essay on science and faith go hand in hand

A complex God: why science and religion can  co-exist

Associate Professor of Physics, The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Associate Professor Martin Sevior receives ARC funding to conduct experiments in fundamental particle physics at the KEK National accelerator Laboratory in Japan and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland. He is also an Elder and the congregation chair of St. Columbas Uniting Church in Balwyn, Victoria. This essay grew out of a series of lectures on the topic of "Intelligent and Intelligible Design" delivered at St. Columbas in 2008 with Professor Emeritus Reverend Harry Wardlaw, also of St. Columbas. Martin gratefully acknowledges many fruitful conversations with Harry.

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Science and religion are often cast as opponents in a battle for human hearts and minds.

But far from the silo of strict creationism and the fundamentalist view that evolution simply didn’t happen lies the truth: science and religion are complementary.

God cast us in his own image. We have free will and intelligence. Without science we could only ever operate at the whim of God.

Discussion of the idea that our universe is fundamentally intelligible is even more profound. Through science and the use of mathematical rules, we can and do understand how nature works.

The fact our universe is intelligible has profound implications for humankind and perhaps for the existence of God.

Does science work?

It’s very clear that science “works”. We can explain and predict how nature will behave over an extraordinary range of scales.

There are various limits to scientific understanding but, within these limits, science makes a complete and compelling picture.

We know that the universe was created 13.7 billion years ago. The “Big Bang” model of universal creation makes a number of very specific and numerical predictions which are observed and measured with high accuracy.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics employs something known as “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking” to explain the strength of the laws of nature.

Within the Standard Model the strength of these laws are not predicted. At present our current best theory is that they arose “by chance”.

But these strengths have to be exquisitely fine-tuned in order for life to exist. How so?

The strength of the gravitational attraction must be tuned to ensure that the expansion of the universe is not too fast and not too slow.

It must be strong enough to enable stars and planets to form but not too strong, otherwise stars would burn through their nuclear fuel too quickly.

The imbalance between matter and anti-matter in the early Universe must be fine tuned to 12 orders of magnitude to create enough mass to form stars and galaxies.

The strength of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions must be finely-tuned to create stable protons and neutrons.

They must also be fine-tuned to enable complex nuclei to be synthesized in supernovae.

Finally the mass of the electron and the strength of the electromagnetic interaction must be tuned to provide the chemical reaction rates that enables life to evolve over the timescale of the Universe.

The fine tuning of gravitational attraction and electromagnetic interactions which allow the laws of nature to enable life to form are too clever to be simply a coincidence.

Is intelligent life special?

It has taken 4.5 billion years for humans to evolve on earth. This is more than 25% of the age of the universe itself.

We are the only intelligent life that has existed on the planet and we have only been here for 0.005% of the time the planet has been here.

This is a mere blink in the age of the galaxy. If some other intelligent life had emerged elsewhere in the galaxy before us, why haven’t we seen it here?

To me this is a strong argument that we are the first intelligent life in the galaxy.

Designed for life

One interpretation of the collection of unlikely coincidences that lead to our existence is that a designer made the universe this way in order for it to create us; in other words, this designer created a dynamic evolving whole whose output is our creation.

Many take exception to this idea and argue instead that our universe is but one of an uncountable multitude that has happened to create us.

Other ideas are that there are as-yet unobserved principles of nature that will explain why the strengths of the forces are as they are.

To me, neither argument is in principle against an intelligent design.

The designer is simply clever enough to have devised either an evolving multitude of universes or to have devised a way to make our present universe create us.

Intelligible Design

We do know a lot about the design of the universe, so clearly the design is in good measure intelligible.

But why is it that we can understand nature so well?

One answer is that evolution favours organisms that can exploit their environment. Most organisms have a set of “wired” instructions passed from earlier generations.

Over the evolutionary history of Earth, organisms that can learn how to manipulate their surroundings have prospered.

Humans are not unique in this trait but we’re definitely the best at learning. So in other words nature has built us to understand the rules of nature.

Mathematics and science

All of this rests on the predictability which results from nature obeying rules. As we’ve learned about these rules we’ve discovered that they can be expressed in purely mathematical form.

Mathematics has a validity that is independent of its ability to describe nature and the universe.

One could imagine mathematics with its complex relationships being true outside of our universe and having the ability to exist outside it.

The outcome of humankind’s investigations into nature is science. And the fundamental tenet of science is that there is an objective reality which can be understood by anybody who is willing to learn.

A universe without laws?

The only way I can imagine a universe without rules is for every action to be the result of an off-screen director who controls all.

Such a thing is almost beyond comprehension as everything would need to be the result of premeditation.

Events would appear to occur by pure random chance. Furthermore the level of detail required for godly oversight is absolutely beyond human comprehension.

Each of the hundreds of billions of cells in our bodies operates within a complex set of biochemical reactions, all of which have to work individually and as well as collectively for just one human body to function.

So for a start our offscreen director would have to ensure that all these processes happen correctly for every one of the trillions of living organisms on earth.

We are all the stuff of the universe, absolutely embedded within, and subject to, the rules which govern nature. Because we’re self-aware, one can argue that the universe is self-aware.

Without an intelligible design it would be impossible for humans to have free will as all actions would be as a consequence of the will of the director. Free will is a fundamental element of Christian doctrine.

The Christian statement “God made man in His own image” implies both free will and intelligence for humans. Intelligible design is thus a necessary condition for the existence of a Christian God.

Given we are intelligent, we can imagine sharing this aspect with a God who made us in “His own image”.

Free will is only possible in a universe with rules and hence predictability.

Intelligence has application beyond our physical universe – which is indicative, but not proof of, God to me.

On the other hand, the existence of a God providing free will to humans requires the existence of science.

Otherwise we could only ever operate at the whim of God.

Science and religion go hand in hand.

We all know the subjective reality of experience. I personally feel the power of the redemption which is at the core of Christianity.

Each of us has access to that through our own free will to exercise choice.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Reverend Jim Martin.

Are science and religion compatible? Leave your views below.

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Science and Faith, Hand in Hand

What God teaches us through science and engineering

Science and faith went hand in hand for centuries, as numerous pioneers of mathematics and science were devout Christians, including Kepler, Pascal, Mendel, Kelvin, and Carver. They would have affirmed what David wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). These scientists saw study of the laws of nature as an expression of their faith, like an act of worship.

Today talk about God and science gets clouded by evolution or cosmology, though I consider these in the category of empirical models of the past, rather than the scientific method of repeatable experiments.

PERSONAL TESTIMONY

In my own life the faith-science nexus has brought meaning and focus, personal development, ethics, and humility. As an engineering professor, I use targeted experiments to solve a problem. My own work at the intersection of materials, mechanical and chemical engineering, focuses on metal production and energy generation, conversion, and storage for greenhouse emissions reduction, elimination, or drawdown. Indeed, my focus on this topic is based in large part on my faith as a way to use my gifts to address an urgent problem.

The most direct intersection between my faith and work comes when I pray for insight. This is clearest when my own effort fails, as prayer clears my mind and focuses me, and humbles me. In one situation, after a conference presentation in which I had results only by God’s grace, an audience member approached me and asked whether I was Christian—he said that he could see humility in my demeanor, humility that had come from seeing God’s power in my weakness (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9).

Faith has also led me to prioritize people and their development. I often encourage students to change to a different institution or research group after completing a degree or milestone to further their careers, when my research might benefit more if they kept working with me. Again, this is not unique to science; all of us can and should promote the interests of those around us.

More specific to science, being at the forefront of a discipline, however narrow that discipline is, helps one see how much we don’t know and will likely never know. Harvard’s original crest had one of its three books facedown to represent the limits of reason, and the need for God’s revelation. Two hundred years after its design, Harvard turned the third book forward, as in 1843 its regents saw rapid progress in science and believed that all knowledge had either been revealed or soon would be. Because nearly all compulsory science education and media coverage of technology focus on settled facts and accomplishments, it is hard for many to understand limits and uncertainty.

PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE

But it is even more humbling when people don’t act based on well-established knowledge, like the buried talents referenced by Jesus (Matt. 25:14-30), or Psalm 127. For example, in the COVID pandemic, United States scientists learned quickly about the virus and developed the first and most effective vaccines. But mixed messaging hobbled prevention efforts, and the infection rates and excess death rate of the United States dwarfed many significantly less developed economies.*

It is similar in my field of climate mitigation, where the United States is humbled by Norway’s switch to electric vehicles—many made in the USA; and even more by Bhutan and Costa Rica, which already are or soon will be carbon-neutral.

As a high school student, I verbalized this dichotomy between technology and its useful deployment. As an engineer, I wanted to help solve the world’s “little problems,” which I listed as:

• agriculture, to feed a growing planet;
• medical research, allowing people to lead longer, healthier lives;
• human interactions with the environment, for sustainable development;
• information access, as the biggest enemy of a dictator is the truth.

All of these are important, but if scientists and engineers do our jobs well, we help the artists, economists, social workers, church leaders, and politicians to address the “big problems,” which I listed as:

• peace between nations, and security in our neighborhoods;
• averting and mitigating famines;
• education to build agency and confidence, particularly for the marginalized;
• health care for those who need it most;
• justice, including fair economic distribution;
• truth in journalism and history;
• purpose and meaning for our lives, and artistic expression of that purpose and meaning;

TOLERANCE OF DIFFERENCES

An important consequence of this understanding of “little problems” and “big problems” is that being a scientist or engineer requires faith that our work will be used for good and not for evil. Even if we don’t work on nuclear science or weaponry, the events of September 11, 2001, showed that even if one focuses on nonmilitary technologies, a civilian jetliner— built to bring people together—can be abused, by people with sufficient hatred, as a weapon of mass destruction. This frightened me as an engineer, and I believe it requires us to have more faith in the people, institutions, and systems surrounding technology.

I would rather live in a world in which we solve the big problems but not the little ones—one with democracy, but also challenges with energy or nutrition, rather than the other way around, as in fascism or in dark visions of technological perfection. This doesn’t mean that work in STEM (science, technology, engineering , and math) doesn’t matter. Rather, it’s an enabler: new technology can dramatically reduce the impact of a pandemic, and the cost of reducing climate emissions. With economic incentives and research and development funding , wind and solar energy prices fell by 75 percent and 90 percent, respectively, from 2007 to 2019.

Thus we continue to explore God’s creation, more vast than even our imaginations can fathom. And we work hard to use God’s gifts of material and knowledge to fashion tools for improving each other’s lives. But we are humbled by our limitations, and must remain open to considering that what we think we know could be wrong. This openness is the essence of scientific pursuit, of engineering design, and of the Christian walk, as they go forward hand in hand.

* See https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/05/27/covid-19-is-a-developing-country-pandemic/ .

Adam Clayton Powell IV

Adam Clayton Powell IV, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, focuses on new zero-emissions technologies for aviation, etc. He is treasurer of Boston Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church and lives in Massachusetts, United States.

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How religion and science can go hand in hand: Opinion

• Published: Jun. 21, 2014, 9:00 p.m.
• Star-Ledger Guest Columnist

evolution.JPG

Scientists have proved evolution -- meet this model of Homo floresiensis, who roamed the planet some 50,000 years ago -- exists in the world, which people of religion should accept. Likewise, people of science should accept that people have religious faiths.

(2010 Washington Post file photo)

By Gerald L. Zelizer

So what do we religious folk say about the 42 percent who believe — according to a recent Gallup poll — that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago?

That creationist position has practical implications. Even our governor in 2011, when asked if he believed in creationism responded, “That is none of your business.” Actually, it is our business — the business of local school districts that have the option, if they choose, to teach creationism along side of evolution. This has already been mandated by some districts throughout the country.

There are lots of religious folk like me, constituting the other 58 percent who accept scientific explanations of the origins of the universe while simultaneously affirming their faith in many cases. That is because science and religion have two different functions.

Science explores the how of life. It utilizes the scientific method of observation to understand the mechanism by which things are as they are. Religion explores the why of life — not how things are, but why things are. Each faith searches for meaning, not mechanics, in life, death and our relationship to others and the world. Science cannot tell us why, only how. Religion cannot tell us how, only why.

So, for example, in the creation vs. evolution debate, if science says that evolution most fits the observable facts, then that is the truth, not creationism. By the same token, the first chapters of Genesis repeat after each day, “And God saw that it was good.” The religious truth of creation is that because the world is divine, it is worth preserving and not squandering.

Many secular folk beat up on religion by aiming at only the 42 percent. For example, Bill Maher, the political satirist and a consummate atheist, recently interviewed the politically active, Biblical literalist Ralph Reed. Maher's challenge was that, if the Bible is literally the word of God, why does it seem to accept issues such as slavery, stoning an adulterous woman, and genocide of the Canaanites — children included? Reed's answer was that those kinds of orders from God were part of the Old Testament, while Jesus in the New Testament upgraded the Old. To which Maher snapped, "So why did Jesus come along to correct his dad?"

As a believer who is a nonliteralist, I would have answered differently. Sure, the Bible, in addition to containing spiritually uplifting passages including “Thou shall not murder,” also includes spiritually degrading arguments, such as advocating slavery. That is because both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are not the actual, literal words of God, conveyed as through a recording device, but the transmissions of human scribes, giving their impressions of what God expected of humankind.

That is why there are inconsistencies and contradictions in so much of the Bible. So for example, to Maher’s challenge that slavery was condoned in the Bible, I would have pointed to the later Prophets who instead emphasize the shared humanity of all races and classes. The sacredness of the Bible evolves.

There are many people of faith like me. For example, this year’s Laetare Medal of Notre Dame University was given to Kenneth R. Miller, professor of biology at Brown University, author of “Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.” Miller said: “The second great myth about science holds it to be the antithesis of faith. This is a myth that serves both the enemies of faith and science very well … . Such assertions ignore the very history of western science, which has its roots in a faith that views the study of nature and its mysteries as a way to praise and understand the glory of God.”

He cites Isaac Newton as an example and points out that science too has its own faith-based system: “All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way ... a faith that would require one to reject scientific reason is not a faith worth having.”

So let’s put to bed the assumed antagonism between scientific and religious truth. They work distinctly and in tandem. Religious folk should accept scientific truth as “gospel” and secular folk should accept religious truth as “attributing meaning beyond the how.”

Do I expect the 42 percent who are Biblical literalists to forsake their belief in the creation of the world in six days and embrace scientific accounts? No. Do I expect scientists to relinquish their dire warnings of the planet’s demise resulting from we humans releasing too much carbon into the atmosphere, because the Bible says that man’s right is to “rule” the rest of God’s kingdom? Certainly not.

Both the Reeds and the Mahers of the world will never do that. But for the rest of us in the 58 percent, let’s publicly refute the assumed conflict between scientific and religious truth that we hear from many vocal atheists and religious fundamentalists. Once we acknowledge and disseminate these separate and distinctive functions, then an even more substantive conversation can follow on the details, which sometimes separate the two camps — such as birth control, homosexuality and global warming.

In the Gallup poll, 47 percent responded that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Nearly 1 in 3 responded that humans evolved with God’s guidance.

Hurray for those who blend religion and science. Let us set the tenor and agenda for this discussion of religion and science.

Gerald Zelizer is rabbi of Cong Neve Shalom in Metuchen: [email protected].

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• v.82(1); February, 2015

The harmonious relationship between faith and science from the perspective of some great saints: A brief comment

Manuel e. cortés.

1 Departamento de Ciencias Químicas y Biológicas, Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins, Santiago, Chile

2 Reproductive Health Research Institute, Santiago, Chile

Juan Pablo del Río

3 Escuela de Medicina, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Los Andes, Santiago, Chile

Pilar Vigil

4 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

The objective of this editorial is to show that a harmonious relationship between science and faith is possible, as exemplified by great saints of the Catholic Church. It begins with the definitions of science and faith, followed by an explanation of the apparent conflict between them. A few saints that constitute an example that a fruitful relationship between these two seemingly opposed realities has been possible are Saint Albert the Great, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Giuseppe Moscati, and Saint Edith Stein, among others, and this editorial highlights their deep contributions to the dialogue between faith and reason. This editorial ends with a brief discussion on whether it is possible to be both a scientist and a man of faith.

Introduction

In the current academic scene, it is quite common to hear of the alleged conflict and incompatibility between science and faith, between being a scientist and being a believer. Any scientist interested in establishing a dialogue with the world of faith would probably be frowned upon. The present editorial aims at showing that a harmonious, complementary, and productive coexistence between faith and true science (the one guided by reason) has indeed been possible—and is still possible in the present day. Such fruitful coexistence is exemplified by the remarkable work of some important saints and intellectuals of the Catholic Church who have made significant contributions to theology, philosophy, natural science, medicine, and bioethics.

A Definition of Science

Let us begin by establishing what is meant by the term “science.” Science 1 is a human activity aimed at acquiring a reliable knowledge of the causes and principles of things ( Cortés and Alfaro 2013 ). Science results from man's attempt to understand the natural world, comprehend the universe to which he belongs, and thus explain to himself his longing for transcendence. Hence, man seeks to satisfy his need to immerse himself in the world, reveal the unknown, and conquer it ( Cortés and Alfaro 2013 ). From this perspective, science and faith share the same fundamental concerns: the intimate wish to comprehend the infinite, be part of it, and decipher the role man plays in it. According to Aristotle, man's admiration for all that surrounds us would account for the search for knowledge; in this wider sense, science should be understood as natural philosophy.

A Definition of Faith

In line with our approach, we must now define “faith” 2 ; before doing so, one has to first accept an anthropology that acknowledges the presence of levels in man beyond the purely material levels. That is, it is necessary to assert the spiritual and transcendent dimension of man. This dimension connaturally implies a deep yearning for eternity, embodied in the search for Truth through the intellectual powers of man: memory, understanding, and will (cf. Aquinas 1947 ). We are especially concerned here with the power of understanding, where new life is given to intellectual pursuit, the one science is concerned with.

Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), Doctor Mysticus , defines faith from an ontological and dynamic perspective as the supernatural means to achieve union of the understanding with God, enabling this power to participate in Divinity ( John of the Cross 2009 ; Wojtyla 1979 ). This means that through the free action of faith it is possible to walk toward a truth that transcends ourselves; faith itself, through the discovery of and participation in creation, leads us to this truth. According to Saint John of the Cross, faith does not deny the power of understanding, but rather, it raises it to its full potential so it can contemplate the mystery of the created ( John of the Cross 2009 ).

The Alleged Conflict between Science and Faith

In Carroll's ( 2003 ) words, science and faith in relation to one another should have been twin pillars of civilization. However, such a relationship is not as evident for the current scientific community. The reason for this would be that Descartes's statement “I think, therefore I am” ( Je pense, donc je suis , Descartes 1637 ), which constitutes a fundamental element to Western rationalism, has been misinterpreted by many scientists from the Enlightenment to our times, reducing human nature to mere intelligence, and thus, reducing him to an object. In fact, Saint John Paul II made extensive reference to the tragic division between faith and reason which originated with the emergence of modern science and lasts to the present day:

Particularly, beginning in the Enlightenment period, an extreme and one-sided rationalism led to the radicalization of positions in the realm of the natural sciences and in that of philosophy. The resulting split between faith and reason caused irreparable damage not only to religion but also to culture. ( John Paul II 1999 )

Hence, the apparent conflict and incompatibility between science and faith came to serve as a basis for two broadly antagonistic positions: on the one hand, a strict rationalism, reductionist to the point of not acknowledging the spiritual nature of the human being, thus denying its sense of transcendence. This can be exemplified in the opinion of Nobel laureate Francis C. Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA structure in 1953, who stated:

You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. ( Crick 1994 )

And, on the other hand, we have creationism, a set of beliefs based on which the Earth and every current living being originated in an action of creation performed by one or more divine entities according to a divine intention ( Hayward 1998 ). Thus, most pseudoscientific and religious movements subscribing to creationism go against the theory (or theories) of evolution ( Ayala 2007 ). Hence, fundamentalists and creationists (not identical) have proposed that creationism be taught in school science class as a valid alternative to evolution ( Yahr 2008 ). This stream of thought denies part of the physical reality of creation. In view of the above, it is necessary to bear in mind Saint John Paul II's clear reference to this dichotomy in his Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio :

I make this strong and insistent appeal that faith and philosophy recover the profound unity which allows them to stand in harmony with their nature without compromising their mutual autonomy. ( John Paul II 1998 )

Hence, the apparent contradiction between pure materialism and creationism is a dissociation of faith and reason taken to the extreme. In contrast, a productive and enlightening relationship between faith and reason has constituted a striking feature of some remarkable Christian thinkers, as is briefly commented below.

