Science vs. religion : what scientists really think - File PDF

82Society and Broader Publicsthem are very religious. In response, she makes a sincere effort to think of waysto present science so that religious students who take her biology class do notneed to compromise their faith commitments. Similarly, a psychologist 18 whois an agnostic said that he views discussions about intelligent design as animportant opportunity to help students think more clearly about the connectionsbetween religion and science. During the course of our conversation, itbecame clear that even though he is not part of a faith tradition, he thinks a lotabout issues related to science and religion. And he feels the environmentalpush. He said that public debates about intelligent design are forcing him andhis colleagues to think about the place of religion in their teaching and aboutthe boundaries that establish what science is and what it is not. 19 He thinks thatstudents should be presented with arguments for and against intelligent design,including the social environment that leads to its acceptance. For this psychologist,his priority is not a matter of supporting or debunking intelligent designbut of helping students develop productive ways of talking about the role ofscience in society. “Students ought to think about what science contributes andwhat it cannot contribute to knowledge,” he explained.One economist20I interviewed was raised in a home that was more philosophicallythan religiously Jewish but now considers himself an Orthodox Jew(although he also commented that he is a “bad Orthodox Jew” because he doesnot follow many of the rituals). He explained that religion is naturally part ofthe courses he teaches on economic thought. He said, “I would start with theBible, and I would talk about the whole question of rich and poor, the issuesthat confronted people who lived in biblical times. The whole question of howdoes society live together in a way that provides the greatest good for the greatestnumber.” This way of incorporating religion into his work as a social scientistestablishes him as different from his peers. If they knew he was teaching thisway in his courses, most of his economist colleagues would probably “look at[him] strangely,” he thinks, because “the profession is not there.” He went onto clarify that there are distinct “value systems in the profession” but that thesevalue systems tend to be “very esoteric, really removed from issues that haveanything to do with spirituality”—removed from the stuff of real people’slives.It is important to recognize that those who think that religion should bemore openly discussed in science classrooms are not always the scientists whoare themselves the most religious. Their common ground is instead the samesense of what it means to be a good teacher and a good scientist. The scientistswho experience positive environmental push have a distinctive approach tocrossing the boundary between religion and science, one that does not threatenthe continuity of science education. In an effort to fulfill their obligation as