SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science and Religion

Science and Religion

Introduction

The troubled, creative, and complicated relations between science and religion in American culture have excited widespread commentary and examination and produced an extensive literature. Although historians have argued for seeing these two aggregates of knowledge and intellectual orientation generally as interactive rather than hostile, there remains an abiding sense that religion and science are intense competitors for cultural authority in the United States. It is possible that this sentiment stems from the Scopes trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, which provoked a memorable debate between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, or from the perennial angry attempts of one group or another to claim the mantle of true science for its particular religious belief. More likely, however, is the centrality of both religion and science in American culture. (Ted, 2003)

To understand the long history of the relationship between science and religion means, first, to recognize that this is a shifting and changing association between two modes of thought and authority that are themselves diverse in makeup and rapidly changing. The history of science in America has evolved from its base in philosophy and theology toward professionalization, as society has become more secular. This was particularly apparent in the nineteenth century when the scientific endeavor was increasingly defined by professional organizations, state-supported laboratories and institutions, and secular universities. At the same time the growth of technology and the practical applications of science and, especially, the development of the social sciences greatly transformed society, raising a host of new questions that religions had to confront(Alan, 2006). This paper discusses

Thesis Statement

A relationship between science and religion is both very old and quite new, reproducing some of the older notions of the dyad but with a modern twist. That is the attempt to bring science and religion together again on a theoretical level.

Discussion

During the same period American religions altered dramatically and expanded in number. By the mid-nineteenth century evangelicalism had a firm and lasting grip on much of American Protestantism. By the end of the century a huge wave of Roman Catholic immigration brought a somewhat different view of science to American society. By the early twentieth century, certain scientific theories and derivations, such as Darwinism and biblical criticism, had become contentious issues and helped increase the antagonism between fundamentalists and modernists and between some religious groups and the scientific establishment. While these issues may have been more symbolic than substantive (for almost no one advocated the ruin of either science or religion) they nonetheless became—and remained—important markers of cultural identity for many Americans. (Brooke, 1991)

The locus of the dialogue about science and religion in early America was concentrated primarily among Puritan theologians such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Both men assimilated ideas of the English Enlightenment and found, in their vision of religion, no breach between the ideas of such thinkers as Isaac Newton and their own theology. This was less true during the American Revolution when a few important thinkers, including Thomas ...