Some Great Saints as Examples of Fruitful Coexistence between Faith and Reason

First, we will refer to Saint Albert the Great (1206–1280), Doctor Universalis and “patron saint of natural scientists” ( Ortega 2010 ), whose humility and selfless intellectual endeavors served as an inspiration for a number of disciples, among them Saint Thomas Aquinas. His many contributions include his proposal that the Earth was round, a detailed description of plant morphology and, in the field of chemistry, the discovery or the element arsenic (cf. Ortega 2010 ; Reed 1980 ; Valderas 1987 ). Another intellectual possessing deep spirituality was the Italian physician Saint Giuseppe Moscati (1880–1927), a prominent figure both for his pioneer work in physiological biochemistry (particularly the study of reactions involved in glycogen transformation) ( Moscati 1906 1907 ), and for his integration of faith and reason, as particularly expressed through his disinterested work with the poor and incurably ill patients. He personally looked over the “incurabili” (incurable) patients in the hospital, where he remained stationed for several years. While taking care of the ill, Moscati never stopped doing research, balancing science, and faith. Edith Stein (1891–1942), also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, co-patroness of Europe, was a German Carmelite who participated prominently in the dialogue between science and faith. Initially an atheist philosopher ascribing to phenomenology, following a long discernment period she entered religious life and devoted herself to deeply spiritual and philosophical writings, among them The Structure of the Human Person ( Stein 2003 ). Stein reaches the conclusion that “he who seeks the truth, whether aware of it or not, seeks God”; according to Stein, for philosophy, the meaning of faith is twofold:

if through faith a truth is reached that cannot be accessed by any other means, philosophy cannot deny such facts of faith without relinquishing its claim as universal truth, and moreover, without risking its inherent knowledge being tainted by error; due to the organic interdependence of truth, if separated from the core, any partial aspect of it will be poorly illuminated. Hence the material dependence of philosophy on faith. Therefore, if man's highest certainty is inherent to faith, and if philosophy intends to provide the highest accessible truth, it has to take ownership of faith. Such is the case when it accepts in itself the truths of faith, and even more, analyzes all other certainties in the light of such truths of faith, as the ultimate criterion. This also accounts for a formal dependence of philosophy on faith. ( Stein 1993 )

Given her Jewish origin and her allegiance to the teachings of Jesus Christ, Edith Stein died a Catholic martyr in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Concluding Remarks

In the light of the foregoing, the work of these saints shows us that it is possible to overcome scientific reductionism, which is based on a misinterpretation of “I think, therefore I am.” Such reductionism goes totally against the integral nature of the human person where the spiritual component is an essential part. Along the same line, an absolute creationism will focus exclusively on man's spiritual component, denying the possibility of finding the truth by contemplating creation through understanding. Both should be replaced by a much broader perspective integrating the communion between science and faith, and also between body and soul. In our personal opinion, the life and work of the aforementioned saints constitute a proof that shows us that it is possible to be an intellectual devoted to both science and faith, and that no contradiction exists between both when truth is genuinely sought; on the contrary, faith and reason are mutually supporting. In this way, the natural sciences collaborate with theology, and theology collaborates with the natural sciences ( Vicuña 2002 ). As way of synthesis, it is always worth remembering the words of Saint Augustine of Hippo, subsequently restated by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, credo ut intelligam et intelligo ut credam , i.e., we believe in order to understand and we understand in order to believe.

Biographies

Dr. Manuel E. Cortés is professor of physiology and physiopathology at the Departamento de Ciencias Químicas y Biológicas, Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins, Santiago; and a post-doctoral researcher at the Reproductive Health Research Institute (RHRI), Santiago Chile.

Juan Pablo del Río is currently pursuing a degree in medicine and surgery and studying philosophy at the Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.

Dr. Pilar Vigil is associate professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, and medical director of the RHRI, Santiago, Chile. In addition, Dr. Vigil is a member of the Ponfical Academy for Life, Vatican City, and president of Teen STAR International. The authors wish to thank Miss Isabella Montero for her useful comments about this editorial. The authors may be contacted through Dr. Manuel E. Cortés, Departamento de Ciencias Químicas y Biológicas, Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins, General Gana 1702, Santiago, Chile. Email: [email protected]

1 Science, from the Latin scientia , means knowledge, which comes from the verb scire , to know (cf. Eto 2008 ). However, the origin of the term “science” dates back to the Indo-European term skei , referring to the capacity to cut or separate one thing from another to distinguish them. Thus, from an epistemological and historical point of view, from ancient times science has been closely linked to identifying one thing as separate from the other in order get to know it.

2 Etymologically, “faith” comes from the Latin fidēs , a term related to the Proto-Indo-European *b h eyd h , that means “to trust.”

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science, religion can walk hand in hand

We have been told that we can be people of faith or people of science, but we can't be both. That was historically not the case, and need not be the case today.

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Religion and Science: Conflict or Harmony?

Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2009 for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life.

Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, discussed why he believes religion and science are compatible and why the current conflict over evolution vs. faith, particularly in the evangelical community, is unnecessary.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, discussed how the brain reacts to spiritual experiences and her belief that people can look at scientific evidence and conclude that everything is explained by material means or look at the universe and see the hand of God.

Speaker: Francis S. Collins, Former Director, National Human Genome Research Institute Respondent: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Religion Correspondent, National Public Radio Moderator: Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center; Senior Adviser, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In the following excerpt ellipses have been omitted to facilitate reading. Read the full transcript, including audience discussion at pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion .

Francis Collins

So let’s start with the science. I know there’s broad diversity and background in this room, but I’m not going to get deeply into the nitty-gritty of genomics. I will simply use this metaphor because I think it’s a pretty good one, that the DNA of an organism is its instruction book sitting there in the nucleus of the cell. All of the DNA of any organism is its genome. Ours happens to be about 3.1 billion of those letters of the code.

The Human Genome Project set itself up in 1990 as an international effort to read out all of those letters at a time when many people thought this was foolhardy because the technology to do this hadn’t been invented. But due to the ingenuity and commitment of a very dedicated group of over 2,000 scientists that I had the privilege of leading, we did in fact — two-and-a-half years early and about $400 million under-budget — achieve the goal of reading out all of those 3.1 billion letters in April of 2003. A lot of the effort on the genome since that time has been to understand how the instruction book actually does what it does. How do you read these instructions written in this funny language that has just four letters in its alphabet — A, C, G and T — the four bases of the DNA code?

But particularly, we’ve been interested in trying to identify the ticking time bombs in the human genome that put each of us at risk for something. Progress here has been actually quite exhilarating.We’re identifying all of these risk factors for almost any disease using the tools of the Human Genome Project. That in turn provides the opportunity to identify who’s at risk for what. You can already, for $400, send your money to one of these direct-to-consumer marketing companies, and they will tell you what your risk is for about 20 different diseases. I just recently finished a book on personalized medicine, which will be coming out early in 2010, designed to try to explain this for a non-scientific audience, namely the general public, to try to begin the process of people imagining how to incorporate this information into their own health care.

I’ve been talking about DNA; this is actually DNA.

It’s a different sort of picture than you’re used to, where instead of looking from the side, you’re looking down the barrel of the double helix. It’s quite a beautiful picture that way, and I think this is a provocative pair of images to introduce the main topic this morning, which is, are those two worldviews that you see there incompatible? On the left is the rose window of Westminster Cathedral, a beautiful stained glass window, and on the right, a picture of DNA.

There are certainly voices out there arguing that you can’t have both of those; you’ve got to take your pick. You either are going to approach questions from a purely scientific perspective or a purely spiritual perspective, and the two are locked in eternal combat. I don’t happen to agree with that, so perhaps I should say a bit of a word about how I got there.

I grew up in a home where faith was not practiced. My parents were free spirits in the arts and theater and music. I was home schooled till the sixth grade. I was not taught that faith was ridiculous, but I was certainly not taught that it mattered very much. When I got to college and later graduate school in chemistry, I became an agnostic and then eventually an atheist. In my view at that point, the only thing that really mattered was the scientific approach to understand how the universe worked; everything else was superstition.

But then I went to medical school and discovered that those hypothetical questions about life and death and whether God exists weren’t so hypothetical anymore. I realized my atheism had been arrived at as the convenient answer, not on the basis of considering the evidence. A thoughtful person turned me onto the writings of C.S. Lewis, which was quite a revelation in terms of the depth of intellectual argument that undergirds a belief in a creator God and the existence of moral law. I began to realize that even in science, where I had spent most of my time, there were pointers to God that I had paid no attention to that were actually pretty interesting.

One obvious one, although maybe it’s not so obvious, is that there is something instead of nothing. There’s no reason there should be anything at all. Wigner’s wonderful phrase “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” also comes to mind — Eugene Wigner, the Nobel laureate in physics, talking about the amazing thing about the whole study of physics is that mathematics makes sense; it can describe the properties of matter and energy in simple, even beautiful, laws. Why should that be? Why should gravity follow an inverse square law? Why should Maxwell’s five equations describe electromagnetism in very simple terms, and they actually turn out to be true? A thoughtful and interesting question.

The Big Bang, the fact that the universe had a beginning out of nothingness, as far as we can tell — from this unimaginable singularity, the universe came into being and has been flying apart ever since — that cries out for some explanation. Since we have not observed nature to create itself, where did this come from? That seems to ask you to postulate a creator who must not be part of nature or you haven’t solved the problem. In fact, one can also make a pretty good philosophical argument that a creator of this sort must also be outside of time or you haven’t solved the problem.

So now we have the idea of a creator who is outside of time and space, and who is a pretty darn good mathematician, and apparently also must be an incredibly good physicist. An additional set of observations I found quite breathtaking is the fact that the physical constants that determine the nature of interactions between matter and the way in which energy behaves have precisely the values they would need to have for any kind of complexity or life to occur. Various people have written about this. Martin Rees has a book on this called Just Six Numbers . Depending on how you count them up, somewhere between six and a dozen of these constants are independent of each other, and I’m talking about things like the gravitational constant. Theory can tell you that gravity is an inverse square law, but there’s that constant in there to say how strong gravity is and you can’t derive that by theory. That is something you have to measure experimentally.

That second hypothesis, the multiverse hypothesis, does require a certain amount of faith because those are not other parallel universes that we ever expect we would be able to observe. So which of those is a more faith-requiring hypothesis? I would ask you to think about that from my perspective, using the Ockham’s Razor approach that the simplest explanation may in fact be the right one. This sounds a lot like all of these things are pointing us toward a creator who had an intention about the universe that would include setting these constants so that interesting things might happen.

Then there’s C.S. Lewis’ point that I discovered while reading the first chapter of Mere Christianity , “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” Where does this notion of morality come from? Is this a purely evolutionary artifact, where we have been convinced by evolution that right and wrong have meanings and that we’re supposed to do the right thing, or is there something more profound going on?

But how can you be both a believer and a biologist? I’ve certainly been asked that question on numerous occasions by people who find out that I’m a geneticist who studies DNA every day and I’m a Christian. After all, don’t you realize that evolution is incompatible with faith? If you believe in evolution, how can you be a believer? That’s the usual kind of concern.

First of all, let me say the evidence for Darwin’s theory of descent from a common ancestor by gradual change over long periods of time operated on by natural selection is absolutely overwhelming. It is not possible, I think, to look at that evidence accumulated, especially in the last few years on the basis of the study of DNA, and not come to the conclusion that Darwin was right — right in ways that Darwin himself probably never could have imagined, not knowing about DNA, not knowing that we’d have a digital record of these events to study.

Among the evidences are the ability to compare the genomes of ourselves with other species. You can feed all of that data into a computer and say, make sense of this, without telling the computer anything about what these animals look like or what the fossil record said, and the computer comes up with this analysis with all of these species lined up in order. Humans are there as part of this story, and the computer says, this really only makes sense if you derive this back to a common ancestor in this case of vertebrates. We could even extend this to invertebrates, where we have lots of sequence as well.

When you look at the details of that tree in terms of which animals are clustered close together and how long the branches are, which says something about how long it’s been since they diverged, the matchup here with the fossil record and with anatomical descriptions is breathtaking. It’s all very internally consistent. Now you might say, looking at this tree, that that doesn’t prove anything about descent from a common ancestor. If you believe that Genesis says that all of these organisms were created as individual acts of special creation, wouldn’t it have made sense for God to use some of the same DNA motifs, modifying them along the way? And wouldn’t it therefore seem to show you that DNA is more similar between creatures that look more like each other, so this doesn’t prove anything.

But when you start looking at the details, that argument really can’t be sustained anymore. I could give you many examples, but I’ll just give you one because of the time. Here is one that I think really cannot be easily understood without the common ancestor hypothesis being correct and with it involving humans.

If you look across the genome of ourselves and other species, you find genes in a particular order with space in between them. Here’s a place, for example, in the human and the cow and the mouse genome where you have the same three genes. They’re lined up in the same order, which also is consistent with a common ancestor, although it doesn’t prove it. But I picked these three for a particular reason. These genes have funny names — so what do they actually do?

I’m not going to bother you about two of them, but GULO is an interesting gene. It codes for an enzyme called gulonolactone oxidase. That is the enzyme that catalyzes the final step in the synthesis of vitamin C, ascorbic acid. You probably know that vitamin C is something that’s a vitamin because we need it. We can’t make it ourselves, and the reason for that is that our GULO gene has sustained a knockout blow About half the gene has been deleted, and there’s a little remnant left behind that you can see. The tail end of it is still evidence that GULO used to be there, but it’s not in any of us. In fact, it’s not there in any primate.

So somewhere higher up in that lineage this happened in a single individual, and that happened to be spread throughout all of the following organisms, primates and humans. That’s why we humans get scurvy if we don’t have access to vitamin C. Apparently in most of human history and primate history, there was plenty of vitamin C in the environment, so there was no great loss sustained here until we went to sea for long periods of time. Cows and mice don’t need vitamin C; they make their own. They have a GULO gene that works.

Now looking at that, of course, that immediately suggests common ancestry for all three of these species — not only suggests it, but, it seems to me, demands it because if you’re going to try to argue that the human genome was somehow special, that God created us in a different way than these other organisms, you would also have to postulate that God intentionally put a defective gene in exactly the place where a common ancestry would say it should be. Does that sound like the action of a God of all truth? I could give other examples. But — once you look at the details — it is, I think, inescapable for somebody with an open mind to conclude that descent from a common ancestor is true and we’re part of it.

Despite that, we have issues, especially here in the U.S., about what people believe about this question. You all probably have seen the Gallup Poll that gets asked every year — given the choice among three options, what do people say? That first option, that God guided a process that happened over millions of years — 38 percent; the second option, that God had no part, that being a deist or an atheist perspective — 13 percent. But the largest number — 45 percent, almost half — choose the third option, that God created human beings in their present form in the last 10,000 years. You can’t arrive at that conclusion without throwing out pretty much all of the evidence from cosmology, geology, paleontology, biology, physics, chemistry, genomics and the fossil record. Yet that is the conclusion that many Americans prefer.

There are a lot of forces trying to encourage that view. If you’ve been to the Creation Museum — I haven’t, but I gather some of you have — it will show you this perspective of humans and dinosaurs frolicking together in a way that’s consistent with the 6,000-year-old Earth. Again, many children going to see this are probably walking away thinking, yeah, that makes sense. I get e-mails practically every week from people who were raised in this tradition — many of them home schooled or schooled in a Christian high school where young Earth creationism is the only view that they’re exposed to. Then they get to university and they see the actual data that supports the age of the Earth as 4.5, 5 billion years old, and they see the data that supports evolution as being correct, and they go into an intense personal crisis.

We’ve set those folks up for a terrible struggle by what we’re doing right now in this country. It seems to me that atheism is, of all of the choices, the least rational because it assumes that you know enough to exclude the possibility of God. And which of us could claim we know enough to make such a grand statement? G.K. Chesterton says this quite nicely: “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, the assertion of a universal negative.”

So how, then, do we put this synthesis together? I’ll give you the view that I’ve arrived at, which in my experience is also the view that about 40 percent of working scientists who believe in a personal God have arrived at. So here it is — God, who is not limited in space or time, created this universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time. That plan included the mechanism of evolution to create this marvelous diversity of living things on our planet and to include ourselves, human beings. Evolution, in the fullness of time, prepared these big-brained creatures, but that’s probably not all we are from the perspective of a believer.

Some would say, evolution just doesn’t seem like a very efficient method. Why would God spend so much time getting to the point? Remember, a few steps back there, we said the only way you’ve really solved the creator problem without ending up in an infinite regress is to have God be outside of time. So, basically, it might be a long time to us, but it might be a blink of an eye to God.

The intelligent design perspective, which is so prominent now in the evangelical church and, of course, is a flashpoint for debates about the teaching of science in schools, is basically that evolution might be OK in some ways, but it can’t account for the complexity of things like the bacterial flagellum, which are considered to be irreducibly complex because they have so many working parts and they don’t work with any of the parts dropping out, so you can’t imagine how evolution could have produced them.

This is showing severe cracks scientifically in that the supposedly irreducibly complex structures are, increasingly, yielding up their secrets, and we can see how they have been arrived at by a stepwise mechanism that’s quite comfortable from an evolutionary perspective. So intelligent design is turning out to be — and probably could have been predicted to be — a God-of-the-gaps theory, which inserts God into places that science hasn’t quite yet explained, and then science comes along and explains them.

I think I would also say intelligent design is not only bad science; it’s questionable theology. It implies that God was an underachiever and started this evolutionary process and then realized it wasn’t going to quite work and had to keep stepping in all along the way to fix it. That seems like a limitation of God’s omniscience.

I think we need only go back before Darwin and see what theologians thought about Genesis to have a better conversation about this. Go back all the way to Augustine in 400 A.D. Augustine is writing here specifically about Genesis: “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.” And is that not what is happening in the current climate with, in fact, insistence that the only acceptable interpretation for a serious Christian now is a literal acceptance of the six days of creation, which, again, Augustine would have argued is not required by the language?

[ The Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality ]

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

For the past century, materialism had reigned triumphant. But the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has done extensive polling on people who have spiritual experiences — not just believe in God, but a spiritual experience. It turns out that 51 percent of people have had a spiritual experience that absolutely transformed their lives. That’s a lot of people.So now I think there is a move afoot among scientists to, if not embrace, then at least study this thing called spiritual experience. They can do that because they have the technology to do that or at least to start to make inroads. They have brain scanners and EEGs, which allow them to peer into the brain.

Back in 2006, I took a year off from NPR to just study, to look at what I think of as the emerging science of spirituality. My litmus test in doing my research was this: Basically, if a prominent scientist or if prominent scientists were investigating some aspect of spiritual experience, then it was fair game for me to report on it. So I encountered questions like, is there a “God spot” in the brain? Is there a God chemical? Is God all in your head?

First I attacked the question of the “God spot” in the brain: Is there an area of the brain that handles or mediates spiritual experience — by spiritual experience I mean that notion, that transcendent moment that you have, that sense that there’s another being in the room or around you. The question is, if you can locate the place that mediates spiritual experience, does that mean that God is nothing more than brain tissue?

People have long suspected that the temporal lobe has something to do with religious experience. The temporal lobe runs along the side of your head, and it handles things like hearing and smell and memory and emotion. The first concrete evidence that there was a connection between the temporal lobe and spiritual experience was made by a Canadian neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield. Back in the 1940s and ’50s, he began mucking around in the brains of patients as he operated on them. There aren’t any pain receptors in the brain, so he’d go in and he could take an electrode and prod a part of the brain — keep them awake — prod a part of the brain and see what part of the body corresponded with that part of the brain. Well, when he prodded the temporal lobe, something very strange happened. People reported having out-of-body experiences and hearing voices and seeing apparitions. He hypothesized that he might have found the physical seat of religious experience.

So science figured out that one way to try to explore spiritual experience and look at the brain mechanics of religious experience is to look at people with temporal lobe epilepsy on the theory that the extreme elucidates the normal. Temporal lobe epilepsy is basically an electrical storm in the brain where all the cells fire together. Usually seizures are really horrible things. I went to a Henry Ford hospital to the epilepsy clinic and it was just — it’s a horrifying experience to watch a seizure. But in a few rare cases, people have ecstatic seizures, and they believe that they are having a religious experience. They may hear snatches of music or words, presumably from their memory bank, and they interpret it as a message from God or the music from the heavenly spheres. They may see a snatch of light and think that that’s an angel.

Today a lot of neuroscientists have kind of retrofitted a lot of major religious leaders with temporal lobe epilepsy. Like Saul on the road to Damascus — was he blinded by God and heard Jesus’ voice or did he suffer, as one neurologist said, “visual and auditory hallucinations with photism and transient blindness”? Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, did he see a pillar of light and two angels or did he suffer a complex partial seizure? What about Moses and the burning bush, hearing God’s voice?

Now I’ve got to say, I have a little trouble with this kind of retrofitting, because it’s hard to imagine something as debilitating as epilepsy being helpful in writing, say, the bulk of Christian doctrine, as did Paul; guiding a nation through the wilderness for 40 years, as did Moses; or founding one of the three monotheistic religions, as did Mohammed. But I do think that scientists are onto something. I think the temporal lobe may in fact be the place that mediates spiritual experience.

One of the people who convinced me of this is a guy named Jeff Schimmel. Jeff is a writer in Hollywood. He was raised Jewish, never believed in God, had no interest in spirituality. Then a few years ago, nine years ago, when he was 40 years old, he had a benign tumor in his left temporal lobe removed. The surgery was a snap, but a couple of years later, unknown to him, he began to suffer from mini-seizures. He began hearing things and having visions. He remembers twice lying in bed when he looked up at the ceiling and saw a kind of swirl of blue and gold and green all settle into a shape, a pattern. He said, then it dawned on me, it was the Virgin Mary. Then he thinks, why would the Virgin Mary appear to a Jewish guy? But a few other things began to happen to Jeff. He became fascinated with spirituality. He found himself weeping at the drop of a hat when he saw pain in other people. He became fairly obsessed with Buddhism.

But he began to wonder, could his newfound spirituality have anything to do with his brain? So the next time he visited his neurologist, he asked to see a picture of his brain scan, the most recent one. And, in fact, the temporal lobe was very different before and after the surgery. It had kind of pulled away from the skull. His temporal lobe was smaller, a different shape, it was covered with scar tissue, and those changes had begun to spark electrical firings in his brain. He essentially developed temporal lobe epilepsy. But there was no question in his mind that his faith, his newfound love for his fellow man, all of that, came from his brain.

Are transcendent experiences — not just Jeff Schimmel’s, but Teresa of Avila’s — are they merely a physiological event or could it possibly reflect an encounter with another dimension? I want to propose that how you come down on that issue depends on whether you think of the brain as a CD player or a radio. Most scientists who think that everything is explainable through material processes think that the brain is like a CD player: The content, the CD with the song on it, for example, is playing in a closed system, and if you take a hammer to the machine, you know, destroy it, the song is not going to play. All spiritual experience is inside the brain, and when you alter the brain, God and spirituality disappear.

Now there is some scientific support for this line of thinking. These days scientists can make transcendent realities, or God, disappear or appear at will. It’s kind of a party trick. Recently a group of Swiss researchers found out that when they electrically stimulated a certain part of the brain in a woman, she suddenly felt a sensed presence, that there was another being in the room enveloping her. A lot of people describe God that way: a sensed presence, a being nearby enveloping them. So they could conjure up God just by poking part of the brain.

Making spiritual experiences disappear is, of course, far more common. It’s what epilepsy specialists are trained to do: You remove part of the temporal lobe or you medicate the brain and tamp down the electrical spikes and, voila, God disappears, all spiritual experience goes away. But suppose the brain isn’t a CD player. Suppose it’s a radio. Now in this analogy, everyone possesses the neural equipment to receive the radio program in varying degrees. So some have the volume turned low. Other people hear their favorite programs every now and again, maybe some of you all, like me, who have had brief transcendent moments. Some people have the volume way too high or they’re caught between stations and they hear a cacophony, and those people actually need medical help.

