pages of the Bible to life.
Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children
play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers.
Natural selection is not evolution. The cave aquarium
features live blind cavefish, showing how natural
selection allows organisms to possess characteristics
most favorable for a given environment—but it is not
an example of evolution in the molecules-to-man
sense.

14. The 12 States of America:
Since 1980 income inequality has fractured the nation.
By Dante Chinni & James Gimpel, authors of Our Patchwork Nation
THE ATLANTIC, April 2011, pgs 70-71.

15. The 12 States of America:
Since 1980 income inequality has fractured the nation.
By Dante Chinni & James Gimpel
THE ATLANTIC, April 2011, pgs 70-71.

17. Evangelical epicenter income of $37,554 is
the lowest.

18. -Biblical literalists raised $26 M to build the anti-evolutionary Creation Science
Museum in Petersburg, KY, a region where the median family income is $37,554,
down 2.8% from 1980.
-In contrast, the moneyed suburbs with broader science education have family
incomes of $59,404, up 5.6%.
• ECONOMIC STATUS AFFECTS THE ACCEPTANCE OF EVOLUTION.
• FUNDAMENALIST/EVANGELICAL RELIGION IS THE OPIATE OF THE PEOPLE.

19. Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny? NY Times, 11 May 2011
FUNDAMENTALISTS: LESS EDUCATED & POORER THAN LIBERALS

20. Can our “free” economy survive the increasing
gap between the rich and the poor?
The richest one percent of Americans posses over a third of
the country’s wealth, more than the combined wealth of the
bottom 90 percent of American families.”
In the past 30 years, an increase in income inequality has
been accompanied by increased political polarization.
Historically, income inequality contributed to the French
Revolution, the 1849 European Revolution, and 1917
Communist Revolution in Russia.
Income inequality contributes to the revolutions in the Arab
World.

21. Political polarization, income
inequality, and immigration have
all increased dramatically in the
United States over the past three
decades. The increases have
followed an equally dramatic
decline in these three social
indicators over the first seven
decades of the twentieth century.
The pattern in the social
indicators has been matched by
a pattern in public policies with
regard to taxation of high
incomes and estates and with
regard to minimum wage policy.
We seek to identify the forces that
have led to this observation of a
social turn about in American
society, with a primary focus on
political polarization.
MIT Press 2006

23. Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new
book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010" (Crown Forum)
published on Jan. 31,2012

24. Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new
book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010" (Crown Forum)
published on Jan. 31,2012

25. WHO SAVED ENGLAND FROM THE BLOOD BATH OF
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?
John Wesley (1703 – 1791) was a
Church of England cleric and
Christian theologian. Wesley is
largely credited, along with his
brother Charles Wesley, as founding
the Methodist movement which
began when he took to
open-air preaching to miners and
the masses in the cities.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in 1968
Bill Graham’s Evangelism seems to have declined.

26. Transformation of Evolutionary Evangelist, Rev. Michael Dowd
• At Bible-Based Evangel College, believed Darwinian purposeless evolution was the
source of moral decline in our society. Later made friends with Darwinians.
• M. Div. at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
•1988, attending course “A New Catholic Mysticism” in Boston,had an epiphany
while hearing Albert LaChance present the scientific universe story presented as a
sacred epic. Ordained in the United Church of Christ . Pastored 3 UCC churches.
• Married atheist science writer Connie Barlow.
• 2007. Published Thank God for Evolution: How Marriage of Science & Religion will Transform you Life & Our World.

27. RELIGION HELPS THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE
Theology has nurtured science by establishing colleges and
universities.
The Congregationalist Pilgrim Fathers established Harvard
University in 1636 to train ministers in the New World rather
than in the Old. Harvard University has matured many Nobel
Prize winners in the sciences.
Roman Catholics have established many institutions of higher
learning: Notre Dame, Georgetown University, Boston College,
Loyola Marymount, and Holy Cross;
Methodists have established Boston University and Drew, etc.

