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One of the most important analyses of the
relation between science and religion is that of Willem B. Drees in Religion, Science and Naturalism
(1996). Drees stresses two points which have received too little attention in
the science-religion debate:
a) That religion contains a number of
elements other than the cognitive-propositional.In particular much of the content of religion rests on religious experienceand tradition. So Drees proposes
a much wider scheme of ‘areas of discussion concerning the relationship of
religion and science.’
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CHALLENGE
POSED BY SCIENCE
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CHARACTER OF RELIGION
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1.
Cognitive
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2.
Experience
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3.
Tradition
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(a)
New knowledge
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(1a)
Content:
i: Conflicts
ii: Separation
iii: Partial adoption
iv: Integration
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(2a)
Opportunities for experiential religion? Religious experience and the brain
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(3a)
Religions traditions as products of evolution
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(b)
New views of knowledge
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(1b)
Philosophy of science and opportunities for theology
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(2b)
Philosophical defenses of religious experiences as data
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(3b)
Criticism and development of religions as ‘language games’
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(c)
Appreciation of the world
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(1c)
A new covenant between humans and the universe?
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(2c)
Ambivalence of the world and implications for the concept of God
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(3c)
A basis for hope? Or religions as local traditions without universal claim?
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Willem
B Drees’ categories of effects on different aspects of religion posed by
science (Drees, 1996, 45).
This broadens the debate helpfully, and
shows that the categories that have received most attention, Drees’ ‘1a.
Content,’ form only one aspect of a complex matrix. These categories concern
science’s propositional claims and the way they impinge upon the cognitive
claims developed by theologies. Drees
shows that these interactions do not exhaust the content of science’s
interaction with religions, or the challenges
science poses to them.
See however a
critique of Willem B Drees’ typology.
b) Drees also recognises clearly that religion is itself a phenomenon in the
evolution of human culture. As such it is an object of scientific study. It
is less evident, though equally important, to note that the activities of
scientific communities are properly the subject of theological and ethical
critique. What values do the communities actually
evince? Are they committed to disinterested enquiry, or merely to a
self-perpetuating search for funding? Does their source of funding constrain
what results they can obtain [as may be the case with those epidemiologists
employed by the tobacco industry, or those climatologists employed by oil companies]?
For further thoughts, see religion as
evolutionary phenomenon.
Also see critical
realism in science and religion and consonances between science and
religion.
Email
link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)
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