So that’s one debate about the brain and whether spiritual experience is just something within the brain or something that may transcend the brain. Another argument that God is all in your head comes from neuropharmacologists. They propose that God is nothing more than chemical reactions in your brain.

Peyote like other psychedelic drugs, including LSD and magic mushrooms seem to prompt mystical experience. Scientists have discovered recently that these psychedelic drugs have a couple of interesting things in common. Chemically, they all look a lot like serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that affects parts of the brain that relate to emotions and perception. Now scientists at Johns Hopkins University have discovered that they all target the same serotonin receptor, serotonin HT2A. So what that receptor does is, it allows the serotonin or the psilocybin or the active ingredient of these psychedelics to create a cascade of chemical reactions, which then create the sounds and sights and smells and perceptions of a mystical experience. Essentially, they’ve discovered a “God neurotransmitter,” in a way.

He raises a third issue, which Francis alluded to, which is, why? Why are we wired to have mystical experiences in the first place? Is it possible that there is a God or an intelligence who’s created this way? I mean, if there is a God who wants to communicate with us, he probably wouldn’t use the big toe; he’d probably use the brain. Doesn’t it make sense that this is how God would communicate?

Now in the end, I don’t think science will be able to prove or disprove God, but I do think there’s a really fascinating debate that’s circling around spiritual issues. We may actually make some headway about it. There may be a way to tackle this issue in a definitive way. It’s the mind-brain debate, or can consciousness operate when the brain is stilled?

Read the full transcript including discussion at pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion .

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Religion and Science

The relationship between religion and science is the subject of continued debate in philosophy and theology. To what extent are religion and science compatible? Are religious beliefs sometimes conducive to science, or do they inevitably pose obstacles to scientific inquiry? The interdisciplinary field of “science and religion”, also called “theology and science”, aims to answer these and other questions. It studies historical and contemporary interactions between these fields, and provides philosophical analyses of how they interrelate.

This entry provides an overview of the topics and discussions in science and religion. Section 1 outlines the scope of both fields, and how they are related. Section 2 looks at the relationship between science and religion in five religious traditions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Section 3 discusses contemporary topics of scientific inquiry in which science and religion intersect, focusing on divine action, creation, and human origins.

1.1 A brief history

1.2 what is science, and what is religion, 1.3 taxonomies of the interaction between science and religion, 1.4 the scientific study of religion, 2.1 christianity, 2.3 hinduism, 2.4 buddhism, 2.5 judaism, 3.1 divine action and creation, 3.2 human origins, works cited, other important works, other internet resources, related entries, 1. science, religion, and how they interrelate.

Since the 1960s, scholars in theology, philosophy, history, and the sciences have studied the relationship between science and religion. Science and religion is a recognized field of study with dedicated journals (e.g., Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science ), academic chairs (e.g., the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University), scholarly societies (e.g., the Science and Religion Forum), and recurring conferences (e.g., the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology’s biennial meetings). Most of its authors are theologians (e.g., John Haught, Sarah Coakley), philosophers with an interest in science (e.g., Nancey Murphy), or (former) scientists with long-standing interests in religion, some of whom are also ordained clergy (e.g., the physicist John Polkinghorne, the molecular biophysicist Alister McGrath, and the atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe). Recently, authors in science and religion also have degrees in that interdisciplinary field (e.g., Sarah Lane Ritchie).

The systematic study of science and religion started in the 1960s, with authors such as Ian Barbour (1966) and Thomas F. Torrance (1969) who challenged the prevailing view that science and religion were either at war or indifferent to each other. Barbour’s Issues in Science and Religion (1966) set out several enduring themes of the field, including a comparison of methodology and theory in both fields. Zygon, the first specialist journal on science and religion, was also founded in 1966. While the early study of science and religion focused on methodological issues, authors from the late 1980s to the 2000s developed contextual approaches, including detailed historical examinations of the relationship between science and religion (e.g., Brooke 1991). Peter Harrison (1998) challenged the warfare model by arguing that Protestant theological conceptions of nature and humanity helped to give rise to science in the seventeenth century. Peter Bowler (2001, 2009) drew attention to a broad movement of liberal Christians and evolutionists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who aimed to reconcile evolutionary theory with religious belief. In the 1990s, the Vatican Observatory (Castel Gandolfo, Italy) and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley, California) co-sponsored a series of conferences on divine action and how it can be understood in the light of various contemporary sciences. This resulted in six edited volumes (see Russell, Murphy, & Stoeger 2008 for a book-length summary of the findings of this project).

The field has presently diversified so much that contemporary discussions on religion and science tend to focus on specific disciplines and questions. Rather than ask if religion and science (broadly speaking) are compatible, productive questions focus on specific topics. For example, Buddhist modernists (see section 2.4 ) have argued that Buddhist theories about the self (the no-self) and Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness meditation, are compatible and are corroborated by neuroscience.

In the contemporary public sphere, a prominent interaction between science and religion concerns evolutionary theory and creationism/Intelligent Design. The legal battles (e.g., the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial in 2005) and lobbying surrounding the teaching of evolution and creationism in American schools suggest there’s a conflict between religion and science. However, even if one were to focus on the reception of evolutionary theory, the relationship between religion and science is complex. For instance, in the United Kingdom, scientists, clergy, and popular writers (the so-called Modernists), sought to reconcile science and religion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whereas the US saw the rise of a fundamentalist opposition to evolutionary thinking, exemplified by the Scopes trial in 1925 (Bowler 2001, 2009).

Another prominent offshoot of the discussion on science and religion is the New Atheist movement, with authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. They argue that public life, including government, education, and policy should be guided by rational argument and scientific evidence, and that any form of supernaturalism (especially religion, but also, e.g., astrology) has no place in public life. They treat religious claims, such as the existence of God, as testable scientific hypotheses (see, e.g., Dawkins 2006).

In recent decades, the leaders of some Christian churches have issued conciliatory public statements on evolutionary theory. Pope John Paul II (1996) affirmed evolutionary theory in his message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, but rejected it for the human soul, which he saw as the result of a separate, special creation. The Church of England publicly endorsed evolutionary theory (e.g., C. M. Brown 2008), including an apology to Charles Darwin for its initial rejection of his theory.

This entry will focus on the relationship between religious and scientific ideas as rather abstract philosophical positions, rather than as practices. However, this relationship has a large practical impact on the lives of religious people and scientists (including those who are both scientists and religious believers). A rich sociological literature indicates the complexity of these interactions, among others, how religious scientists conceive of this relationship (for recent reviews, see Ecklund 2010, 2021; Ecklund & Scheitle 2007; Gross & Simmons 2009).

For the past fifty years, the discussion on science and religion has de facto been on Western science and Christianity: to what extent can the findings of Western sciences be reconciled with Christian beliefs? The field of science and religion has only recently turned to an examination of non-Christian traditions, providing a richer picture of interaction.

In order to understand the scope of science and religion and their interactions, we must at least get a rough sense of what science and religion are. After all, “science” and “religion” are not eternally unchanging terms with unambiguous meanings. Indeed, they are terms that were coined recently, with meanings that vary across contexts. Before the nineteenth century, the term “religion” was rarely used. For a medieval author such as Aquinas, the term religio meant piety or worship, and was not applied to religious systems outside of what he considered orthodoxy (Harrison 2015). The term “religion” obtained its considerably broader current meaning through the works of early anthropologists, such as E.B. Tylor (1871), who systematically used the term for religions across the world. As a result, “religion” became a comparative concept, referring to traits that could be compared and scientifically studied, such as rituals, dietary restrictions, and belief systems (Jonathan Smith 1998).

The term “science” as it is currently used also became common in the nineteenth century. Prior to this, what we call “science” fell under the terminology of “natural philosophy” or, if the experimental part was emphasized, “experimental philosophy”. William Whewell (1834) standardized the term “scientist” to refer to practitioners of diverse natural philosophies. Philosophers of science have attempted to demarcate science from other knowledge-seeking endeavors, in particular religion. For instance, Karl Popper (1959) claimed that scientific hypotheses (unlike religious and philosophical ones) are in principle falsifiable. Many authors (e.g., Taylor 1996) affirm a disparity between science and religion, even if the meanings of both terms are historically contingent. They disagree, however, on how to precisely (and across times and cultures) demarcate the two domains.

One way to distinguish between science and religion is the claim that science concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns the supernatural world and its relationship to the natural. Scientific explanations do not appeal to supernatural entities such as gods or angels (fallen or not), or to non-natural forces (such as miracles, karma, or qi ). For example, neuroscientists typically explain our thoughts in terms of brain states, not by reference to an immaterial soul or spirit, and legal scholars do not invoke karmic load when discussing why people commit crimes.

Naturalists draw a distinction between methodological naturalism , an epistemological principle that limits scientific inquiry to natural entities and laws, and ontological or philosophical naturalism , a metaphysical principle that rejects the supernatural (Forrest 2000). Since methodological naturalism is concerned with the practice of science (in particular, with the kinds of entities and processes that are invoked), it does not make any statements about whether or not supernatural entities exist. They might exist, but lie outside of the scope of scientific investigation. Some authors (e.g., Rosenberg 2014) hold that taking the results of science seriously entails negative answers to such persistent questions into the existence of free will or moral knowledge. However, these stronger conclusions are controversial.

The view that science can be demarcated from religion in its methodological naturalism is more commonly accepted. For instance, in the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, the philosopher of science Robert Pennock was called to testify by the plaintiffs on whether Intelligent Design was a form of creationism, and therefore religion. If it were, the Dover school board policy would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Building on earlier work (e.g., Pennock 1998), Pennock argued that Intelligent Design, in its appeal to supernatural mechanisms, was not methodologically naturalistic, and that methodological naturalism is an essential component of science.

Methodological naturalism is a recent development in the history of science, though we can see precursors of it in medieval authors such as Aquinas who attempted to draw a theological distinction between miracles, such as the working of relics, and unusual natural phenomena, such as magnetism and the tides (see Perry & Ritchie 2018). Natural and experimental philosophers such as Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Robert Hooke, and Robert Boyle regularly appealed to supernatural agents in their natural philosophy (which we now call “science”). Still, overall there was a tendency to favor naturalistic explanations in natural philosophy. The X-club was a lobby group for the professionalization of science founded in 1864 by Thomas Huxley and friends. While the X-club may have been in part motivated by the desire to remove competition by amateur-clergymen scientists in the field of science, and thus to open up the field to full-time professionals, its explicit aim was to promote a science that would be free from religious dogma (Garwood 2008, Barton 2018). This preference for naturalistic causes may have been encouraged by past successes of naturalistic explanations, leading authors such as Paul Draper (2005) to argue that the success of methodological naturalism could be evidence for ontological naturalism.

Several typologies probe the interaction between science and religion. For example, Mikael Stenmark (2004) distinguishes between three views: the independence view (no overlap between science and religion), the contact view (some overlap between the fields), and a union of the domains of science and religion; within these views he recognizes further subdivisions, e.g., contact can be in the form of conflict or harmony. The most influential taxonomy of the relationship between science and religion remains Barbour’s (2000): conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. Subsequent authors, as well as Barbour himself, have refined and amended this taxonomy. However, others (e.g., Cantor & Kenny 2001) have argued that this taxonomy is not useful to understand past interactions between both fields. Nevertheless, because of its enduring influence, it is still worthwhile to discuss it in detail.

The conflict model holds that science and religion are in perpetual and principal conflict. It relies heavily on two historical narratives: the trial of Galileo (see Dawes 2016) and the reception of Darwinism (see Bowler 2001). Contrary to common conception, the conflict model did not originate in two seminal publications, namely John Draper’s (1874) History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and Andrew Dickson White’s (1896) two-volume opus A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom . Rather, as James Ungureanu (2019) argues, the project of these early architects of the conflict thesis needs to be contextualized in a liberal Protestant tradition of attempting to separate religion from theology, and thus salvage religion. Their work was later appropriated by skeptics and atheists who used their arguments about the incompatibility of traditional theological views with science to argue for secularization, something Draper and White did not envisage.

The vast majority of authors in the science and religion field is critical of the conflict model and believes it is based on a shallow and partisan reading of the historical record. While the conflict model is at present a minority position, some have used philosophical argumentation (e.g., Philipse 2012) or have carefully re-examined historical evidence such as the Galileo trial (e.g., Dawes 2016) to argue for this model. Alvin Plantinga (2011) has argued that the conflict is not between science and religion, but between science and naturalism. In his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (first formulated in 1993), Plantinga argues that naturalism is epistemically self-defeating: if both naturalism and evolution are true, then it’s unlikely we would have reliable cognitive faculties.

The independence model holds that science and religion explore separate domains that ask distinct questions. Stephen Jay Gould developed an influential independence model with his NOMA principle (“Non-Overlapping Magisteria”):

The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise. (2001: 739)

He identified science’s areas of expertise as empirical questions about the constitution of the universe, and religion’s domain of expertise as ethical values and spiritual meaning. NOMA is both descriptive and normative: religious leaders should refrain from making factual claims about, for instance, evolutionary theory, just as scientists should not claim insight on moral matters. Gould held that there might be interactions at the borders of each magisterium, such as our responsibility toward other living things. One obvious problem with the independence model is that if religion were barred from making any statement of fact, it would be difficult to justify its claims of value and ethics. For example, one could not argue that one should love one’s neighbor because it pleases the creator (Worrall 2004). Moreover, religions do seem to make empirical claims, for example, that Jesus appeared after his death or that the early Hebrews passed through the parted waters of the Red Sea.

The dialogue model proposes a mutualistic relationship between religion and science. Unlike independence, it assumes a common ground between both fields, perhaps in their presuppositions, methods, and concepts. For example, the Christian doctrine of creation may have encouraged science by assuming that creation (being the product of a designer) is both intelligible and orderly, so one can expect there are laws that can be discovered. Creation, as a product of God’s free actions, is also contingent, so the laws of nature cannot be learned through a priori thinking which prompts the need for empirical investigation. According to Barbour (2000), both scientific and theological inquiry are theory-dependent, or at least model-dependent. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity colors how Christian theologians interpret the first chapters of Genesis. Next to this, both rely on metaphors and models. Both fields remain separate but they talk to each other, using common methods, concepts, and presuppositions. Wentzel van Huyssteen (1998) has argued for a dialogue position, proposing that science and religion can be in a graceful duet, based on their epistemological overlaps. The Partially Overlapping Magisteria (POMA) model defended by Alister McGrath (e.g., McGrath and Collicutt McGrath 2007) is also worth mentioning. According to McGrath, science and religion each draw on several different methodologies and approaches. These methods and approaches are different ways of knowing that have been shaped through historical factors. It is beneficial for scientists and theologians to be in dialogue with each other.

The integration model is more extensive in its unification of science and theology. Barbour (2000) identifies three forms of integration. First, natural theology, which formulates arguments for the existence and attributes of God. It uses interpretations of results from the natural sciences as premises in its arguments. For instance, the supposition that the universe has a temporal origin features in contemporary cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Likewise, the fact that the cosmological constants and laws of nature are life-permitting (whereas many other combinations of constants and laws would not permit life) is used in contemporary fine-tuning arguments (see the entry to fine-tuning arguments ). Second, theology of nature starts not from science but from a religious framework, and examines how this can enrich or even revise findings of the sciences. For example, McGrath (2016) developed a Christian theology of nature, examining how nature and scientific findings can be interpreted through a Christian lens. Thirdly, Barbour believed that Whitehead’s process philosophy was a promising way to integrate science and religion.

While integration seems attractive (especially to theologians), it is difficult to do justice to both the scientific and religious aspects of a given domain, especially given their complexities. For example, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1971), who was both knowledgeable in paleoanthropology and theology, ended up with an unconventional view of evolution as teleological (which put him at odds with the scientific establishment) and with an unorthodox theology (which denied original sin and led to a series of condemnations by the Roman Catholic Church). Theological heterodoxy, by itself, is no reason to doubt a model. However, it shows obstacles for the integration model to become a live option in the broader community of theologians and philosophers who want to remain affiliate to a specific religious community without transgressing its boundaries. Moreover, integration seems skewed towards theism: Barbour described arguments based on scientific results that support (but do not demonstrate) theism, but failed to discuss arguments based on scientific results that support (but do not demonstrate) the denial of theism. Hybrid positions like McGrath’s POMA indicate some difficulty for Barbour’s taxonomy: the scope of conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration is not clearly defined and they are not mutually exclusive. For example, if conflict is defined broadly then it is compatible with integration. Take the case of Frederick Tennant (1902), who sought to explain sin as the result of evolutionary pressures on human ancestors. This view led him to reject the Fall as a historical event, as it was not compatible with evolutionary biology. His view has conflict (as he saw Christian doctrine in conflict with evolutionary biology) but also integration (he sought to integrate the theological concept of sin in an evolutionary picture). It is clear that many positions defined by authors in the religion and science literature do not clearly fall within one of Barbour’s four domains.

Science and religion are closely interconnected in the scientific study of religion, which can be traced back to seventeenth-century natural histories of religion. Natural historians attempted to provide naturalistic explanations for human behavior and culture, including religion and morality. For example, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle’s De l’Origine des Fables (1724) offered a causal account of belief in the supernatural. People often assert supernatural explanations when they lack an understanding of the natural causes underlying extraordinary events: “To the extent that one is more ignorant, or one has less experience, one sees more miracles” (1724 [1824: 295], my translation). Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1757) is perhaps the best-known philosophical example of a natural historical explanation of religious belief. It traces the origins of polytheism—which Hume thought was the earliest form of religious belief—to ignorance about natural causes combined with fear and apprehension about the environment. By deifying aspects of the environment, early humans tried to persuade or bribe the gods, thereby gaining a sense of control.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors from newly emerging scientific disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology examined the purported naturalistic roots of religious beliefs. They did so with a broad brush, trying to explain what unifies diverse religious beliefs across cultures. Auguste Comte (1841) proposed that all societies, in their attempts to make sense of the world, go through the same stages of development: the theological (religious) stage is the earliest phase, where religious explanations predominate, followed by the metaphysical stage (a non-intervening God), and culminating in the positive or scientific stage, marked by scientific explanations and empirical observations.

In anthropology, this positivist idea influenced cultural evolutionism, a theoretical framework that sought to explain cultural change using universal patterns. The underlying supposition was that all cultures evolve and progress along the same trajectory. Cultures with differing religious views were explained as being in different stages of their development. For example, Tylor (1871) regarded animism as the earliest form of religious belief. James Frazer’s Golden Bough (1890) is somewhat unusual within this literature, as he saw commonalities between magic, religion, and science. Though he proposed a linear progression, he also argued that a proto-scientific mindset gave rise to magical practices, including the discovery of regularities in nature. Cultural evolutionist models dealt poorly with religious diversity and with the complex relationships between science and religion across cultures. Many authors proposed that religion was just a stage in human development, which would eventually be superseded. For example, social theorists such as Karl Marx and Max Weber proposed versions of the secularization thesis, the view that religion would decline in the face of modern technology, science, and culture.

Functionalism was another theoretical framework that sought to explain religion. Functionalists did not consider religion to be a stage in human cultural development that would eventually be overcome. They saw it as a set of social institutions that served important functions in the societies they were part of. For example, the sociologist Émile Durkheim (1912 [1915]) argued that religious beliefs are social glue that helps to keep societies together.

Sigmund Freud and other early psychologists aimed to explain religion as the result of cognitive dispositions. For example, Freud (1927) saw religious belief as an illusion, a childlike yearning for a fatherly figure. He also considered “oceanic feeling” (a feeling of limitlessness and of being connected with the world, a concept he derived from the French author Romain Rolland) as one of the origins of religious belief. He thought this feeling was a remnant of an infant’s experience of the self, prior to being weaned off the breast. William James (1902) was interested in the psychological roots and the phenomenology of religious experiences, which he believed were the ultimate source of all institutional religions.

From the 1920s onward, the scientific study of religion became less concerned with grand unifying narratives, and focused more on particular religious traditions and beliefs. Anthropologists such as Edward Evans-Pritchard (1937) and Bronisław Malinowski (1925) no longer relied exclusively on second-hand reports (usually of poor quality and from distorted sources), but engaged in serious fieldwork. Their ethnographies indicated that cultural evolutionism was a defective theoretical framework and that religious beliefs were more diverse than was previously assumed. They argued that religious beliefs were not the result of ignorance of naturalistic mechanisms. For instance, Evans-Pritchard (1937) noted that the Azande were well aware that houses could collapse because termites ate away at their foundations, but they still appealed to witchcraft to explain why a particular house collapsed at a particular time. More recently, Cristine Legare et al. (2012) found that people in various cultures straightforwardly combine supernatural and natural explanations, for instance, South Africans are aware AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, but some also believe that the viral infection is ultimately caused by a witch.

Psychologists and sociologists of religion also began to doubt that religious beliefs were rooted in irrationality, psychopathology, and other atypical psychological states, as James (1902) and other early psychologists had assumed. In the US, in the late 1930s through the 1960s, psychologists developed a renewed interest for religion, fueled by the observation that religion refused to decline and seemed to undergo a substantial revival, thus casting doubt on the secularization thesis (see Stark 1999 for an overview). Psychologists of religion have made increasingly fine-grained distinctions between types of religiosity, including extrinsic religiosity (being religious as means to an end, for instance, getting the benefits of being a member of a social group) and intrinsic religiosity (people who adhere to religions for the sake of their teachings) (Allport & Ross 1967). Psychologists and sociologists now commonly study religiosity as an independent variable, with an impact on, for instance, health, criminality, sexuality, socio-economic profile, and social networks.