28. RELIGION HELPS SCIENCE
Old Testament theology provided a milieu for the goodness of the material world,
in contrast with the inner contemplation and enlightenment. A monotheistic God
created the material world as “good” and therefore worthy of being investigated.
"It was good," is a recurring theme in the First Chapter of Genesis.
The God of the Bible was consistent and honored His covenant, in contrast with
the capriciousness of polytheistic gods. This consistency contributed to the
emergence of the natural laws of science, whose fruit is technology. For example,
Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravity are always present and can not be
"turned off" to explain something new. Newton himself was motivated by a desire
to decipher the clues about God's creation. The created natural world is
contingent and therefore non-deducible from logical principles. The world must
therefore be discovered and investigated by empirical science.

29. Dear Southern Baptist Pastor,
First of all, we grew up in the same faith.
Although I no longer belong to that faith, I am
confident that if we met and spoke privately of
our deepest beliefs, it would be in a spirit of
mutual respect and goodwill. I write to you now
for your counsel and help. Let us see if we can,
and you are willing, to meet on the near side of
metaphysics in order to deal with the real world
we share. I suggest that we set aside our
differences in order to save the Creation...
Sincerely,
E. O. Wilson, Biologist & Secular Humanist
• The number of scientists who
understand the ecological threat to our
planet number in the thousands.
• The number of Southern Baptists
number in the millions.
Published in 2006

30. The evangelicals believe in
CREATION CARE.
They ask the question,
If Jesus were to return to
earth today, what car would
he choose to drive?

32. Natural knowledge and
biblical interpretation
Augustine believed that the
Biblical text should not be
interpreted literally, if it
contradicts what we know
from science and our God-
given reason.
St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 354 - 430 A.D.

33. Dr. Francis Collins, founder BioLogos.
“I find those rare dramatic moments of scientific
discovery in my own experience to be moments of
worship also, where a revelation about some intricacy
of God’s creation is appreciated for the first time.”
33

34. "BioLogos" is a new term for theistic evolution.
http://biologos.org/
• Bios is the Greek word for "life".
•Logos is Greek for "word," with a broader meaning in
Philosophy and Stoicism—namely the rational principle
ordering the universe.
• In Christian theology, "word" includes the Hebrew idea
of a creative agent for all that exists, in addition to being
an ordering principle.
•"BioLogos" expresses the belief that God is the source of
all life and that life expresses the will of God.
•BioLogos represents the view that evolutionary science
and religious faith co-exist in harmony.
34

35. Reconciliation
Ginny’s
granddaughter
in New Orleans
calls Ginny her
liberal
grandmother.

37. “That’s beautiful, marching up
to Zion, beautiful city of God.”

38. Rev. Jessie Smith, Jr
With son Jason Smith

39. Harold (the dad) with grandfather Rev. Jessie baptizing
grandson Donovan.

40. Complementary Beauty of Science & Spirit
• I experience beauty
in both science and
religion.
• “If nature were not
beautiful, it would not
be worth knowing.”
Henri Poincare
• The emergent evolutionary
process produced homo
sapiens who perceive the
beauty of the natural world
as the result a Divine
Creator.

41. www.asa3.org
2014 Annual Confrence, July 24-28,
McMaster Univ, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Journal
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith

42. II. RELIGION: Cosmos Emerged From Divine Consciousness
“Word (Logos) was God,” John 1:1
“Spirit of God,” Gen 1:2
I. SCIENCE: Human Consciousness Emerged from the Cosmos
Cosmos emerged from a hot Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago.
First Homo Sapiens in Africa, 200,000 years ago.
Searching for natural processes & laws that gave rise to
psyche.
III. RECONCILIATION of SCIENCE & RELIGION:
-Biologos: Evolutionary creation.
-Emergence of homo sapiens’ sense of Divine beauty.
-Complementary beauty of science’s how & spirit’s why.
Did Consciousness Emerge from Cosmos or Visa-Versa?
Paul H. Carr’s ASA Paper, 7/27/2014
42

43. Religion: Helping or Hindering Science?
1.Religion hinders the development of science.
2.Religion helps
3.Religion both helps and hinders.
Reconciling Differences Between:
Region, Education, and Worldviews
WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP

44. SERENETY PRAYER, attributed to Reinhold Niehbuhr
O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,
The courage to change what can be changed, and
the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.