*Criterion Winter 02-4.16 - Divinity School - University of Chicago

2 W INTER 2002
RELIGION AND SCIENCE,
FAITH AND REASON
There seem to be two main approaches in the literature. The
bad, old approach is exemplified by two books from the nineteenth
century: John William Draper’s History of the Conflict
between Religion and Science (New York, 1874, with a twentyfirst
edition in 1890), and Andrew Dickson White’s A History
of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New
York, 1896). Both are classics in the literature: the first written
by a scientist in the defense of free inquiry, and the second by
a historian, the first president of Cornell University, as part of
his brief for a secular university grounded in the sciences.
There are some subtle differences in their approaches to the
subject. Draper is concerned with religion in general, while
White is concerned with theology. Draper’s criticisms are
directed against religion as such, while White is more focused
against the Roman Catholic Church. But both are united in
seeing the two institutions of science and religion as, in some
sense, being fundamentally opposed to one another. Their stories
derive from one particular strand of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment, which sees evil, dogmatic, and antirational
religion standing against progress, as represented by the new
scientific worldview. The key examples of this view might be the
condemnation of Galileo in early seventeenth-century Rome
and the battle over evolutionism and creationism that started
with Darwin and his opponents and continues to this day.
SOME PASCALIAN REFLECTIONS
Daniel Garber
n this lecture I would like to discuss the relation between religion and science—more broadly, the
relation between religion and reason. The topic is hardly new. Important discussions that explicitly
focus on this question can be found in the writings of all of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions—
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But, in recent years, the discussions have become particularly intense.
Perhaps it is the result of recent advances in science, or of a large cash prize offered by the Templeton
Foundation for work in the area, I don’t know. But the literature has been expanding at a rapid rate.
The more recent literature, by contrast, has a markedly
different tone in which there is no real contradiction between
science and religion. This view is nicely exemplified in the
work of Ian Barbour and his followers (whom one might
call the Barbourians). Barbour’s thought about religion
and science is centered around a four-fold schema that is
supposed to encompass all the views that have been taken
on the subject. The four categories are conflict, independence,
dialogue, and integration. The views of Draper and White,
that religion and science are inherently conflictual, obviously
fit into Barbour’s first category. The view that science and
religion have their separate and equal domains, and that
they coexist by not interacting with one another, is what
Barbour means by independence. Dialogue is the category
into which Barbour puts views that stress the similarities
between science and religion, while maintaining that they
are distinct enterprises: “Dialogue emphasizes similarities
in presuppositions, methods, and concepts, whereas Independence
emphasizes differences.” 1 Finally, integrationists
attempt to merge science and theology into a single picture,
a natural theology or a theology of nature, or a genuine
This essay is based on the 2001 John Nuveen Lecture Mr.
Garber delivered on October 18, 2001, in Swift Lecture Hall.