A recent development in the scientific study of religion is the cognitive science of religion (CSR). This is a multidisciplinary field, with authors from, among others, developmental psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive psychology (see C. White 2021 for a comprehensive overview). It differs from other scientific approaches to religion in its presupposition that religion is not a purely cultural phenomenon. Rather, authors in CSR hold that religion is the result of ordinary, early developed, and universal human cognitive processes (e.g., Barrett 2004, Boyer 2002). Some authors regard religion as the byproduct of cognitive processes that are not evolved for religion. For example, according to Paul Bloom (2007), religion emerges as a byproduct of our intuitive distinction between minds and bodies: we can think of minds as continuing, even after the body dies (e.g., by attributing desires to a dead family member), which makes belief in an afterlife and in disembodied spirits natural and spontaneous. Another family of hypotheses regards religion as a biological or cultural adaptive response that helps humans solve cooperative problems (e.g., Bering 2011; Purzycki & Sosis 2022): through their belief in big, powerful gods that can punish, humans behave more cooperatively, which allowed human group sizes to expand beyond small hunter-gatherer communities. Groups with belief in big gods thus out-competed groups without such beliefs for resources during the Neolithic, which would explain the current success of belief in such gods (Norenzayan 2013). However, the question of which came first—big god beliefs or large-scale societies—is a continued matter of debate.

2. Science and religion in various religions

As noted, most studies on the relationship between science and religion have focused on science and Christianity, with only a small number of publications devoted to other religious traditions (e.g., Brooke & Numbers 2011; Lopez 2008). Since science makes universal claims, it is easy to assume that its encounter with other religious traditions would be similar to its interactions with Christianity. However, given different creedal tenets (e.g., in Hindu traditions God is usually not entirely distinct from creation, unlike in Christianity and Judaism), and because science has had distinct historical trajectories in other cultures, one can expect disanalogies in the relationship between science and religion in different religious traditions. To give a sense of this diversity, this section provides a bird’s eye view of science and religion in five major world religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, currently the religion with the most adherents. It developed in the first century CE out of Judaism. Christians adhere to asserted revelations described in a series of canonical texts, which include the Old Testament, which comprises texts inherited from Judaism, and the New Testament, which contains the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (narratives on the life and teachings of Jesus), as well as events and teachings of the early Christian churches (e.g., Acts of the Apostles, letters by Paul), and Revelation, a prophetic book on the end times.

Given the prominence of revealed texts in Christianity, a useful starting point to examine the relationship between Christianity and science is the two books metaphor (see Tanzella-Nitti 2005 for an overview): God revealed Godself through the “Book of Nature”, with its orderly laws, and the “Book of Scripture”, with its historical narratives and accounts of miracles. Augustine (354–430) argued that the book of nature was the more accessible of the two, since scripture requires literacy whereas illiterates and literates alike could read the book of nature. Maximus Confessor (c. 580–662), in his Ambigua (see Louth 1996 for a collection of and critical introduction to these texts) compared scripture and natural law to two clothes that envelop the Incarnated Logos: Jesus’ humanity is revealed by nature, whereas his divinity is revealed by the scriptures. During the Middle Ages, authors such as Hugh of St. Victor (ca. 1096–1141) and Bonaventure (1221–1274) began to realize that the book of nature was not at all straightforward to read. Given that original sin marred our reason and perception, what conclusions could humans legitimately draw about ultimate reality? Bonaventure used the metaphor of the books to the extent that “ liber naturae ” was a synonym for creation, the natural world. He argued that sin has clouded human reason so much that the book of nature has become unreadable, and that scripture is needed as an aid as it contains teachings about the world.

Christian authors in the field of science and religion continue to debate how these two books interrelate. Concordism is the attempt to interpret scripture in the light of modern science. It is a hermeneutical approach to Bible interpretation, where one expects that the Bible foretells scientific theories, such as the Big Bang theory or evolutionary theory. However, as Denis Lamoureux (2008: chapter 5) argues, many scientific-sounding statements in the Bible are false: the mustard seed is not the smallest seed, male reproductive seeds do not contain miniature persons, there is no firmament, and the earth is neither flat nor immovable. Thus, any plausible form of integrating the book of nature and scripture will require more nuance and sophistication. Theologians such as John Wesley (1703–1791) have proposed the addition of other sources of knowledge to scripture and science: the Wesleyan quadrilateral (a term not coined by Wesley himself) is the dynamic interaction of scripture, experience (including the empirical findings of the sciences), tradition, and reason (Outler 1985).

Several Christian authors have attempted to integrate science and religion (e.g., Haught 1995, Lamoureux 2008, Murphy 1995), making integration a highly popular view on the relationship between science and religion. These authors tend to interpret findings from the sciences, such as evolutionary theory or chaos theory, in a theological light, using established theological models such as classical theism or the doctrine of creation. John Haught (1995) argues that the theological view of kenosis (self-emptying of God in creation) anticipates scientific findings such as evolutionary theory: a self-emptying God (i.e., who limits Godself), who creates a distinct and autonomous world, makes a world with internal self-coherence, with a self-organizing universe as the result.

The dominant epistemological outlook in Christian science and religion has been critical realism, a position that applies both to theology (theological realism) and to science (scientific realism). Barbour (1966) introduced this view into the science and religion literature; it has been further developed by theologians such as Arthur Peacocke (1984) and Wentzel van Huyssteen (1999). Critical realism aims to offer a middle way between naïve realism (the world is as we perceive it) and instrumentalism (our perceptions and concepts are purely instrumental). It encourages critical reflection on perception and the world, hence “critical”. Critical realism has distinct flavors in the works of different authors, for instance, van Huyssteen (1998, 1999) develops a weak form of critical realism set within a postfoundationalist notion of rationality, where theological views are shaped by social, cultural, and evolved biological factors. Murphy (1995: 329–330) outlines doctrinal and scientific requirements for approaches in science and religion: ideally, an integrated approach should be broadly in line with Christian doctrine, especially core tenets such as the doctrine of creation, while at the same time it should be in line with empirical observations without undercutting scientific practices.

Several historians (e.g., Hooykaas 1972) have argued that Christianity was instrumental to the development of Western science. Peter Harrison (2007) maintains that the doctrine of original sin played a crucial role in this, arguing there was a widespread belief in the early modern period that Adam, prior to the Fall, had superior senses, intellect, and understanding. As a result of the Fall, human senses became duller, our ability to make correct inferences was diminished, and nature itself became less intelligible. Postlapsarian humans (i.e., humans after the Fall) are no longer able to exclusively rely on their a priori reasoning to understand nature. They must supplement their reasoning and senses with observation through specialized instruments, such as microscopes and telescopes. As the experimental philosopher Robert Hooke wrote in the introduction to his Micrographia :

every man, both from a deriv’d corruption, innate and born with him, and from his breeding and converse with men, is very subject to slip into all sorts of errors … These being the dangers in the process of humane Reason, the remedies of them all can only proceed from the real, the mechanical, the experimental Philosophy [experiment-based science]. (1665, cited in Harrison 2007: 5)

Another theological development that may have facilitated the rise of science was the Condemnation of Paris (1277), which forbade teaching and reading natural philosophical views that were considered heretical, such as Aristotle’s physical treatises. As a result, the Condemnation opened up intellectual space to think beyond ancient Greek natural philosophy. For example, medieval philosophers such as John Buridan (fl. 14th c) held the Aristotelian belief that there could be no vacuum in nature, but once the idea of a vacuum became plausible, natural philosophers such as Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647) and Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) could experiment with air pressure and vacua (see Grant 1996, for discussion).

Some authors claim that Christianity was unique and instrumental in catalyzing the scientific revolution. For example, according to the sociologist of religion Rodney Stark (2004), the scientific revolution was in fact a slow, gradual development from medieval Christian theology. Claims such as Stark’s, however, fail to recognize the legitimate contributions of Islamic and Greek scholars to the development of modern science, and fail to do justice to the importance of practical technological innovations in map-making and star-charting in the emergence of modern science. In spite of these positive readings of the relationship between science and religion in Christianity, there are sources of enduring tension. For example, there is still vocal opposition to the theory of evolution among Christian fundamentalists. In the public sphere, the conflict view between Christianity and science prevails, in stark contrast to the scholarly literature. This is due to an important extent to the outsize influence of a vocal conservative Christian minority in the American public debate, which sidelines more moderate voices (Evans 2016).

Islam is a monotheistic religion that emerged in the seventh century, following a series of purported revelations to the prophet Muḥammad. The term “Islam” also denotes geo-political structures, such as caliphates and empires, which were founded by Muslim rulers from the seventh century onward, including the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman caliphates. Additionally, it refers to a culture which flourished within this political and religious context, with its own philosophical and scientific traditions (Dhanani 2002). The defining characteristic of Islam is belief in one God (Allāh), who communicates through prophets, including Adam, Abraham, and Muḥammad. Allāh‎’s revelations to Muḥammad are recorded in the Qurʾān, the central religious text for Islam. Next to the Qurʾān, an important source of jurisprudence and theology is the ḥadīth, an oral corpus of attested sayings, actions, and tacit approvals of the prophet Muḥammad. The two major branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, are based on a dispute over the succession of Muḥammad. As the second largest religion in the world, Islam shows a wide variety of beliefs. Core creedal views include the oneness of God ( tawḥīd ), the view that there is only one undivided God who created and sustains the universe, prophetic revelation (in particular to Muḥammad), and an afterlife. Beyond this, Muslims disagree on a number of doctrinal issues.

The relationship between Islam and science is complex. Today, predominantly Muslim countries, such as the United Arabic Emirates, enjoy high urbanization and technological development, but they still underperform in common metrics of scientific research, such as publications in leading journals and number of citations per scientist, compared to other regions outside of the west such as India and China (see Edis 2007). Some Muslims hold a number of pseudoscientific ideas, some of which it shares with Christianity such as Old Earth creationism, whereas others are specific to Islam such as the recreation of human bodies from the tailbone on the day of resurrection, and the superiority of prayer in treating lower-back pain instead of conventional methods (Guessoum 2011: 4–5).

This contemporary lack of scientific prominence is remarkable given that the Islamic world far exceeded European cultures in the range and quality of its scientific knowledge between approximately the ninth and the fifteenth century, excelling in domains such as mathematics (algebra and geometry, trigonometry in particular), astronomy (seriously considering, but not adopting, heliocentrism), optics, and medicine. These domains of knowledge are commonly referred to as “Arabic science”, to distinguish them from the pursuits of science that arose in the west (Huff 2003). “Arabic science” is an imperfect term, as many of the practitioners were not speakers of Arabic, hence the term “science in the Islamic world” is more accurate. Many scientists in the Islamic world were polymaths, for example, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, 980–1037) is commonly regarded as one of the most significant innovators, not only in philosophy, but also in medicine and astronomy. His Canon of Medicine , a medical encyclopedia, was a standard textbook in universities across Europe for many centuries after his death. Al-Fārābī (ca. 872–ca. 950), a political philosopher from Damascus, also investigated music theory, science, and mathematics. Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) achieved lasting fame in disparate domains such as poetry, astronomy, geography, and mineralogy. The Andalusian Ibn Rušd (Averroes, 1126–1198) wrote on medicine, physics, astronomy, psychology, jurisprudence, music, and geography, next to developing a Greek-inspired philosophical theology.

A major impetus for science in the Islamic world was the patronage of the Abbasid caliphate (758–1258), centered in Baghdad. Early Abbasid rulers, such as Harun al-Rashid (ruled 786–809) and his successor Abū Jaʿfar Abdullāh al-Ma’mūn (ruled 813–833), were significant patrons of science. The former founded the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom), which commissioned translations of major works by Aristotle, Galen, and many Persian and Indian scholars into Arabic. It was cosmopolitan in its outlook, employing astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians from abroad, including Indian mathematicians and Nestorian (Christian) astronomers. Throughout the Islamic world, public libraries attached to mosques provided access to a vast compendium of knowledge, which spread Islam, Greek philosophy, and science. The use of a common language (Arabic), as well as common religious and political institutions and flourishing trade relations encouraged the spread of scientific ideas throughout the Islamic world. Some of this transmission was informal, e.g., correspondence between like-minded people (see Dhanani 2002), some formal, e.g., in hospitals where students learned about medicine in a practical, master-apprentice setting, and in astronomical observatories and academies. The decline and fall of the Abbasid caliphate dealt a blow to science in the Islamic world, but it remains unclear why it ultimately stagnated, and why it did not experience something analogous to the scientific revolution in Western Europe. Note, the decline of science in the Islamic world should not be generalized to other fields, such as philosophy and philosophical theology, which continued to flourish after the Abbasid caliphate fell.

Some liberal Muslim authors, such as Fatima Mernissi (1992), argue that the rise of conservative forms of Islamic philosophical theology stifled more scientifically-minded natural philosophy. In the ninth to the twelfth century, the Mu’tazila (a philosophical theological school) helped the growth of science in the Islamic world thanks to their embrace of Greek natural philosophy. But eventually, the Mu’tazila and their intellectual descendants lost their influence to more conservative brands of theology. Al-Ghazālī’s influential eleventh-century work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers ( Tahāfut al-falāsifa ), was a scathing and sophisticated critique of Greek-inspired Muslim philosophy, arguing that their metaphysical assumptions could not be demonstrated. This book vindicated more orthodox Muslim religious views. As Muslim intellectual life became more orthodox, it became less open to non-Muslim philosophical ideas, which led to the decline of science in the Islamic world, according to this view.

The problem with this narrative is that orthodox worries about non-Islamic knowledge were already present before Al-Ghazālī and continued long after his death (Edis 2007: chapter 2). The study of law ( fiqh ) was more stifling for science in the Islamic world than developments in theology. The eleventh century saw changes in Islamic law that discouraged heterodox thought: lack of orthodoxy could now be regarded as apostasy from Islam ( zandaqa ) which is punishable by death, whereas before, a Muslim could only apostatize by an explicit declaration (Griffel 2009: 105). (Al-Ghazālī himself only regarded the violation of three core doctrines as zandaqa , namely statements that challenged monotheism, the prophecy of Muḥammad, and resurrection after death.) Given that heterodox thoughts could be interpreted as apostasy, this created a stifling climate for science. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as science and technology became firmly entrenched in Western society, Muslim empires were languishing or colonized. Scientific ideas, such as evolutionary theory, became equated with European colonialism, and thus met with distrust. The enduring association between western culture, colonialism, and science led to a more prominent conflict view of the relationship between science and religion in Muslim countries.

In spite of this negative association between science and Western modernity, there is an emerging literature on science and religion by Muslim scholars (mostly scientists). The physicist Nidhal Guessoum (2011) holds that science and religion are not only compatible, but in harmony. He rejects the idea of treating the Qurʾān as a scientific encyclopedia, something other Muslim authors in the debate on science and religion tend to do. Moreover, he adheres to the no-possible-conflict principle, outlined by Ibn Rušd: there can be no conflict between God’s word (properly understood) and God’s work (properly understood). If an apparent conflict arises, the Qurʾān may not have been interpreted correctly.

While the Qurʾān asserts a creation in six days (like the Hebrew Bible), “day” is often interpreted as a very long span of time, rather than a 24-hour period. As a result, Old Earth creationism is more influential in Islam than Young Earth creationism. Adnan Oktar’s Atlas of Creation (published in 2007 under the pseudonym Harun Yahya), a glossy coffee table book that draws heavily on Christian Old Earth creationism, has been distributed worldwide (Hameed 2008). Since the Qurʾān explicitly mentions the special creation of Adam out of clay, most Muslims refuse to accept that humans evolved from hominin ancestors. Nevertheless, Muslim scientists such as Guessoum (2011) and Rana Dajani (2015) have advocated acceptance of evolution.

Hinduism is the world’s third largest religion, though the term “Hinduism” is an awkward catch-all phrase that denotes diverse religious and philosophical traditions that emerged on the Indian subcontinent between 500 BCE and 300 CE. The vast majority of Hindus live in India; most others live in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, with a significant diaspora in western countries such as the United States (Hackett 2015 [ Other Internet Resources ]). In contrast to the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not always draw a sharp distinction between God and creation. (While there are pantheistic and panentheistic views in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, these are minority positions.) Many Hindus believe in a personal God, and identify this God as immanent in creation. This view has ramifications for the science and religion debate, in that there is no sharp ontological distinction between creator and creature (Subbarayappa 2011). Religious traditions originating on the Indian subcontinent, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are referred to as dharmic religions. Philosophical points of view are referred to as darśana .

One factor that unites the different strands of Hinduism is the importance of foundational texts composed between ca. 1600 and 700 BCE. These include the Vedas, which contain hymns and prescriptions for performing rituals, Brāhmaṇa, accompanying liturgical texts, and Upaniṣad, metaphysical treatises. The Vedas discuss gods who personify and embody natural phenomena such as fire (Agni) and wind (Vāyu). More gods appear in the following centuries (e.g., Gaṇeśa and Sati-Parvati in the 4th century). Note that there are both polytheistic and monotheistic strands in Hinduism, so it is not the case that individual believers worship or recognize all of these gods. Ancient Vedic rituals encouraged knowledge of diverse sciences, including astronomy, linguistics, and mathematics. Astronomical knowledge was required to determine the timing of rituals and the construction of sacrificial altars. Linguistics developed out of a need to formalize grammatical rules for classical Sanskrit, which was used in rituals. Large public offerings also required the construction of elaborate altars, which posed geometrical problems and thus led to advances in geometry. Classic Vedic texts also frequently used very large numbers, for instance, to denote the age of humanity and the Earth, which required a system to represent numbers parsimoniously, giving rise to a 10-base positional system and a symbolic representation for zero as a placeholder, which would later be imported in other mathematical traditions (Joseph 1991 [2000]). In this way, ancient Indian dharma encouraged the emergence of the sciences.

Around the sixth–fifth century BCE, the northern part of the Indian subcontinent experienced an extensive urbanization. In this context, medicine ( āyurveda ) became standardized. This period also gave rise to a wide range of heterodox philosophical schools, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Cārvāka. The latter defended a form of metaphysical naturalism, denying the existence of gods or karma. The relationship between science and religion on the Indian subcontinent is complex, in part because the dharmic religions and philosophical schools are so diverse. For example, Cārvāka proponents had a strong suspicion of inferential beliefs, and rejected Vedic revelation and supernaturalism in general, instead favoring direct observation as a source of knowledge.

Natural theology also flourished in the pre-colonial period, especially in the Advaita Vedānta, a darśana that identifies the self, ātman , with ultimate reality, Brahman. Advaita Vedāntin philosopher Adi Śaṅkara (fl. first half eighth century) was an author who regarded Brahman as the only reality, both the material and the efficient cause of the cosmos. Śaṅkara formulated design and cosmological arguments, drawing on analogies between the world and artifacts: in ordinary life, we never see non-intelligent agents produce purposive design, yet the universe is suitable for human life, just like benches and pleasure gardens are designed for us. Given that the universe is so complex that even an intelligent craftsman cannot comprehend it, how could it have been created by non-intelligent natural forces? Śaṅkara concluded that it must have been designed by an intelligent creator (C.M. Brown 2008: 108).

From 1757 to 1947, India was under British colonial rule. This had a profound influence on its culture as Hindus came into contact with Western science and technology. For local intellectuals, the contact with Western science presented a challenge: how to assimilate these ideas with Hinduism? Mahendrahal Sircar (1833–1904) was one of the first authors to examine evolutionary theory and its implications for Hindu religious beliefs. Sircar was an evolutionary theist, who believed that God used evolution to create current life forms. Evolutionary theism was not a new hypothesis in Hinduism, but the many lines of empirical evidence Darwin provided for evolution gave it a fresh impetus. While Sircar accepted organic evolution through common descent, he questioned the mechanism of natural selection as it was not teleological, which went against his evolutionary theism. This was a widespread problem for the acceptance of evolutionary theory, one that Christian evolutionary theists also wrestled with (Bowler 2009). He also argued against the British colonists’ beliefs that Hindus were incapable of scientific thought, and encouraged fellow Hindus to engage in science, which he hoped would help regenerate the Indian nation (C.M. Brown 2012: chapter 6).

The assimilation of Western culture prompted various revivalist movements that sought to reaffirm the cultural value of Hinduism. They put forward the idea of a Vedic science, where all scientific findings are already prefigured in the Vedas and other ancient texts (e.g., Vivekananda 1904). This idea is still popular within contemporary Hinduism, and is quite similar to ideas held by contemporary Muslims, who refer to the Qurʾān as a harbinger of scientific theories.

Responses to evolutionary theory were as diverse as Christian views on this subject, ranging from creationism (denial of evolutionary theory based on a perceived incompatibility with Vedic texts) to acceptance (see C.M. Brown 2012 for a thorough overview). Authors such as Dayananda Saraswati (1930–2015) rejected evolutionary theory. By contrast, Vivekananda (1863–1902), a proponent of the monistic Advaita Vedānta enthusiastically endorsed evolutionary theory and argued that it is already prefigured in ancient Vedic texts. His integrative view claimed that Hinduism and science are in harmony: Hinduism is scientific in spirit, as is evident from its long history of scientific discovery (Vivekananda 1904). Sri Aurobindo Ghose, a yogi and Indian nationalist who was educated in the West, formulated a synthesis of evolutionary thought and Hinduism. He interpreted the classic avatara doctrine, according to which God incarnates into the world repeatedly throughout time, in evolutionary terms. God thus appears first as an animal, later as a dwarf, then as a violent man (Rama), and then as Buddha, and as Kṛṣṇa. He proposed a metaphysical picture where both spiritual evolution (reincarnation and avatars) and physical evolution are ultimately a manifestation of God (Brahman). This view of reality as consisting of matter ( prakṛti ) and consciousness ( puruṣa ) goes back to sāṃkhya , one of the orthodox Hindu darśana, but Aurobindo made explicit reference to the divine, calling the process during which the supreme Consciousness dwells in matter involution (Aurobindo, 1914–18 [2005], see C.M. Brown 2007 for discussion).

During the twentieth century, Indian scientists began to gain prominence, including C.V. Raman (1888–1970), a Nobel Prize winner in physics, and Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974), a theoretical physicist who described the behavior of photons statistically, and who gave his name to bosons. However, these authors were silent on the relationship between their scientific work and their religious beliefs. By contrast, the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) was open about his religious beliefs and their influence on his mathematical work. He claimed that the goddess Namagiri helped him to intuit solutions to mathematical problems. Likewise, Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), a theoretical physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist, and archaeologist who worked on radio waves, saw the Hindu idea of unity reflected in the study of nature. He started the Bose institute in Kolkata in 1917, the earliest interdisciplinary scientific institute in India (Subbarayappa 2011).

