Relationship between religion and science
[4][18][19] In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science (scientia) and religion (religio) were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues, never as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge.
The prominent scholastic Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologica concerning apparent contradictions: "In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to observed, as Augustine teaches (Gen. ad lit.
[33] Some medieval contributors to science included:[34] Boethius (c. 477–524), John Philoponus (c. 490–570), Bede the Venerable (c. 672–735), Alciun of York (c. 735–804), Leo the Mathematician (c. 790–869), Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 946–1003), Constantine the African (c. 1020–1087), Adelard of Bath (c. 1080–1152), Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253), St. Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280), Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294), William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), Jean Burdian (c. 1301–1358), Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349), Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), Nicholas of Cusa (c. 1401–1464).
[35] While theological issues that had the potential to be divisive were typically excluded from formal discussions of the early Society, many of its fellows nonetheless believed that their scientific activities provided support for traditional religious belief.
Prominent scientists advocating religious belief include Nobel Prize–winning physicist and United Church of Christ member Charles Townes, evangelical Christian and past head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins, and climatologist John T.
[58] According to Kenneth Miller, he disagrees with Jerry Coyne's assessment and argues that since significant portions of scientists are religious and the proportion of Americans believing in evolution is much higher, it implies that both are indeed compatible.
In the end, a decree of the Congregation of the Index was issued, declaring that the ideas that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture", and suspending Copernicus's De Revolutionibus until it could be corrected.
[75][76] According to physicist Christopher Graney, Galileo's own observations did not actually support the Copernican view, but were more consistent with Tycho Brahe's hybrid model where that Earth did not move and everything else circled around it and the Sun.
[78] A modern view, described by Stephen Jay Gould as "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA), is that science and religion deal with fundamentally separate aspects of human experience and so, when each stays within its own domain, they co-exist peacefully.
A notable example is the now defunct belief in the Ptolemaic (geocentric) planetary model that held sway until changes in scientific and religious thinking were brought about by Galileo and proponents of his views.
[83] According to Lawrence M. Principe, the Johns Hopkins University Drew Professor of the Humanities, from a historical perspective this points out that much of the current-day clashes occur between limited extremists—both religious and scientistic fundamentalists—over a very few topics, and that the movement of ideas back and forth between scientific and theological thought has been more usual.
"[104][105][page needed] Among early Christian teachers, Tertullian (c. 160–220) held a generally negative opinion of Greek philosophy, while Origen (c. 185–254) regarded it much more favorably and required his students to read nearly every work available to them.
[107][108] Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)[109] held that scriptures can have multiple interpretations on certain areas where the matters were far beyond their reach, therefore one should leave room for future findings to shed light on the meanings.
Heilbron,[112] Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg,[113] Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein,[114] and Ted Davis have reviewed the popular notion that medieval Christianity was a negative influence in the development of civilization and science.
In their views, not only did the monks save and cultivate the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but the medieval church promoted learning and science through its sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries.
[117] Lindberg reports that "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led.
[135] While refined and clarified over the centuries, the Roman Catholic position on the relationship between science and religion is one of harmony, and has maintained the teaching of natural law as set forth by Thomas Aquinas.
[138] Pope Francis, in his encyclical letter Laudato si', affirms his opinion that "science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both".
For instance, when Georg Calixtus ventured, in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical.
"[142][143] From the fall of Rome to the time of Columbus, all major scholars and many vernacular writers interested in the physical shape of the earth held a spherical view with the exception of Lactantius and Cosmas.
[145] He presented Dutch historian R. Hooykaas' argument that a biblical world-view holds all the necessary antidotes for the hubris of Greek rationalism: a respect for manual labour, leading to more experimentation and empiricism, and a supreme God that left nature open to emulation and manipulation.
Numbers has also argued, "Despite the manifest shortcomings of the claim that Christianity gave birth to science—most glaringly, it ignores or minimizes the contributions of ancient Greeks and medieval Muslims—it too, refuses to succumb to the death it deserves.
[165] After contact with the West, scholars such as Wang Fuzhi would rely on Buddhist/Daoist skepticism to denounce all science as a subjective pursuit limited by humanity's fundamental ignorance of the true nature of the world.
In 1835, English was made the primary language for teaching in higher education in India, exposing Hindu scholars to Western secular ideas; this started a renaissance regarding religious and philosophical thought.
[191] Robert Briffault, in The Making of Humanity, asserts that the very existence of science, as it is understood in the modern sense, is rooted in the scientific thought and knowledge that emerged in Islamic civilizations during this time.
[192] Ibn al-Haytham, an Arab[193] Muslim,[194][195][196] was an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—hence understanding the scientific method 200 years before Renaissance scientists.
[citation needed] This changed the practice of science in the Muslim world, as Islamic scientists had to confront the western approach to scientific learning, which was based on a different philosophy of nature.
[227][228] A 2009 report by the Pew Research Center found that members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) were "much less religious than the general public," with 51% believing in some form of deity or higher power.
[233] In 2005, Farr Curlin, a University of Chicago Instructor in Medicine and a member of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, noted in a study that doctors tend to be science-minded religious people.
"[259] The Pew Forum states that specific factual disagreements are "not common today", though 40% to 50% of Americans do not accept the evolution of humans and other living things, with the "strongest opposition" coming from evangelical Christians at 65% saying life did not evolve.
