Source: Deseret News
Casey Cole wants to be a priest. That means attending five years of seminary classes, where he studies theology, philosophy and — evolution.
“I was not expecting to take a course in which I had to read from NASA’s website or from Darwin,” he said of his Old Testament class this semester that includes the story of creation. “But when you know more about Catholic tradition, it fits.”
Cole attends the School of Theology and Religious Studies at Catholic University of America, one of 10 seminaries integrating scientific research into its curriculum with the help of the “Science for Seminaries” pilot project, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion. Students at participating schools study scientific disciplines like neuroscience, biology and astronomy alongside the Bible.
The project combats a popular perception among Americans that pits science against religion. Nearly 6-in-10 (59 percent) U.S. adults say the two ways of viewing the world are in conflict, according to a new Pew Research Center study.
In addition to bridging that divide among many congregants, Science for Seminaries advocates said reflecting on the relationship between religion and science can also aid faith leaders both intellectually and professionally.
“The great theologians of the past spent a lot of time focused on creation and did what they could with the insights of their day. They were intrigued by medicine and the human body,” said Ronald Cole-Turner, a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. “I take their curiosity as an opening to fuel and nourish the curiosity of today’s students.”
Science and faith
Preachers may rarely highlight the value of science from their pulpits, but that doesn’t mean science and religion are opposed, according to Cole-Turner and others who work at the intersection of the two subjects.
“Scientists help advance human understanding of God’s mysterious creation,” he said. “What’s more elegant than that?”
Historically, many religious leaders have famously viewed science with contempt, such as when Galileo was condemned by the Catholic Church for positing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Even today, some faith leaders confront science with fear and dismissal, such as when Ken Ham, a prominent Christian speaker and leader of Kentucky’s Creation Museum, publicly shames Christians who believe in evolution, said Cole-Turner, who serves as an adviser for the Science for Seminaries project.
However, scientists have also had a role in fueling tension between the two worldviews, said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, in an email. She cited 19th century books by Andrew Dickson White and John Draper, who wrote about past conflicts between religion and science in order to raise the status of scientific education.
“Both (authors) had good arguments for why people should learn science, but they embedded them in a larger, and faulty” argument against the value of religious education, she said.
The conflict resurfaces regularly, as when Neil deGrasse Tyson, a popular science communicator and host of the “Cosmos” reboot, said in 2014 that nothing fruitful can emerge from efforts to reconcile faith and reason.
These memorable confrontations between faith leaders and scientists have become the prominent, popular narrative depicting a centuries-old conflict. But even if many Americans perceive a tension between science and religion in general, most see no conflict between scientific findings and their personal faith.
“Less than one-third of Americans polled in the new survey say their personal religious beliefs conflict with science, while fully two-thirds (68 percent) say there is no conflict between their own beliefs and science,” Pew reported.
People who are most active in faith communities are actually less likely than other believers to cite conflict, with 50 percent of adults who attend religious services at least weekly seeing religion and science as opposed, compared to 73 percent of those who attend religious services “seldom or never,” the survey found.
Although Cole-Turner said these figures are surprising, he noted that people who are serious about their faith are often more comfortable working through potential conflicts.
“Those who are deeply in tune with the practice of the Christian life” can engage with science without feeling threatened, he said.
Categories: Belief