Buddhism, like the other religious traditions surveyed in this entry, encompasses many views and practices. The principal forms of Buddhism that exist today are Theravāda and Mahāyāna. (Vajrayāna, the tantric tradition of Buddhism, is also sometimes seen as a distinct form.) Theravāda is the dominant form of Buddhism of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. It traditionally refers to monastic and textual lineages associated with the study of the Pāli Buddhist Canon. Mahāyāna refers to a movement that likely began roughly four centuries after the Buddha’s death; it became the dominant form of Buddhism in East and Central Asia. It includes Chan or Zen, and also tantric Buddhism, which today is found mostly in Tibet, though East Asian forms also exist.

Buddhism originated in the historical figure of the Buddha (historically, Gautama Buddha or Siddhārtha Gautama, ca. 5 th –4 th century BCE). His teaching centered on ethics as well as metaphysics, incapsulated in the Four Noble Truths (on suffering and its origin in human desires), and the Noble Eightfold Path (right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) to end suffering and to break the cycle of rebirths, culminating in reaching Nirvana. Substantive metaphysical teachings include belief in karma, the no-self, and the cycle of rebirth.

As a response to colonialist attitudes, modern Buddhists since the nineteenth century have often presented Buddhism as harmonious with science (Lopez 2008). The argument is roughly that since Buddhism doesn’t require belief in metaphysically substantive entities such as God, the soul, or the self (unlike, for example, Christianity), Buddhism should be easily compatible with the factual claims that scientists make. (Note, however, that historically most Buddhist have believed in various forms of divine abode and divinities.) We could thus expect the dialogue and integration view to prevail in Buddhism. An exemplar for integration is the fourteenth Dalai Lama, who is known for his numerous efforts to lead dialogue between religious people and scientists. He has extensively written on the relationship between Buddhism and various scientific disciplines such as neuroscience and cosmology (e.g., Dalai Lama 2005, see also the Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics series, a four-volume series conceived and compiled by the Dalai Lama, e.g., Jinpa 2017). Donald Lopez Jr (2008) identifies compatibility as an enduring claim in the debate on science and Buddhism, in spite of the fact that what is meant by these concepts has shifted markedly over time. As David McMahan (2009) argues, Buddhism underwent profound shifts in response to modernity in the west as well as globally. In this modern context, Buddhists have often asserted the compatibility of Buddhism with science, favorably contrasting their religion to Christianity in that respect.

The full picture of the relationship between Buddhism and religion is more nuanced than one of wholesale acceptance of scientific claims. I will here focus on East Asia, primarily Japan and China, and the reception of evolutionary theory in the early twentieth century to give a sense of this more complex picture. The earliest translations of evolutionary thought in Japan and China were not drawn from Darwin’s Origin of Species or Descent of Man , but from works by authors who worked in Darwin’s wake, such as Ernst Haeckel and Thomas Huxley. For example, the earliest translated writings on evolutionary theory in China was a compilation by Yan Fu entitled On Natural Evolution ( Tianyan lun ), which incorporated excerpts by Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley. This work drew a close distinction between social Darwinism and biological evolution (Ritzinger 2013). Chinese and Japanese Buddhists received these ideas in the context of western colonialism and imperialism. East Asian intellectuals saw how western colonial powers competed with each other for influence on their territory, and discerned parallels between this and the Darwinian struggle for existence. As a result, some intellectuals such as the Japanese political adviser and academic Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916) drew on Darwinian thought and popularized notions such as “survival of the fittest” to justify the foreign policies of the Meiji government (Burenina 2020). It is in this context that we can situate Buddhist responses to evolutionary theory.

Buddhists do not distinguish between human beings as possessing a soul and other animals as soulless. As we are all part of the cycle of rebirth, we have all been in previous lives various other beings, including birds, insects, and fish. The problem of the specificity of the human soul does not even arise because of the no-self doctrine. Nevertheless, as Justin Ritzinger (2013) points out, Chinese Buddhists in the 1920s and 1930s who were confronted with early evolutionary theory did not accept Darwin’s theory wholesale. In their view, the central element of Darwinism—the struggle for existence—was incompatible with Buddhism, with its emphasis on compassion with other creatures. They rejected social Darwinism (which sought to engineer societies along Darwinian principles) because it was incompatible with Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. Struggling to survive and to propagate was clinging onto worldly things. Taixu (1890–1947), a Chinese Reformer and Buddhist modernist, instead chose to appropriate Pyotr Kropotkin’s evolutionary views, specifically on mutual aid and altruism. The Russian anarchist argued that cooperation was central to evolutionary change, a view that is currently also more mainstream. However, Kropotkin’s view did not go far enough in Taixu’s opinion because mutual aid still requires a self. Only when one recognizes the no-self doctrine could one dedicate oneself entirely to helping others, as bodhisattvas do (Ritzinger 2013).

Similar dynamics can be seen in the reception of evolutionary theory among Japanese Buddhists. Evolutionary theory was introduced in Japan during the early Meji period (1868–1912) when Japan opened itself to foreign trade and ideas. Foreign experts, such as the American zoologist Edward S. Morse (1838–1925) shared their knowledge of the sciences with Japanese scholars. The latter were interested in the social ramifications of Darwinism, particularly because they had access to translated versions of Spencer’s and Huxley’s work before they could read Darwin’s. Japanese Buddhists of the Nichiren tradition accepted many elements of evolutionary theory, but they rejected other elements, notably the struggle for existence, and randomness and chance, as this contradicts the role of karma in one’s circumstances at birth.

Among the advocates of the modern Nishiren Buddhist movement is Honda Nisshō (1867–1931). Honda emphasized the importance of retrogressions (in addition to progress, which was the main element in evolution that western authors such as Haeckel and Spencer considered). He strongly argued against social Darwinism, the application of evolutionary principles in social engineering, on religious grounds. He argued that we can accept humans are descended from apes without having to posit a pessimistic view of human nature that sees us as engaged in a struggle for survival with fellow human beings. Like Chinese Buddhists, Honda thought Kropotkin’s thesis of mutual aid was more compatible with Buddhism, but he was suspicious of Kropotkin’s anarchism (Burenina 2020). His work, like that of other East Asian Buddhists indicates that historically, Buddhists are not passive recipients of western science but creative interpreters. In some cases, their religious reasons for rejecting some metaphysical assumptions in evolutionary theory led them to anticipate recent developments in biology, such as the recognition of cooperation as an evolutionary principle.

Judaism is one of the three major Abrahamic monotheistic traditions, encompassing a range of beliefs and practices that express a covenant between God and the people of Israel. Central to both Jewish practice and beliefs is the study of texts, including the written Torah (the Tanakh, sometimes called “Hebrew Bible”), and the “Oral Law” of Rabbinic Judaism, compiled in such works like the Talmud. There is also a corpus of esoteric, mystical interpretations of biblical texts, the Kabbalah, which has influenced Jewish works on the relationship between science and religion. The Kabbalah also had an influence on Renaissance and early modern Christian authors such as Pico Della Mirandola, whose work helped to shape the scientific revolution (see the entry on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola ). The theologian Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon, 1138–1204, aka Rambam) had an enduring influence on Jewish thought up until today, also in the science and religion literature.

Most contemporary strains of Judaism are Rabbinic, rather than biblical, and this has profound implications for the relationship between religion and science. While both Jews and Evangelical Christians emphasize the reading of sacred texts, the Rabbinic traditions (unlike, for example, the Evangelical Christian tradition) holds that reading and interpreting texts is far from straightforward. Scripture should not be read in a simple literal fashion. This opens up more space for accepting scientific theories (e.g., Big Bang cosmology) that seem at odds with a simple literal reading of the Torah (e.g., the six-day creation in Genesis) (Mitelman 2011 [ Other Internet Resources ]). Moreover, most non-Orthodox Jews in the US identify as politically liberal, so openness to science may also be an identity marker given that politically liberal people in the US have positive attitudes toward science (Pew Forum, 2021 [ Other Internet Resources ]).

Jewish thinkers have made substantive theoretical contributions to the relationship between science and religion, which differ in interesting respects from those seen in the literature written by Christian authors. To give just a few examples, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), a prominent neo-Kantian German Jewish philosopher, thought of the relationship between Judaism and science in the light of the advances in scientific disciplines and the increased participation of Jewish scholars in the sciences. He argued that science, ethics, and Judaism should all be conceived of as distinct but complementary sciences. Cohen believed that his Jewish religious community was facing an epistemic crisis. All references to God had become suspect due to an adherence to naturalism, at first epistemological, but fast becoming ontological. Cohen saw the concept of a transcendent God as foundational to both Jewish practice and belief, so he thought adherence to wholesale naturalism threatened both Jewish orthodoxy and orthopraxy. As Teri Merrick (2020) argues, Cohen suspected this was in part due to epistemic oppression and self-censuring (though Cohen did not frame it in these terms). Because Jewish scientists wanted to retain credibility in the Christian majority culture, they underplayed and neglected the rich Jewish intellectual legacy in their practice. In response to this intellectual crisis, Cohen proposed to reframe Jewish thought and philosophy so that it would be recognized as both continuous with the tradition and essentially contributing to ethical and scientific advances. In this way, he reframed this tradition, articulating a broadly Kantian philosophy of science to combat a perceived conflict between Judaism and science (see the entry on Hermann Cohen for an in-depth discussion).

Jewish religious scholars have examined how science might influence religious beliefs, and vice versa. Rather than a unified response we see a spectrum of philosophical views, especially since the nineteenth and early twentieth century. As Shai Cherry (2003) surveys, Jewish scholars in the early twentieth century accepted biological evolution but were hesitant about Darwinian natural selection as the mechanism. The Latvian-born Israeli rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) thought that religion and science are largely separate domains (a view somewhat similar to Gould’s NOMA), though he believed that there was a possible flow from religion to science. For example, Kook challenged the lack of directionality in Darwinian evolutionary theory. Using readings of the Kabbalah (and Halakhah, Jewish law), he proposed that biological evolution fits in a larger picture of cosmic evolution towards perfection.

By contrast, the American rabbi Morcedai Kaplan (1881–1983) thought information flow between science and religion could go in both directions, a view reminiscent to Barbour’s dialogue position. He repeatedly argued against scientism (the encroachment of science on too many aspects of human life, including ethics and religion), but he believed nevertheless we ought to apply scientific methods to religion. He saw reality as an unfolding process without a pre-ordained goal: it was progressive, but not teleologically determined. Kaplan emphasized the importance of morality (and identified God as the source of this process), and conceptualized humanity as not merely a passive recipient of evolutionary change, but an active participant, prefiguring work in evolutionary biology on the importance of agency in evolution (e.g., Okasha 2018). Thus, Kaplan’s reception of scientific theories, especially evolution, led him to formulate an early Jewish process theology.

Reform Judaism endorses an explicit anti-conflict view on the relationship between science and religion. For example, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, the first document of the Reform rabbinate, has a statement that explicitly says that science and Judaism are not in conflict:

We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism.

This Platform had an enduring influence on Reform Judaism over the next decades. Secular Jewish scientists such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Douglas Daniel Kahneman, and Stephen J. Gould have also reflected on the relationship between science and broader issues of existential significance, and have exerted considerable influence on the science and religion debate.

3. Central topics in the debate

Current work in the field of science and religion encompasses a wealth of topics, including free will, ethics, human nature, and consciousness. Contemporary natural theologians discuss fine-tuning, in particular design arguments based on it (e.g., R. Collins 2009), the interpretation of multiverse cosmology, and the significance of the Big Bang (see entries on fine-tuning arguments and natural theology and natural religion ). For instance, authors such as Hud Hudson (2013) have explored the idea that God has actualized the best of all possible multiverses. Here follows an overview of two topics that continue to generate substantial interest and debate: divine action (and the closely related topic of creation) and human origins. The focus will be on Christian work in science and religion, due to its prevalence in the literature.

Before scientists developed their views on cosmology and origins of the world, Western cultures already had a doctrine of creation, based on biblical texts (e.g., the first three chapters of Genesis and the book of Revelation) and the writings of church fathers such as Augustine. This doctrine of creation has the following interrelated features: first, God created the world ex nihilo, i.e., out of nothing. Differently put, God did not need any pre-existing materials to make the world, unlike, e.g., the Demiurge (from Greek philosophy), who created the world from chaotic, pre-existing matter. Second, God is distinct from the world; the world is not equal to or part of God (contra pantheism or panentheism) or a (necessary) emanation of God’s being (contra Neoplatonism). Rather, God created the world freely. This introduces an asymmetry between creator and creature: the world is radically contingent upon God’s creative act and is also sustained by God, whereas God does not need creation (Jaeger 2012b: 3). Third, the doctrine of creation holds that creation is essentially good (this is repeatedly affirmed in Genesis 1). The world does contain evil, but God does not directly cause this evil to exist. Moreover, God does not merely passively sustain creation, but rather plays an active role in it, using special divine actions (e.g., miracles and revelations) to care for creatures. Fourth, God made provisions for the end of the world, and will create a new heaven and earth, in this way eradicating evil.

Views on divine action are related to the doctrine of creation. Theologians commonly draw a distinction between general and special divine action, but within the field of science and religion there is no universally accepted definition of these two concepts. One way to distinguish them (Wildman 2008: 140) is to regard general divine action as the creation and sustenance of reality, and special divine action as the collection of specific providential acts, such as miracles and revelations to prophets. Drawing this distinction allows for creatures to be autonomous and indicates that God does not micromanage every detail of creation. Still, the distinction is not always clear-cut, as some phenomena are difficult to classify as either general or special divine action. For example, the Roman Catholic Eucharist (in which bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus) or some healing miracles outside of scripture seem mundane enough to be part of general housekeeping (general divine action), but still seem to involve some form of special intervention on God’s part. Alston (1989) makes a related distinction between direct and indirect divine acts. God brings about direct acts without the use of natural causes, whereas indirect acts are achieved through natural causes. Using this distinction, there are four possible kinds of actions that God could do: God could not act in the world at all, God could act only directly, God could act only indirectly, or God could act both directly and indirectly.

In the science and religion literature, there are two central questions on creation and divine action. To what extent are the Christian doctrine of creation and traditional views of divine action compatible with science? How can these concepts be understood within a scientific context, e.g., what does it mean for God to create and act? Note that the doctrine of creation says nothing about the age of the Earth, nor does it specify a mode of creation. This allows for a wide range of possible views within science and religion, of which Young Earth creationism is but one that is consistent with scripture. Indeed, some scientific theories, such as the Big Bang theory, first proposed by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître (1927), look congenial to the doctrine of creation. The theory is not in contradiction, and could be integrated into creatio ex nihilo as it specifies that the universe originated from an extremely hot and dense state around 13.8 billion years ago (Craig 2003), although some philosophers have argued against the interpretation that the universe has a temporal beginning (e.g., Pitts 2008).

The net result of scientific findings since the seventeenth century has been that God was increasingly pushed into the margins. This encroachment of science on the territory of religion happened in two ways: first, scientific findings—in particular from geology and evolutionary theory—challenged and replaced biblical accounts of creation. Although the doctrine of creation does not contain details of the mode and timing of creation, the Bible was regarded as authoritative, and that authority got eroded by the sciences. Second, the emerging concept of scientific laws in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century physics seemed to leave no room for special divine action. These two challenges will be discussed below, along with proposed solutions in the contemporary science and religion literature.

Christian authors have traditionally used the Bible as a source of historical information. Biblical exegesis of the creation narratives, especially Genesis 1 and 2 (and some other scattered passages, such as in the Book of Job), remains fraught with difficulties. Are these texts to be interpreted in a historical, metaphorical, or poetic fashion, and what are we to make of the fact that the order of creation differs between these accounts (Harris 2013)? The Anglican archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) used the Bible to date the beginning of creation at 4004 BCE. Although such literalist interpretations of the biblical creation narratives were not uncommon, and are still used by Young Earth creationists today, theologians before Ussher already offered alternative, non-literalist readings of the biblical materials (e.g., Augustine De Genesi ad litteram , 416). From the seventeenth century onward, the Christian doctrine of creation came under pressure from geology, with findings suggesting that the Earth was significantly older than 4004 BCE. From the eighteenth century on, natural philosophers, such as Benoît de Maillet, Lamarck, Chambers, and Darwin, proposed transmutationist (what would now be called evolutionary) theories, which seem incompatible with scriptural interpretations of the special creation of species. Following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), there has been an ongoing discussion on how to reinterpret the doctrine of creation in the light of evolutionary theory (see Bowler 2009 for an overview).

Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett (2003) have outlined a divine action spectrum to clarify the distinct positions about creation and divine action in the contemporary science and religion literature that focuses on Christians, agnostics, and atheists. They discern two dimensions in this spectrum: the degree of divine action in the natural world, and the form of causal explanations that relate divine action to natural processes. At one extreme are creationists. Like other theists, they believe God has created the world and its fundamental laws, and that God occasionally performs special divine actions (miracles) that intervene in the fabric of those laws. Creationists deny any role of natural selection in the origin of species. Within creationism, there are Old and Young Earth creationism, with the former accepting geology and rejecting evolutionary biology, and the latter rejecting both. Next to creationism is Intelligent Design, which affirms divine intervention in natural processes. Intelligent Design creationists (e.g., Dembski 1998) believe there is evidence of intelligent design in organisms’ irreducible complexity; on the basis of this they infer design and purposiveness (see Kojonen 2016). Like other creationists, they deny a significant role for natural selection in shaping organic complexity and they affirm an interventionist account of divine action. For political reasons they do not label their intelligent designer as God, as they hope to circumvent the constitutional separation of church and state in the US which prohibits teaching religious doctrines in public schools (Forrest & Gross 2004). Theistic evolutionists hold a non-interventionist approach to divine action: God creates indirectly, through the laws of nature (e.g., through natural selection). For example, the theologian John Haught (2000) regards divine providence as self-giving love, and natural selection and other natural processes as manifestations of this love, as they foster creaturely autonomy and independence. While theistic evolutionists allow for special divine action, particularly the miracle of the Incarnation in Christ (e.g., Deane-Drummond 2009), deists such as Michael Corey (1994) think there is only general divine action: God has laid out the laws of nature and lets it run like clockwork without further interference. Deism is still a long distance from ontological materialism, the view that the material world is all there is. Ontological materialists tend to hold that the universe is intelligible, with laws that scientists can discover, but there is no lawgiver and no creator.

Views on divine action were influenced by developments in physics and their philosophical interpretation. In the seventeenth century, natural philosophers, such as Robert Boyle and John Wilkins, developed a mechanistic view of the world as governed by orderly and lawlike processes. Laws, understood as immutable and stable, created difficulties for the concept of special divine action (Pannenberg 2002). How could God act in a world that was determined by laws?

One way to regard miracles and other forms of special divine action is to see them as actions that somehow suspend or ignore the laws of nature. David Hume (1748: 181), for instance, defined a miracle as “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity, or by the interposal of some invisible agent”, and, more recently, Richard Swinburne (1968: 320) defines a miracle as “a violation of a law of Nature by a god”. This concept of divine action is commonly labeled interventionist. Interventionism regards the world as causally deterministic, so God has to create room for special divine actions. By contrast, non-interventionist forms of divine action require a world that is, at some level, non-deterministic, so that God can act without having to suspend or ignore the laws of nature.

In the seventeenth century, the explanation of the workings of nature in terms of elegant physical laws suggested the ingenuity of a divine designer. The design argument reached its peak during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century (McGrath 2011). For example, Samuel Clarke (1705: part XI, cited in Schliesser 2012: 451) proposed an a posteriori argument from design by appealing to Newtonian science, calling attention to the

exquisite regularity of all the planets’ motions without epicycles, stations, retrogradations, or any other deviation or confusion whatsoever.

A late proponent of this view of nature as a perfect smooth machine is William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802).

Another conclusion that the new laws-based physics suggested was that the universe was able to run smoothly without requiring an intervening God. The increasingly deterministic understanding of the universe, ruled by deterministic causal laws as, for example, outlined by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), seemed to leave no room for special divine action, which is a key element of the traditional Christian doctrine of creation. Newton resisted interpretations like these in an addendum to the Principia in 1713: the planets’ motions could be explained by laws of gravity, but the positions of their orbits, and the positions of the stars—far enough apart so as not to influence each other gravitationally—required a divine explanation (Schliesser 2012). Alston (1989) argued, contra authors such as Polkinghorne (1998), that mechanistic, pre-twentieth century physics is compatible with divine action and divine free will. Assuming a completely deterministic world and divine omniscience, God could set up initial conditions and the laws of nature in such a way as to bring God’s plans about. In such a mechanistic world, every event is an indirect divine act.

Advances in twentieth-century physics, including the theories of general and special relativity, chaos theory, and quantum theory, overturned the mechanical clockwork view of creation. In the latter half of the twentieth century, chaos theory and quantum physics have been explored as possible avenues to reinterpret divine action. John Polkinghorne (1998) proposed that chaos theory not only presents epistemological limits to what we can know about the world, but that it also provides the world with an “ontological openness” in which God can operate without violating the laws of nature. One difficulty with this model is that it moves from our knowledge of the world to assumptions about how the world is: does chaos theory mean that outcomes are genuinely undetermined, or that we as limited knowers cannot predict them? Robert Russell (2006) proposed that God acts in quantum events. This would allow God to directly act in nature without having to contravene the laws of nature. His is therefore a non-interventionist model: since, under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are no natural efficient causes at the quantum level, God is not reduced to a natural cause. Murphy (1995) outlined a similar bottom-up model where God acts in the space provided by quantum indeterminacy. These attempts to locate God’s actions either in chaos theory or quantum mechanics, which Lydia Jaeger (2012a) has termed “physicalism-plus-God”, have met with sharp criticism (e.g., Saunders 2002; Jaeger 2012a,b). After all, it is not even clear whether quantum theory would allow for free human action, let alone divine action, which we do not know much about (Jaeger 2012a). Next to this, William Carroll (2008), building on Thomistic philosophy, argues that authors such as Polkinghorne and Murphy are making a category mistake: God is not a cause in the way creatures are causes, competing with natural causes, and God does not need indeterminacy in order to act in the world. Rather, as primary cause God supports and grounds secondary causes. While this neo-Thomistic proposal is compatible with determinism (indeed, on this view, the precise details of physics do not matter much), it blurs the distinction between general and special divine action. Moreover, the Incarnation suggests that the idea of God as a cause among natural causes is not an alien idea in theology, and that God incarnate as Jesus at least sometimes acts as a natural cause (Sollereder 2015).

