The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science

The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with physicist Dr. Stephen Barr | By Mark Brumley | September 25, 2006              

Some news hooks are irresistible, even when they're false or at least incomplete. Case in point: the alleged conflict between science and religion. Is science opposed to religion? The answer depends in large measure on what you mean by religion. If your "religion" is, say, astrology, then you could say there's a conflict between science and "religion". The science of astronomy does conflict with the "religion" of astrology.

Probably most people who speak of a conflict between science and religion, though, don't mean the "religion" of astrology -- if they think of astrology as a religion at all. They mean Christianity or perhaps Judeo-Christianity. They have before their minds Galileo and his struggle with the Inquisition of the Catholic Church over geocentrism or, more recently, the argument certain Christians have with the theory of evolution. Or perhaps they have only a vague idea that as science progresses religion becomes more and more problematic. Religion, in this view, is simply a way of talking about things science hasn't yet explained. When science gets around to explaining them, no role for religion will remain, and like the State in the Marxist paradise, it will wither away.

Those ideas about science and "religion" suppose an inherent conflict between the two fields. Conflicts, of course, make for more exciting news stories. But does the constant "hook" of a battle between science and religion reflect reality? Are science and religion -- specifically Christianity -- inevitably at odds with one another?

No, says physicist and Catholic Stephen Barr, author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (University of Notre Dame Press). Dr. Barr is professor of physics at the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware. His writings include essays such as "A new Symmetry Breaking Pattern for SO(10) and Proton Decay" and "Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron and of the Neutron", though IgnatiusInsight.com readers are more likely to know Stephen Barr's essays and reviews in First Things magazine, where he writes on such topics as evolution and Intelligent Design and naturalism.

Ignatius Insight recently interviewed Dr. Barr on science and religion. Continue reading...

Comments

[Carl Olson]

A really fine interview, with lots of food for thought. I'm definitely going to track down a copy of Dr. Barr's book.

[padraighh]

It is probably too late to comment on this, but I think it is rather condescending to say that one understands what the ID theorists mean even though they don't say what they mean. This is like constructing a strawman.

Also the idea that humans have souls seems to me to be equivalent to assuming some sort of miracle, as does the basic notion of creation. How does God create a universe at all without the notion that it is miraculous. To deny the miraculous nature of the universe seems to be the same as accepting the idea that the universe can be explained purely by a materialistic doctrine. ( I do not mean to agree that mutations that occcur in a natural setting are miraculous, I agree with Professor Barr about that controversy. I only question whether it is fair to characterize the ID movement this way)