For centuries there has been tension—in churches, the academies, and the public square—between science and religion. Each makes truth claims and addresses essential questions. Science looks at the tangible, visible world, and religion asks, Why are we here? Why is there something instead of nothing? Six forthcoming books offer new insights on the war between science and religion, both past and present.
Beyond the binary
What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture? Comparing Conceptual Worlds of the Bible and Evolution by Dru Johnson (IVP, Dec.) breaks through the usual binary view that science and religion stand in opposition, says IVP editor Jon Boyd. “Most people are tired of the oversimplification, tired of the debate,” he says. “Dru Johnson is not a controversialist. He talks about the imagination and creativity it takes to look at things from a fresh direction.”
Johnson, who directs the Center for Hebraic Thought at the King’s College in New York City, sees parallels between scientific findings and religious thinking. As Charles Darwin explored evolutionary theory in The Descent of Man, Johnson looks at the cultural descent of ideas. Boyd says Johnson is particularly interested in discipleship—the ways in which biblical ideas are nurtured and transmitted, and what makes them “stick.”
A trend emerged when Johnson considered the intellectual world of the Bible and Darwin’s three requirements for natural selection. He writes in the book, “Both worlds interweave reactions to scarcity, fittedness to place, and sexual propagation into their origin stories. Both origin stories intend to explain the present.” Still, he concludes, “Significant and irreconcilable tensions remain between the Hebraic conceptual world and that of some evolutionary sciences.”
The long tail of the Scopes trial
It’s been almost century since the 1925 Scopes trial, when William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow squared off in a Tennessee courtroom where a teacher was on trial for teaching evolution in the local high school. Janet Kellogg Ray, an evangelical Christian, a science educator, and the author of The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World (Eerdmans, out now) sees the same social and spiritual tensions in today’s Covid vaccine refusers and climate change deniers.
In an interview with PW, Ray described the views held by Bryan and fundamentalist believers “that evolution is not supported by science, that evolution undermines morality and religion, and that a fair society wouldn’t allow something like evolution to be taught in school.” Following this template, she said, is “what we saw with the pandemic, and see with evangelical denial of climate science, is this same pattern—that ‘pandemic and climate science’ are not really science, it’s all a conspiracy. The scientists aren’t really scientists, they’re bureaucrats, who, as with evolution, were undermining morality and religion.”
She instead calls on readers to perceive science as God’s truth. She writes in the book, “As Christians, we are called to truth. Speaking it. Defending it. Living it. Why be afraid of science? If God is truth, all truth is God’s truth, including scientific truth.”
Eerdmans senior acquisitions editor Trevor Thompson says the press is gearing Ray’s book toward “Christian colleges and universities where science majors have to take a class talking about science and religion.” He adds, “We are hopeful, but it is such a polarized field.”
Another forthcoming book also deals with the impact of the trial: Fundamentalists in the Public Square: Evolution, Alcohol, and Culture Wars after the Scopes Trial (Lexham, Dec.) by Maddison Trammel, publisher at B&H Academic. The author investigates newspaper coverage of fundamentalism’s opposition to Darwinian evolution and to alcohol between 1920 and 1933, examining fundamentalists’ “attempts to influence the thoughts, actions, and structures of a society in order to better align them with Christian virtues and values,” he writes in the book.
Trammel also writes that while evangelicals have always stressed the Bible’s inspiration and authority, fundamentalism arose to divide theological conservatives from religious modernists who did not take the Bible literally. Instead, modernists “attempted to adapt traditional Christian understandings of miracles, the Bible, Jesus, and salvation to Enlightenment challenges and modern science.”
Raising cosmic questions
The day humankind discovers life beyond the earth is going to come, and we had better be ready for the deep and difficult questions it will prompt, says Andrew Davison in his book Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine: Exploring the Implications of Life in the Universe (Cambridge Univ., out now). Findings in astrobiology, the scientific study of life beyond earth, also may have theological implications. What might this life say about God, creation, the nature of sin, and Jesus? Davison writes in the book that now is the time to draw on the “resources from our theological traditions, to help us to take up this particular part of the task of thinking about God and all things in relation to God.”
Cambridge University Press religious studies publisher Beatrice Rehl says, “He is interested in the ideas of life itself from the theological perspective, considering issues such as knowledge, grace, redemption, and sin that are critical to understanding life anywhere and everywhere, since there is nothing to stop God from creating all that is out there.” The book is aimed toward academics and “readers who are open to new questions,” she adds.
Two Catholic astronomers see another commonality between religion and science—errors. In When Science Goes Wrong: The Desire and Search for Truth (Paulist, out now) authors Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit brother and director of the Vatican Observatory, and Christopher Graney, press officer for the Vatican Observatory Foundation, spotlight ideas in both domains that once seemed reasonable but later were proven incorrect or heretical, says Paulist editor Paul McMahon. For example, in addressing the way confirmation bias can lead a scientist or a believer astray, the authors move from quoting 2 Timothy 4:3 to Paul Simon’s lyrics in the song “The Boxer”: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
Ultimately, the authors believe people are looking to both science and to religion for authority they can trust in an uncertain world. “They are saying we are on a journey in science and in faith and we learn from living, from our experiences and our mistakes,” McMahon says.
Addressing one of the most damaging aspects of the cultural conflict between science and religion, The Faithful Scientist: Experiences of Anti-religious Bias in Scientific Training (NYU, out now) features a survey of more than 1,300 students in graduate science programs. Author Christopher P. Scheitle, who is an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University, uncovers the experiences of religious students who said they felt isolated and unsupported, describing professors and classmates who were openly hostile or disparaging of religion.
“The bias against scientists who are religious is actually harmful to society as a whole because it discourages diversity in the field,” says Jennifer Hammer, senior editor at NYU. “Women, African Americans, and Latinx people tend to be more religious. A hostile atmosphere pushes them away. He offers insights on what it would mean to foster a more welcoming professional environment.”