There has been a debate on the question to what extent randomness is a genuine feature of creation, and how divine action and chance interrelate. Chance and stochasticity are important features of evolutionary theory (the non-random retention of random variations). In a famous thought experiment, Gould (1989) imagined that we could rewind the tape of life back to the time of the Burgess Shale (508 million years ago); the chance that a rerun of the tape of life would end up with anything like the present-day life forms is vanishingly small. However, Simon Conway Morris (2003) has insisted species very similar to the ones we know now, including humans, would evolve under a broad range of conditions.

Under a theist interpretation, randomness could either be a merely apparent aspect of creation, or a genuine feature. Plantinga suggests that randomness is a physicalist interpretation of the evidence. God may have guided every mutation along the evolutionary process. In this way, God could

guide the course of evolutionary history by causing the right mutations to arise at the right time and preserving the forms of life that lead to the results he intends. (2011: 121)

By contrast, other authors see stochasticity as a genuine design feature, and not just as a physicalist gloss. Their challenge is to explain how divine providence is compatible with genuine randomness. (Under a deistic view, one could simply say that God started the universe up and did not interfere with how it went, but that option is not open to the theist, and most authors in the field of science and religion are not deists.) The neo-Thomist Elizabeth Johnson (1996) argues that divine providence and true randomness are compatible: God gives creatures true causal powers, thus making creation more excellent than if they lacked such powers. Random occurrences are also secondary causes. Chance is a form of divine creativity that creates novelty, variety, and freedom. One implication of this view is that God may be a risk taker—although, if God has a providential plan for possible outcomes, there is unpredictability but not risk. Johnson uses metaphors of risk taking that, on the whole, leave the creator in a position of control. Creation, then, is akin to jazz improvisation. Why would God take risks? There are several solutions to this question. The free will theodicy says that a creation that exhibits stochasticity can be truly free and autonomous:

Authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation. Such freedom is best supplied by the open contingency of evolution, and not by strings of divine direction attached to every living creature. (Miller 1999 [2007: 289])

The “only way theodicy” goes a step further, arguing that a combination of laws and chance is not only the best way, but the only way for God to achieve God’s creative plans (see, e.g., Southgate 2008 for a defense).

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have similar creation stories, which ultimately go back to the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis). According to Genesis, humans are the result of a special act of creation. Genesis 1 offers an account of the creation of the world in six days, with the creation of human beings on the sixth day. It specifies that humans were created male and female, and that they were made in God’s image. Genesis 2 provides a different order of creation, where God creates humans earlier in the sequence (before other animals), and only initially creates a man, later fashioning a woman out of the man’s rib. Islam has a creation narrative similar to Genesis 2, with Adam being fashioned out of clay. These handcrafted humans are regarded as the ancestors of all living humans today. Together with Ussher’s chronology, the received view in eighteenth-century Europe was that humans were created only about 6000 years ago, in an act of special creation.

Humans occupy a privileged position in these creation accounts. In Christianity, Judaism, and some strands of Islam, humans are created in the image of God ( imago Dei ). Humans also occupy a special place in creation as a result of the Fall. In Genesis 3, the account of the Fall stipulates that the first human couple lived in the Garden of Eden in a state of innocence and/or righteousness. This means they were able to not sin, whereas we are no longer able to refrain from sinning. By eating from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil they fell from this state, and death, manual labor, as well as pain in childbirth were introduced. Moreover, as a result of this so-called “original sin”, the effects of Adam’s sin are passed on to every human being. The Augustinian interpretation of original sin also emphasizes that our reasoning capacities have been marred by the distorting effects of sin (the so-called noetic effects of sin): as a result of sin, our original perceptual and reasoning capacities have been marred. This interpretation is influential in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. For example, Plantinga (2000) appeals to the noetic effects of sin to explain religious diversity and unbelief, offering this as an explanation for why not everyone believes in God even though this belief would be properly basic.

There are different ways in which Christians have thought about the Fall and original sin. In Western Christianity, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin is very influential, though there is no generally accepted Christian doctrine on original sin (Couenhoven 2005). For Augustine, humans were in a state of original righteousness before the Fall, and by their action not only marred themselves but the entirety of creation. By contrast, Eastern Orthodox churches are more influenced by Irenaeus, an early Church Father who argued that humans were originally innocent and immature, rather than righteous. John Hick (1966) was an influential proponent of “Irenaean style” theodicy in contemporary Christianity.

Over the past decades, authors in the Christian religion and science literature have explored these two interpretations (Irenaean, Augustinian) and how they can be made compatible with scientific findings (see De Smedt and De Cruz 2020 for a review). Scientific findings and theories relevant to human origins come from a range of disciplines, in particular geology, paleoanthropology (the study of ancestral hominins, using fossils and other evidence), archaeology, and evolutionary biology. These findings challenge traditional religious accounts of humanity, including the special creation of humans, the imago Dei , the historical Adam and Eve, and original sin.

In natural philosophy, the dethroning of humanity from its position as a specially created species predates Darwin and can already be found in early transmutationist publications. For example, Benoît de Maillet’s posthumously published Telliamed (1748, the title is his name in reverse) traces the origins of humans and other terrestrial animals from sea creatures. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed chimpanzees as the ancestors to humans in his Philosophie Zoologique (1809). The Scottish publisher and geologist Robert Chambers’ anonymously published Vestiges of Creation (1844) stirred controversy with its detailed naturalistic account of the origin of species. He proposed that the first organisms arose through spontaneous generation, and that all subsequent organisms evolved from them. Moreover, he argued that humans have a single evolutionary origin:

The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism (1844: 305)

a view starkly different from the Augustinian interpretation of humanity as being in a prelapsarian state of perfection.

Darwin was initially reluctant to publish on human origins. While he did not discuss human evolution in his Origin of Species , he promised, “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (1859: 487). Huxley (1863) wrote Man’s Place in Nature , the first book on human evolution from a Darwinian point of view which discussed fossil evidence, such as the then recently uncovered Neanderthal fossils from Gibraltar. Darwin’s (1871) Descent of Man identified Africa as the likely place where humans originated, and used comparative anatomy to demonstrate that chimpanzees and gorillas were closely related to humans. In the twentieth century, paleoanthropologists debated whether humans separated from the other great apes (at the time wrongly classified into the paraphyletic group Pongidae ) about 15 million years ago, or about 5 million years ago. Molecular clocks—first immune responses (e.g., Sarich & Wilson 1967), then direct genetic evidence (e.g., Rieux et al. 2014)—favor the shorter chronology.

The discovery of many hominin fossils, including Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 million years ago), Australopithecus afarensis (nicknamed “Lucy”), about 3.5 million years old, the Sima de los Huesos hominins (about 400,000 years old, ancestors to the Neanderthals), Homo neanderthalensis , and the intriguing Homo floresiensis (small hominins who lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia, dated to 700,000–50,000 years ago) have created a rich, complex picture of hominin evolution. These finds are supplemented by detailed analyses of ancient DNA extracted from fossil remains, bringing to light a previously unknown species of hominin (the Denisovans) who lived in Siberia up to about 40,000 years ago. Taken together, this evidence indicates that humans did not evolve in a simple linear fashion, but that human evolution resembles an intricate branching tree with many dead ends, in line with the evolution of other species. Genetic and fossil evidence favors a predominantly African origin of our species Homo sapiens (as early as 315,000 years ago) with limited gene-flow from other hominin species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans (see, e.g., Richter et al. 2017).

In the light of these scientific findings, contemporary science and religion authors have reconsidered the questions of human uniqueness, imago Dei , the Incarnation, and the historicity of original sin. Some authors have attempted to reinterpret human uniqueness as a number of species-specific cognitive and behavioral adaptations. For example, van Huyssteen (2006) considers the ability of humans to engage in cultural and symbolic behavior, which became prevalent in the Upper Paleolithic, as a key feature of uniquely human behavior. Other theologians have opted to broaden the notion of imago Dei. Given what we know about the capacities for morality and reason in non-human animals, Celia Deane-Drummond (2012) and Oliver Putz (2009) reject an ontological distinction between humans and non-human animals, and argue for a reconceptualization of the imago Dei to include at least some nonhuman animals. Joshua Moritz (2011) raises the question of whether extinct hominin species, such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo floresiensis , which co-existed with Homo sapiens for some part of prehistory, partook in the divine image.

There is also discussion of how we can understand the Incarnation (the belief that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, became a human being) with the evidence we have of human evolution. Some interpret Christ’s divine nature quite liberally. For instance, Peacocke (1979) regarded Jesus as the point where humanity is perfect for the first time. Christ is the progression and culmination of what evolution has been working toward in the teleological, progressivist interpretation of evolution by Teilhard de Chardin (1971). According to Teilhard, evil is still horrible but no longer incomprehensible; it becomes a natural feature of creation—since God chose evolution as his mode of creation, evil arises as an inevitable byproduct. Deane-Drummond (2009), however, points out that this interpretation is problematic: Teilhard worked within a Spencerian progressivist model of evolution, and he was anthropocentric, seeing humanity as the culmination of evolution. Contemporary evolutionary theory has repudiated the Spencerian progressivist view, and adheres to a stricter Darwinian model. Deane-Drummond, who regards human morality as lying on a continuum with the social behavior of other animals, conceptualizes the Fall as a mythical, rather than a historical event. It represents humanity’s sharper awareness of moral concerns and its ability to make wrong choices. She regards Christ as incarnate wisdom, situated in a theodrama that plays against the backdrop of an evolving creation. Like all human beings, Christ is connected to the rest of creation through common descent. By saving us, he saves the whole of creation.

Debates on the Fall and the historical Adam have centered on how these narratives can be understood in the light of contemporary science. On the face of it, limitations of our cognitive capacities can be naturalistically explained as a result of biological constraints, so there seems little explanatory gain to appeal to the narrative of the Fall. Some have attempted to interpret the concepts of sin and Fall in ways that are compatible with paleoanthropology, notably Peter van Inwagen (2004) and Jamie K. Smith (2017), who have argued that God could have providentially guided hominin evolution until there was a tightly-knit community of primates, endowed with reason, language, and free will, and this community was in close union with God. At some point in history, these hominins somehow abused their free will to distance themselves from God. These narratives follow the Augustinian tradition. Others, such as John Schneider (2014, 2020), on the other hand, argue that there is no genetic or paleoanthropological evidence for such a community of superhuman beings.

This survey has given a sense of the richness of the literature of science and religion. Giving an exhaustive overview would go beyond the scope of an encyclopedia entry. Because science and religion are such broad terms, the literature has split up in diverse fields of “science engaged theology”, where a specific claim or subfield in science is studied in relation to a specific claim in theology (Perry & Ritchie 2018). For example, rather than ask if Christianity is compatible with science, one could ask whether Christian eschatology is compatible with scientific claims about cultural evolution, or the cosmic fate of the universe. As the scope of science and religion becomes less parochial and more global in its outlook, the different topics the field can engage with become very diverse.

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Comte, Auguste | cosmological argument | Hume, David: on religion | teleology: teleological arguments for God’s existence | theology, natural and natural religion

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Bryce Huebner, Evan Thompson, Meir-Simchah Panzer, Teri Merrick, Geoff Mitelman, Joshua Yuter, Katherine Dormandy, Isaac Choi, Egil Asprem, Johan De Smedt, Taede Smedes, H.E. Baber, Fabio Gironi, Erkki Kojonen, Andreas Reif, Raphael Neelamkavil, Hans Van Eyghen, and Nicholas Joll, for their feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Copyright © 2022 by Helen De Cruz < helen . decruz @ slu . edu >

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Educate Truth

– evolution vs. creation, science and faith walking hand in hand.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”

– Galileo

Table of Contents

• 2 Religion:
• 3 Knowledge that is Beyond Science:
• 4 The Science of Faith:
• 5 Dr. Ravi Zacharias:
• 6 Mrs. Ellen White:
• 7 The Weight of Evidence:
• 8 Famous Scientists Discover God’s Signature:
• 9 Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:

What is science? What does it take to be a real scientist or to think in a scientific manner? Does science have anything to do with religion or faith? Or, is there a distinct dividing line between science and religion?

Of course the word “science” was originally derived from the Latin word scientia , which meant “knowledge.” But what kind of knowledge is included here? And are there different ways, beyond scientific methods, of obtaining knowledge?

Most modern definitions of science, such as those one might find in a modern dictionary, include the idea that there is a building and organization of knowledge based upon testable explanations and predictions about the physical universe in which we live. These explanations are called hypotheses, or, if more extensive in what they propose to explain, are called theories.

So, what about religion? How do we know that what we believe about the Bible or God or Jesus is really true? Is there a way to test our religious beliefs or faith in a scientific manner? Or, should our faith be immune from testing or even the potential of being wrong? How did we arrive at our faith position to begin with? Are we Seventh-day Adventists just because we were born into this particular faith tradition? Do we believe in the Bible as the Word of God just because that is how we were raised? What if someone were to ask one of us, “What about the Qur’an or the Book of Mormon or the Hindu Vedas? How do you know that the Bible, and not some other book or text, is the true Word of God?”

There are many within Adventism, and many other faith traditions, who claim that they know that their faith is real and that the Bible is the true Word of God based on a type of faith that needs no critical analysis or testing or rational validation. For them faith is, by definition, internally-derived and self-validating. Such are very similar in their thinking to my Latter-day Saints friends who have often told me that they have faith in the superiority of the Book of Mormon, “Because the Holy Spirit told me so and He wouldn’t lie to me.” When I ask them how the Holy Spirit speaks to them and reveals to them these truths, they say, “I feel a burning deep down in my soul, deep in my chest, whenever I hear or see or read the truth.” Some refer to this experience as a “Burning in the Bosom.” And, let me tell you, it is pretty much impossible to have any further discussion with someone who believes that God has directly communicated truth to them in this kind of privileged manner. Any attempted conversation regarding the potential for the superior credibility of the Bible is effectively over at this point.

How then do we know that we aren’t falling into the same kind of trap on our end of things? regarding our own beliefs in the credibility of the claims of the Bible? Does God not expect individual effort and study to search out truth from error? to rationally determine if the Bible is in fact what it claims to be? Does God really desire us to follow a form of blind faith, akin to wishful thinking, when it comes to our religious beliefs?

Knowledge that is Beyond Science:

You see, science is only needed when there is limited or incomplete information regarding the nature of something that is external to one’s self, that exists outside of one’s internal world. For this reason, no scientific hypothesis or theory can be absolutely confirmed or proven to be true since its truth is independent of one’s self or one’s own absolute control. Science can establish various degrees of predictive value for a given hypothesis or theory, but there is no such thing as absolute confidence in science. One can approach the truth, or the Truth, but one can never gain absolute knowledge or certainty about what exists outside of one’s own mind. Such an external reality belongs to God alone and therefore can only be perfectly known by Him.

Of course, there do seem to be a few truths that God has given us as a kind of inherent knowledge. For example, the knowledge of the Royal Law of Love, the basis of all moral law and of salvation itself, is “written on the hearts” of each one of us. – James 2:8 and Romans 2:15. This Law is the essence of the very character of God for God is Love. – 1 John 4:16 Also, like vanilla ice cream, God invites us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good” – Psalms 34:8. Also, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” – Romans 8:16.

While such knowledge is real, it is internally derived, being written on the heart by God. Therefore, such forms of knowledge aren’t subject to “scientific” forms of investigation since they aren’t hypothesis or theory driven. No additional “testing” is necessary to increase their “predictive value.”

The Science of Faith:

The question now is, does God reveal all truth to us in such a direct manner? Or, are there certain types of truth that God generally reveals only to those who search out and study the empirical evidence that He has provided in the world around us? For example, generally speaking, does God directly give us privileged information, regarding the origin and credibility of the Bible as the true Word of God and how, exactly, to interpret it? Or, does this type of knowledge usually require some effort, study, and hypothesis testing on our part? – with the very real potential of being wrong in any or all of our original ideas? And, should any form of scientific investigation of the empirical world have any real influence on how we read, understand, and interpret the Bible?

It is very interesting to me to note how the Biblical authors themselves viewed Scripture and how they established its credibility. Over and over again they appeal to empirical evidence and a form of scientific reasoning and rational thought and understanding to establish the credibility of Scripture in a manner calculated to attract the intelligent candid mind. The Bible quotes God Himself as asking us to come and reason with him (Isaiah 1:18) and to test His Word and His promises to see if He isn’t who He claims to be (Malachi 3:10).

Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up, take your mat and walk”? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

What would have happened to Jesus’ metaphysical claim to be able to forgive sins if his empirical claim to have the power to heal the paralyzed man had proved false? – if the man had just laid there paralyzed on his mat when Jesus gave the command to “get up and go home”?

You see, Jesus himself tied in the credibility of his metaphysical claim to be able to forgive sins to an empirical demonstration of Divine power. If the empirical demonstration failed, so would the credibility of his metaphysical claim.

I propose that the same is true for the credibility of the Bible. The credibility of the metaphysical claims of the Bible, claims that cannot be directed investigated or tested (such as the Virgin Birth, the raising of the dead, or our future life in Heaven to come), is based on the demonstrated credibility of those claims of the Bible that can be investigated and tested against known empirical realities (such as archeological discoveries, historical prophecies, the geologic and fossil evidence for the worldwide Noachian Flood, and the recent arrival of all life on this planet).

For instance, if Biblical prophecies concerning empirical reality can be shown to be false, not in line with what really happened, then the credibility of the Bible’s metaphysical claims would suffer as well – for most rational people anyway. The same is true for other Biblical statements concerning empirical reality, such as the recent formation of all life on Earth and a truly worldwide Noachian Flood. If such claims can be clearly falsified, Biblical credibility suffers. It is for this reason that many of those who have become convinced that the Bible does in fact contain many such errors no longer view the Bible as anything more than a good moral fable – if that.

So, in order to effectively support the claim that the Bible is truly superior to all others claiming to be “The Word of God”, the Bible must present superior evidence to support this fantastic claim – if it is to be believed by most intelligent honest-minded people, especially young people.

Dr. Ravi Zacharias:

Ravi was asked:

What do you say to a pastor who says, “Apologetics is just philosophy, and we do not need that. All we need is the Bible.” I desperately wish it were that simple. When pastors believe and teach, “All we need is the Bible,” they equip their young people with the very line that gets them mocked in the universities and makes them unable and even terrified to relate to their friends. If pastors want their young people to do the work of evangelism, to reach their friends, that line will not get them anywhere. Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the Resurrection. The Resurrection gave the Early Church the argument that Christ is risen: We saw, we witnessed, we felt, and we touched. The apostle Paul defended this gospel. He went to Athens and planted a church there. In Ephesus he defended the faith in the school of Tyrannus. We also need to become all things to all people. If a pastor says, “All we need is the Bible,” what does he say to a man who says, “All I need is the Qur’an”? It is a solipsistic method of arguing. The pastor is saying, “All I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that.” Even the gospel was verified by external references. The Bible is a book of history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions. The fact is the resurrection from the dead was the ultimate proof that in history, and in empirically verifiable means, the Word of God was made certain. Otherwise, the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration would have been good enough. But the apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 1:19: “We have the Word of the prophets made more certain as to a light shining in a dark place.” He testified to the authority and person of Christ, and the resurrected person of Christ. To believe, “All we need is the Bible and nothing more,” is what the monks believed in medieval times, and they resorted to monasteries. We all know the end of that story. This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the Bible is authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter-perspectives. To say that it is authoritative in these situations is to deny both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible’s sufficiency. It is sad that some people think a person who asks, “Why the Bible?” is being dishonest. This is a legitimate question. Defending Christianity in a Secular Culture

Mrs. Ellen White:

God is the foundation of everything. All true science is in harmony with His works; all true education leads to obedience to His government. Science opens new wonders to our view; she soars high, and explores new depths; but she brings nothing from her research that conflicts with divine revelation. Ignorance may seek to support false views of God by appeals to science, but the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. We are thus led to adore the Creator and to have an intelligent trust in His word . . . Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have, however, led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the word of God. Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos; and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years . . . The vast forests buried in the earth at the time of the Flood, and since changed to coal, form the extensive coal fields, and yield the supplies of oil that minister to our comfort and convenience today. These things, as they are brought to light, are so many witnesses mutely testifying to the truth of the word of God . . . God designed that the discovery of these things in the earth, should establish the faith of men in inspired history. But men, with their vain reasoning, make a wrong use of these things which God designed should lead them to exalt him. They fall into the same error as did the people before the flood—those things which God gave them as a benefit, they turned into a curse, by making a wrong use of them . . . God never asks us to believe without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith. His existence, His character, the truthfulness of His word, are all established by testimony that appeals to our reason; and this testimony is abundant. Yet God has never removed the possibility of doubt. Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration. Those who wish to doubt will have opportunity; while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith . . . Consider also that, “perfect assurance . . . is not compatible with faith. Faith rests not on certainty, but upon evidence.” Ellen White, PP, p. 115 ; Education, p. 128- 129 ; SG, 3:90-96 ; SC, p. 105 ; Letter 19d, 1892, cited in The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, pp. 1029, 1030.

The Weight of Evidence:

In other words, if faith rests upon the weight of evidence, not internally derived perfect assurance, there is a form of science to faith – of testability and investigation and growth. It seems then that Biblical faith and scientific reasoning are equals, both being dependent upon each other with neither one trumping the other. Since God is the author of both, they must both walk hand-in-hand if either is to be useful. Science does not work if one is unable or unwilling to make leaps of faith beyond that which is absolutely known or knowable. And, religious faith must also be based on the weight of empirical evidence as a platform upon which to make rational leaps into the unknown that are more useful than mere flights of fancy or wishful thinking.

Famous Scientists Discover God’s Signature:

It is quite a shock. From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it. I now find myself driven to this position by logic. There is no other way in which we can understand the precise ordering of the chemicals of life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. . . . We were hoping as scientists that there would be a way round our conclusion, but there isn’t. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, as quoted in “There Must Be A God,” Daily Express, Aug. 14, 1981 and Hoyle on Evolution, Nature, Nov. 12, 1981, p. 105

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists… The force of gravity must be fine-tuned to allow the universe to expand at precisely the right rate. The fact that the force of gravity just happens to be the right number with stunning accuracy is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology… The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe. Davies, Paul C.W. [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide],“The Christian perspective of a scientist,” Review of “The way the world is,” by John Polkinghorne, New Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 1354, pp.638-639, 2 June 1983, p.638

Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan. Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:

It seems like there are quite a number of famous scientists who are finally beginning to realize what King David discovered long ago – that, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard…” and, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” – Psalms 19:1-3 & Psalms 139:14

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20 thoughts on “ science and faith walking hand in hand ”.

There is something delightfully recursive in your statement

“One of my biochemistry professors in medical school told me once that, “Science is really nothing more than a very simple baloney detector.””

It is usually considered that the term “baloney detection” was first used by Carl Sagan in his book the “Demon-haunted world” published in 1996. As I understand it, it was actually skepticism that was proposed as the boloney detection not science.

According to the algorithm of the “baloney detection kit” I need to ask as step one can I get independent confirmation?

Did you have Carl Sagan as your biochemistry professor or was it perhaps Barry Taylor?

When was your professor teaching you biochemistry?

Had your professor perhaps been reading from Carl Sagan’s book?

Or perhaps your mind is playing tricks and your professor didn’t actually say it and you are recalling a quote from some other source? – perhaps a creationist site like this:

http://creationsafaris.com/crevbd.htm

or Phillips Johnson’s comments on baloney detection in his book “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds”

   pauluc (Quote)

Science is based on skepticism – the effort to try to falsify the hypothesis in question.

In any case, my professor did say what he said. I remember it vividly because he didn’t actually use the word “baloney” in his description. I kind of had to water what he really said down a bit for publication here and on SSNET. I’m not sure what original reference he got it from, if any outside of his own independent conclusion. After all, it is downright obvious that all scientific methodologies are based on a very simple rational concept to help weed out potential truth from error.

Sean Pitman http://www.DetectingDesign.com

   Sean Pitman (Quote)

Sean – this is a good article – with lots of good references. Thank you for getting this together.

I also like the free online video “What we still don’t know” by Martin Rees and Leonard Susskind.

Knowing the current facts available to us today – it would require ” a leap of faith” to be an atheist every bit as large as is required to believe in God as creator. But of course that statement is being overly generous to the atheist leap of faith.

   BobRyan (Quote)

I suppose, Sean, the question some would ask you is, “What if science and scripture do not agree?”

And don’t try to get around this question by claiming science and scripture always do agree. They don’t. In which case, where do you place your final locus of authority? \ Bill Sorensen

   Bill Sorensen (Quote)

True science and religion will agree, as Mrs. White pointed out, since they both have the same Source. If they didn’t agree, there would be a problem with one or the other.

To reference a recent article by Leonard Brand on this topic:

“In true science there can be nothing contrary to the teaching of the word of God, for both have the same Author. A correct understanding of both will always prove them to be in harmony.”— Ellen White, Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 258. If we have a correct understanding of how science operates what its limitations are, as well as its strengths—we can have increased confidence that harmony really does exist between true science and true religion. http://ssnet.org/blog/2013/01/what-science-can-and-cannot-do/

Consider also that there have been many religious ideas and interpretations of the Bible that have been effectively falsified by scientific discoveries – the clear weight of empirical evidence. Even certain interpretations of Biblical prophecies promoted by the early Adventist pioneers were proved false by the empirical evidence that clearly countered their predictions (i.e., Jesus simply didn’t show up as predicted). Truly then, if the testable claims of the Bible are determined to be inconsistent with empirical reality the Bible rightly loses credibility (either that or the specific interpretations of the Bible that have been falsified lose credibility). Of course, for those honestly searching for truth, God is quite able to provide them with plenty of empirical evidence that is more than adequate for a rational belief and faith in the credibility of His Word.

Sean said, “True science and religion will agree,….”

Of course you are wrong Sean. There is no way by anything that is rational in science that could or would affirm that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

That is pure supposition. And science would never concur nor affirm such a reality or even possibility.

Creation is a miracle. Science does not consider miracles any part of natural law science. Every miracle of God is beyond natural law science.

Sure, you can affirm a miracle has happened. When Jesus healed the blind man, all the people could see a miracle had happened. But no one tried to explain it by way of natural law science. In fact, they all affirmed it was far beyond natural law science. The blind man himself said the same thing.

Science can affirm that something is here but can not affirm how it got here by way of a miracle. By definition a miracle is “super natural”, meaning, beyond a natural law explanation.

So you may well discredit a lot of phoney ideas science presents for origins as being inconsistent. And evolution has no consistent argument for origins. But neither does creation. And you can not prove creation by science.

The bible affirms itself by its own evidence by way of prophecy. Sure, the prophecies come true and we can affirm this evidence like the healed blind man. But the evidence only affirms that miracles are beyond scientific “falsification”. Hopefully, no one denies evidence based on scriptural declarations of history and future events. But this will give us no “scientific” evidence the God created the world by way of a miracle. None of us were even here to testify that we saw what God did as in the case of the healed blind man.

Bill Sorensen

Sean said, “True science and religion will agree,….” Of course you are wrong Sean. There is no way by anything that is rational in science that could or would affirm that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is pure supposition. And science would never concur nor affirm such a reality or even possibility.

You do realize that I’m directly quoting Mrs. White here? “In true science there can be nothing contrary to the teaching of the word of God, for both have the same Author. A correct understanding of both will always prove them to be in harmony.” — Ellen White, Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 258.

Also, it is not “pure supposition” that a God or at the very least a God-like being is required to rationally explain the origin of the universe and of living things on this planet. This requirement is based on the very same logical inferences used to proposed intelligent design theories in multiple scientific disciplines (like forensics, anthropology and even SETI science).

All forms of intelligent design, even human level intelligence and creative abilities, are “miraculous” in a certain sense. That doesn’t mean, however, that science is therefore unable to detect their activity. Science can detect that certain artifacts discovered in nature are mostly likely the result of deliberate intelligent design – with a very high degree of predictive value that is also, at the same time, subject to at least the potential of falsification.

Again, science is not limited to hypotheses or theories that invoke only mindless naturalistic processes. Science is perfectly capable of hypothesizing the requirement for very high levels of intelligent design to explain various artifactual observations.

Science can affirm that something is here but can not affirm how it got here by way of a miracle. By definition a miracle is “super natural”, meaning, beyond a natural law explanation.

Science doesn’t need to explain the exact mechanism for how the designer produced a super advanced alien space craft, or even a simple highly symmetrical granite cube, before science can determine that such things required the input of intelligence. You’re confusing the scientific ability to detect the need for various levels of intelligent design with the requirement to explain how the intelligent agent did the job. This simply isn’t required in order for science to detect design – even God-like intelligence and design.

You cannot absolutely prove anything by science. However, you can most certainly use scientific methodologies to produce highly useful predictive value for the “God-only” hypothesis.

The bible affirms itself by its own evidence by way of prophecy. Sure, the prophecies come true and we can affirm this evidence like the healed blind man. But the evidence only affirms that miracles are beyond scientific “falsification”. Hopefully, no one denies evidence based on scriptural declarations of history and future events. But this will give us no “scientific” evidence the God created the world by way of a miracle. None of us were even here to testify that we saw what God did as in the case of the healed blind man.

The determination of the credibility of prophetic statements is based on the empirical comparison between that which was predicted and the available evidence that the prediction came true in real history. Such an evaluation is based on the historical sciences. Such can be tested in a potentially falsifiable manner. Therefore, prophecy is not “self affirming”. Useful prophecies are affirmed by external empirical evidence – i.e., a form of science. And, the consistent fulfillment of such adds credibility to their source, the Bible, and everything else the Bible says that cannot be directly tested in a falsifiable manner…

I have read each post, and it appears to me that some people like to argue and take a different position simply for the sake of doing so, and not because they are necessarily correct, or even believe themselves to be so. Hmmm, is this a pride issue? “just sayin.” (BTW, I have no issues with the Author’s positions or his responses; but I certainly would take issue with someone that appears to disagree with EGW)!

   Larry (Quote)

Of course, Sean, “true science” will not contradict the bible. Because “true science” already knows they can not identify the “first cause” and don’t really even try to.

We are discussing the “first cause” when we discuss creation. If your goal is to prove by way of science, that you can determine “first cause” it is an exercise in futility.

The Biblical authors and Mrs. White disagree with you. They all agree that the signature of God is identifiable in nature – in the works of His own hands.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20

And don’t try to get around this question by claiming science and scripture always do agree. They don’t. In which case, where do you place your final locus of authority?

“In true science there can be nothing contrary to the teaching of the word of God, for both have the same Author. A correct understanding of both will always prove them to be in harmony.”— Ellen White, Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 258. If we have a correct understanding of how science operates what its limitations are, as well as its strengths—we can have increased confidence that harmony really does exist between true science and true religion. http://ssnet.org/blog/2013/01/what-science-can-and-cannot-do/

“One of my biochemistry professors in medical school told me once that, “Science is really nothing more than a very simple baloney detector.””

Sean said, “True science and religion will agree,….” Of course you are wrong Sean. There is no way by anything that is rational in science that could or would affirm that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is pure supposition. And science would never concur nor affirm such a reality or even possibility.

You do realize that I’m directly quoting Mrs. White here? “In true science there can be nothing contrary to the teaching of the word of God, for both have the same Author. A correct understanding of both will always prove them to be in harmony.” — Ellen White, Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 258.

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Debate: Can Religion and Science Co-exist? 

The late german-born physicist albert einstein believed that science without religion was lame, and religion without science was blind. but the debate over whether science and religion can co-exist has been going on since the dawn of mankind and continues to divide opinion even today, as inch discovered..

I am convinced that evolution and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. Indeed, if science and religion are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because they concern different matters. Science and religion are like two different windows for looking at the world. The two windows look at the same world, but they show different aspects of that world. Science concerns the processes that account for the natural world: how planets move, the composition of matter and the atmosphere, the origin and adaptations of organisms. Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life, the proper relation of people to the Creator and to each other, the moral values that inspire and govern people’s lives. Apparent contradictions only emerge when either the science or the beliefs, or often both, trespass their own boundaries and wrongfully encroach upon one another’s subject matter. Francisco Ayala, biologist, University of California, Irvine

Observe: science and religion *do* coexist. The first scientists were clergymen. Today, religious institutions from universities to the Vatican Observatory support professional science. And the proportion of scientists who are themselves believers mirrors the fraction in the general population. Science is based on the religious assertion that Creation is orderly, free from the interference of nature gods, and worthy of study. So who continues to push this myth of a “conflict”? What is their agenda?  Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer at the Vatican Observatory

Religion and science are like oil and water. They might co-exist, but they can never mix to produce a homogeneous medium. Religion and science are fundamentally incompatible. They disagree profoundly on how we obtain knowledge of the world. Science is based observation and reasoning from observation. Religion assumes that human beings can access a deeper level of information that is not available by either observation or reason. The scientific method is proven by its success. The religious method is refuted by its failure. Victor J. Stenger, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Hawaii

Personally I’m not religious at all, but I have religious scientists as friends and they seem to manage just fine. I think those people are more likely to take some religious things a bit less literally though, like a religious geologist probably wouldn’t think that the Earth and everything else was actually made by God 6000 years ago, since their science tells them that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Grant Kennedy, astrophysicist, University of Cambridge

Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand. Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths, all faiths, are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to. Dan Brown, author of Angels & Demons

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognise our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. The late Carl Sagan, American astrophysicist

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped. The late William H. Bragg, British physicist

Religion and science are indeed incompatible. Religion and science both offer explanations for why life and the universe exist. Science relies on testable empirical evidence and observation. Religion relies on subjective belief in a creator. Only one explanation is correct. The other must be discarded. Explanations require evidence. None exists for a creator outside the human mind, whereas the evidence for evolution and the origins of life mounts every day. In the face of this uncontradicted evidence, religious belief in a divinity is no more viable than belief in the now-proverbial Flying Spaghetti Monster. Lorna Salzman, American environmental activist

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. When you look at the vast size of the universe, and how insignificant and accidental human life is in it, the existence of a God seems most implausible. Physicist Stephen Hawking

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Shale Gas: The Game-Changer?

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As Europe, which is now one of the most expensive places in the world to make petrochemicals, dithers over shale gas, INEOS has seized the initiative once again. It has now acquired two licences to access indigenous gas from shale in Scotland. And although there is no activity at these sites yet, INEOS has already committed to full and open consultation with local communities and has also promised to share 6% of the revenue from its wells with homeowners, landowners and local authorities. INEOS considers current arrangements with individuals and communities are not sufficiently equitable to convince the British people of the benefits of on-shore drilling for gas. But it believes a combination of community consultation and a fair share of the profits could lead to much greater understanding and acceptance of this important technology. “We think our plan could be the game- changer for Britain,” said INEOS Chairman Jim Ratcliffe. “Giving 6% of revenues to those directly above shale gas wells means the rewards are fairly shared by everyone. It’s what they do in America and we think it is right to do this here because communities will have to put up with some inconvenience for about six months.” INEOS believes it could eventually amount to more than £2.5 billion. “That will make a substantial contribution towards new schools, parks, community centres and even hospitals,” said Jim. “It will be transformational for those communities. It will make a difference to their lives.” The news was welcomed by the Country Land and Business Association which represents the interests of land and property owners in rural England and Wales. “These proposals could help to speed up development of the industry which is important if shale gas is to contribute to the UK’s energy security and provide a bridging fuel to a low carbon economy as Government believes it can,” said association president Henry Robinson. He said the association had consistently argued that the UK’s shale gas industry would be better served by giving landowners and communities an incentive. “It seems only right that those whose property is drilled beneath feel some benefit from the process,” he said. INEOS now has a stake in two exploration licences. In August it bought BG Group’s 51% stake in the shale layer of an exploration licence (PEDL 133) which covers 329 square kilometres surrounding its Scottish refining and petrochemical plant at Grangemouth. At the time Gary Haywood, CEO of INEOS Upstream, the company’s new oil and gas exploration and production business, hinted that INEOS was now well placed to become a major player in the UK on-shore gas production industry. “We already have a large UK asset base, existing operating capabilities and an exemplary safety and environmental record, so this is a logical next step for INEOS,” he said. In September INEOS, which is one of the very few companies that can use shale gas as both a fuel and a feedstock at its manufacturing plants, took another giant step in promising communities a share in the profits. INEOS believes sharing revenues will give local people a real stake in the success of any venture. Typically, those living in a shale gas community (approximately 100 square kilometers) would benefit from the output of 200 wells and split £375 million between them. Home and landowners directly above the wells would share £250 million. The rest of an INEOS shale gas community would share £125 million. “Over the lifetime of a single well, home and land owners would get over £1.3 million and the community £600,000,” said Jim. On October 13, INEOS announced it had signed an agreement with Reach Coal Seam Gas Limited to acquire an 80% stake in the exploration licence (PEDL 162) next to its first licence, in the central belt of Scotland, close to Grangemouth, which the British Geological Survey believes contains significant quantities of gas. As part of the deal, INEOS will operate the licence and fund the initial activity on the site to determine whether the gas can be economically extracted. “We are keen to move quickly to evaluate the potential of this resource,” said Gary. “If we can, it will provide a local source of competitive energy and raw materials to support manufacturing jobs in Scotland.” INEOS is currently spending hundreds of millions of pounds to import large quantities of low-cost shale gas from America to Grangemouth to safeguard the future of its gas cracker in Scotland as the availability of gas in the North Sea dwindles. But its decision to start drilling itself in the UK is a new – and exciting – venture. The Institute of Directors believes that a UK shale gas industry could create 74,000 jobs and support many hundreds of thousands of manufacturing roles beyond this. “UK shale has the potential to make up a significant proportion if not the totality of UK gas requirements going forward,” said Jim. “This would give the UK energy security for the first time in many years. It will help to protect manufacturing and jobs in Europe by securing competitive energy and raw materials and lead to a more competitive manufacturing sector. Our aim is simple – we hope to maintain and create jobs in Britain’s industrial heartlands.” Shale gas also produces approximately half the greenhouse gas of coal and so has the potential to significantly reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions, as it already has in the USA. INEOS has an exemplary safety and environmental track record at petrochemical plants. 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World-Leading Pioneers Join INEOS’ Team

The three world-leading experts, who are credited with perfecting shale gas extraction in America, are now working exclusively for INEOS in Europe. Over the next five years petroleum engineer Nick Steinsberger and geologists Kent Bowker and Dan Steward will be advising INEOS how best to safely access Britain’s vast reserves. All three worked for Mitchell Energy &amp; Development, which pioneered the most effective method for safely extracting shale gas in the Barnett Shale in America and led to the development of the shale gas boom in US. “They bring a vast experience of successful shale gas production,” said Gary Haywood, CEO of INEOS’ newly-formed shale team, INEOS&nbsp;Upstream. “We are confident that&nbsp;our US team, together with our own&nbsp;experts, can safely and efficiently&nbsp;develop a successful business in&nbsp;Scotland, which will play a part&nbsp;in securing the energy supply of&nbsp;Scotland and the UK, and will bring&nbsp;significant economic benefits to the&nbsp;country and to the community.” Nick, Kent and Dan have been working in shale gas extraction since the 1980s and are regarded as leaders in their field. Tom Crotty, INEOS Corporate Affairs Director, described Nick as the best on-shore gas petroleum engineer in the world. “INEOS is one of the world’s biggest chemicals companies,” he said. “We are used to safely running huge petrochemical complexes. And now we have some of the world’s leading shale gas experts on our team who collectively have drilled thousands of wells. We believe that the combination of our expertise as a global petrochemicals company and their expertise in shale gas should begin to show people that we are committed to a very high safety standard and the responsible extraction of gas from shale.”

£230m Loan Guarantee Helps INEOS Raise Finance For Grangemouth's Future

For INEOS’ petrochemicals plant in Grangemouth, the good news continues. Confirmation of a £230 million loan guarantee from the UK government this summer has now helped INEOS to raise the finance necessary to ensure INEOS O&amp;P UK can build a tank to store imports of low-cost ethane from America – and turn its loss-making business into a profitable one. Chief Financial Officer Gerry Hepburn said the government’s financial backing had been seen by INEOS as ‘critical’ to ensuring the long-term future of one of the largest manufacturing sites in the UK. “The loan guarantee shows support for both the UK petrochemicals sector and for one of the most important infrastructure projects in Scotland,” he said. “We have now been able to use the loan guarantee to raise INEOS funds through a public bond issue. The proceeds of the bond are now being be used to fund the ethane tank project.” INEOS has already invested more than £300million at its Grangemouth site as part of its long-term survival plan to ensure the site can manufacture petrochemicals beyond 2017 when its current gas supply agreements end. Traditionally Grangemouth has relied heavily on ethane gas from the North Sea but those supplies are dwindling and the INEOS plant has been forced to run at reduced rates. Importing ethane, which it uses as feedstock, from the US will help INEOS to return its plants to full production and improve operating costs, underpinning the future of manufacturing at Grangemouth. “Without doubt, this is one of the most important projects of recent times in Scotland, with implications to be felt right across the UK, not only for employment but also for manufacturing in general,” said INEOS Chairman Jim Ratcliffe. INEOS has hired Germany-based TGE Gas Engineering to build the ethane storage tank, which will be the largest in Europe and capable of storing 33,000 tons of ethane.&nbsp; “The construction of the storage tank is complex and needs specialist knowledge,” said John McNally, CEO, O&amp;P UK. “But we know we are working with a company that are truly leaders in their field.”&nbsp; TGE built the INEOS ethylene import tank in Antwerp, Belgium, and are currently building the ethane import tank at INEOS’ plant at Rafnes in Norway. Planning permission for the construction of the ethane tank at Grangemouth was granted by Falkirk Council in May this year. “It will be very rewarding to see the renewal of the site starting to take shape as we begin construction work,” said Gerry. Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said the Grangemouth guarantee was fantastic news for Scotland’s economic future, and for the UK’s energy security. The amount of US ethane being imported will enable the ethylene cracker at Grangemouth to double production.&nbsp;

A Land Of Opportunity

Having already clinched game-changing, 15-year deals with America to import its low-cost, shale gas-based ethane, INEOS decided it was time to take a look at how the US did it and what lessons Europe could learn. Ships, which the world has never seen before, leave America’s shores for the first time next year. On board each vessel will be thousands of tons of liquefied ethane destined for INEOS’ gas crackers in Europe to help provide raw materials that are running out in the North Sea and to reduce the operating costs of its gas crackers. Every day 40,000 barrels of shale gas-based ethane, which has been chilled to -140 degrees Fahrenheit, will leave Marcus Hook in Philadelphia for Norway and Scotland in the UK. Dragon Boats Vid “Nobody has ever shipped ethane in these quantities around the world before,” said INEOS chairman Jim Ratcliffe. “These vessels have never been designed before and never crossed the North Atlantic before. This is a world first.” INEOS needs ethane to make high value petrochemicals but if its businesses in Europe are to remain competitive, it must ship supplies from America, where there are sufficient quantities at competitive prices. “We are effectively shipping US economics to Europe,” said Jim. The state-of-the-art ships, currently being built in China, are highly efficient and will have double engines so they can operate in the harshest of conditions. Meanwhile INEOS is building new export facilities in the US and storage tanks at Rafnes and Grangemouth. The journey across the Atlantic Ocean will begin at Marcus Hook, the site of a former crude oil refinery, which produced gasoline, diesel, and kerosene for more than a century. About 500 people lost their jobs when the loss-making plant was finally shut down in 2011 due to difficult market conditions. Today it is being transformed into a major centre for processing and shipping natural gas liquids thanks to its links with Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale industry. “It was a bit of disaster area,” said Tom Crotty, INEOS Corporate Affairs Director. “Much of that town was built around industry with businesses such as the refinery. Jobs depended on it. But suddenly this community, which thought it was dead on its feet, has been brought back to life again, thanks to shale gas.” Marcus Hook is also where Jim and a team from INEOS began their recent, fact-finding tour of America. INEOS, which has invested in its own team of experts to weigh up the pros and cons of pursuing shale gas exploration in the UK, wanted to see – and understand – how it might work in Europe. The group spent a day at Marcus Hook before visiting the Barnett shale field in Texas – home of the very first drilled horizontal well. Explaining how it worked was Nick Steinsberger, described by Tom as the best on-shore gas petroleum engineer in the world. “A lot of others had dabbled and given up, but Nick worked out how to fracture the rock,” said Tom. “He was the first to use what is called slick water hydraulic fracturing to crack open the Barnett shale field in Texas. He opened the door to the development worldwide. He made the breakthrough.” Nick worked for Mitchell Energy &amp; Development when with its founder George Mitchell. The company was sold for $3.5 billion in 2002. Today Nick runs his own business. Nick later escorted INEOS’ delegation to south west Pennsylvania in the Marcellus shale, one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world. “He wanted us to see it because it is similar to Europe with green, rolling countryside,” said Tom. “And now, there are also a lot of strict regulations in place.” For Tom, it was an eye-opener. “One of the public’s biggest concerns is the effect on the countryside,” said Tom. “I had imagined it would be like Texas with nodding donkeys all over the place but in the biggest shale gas area in America, you cannot see anything. There is nothing to be seen, and nothing to be heard. It is just bubbling away like a bottle of pop. The reality is that a single well takes three weeks to drill and one week to fracture, when there is a lot of activity on the site, and then that well can give you gas for anything between 20 and 50 years.” The UK is currently the only country in the EU to seriously consider fracking. Gary Haywood, who is leading INEOS’ shale gas project team, said the British Government had recognised that shale gas had the potential to provide the UK with greater energy security, growth and jobs. “People want an affordable and reliable energy supply,” said Gary. “About 85% of UK homes rely upon gas for heating or cooking, and our indigenous UK supply has now dwindled to less than 50% of our demand. We have a clean energy resource in the UK shale that is ready for development, and this can bring a wide range of benefits to the country. INEOS is keen to be part of this development, and we will be pursuing sensible opportunities to develop shale gas for the company and for the country.” There are currently more than 176 Petroleum Exploration Development Licences (PEDL) for onshore oil and gas in the UK. More on-shore licences were awarded this year. Communities and landowners are being offered incentives to allow companies to drill, but INEOS says they do not go far enough. “We think that communities should share in the benefits if gas is being supplied from under their land,” said Tom. “The offer of £100,000 is not enough to make people think that it’s a great idea so we have announced plans to give 6% of our shale gas revenues to homeowners, landowners and communities close to our wells. We estimate that we will give away over £2.5 billion from our new shale gas business.” Opposition to fracking in the UK has deepened since the protests at Balcombe in West Sussex last year. “The drilling in Balcombe provoked some emotional reactions,” said Tom. “But the issue is that people are not generally well informed about shale gas production. The ‘anti’ lobby have whipped up irrational fear of this technology, largely via misleading propaganda.” Tom and his team are keen to do something about this. “We’ve produced a short film that tells people the real facts around shale gas production. We want the public to hear the real story,” he said. Tom says that the film debunks some of the myths around the impact of shale gas production, and also outlines the important benefits that the industry can bring to the UK. “It is important that people are given all the facts and they can then make an informed decision,” said Tom. “The industry can bring much-needed jobs, and can secure the energy supply for the people of the UK via production of a clean fuel that has half the greenhouse gas impact as coal.” The other big unknown is how continental Europe will respond. “I am not sure how long they can ignore this issue,” said Tom. “Some believe the US has shot its bolt and the gas is going to be gone in a few years time but it won’t. We met companies in the US that had only so far drilled less than 10% of their acreage - there is a long-term industry and supply in place via shale gas production in the US. And renewables will not do the job. Gas is the perfect complement to renewable energy because you need a back up. If the wind does not blow, you cannot turn the fridge off.” INEOS’ 15-year deals with America to import ethane are seen as a stop-gap while Europe makes up its mind. “It buys us time,” said Tom. “It bridges us for the next 15 years until the point when we hope we are going to have an indigenous UK shale industry which can supply that ethane.” Hydrolic Manufac Vid

Cracking Investment

Shale gas is driving investment in the US, and it shows no signs of letting up. The American Chemistry Council says US chemical investment linked to shale gas has now topped $100 billion. And INEOS is among those parting with their money. INEOS has built one of the largest ethane-cracking furnaces in the world to take advantage of America’s low-cost shale gas. It has invested $115 million in a new furnace at the 2,400-acre Chocolate Bayou Works manufacturing complex in Texas to produce competitive ethylene, a chemical that is used by manufacturers to make everything from soaps to paint to clothes to plastic bottles to cosmetics. “This now means we won’t lose capacity every time we have to take down one of the other six furnaces to clean them,” said Dennis Seith, CEO INEOS Olefins &amp; Polymers USA. “That, in turn, improves our overall reliability.” INEOS now operates the second largest ethylene site in the US and the fifth largest in the world, and thanks to state-of-the-art technology, the new furnace has lower environmental impact. “It produces lower emissions per ton of ethylene production and employs the best available industrial technology for emissions control in the industry today,” said Dennis. INEOS began planning to build the furnace in mid-2011. It was started up in April this year, 28 months after the first construction contract with KBR was signed. The project swallowed more than 564,000 construction man-hours – the equivalent of 60 years – during which time construction workers installed eight miles of new piping and 26 miles of new electrical and instrumentation cable. “It was a tremendous result and one that was delivered safely,” said Dennis. “It also secures the future of our site for the next generation.” The American Chemistry Council says US chemical investment linked to shale gas had now topped $100 billion. As of February this year, 148 projects including new factories, expansions and process changes to increase capacity, had been announced. “This is an historic milestone for America’s chemical industry and proof that shale gas is a powerful driver of manufacturing growth,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “Thanks to the shale gas production boom, the United States is the most attractive place in the world to invest in chemical and plastics manufacturing. It’s an astonishing gain in competitiveness.” INEOS’ new furnace will add up to $55 million profit to the bottom line every year. “This has all been part of our plans to add capacity to take advantage of ethane produced from US shale gas and is consistent with our long-term strategy to improve site scale and ability to access low-cost ethane feedstock from shale gas,” said Dennis. The good news for American investment, though, does not end there. In August INEOS and Sasol finally reached an agreement to build a new plant together to produce 470,000 tons of high-density polyethylene a year at LaPorte, Texas. The plant will be built at INEOS’ Battleground Manufacturing Complex and should be operational by 2016. “This investment will allow INEOS to meet our customers’ needs for additional bimodal products,” said Dennis. “It also supports INEOS’ strategy to invest and to capture synergies on our major sites.” The 50/50 joint venture, which was initially discussed by the two companies in July 2013, will use Innovene™ S process technology licensed from INEOS Technologies. The ethylene needed for the production of the high-density polyethylene will be supplied by INEOS and Sasol in proportion to their respective ownership positions. “This project will expand Sasol’s presence in the global chemical market and complement our North American growth strategy,” said Fleetwood Grobler, Sasol group executive for global chemicals. “Its location offers several benefits, including access to US Gulf Coast infrastructure and proximity to our proposed ethane cracker and derivatives complex in Southwest Louisiana.” Access to vast new supplies of American natural gas from shale deposits is one of the most exciting domestic energy developments in decades, particularly for the petrochemical industry. The International Energy Agency believes the US will be self-sufficient in natural gas production by 2015 and oil production by 2035. And in May this year Energy in Depth said CO2 emissions in the United States were now at their lowest level for 20 years.

No Longer A Pipe Dream

Britain’s reliance on foreign imports of gas and coal hit an all-time high last year. And that dependency is set to increase. By 2020, Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, believes the UK will be importing 70% of the gas it needs. For energy-hungry companies like INEOS, with manufacturing plants in the UK, that’s a major concern and one it can no longer ignore. INEOS is planning to invest millions in creating opportunities for more underground gas storage facilities in the UK. The decision – made by INEOS earlier this year – comes at a time of growing concern over spiralling energy costs in the UK, the security of Britain’s energy supplies and the nation’s increasing reliance on foreign imports. Gas stored in the cavities at the Holford Brinefield in Cheshire will play a part in keeping the lights on in the UK and ultimately keep industrial consumers such as INEOS in business. The benefits for INEOS, though, will actually be twofold. “Even without gas storage, cavities would still be formed as they provide the brine that INEOS needs at its two sites in Runcorn,” said Richard Stevenson, Project Manager at INEOS Enterprises. “The proposed development would simply make use of the salt cavities once all the brine has been extracted.” Controlled solution mining has taken place in the Holford Brinefield since the 1920s. Since that time, over 200 cavities have been safely mined by INEOS and its predecessors. INEOS ChlorVinyls uses the concentrated salt solution to produce chlorine, which keeps most of the UK’s drinking water safe. INEOS Enterprises’ Salt Business also uses it to produce table salt, water softeners and de-icing salt. If planning permission is granted, this would be the third gas storage project at the Holford Brinefield and would create an additional 19 gas storage cavities. Today, a significant number of cavities are in use for the production of brine, eleven are operational for gas storage with a further eighteen being developed for gas storage. The importance of gas storage in the UK should not be underestimated. Recently the Energy and Climate Change Committee called on the British Government to double the UK’s current gas storage by 2020. As such, the proposed development at Holford has been classified as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, which means – unlike most planning applications – it will not be decided by the local authority. Instead it requires a Development Consent Order from Ed Davey, the current Secretary of State for Energy &amp; Climate Change. INEOS and Keuper Gas Storage Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of INEOS Enterprises Group Limited, are expected to apply for that order early next year. It is hoped Mr Davey will make a decision in 2016 so that construction can start the following year. INEOS would then expect to start storing natural gas in the specially-designed underground caverns from 2020. “This is an important proposal for the UK’s energy security and would provide vital investment and jobs for Cheshire,” said Greg Stewart, INEOS Enterprises’ Operations Director. “It is also a significant investment, which can be delivered without subsidies from the Government.” In March this year Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, warned that the UK would be importing up to 70% of its gas by 2020. Chief executive Sam Laidlaw said Britain’s energy security supply risked becoming the ‘forgotten priority’ of European energy policy. “In the UK an estimated 3.7 Gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity will be shut down by the end of 2015 as a result of European directives to curb emissions,” he said. “The country’s reserve capacity is forecast to shrink to 4%, increasing the risk of power cuts. Yet no new capacity is being built. The UK’s production of gas is falling rapidly. North Sea oil and gas output has fallen by 38% over the past three years. By 2020 we will be reliant on imports to meet 70% of the country’s gas needs. So when it comes to security of supply, there is a pressing need for solutions.” For a company like INEOS, which uses as much energy as the city of Liverpool to power its plants in Runcorn, it’s not a forgotten matter. It’s very much a priority. The UK became a net importer of energy in 2004. In 2010 it was importing 28% of its supply. Last year it rose to 47% with exports at their lowest level since 1980. Successful development of this project, along with the previous two INEOS supported gas projects in Cheshire, would have a combined ability to deliver up to 40% of the UK’s daily gas storage capability. “If there were a major supply disruption to the UK, the gas stored on the INEOS Enterprises Brinefield, including this project, could help to keep the lights on in the UK for nearly two weeks,” said Richard. Gas from the National Transmission System would be stored in the cavities when demand is low, usually during the warmer, summer months. When the demand increases, it will be fed back into the UK’s National Transmission System. Cheshire is one of the few places in the UK where gas can be safely stored underground due to the geology. The salt stratum is impermeable which means gas cannot pass through it. For more details log on to www.kgsp.co.uk

Why Does It Matter

The discovery of the Higgs boson particle, which gives substance to everything in the universe, turned physicists into rock stars for a day. It had been spectacularly difficult to find but a generation of physicists were so convinced that it was out there – somewhere – that they persuaded 40 countries from around the world to create the most complex machine ever built to test the theory. But what about the rest of us? Were we actually bothered? Should we care? And why does this discovery matter? INCH went to CERN, close to the INEOS headquarters and listened to some of the scientists involved. It was one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all time. Many physicists, whose careers had been dominated by the search for the elusive Higgs boson, thought they might never live to see it. But the average man, woman and child in the street are still probably wondering what the discovery of the Higgs boson particle has got to do with them, and whether it was worth the £6 billion spent trying to find it, especially in the midst of a global recession. It’s a question that Ainissa Ramirez, a former associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at America’s Yale University, understands. “This discovery is up there with Copernicus,” she said. “But people don’t want to know the details of the Higgs. Not yet. They want to know why it is important and how this changes human history.” One thing is certain. It will shape our world. We just don’t know quite how yet. “I cannot promise that the discovery of the Higgs particle will lead to a new type of non-stick pan, or any other concrete change to daily activities,” said Professor Dave Charlton, scientific leader of the ATLAS experiment at CERN which discovered the particle. “It probably won’t. But I hope the person in the street shares the common goal of many people to understand more about the way things work. Pushing the boundaries towards the deep building blocks of the universe is surely a cultural as well as a scientific imperative.” Professor Charlton, who is also a professor of particle physics at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said it was difficult to compare the Higgs discovery with previous historical discoveries, like radioactivity or the structure of DNA. “It’s just too early,” he said. “It can take decades or longer to figure out how such new physics will work through into new technologies. We don’t know what the consequences will be in terms of the next scientific steps. But we do know we have just taken a very big step in establishing how particles can have mass.” To discover the Higgs boson – the particle that gives mass to everything we see and arguably the most coveted prize in physics – scientists needed to recreate conditions less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. And to do this, they needed to build the most complex machine that had ever been built. For 15 years more than 10,000 scientists from 40 countries invested their time and expertise in creating an atom-smasher in a near circular 27km-long tunnel 100 metres (325ft) underground near Geneva, Switzerland. Professor Sir Jim Virdee, from London’s Imperial College, said some of the technology did not even exist when they started designing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which would accelerate sub-atomic particles to almost the speed of light and then smash them together. But the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 – and confirmed in March this year – finally showed the world what theoretical physicists Peter Higgs, Robert Brout and François Englert had predicted almost 50 years earlier. Looking into the future, it may solve fundamental questions about the origin of the universe, and, perhaps more importantly, its fate. “We have answered one deep and long-standing puzzle,” said Professor Charlton. “But the discovery has also posed more questions than it has answered. Some of these questions are not new but they are crystallised into real problems by the discovery. They are no longer hypothetical problems.” Ms Ramirez said when the electron was discovered in 1897, its uses were not obvious. “What is obvious today is that we can’t live without electrons, since they run through all our electronics,” she said. CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, was founded in 1954. Its mission was – and still is – to advance the frontiers of technology, find answers to questions about the universe, bring together nations through science and train the scientists and engineers of tomorrow. “Understanding the world around us has been a basic human interest from time immemorial,” said Professor Charlton. “People work together at CERN irrespective of nationality, gender, religion or other distinctions, because we all want answers to these basic questions.” Over the years thousands of scientists and physicists have passed through the doors. When the LHC was switched on in September 2008 to global fanfare, scientists were venturing into the unknown. The machine in their midst was capable of producing enough data to fill 100,000 CDs every second. The challenge would be to find a way to sift through that data to find the only standard model particle that had never been seen. Every second there were about 800 million head-on collisions at almost the speed of light. If scientists had recorded all the data, it would have been like trying to make 50 billion telephone calls all at the same time or listen to songs for 600 years. “Just a fraction of those collisions were of interest so we had to cut it down very quickly to the most interesting events,” said Professor Charlton. Initially there were teething problems. Thirty six hours after the LHC had been switched on, it had to be shut down again due to a faulty electrical wire between two magnets which had been melted by the high current passing through it. The LHC was finally restarted in November 2009 after repairs and the installation of a new safety system. Life without the Higgs Boson would not be life as we know it. Particles would have continued to fly through the universe, never clumping together to form anything. “It is astounding that we understand only a small fraction of the stuff in the universe,” said Professor Charlton. “The next data we take at the LHC could give us deep insights into the dark universe (dark matter) that we do not understand.” The LHC was shut down in February last year for a massive upgrade. When it restarts in January physicists can only imagine what they might find. All they know is this is just the beginning. “There are still many mysteries there,” said Professor Charlton. “We do know now, though, that empty space is not as we had thought. Empty space contains something, an invisible “Higgs field”, which all particles interact with. The discovery of the Higgs boson is a big step forward in our understanding of the deepest structure of nature.” As a professor of particle physics, probing deep into the basic structure of matter and forces, he believes nothing is impossible. “All scientific problems can be attacked,” he said. “Sometimes they may take years or decades to solve, but it should be possible to find answers to how things work. Understanding each new puzzle just takes time and energy and people and money.” Meanwhile, as a major, international laboratory, CERN has now set its sights on something even bigger. It wants to build a new underground machine that would be four times the size of the LHC. The 100km tunnel, which would encircle all of Geneva, would have unparalleled energy levels.

CERN Finds Its Place In History

Key technologies developed at CERN over the past 60 years have been finding their way into the outside world – and benefiting society. So far, The European Organisation for Nuclear Research can be thanked for giving the world more efficient solar panels, the World Wide Web, touch screen technology and medical imaging to name but a few. “The common drive for knowledge pushes us continuously to look for, and often develop, innovative technologies which are useful to us, as well as to others,” said Professor Dave Charlton. You would assume CERN has always benefited financially through patenting such inventions. But it hasn’t - due to the highly collaborative way it works. As one of Europe’s first joint ventures, its member states pump in millions of euros into the organisation every year to help develop new technologies which means they don’t want to then have to pay to use the inventions in their own countries. In the past CERN simply published details of its inventions in the same way it published its scientific discoveries. In other words, they were freely available. In 2010, though, CERN signed an agreement with the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to ensure it benefited from its engineers’ innovations. “Basic science is the driving force for innovation,” said CERN director General Rolf Heuer. “It is therefore vital for organisations like CERN to ensure that their knowledge and technologies find fertile ground for development. The agreement with WIPO will stimulate both organisations to explore joint ventures that may also involve other international organisations.” For CERN has many success stories of which it is proud. Here are just some of them. WWW Early research at CERN led to the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee, one of its computer scientists, wrote and circulated a hypertext project in 1989 so that staff could access reports, notes and databases. A subsequent report was published in 1993. CERN recently celebrated 20 years of putting World Wide Web software in the public domain by restoring the first website to its original web address – http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html TOUCH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY Apple has long been credited with inventing touchscreen technology with the iPhone but the company simply innovated it. Engineers Bent Stumpe and Frank Beck actually developed the world’s transparent touch screen in the early 1970s which reacted to certain objects like a stylus. It was manufactured by CERN and put to use in 1973. SOLAR PANELS Vacuum technology developed at CERN for particle accelerators is now being used to make a new generation of solar panels with outstanding insulation. Crisoforo Benvenuti, who invented them, said that temperatures of 80 degrees Celsius had been recorded inside the panels even when they were covered in snow. EMAIL ENCRYPTION In May this year three young entrepreneurs, inspired by their time at CERN, launched ProtonMail, a secure email service with a sophisticated encryption system to deter would-be spies. The idea for the company was born in a CERN cafeteria where physicists and engineers regularly meet and share their ideas over coffee. POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY (PET) SCANS CERN developed bismuth germanate and transparent lead tungstate crystals for its detectors. Today both types of crystals are used in PET scans which help to diagnose cancer. The PET scan produces detailed three-dimensional images of the inside of the body which can show how far a cancer has spread or how well it is responding to treatment. And accelerator technology, of which CERN is a lead laboratory, is now being used increasingly for medical purposes such as cancer treatment via hadron therapy, which allows to deliver a very localised dose of radiation to a tumour site more precisely than before.

Out Of Harm’s Way

We live in a world where technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate. But who is driving it? The military or the commercial world? The world owes the existence of some of the most exciting technological developments in history to the military. Necessity was certainly the mother of invention during the 20th century. War demanded the best, focused the mind, pushed the frontiers of what was possible and inspired people to think faster and smarter than the enemy. Computers, thermal imaging, radar, GPS, jet engines, carbon fibre and drones were all developed for the military long before they found a place in everyday civilian life. But the dynamic has changed somewhat. “In the past defence and aerospace were the big drivers of innovation,” said Neil Stansfield, Head of Knowledge, Innovation and Futures Enterprise at the UK Government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. “However today, innovation comes from many more sectors and has commercial drivers.” That said, the military’s need for innovation should never be underestimated as access to new technology provides competitive advantage that can quite literally be the difference between life or death. “In some niche areas, the military will always drive innovation and be an early adopter,” said Neil. Only two months ago the US Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency unveiled its latest invention – hand-held, gecko-inspired paddles that let humans scale vertical glass walls like Spiderman. Using the new technology, a man weighing 218lb – and carrying a 50lb load – climbed a 25ft vertical glass wall without ropes or hooks. Dubbed the Z-Man project, scientists said they had looked to nature – the gecko – for inspiration to help soldiers gain the high ground in built-up warzones without the need for ropes and ladders. “The gecko is one of the champion climbers in the animal kingdom, so it was natural for us to look to it for inspiration in overcoming some of the manoeuvre challenges that US forces face in urban environments,” said Dr Matt Goodman, the DARPA programme manager for Z-Man. Not only that, but the man-made, reversible adhesives that DARPA created using nanotechnology could one day find their way into everyday life. Whatever part the military finally does play in the future should never detract from the importance of its role in the past. The global positioning system, commonly known as GPS, was invented by the US Air Force in the mid-seventies to guide missiles. Today most of us, including aircraft pilots, sailors and fishermen, use the space-age technology to avoid getting lost. Many mobile phones and modern cars are also equipped with satellite navigation systems which let people know exactly where they are in the world at any time. “All smartphones now come with maps and location services as standard,” said Ben Taylor, Senior Corporate Communications Manager at Vodafone UK. “And Ofcom believes that more than half of all adults in the UK now own a smartphone.” The very first thermal imaging camera was developed for the military in Sweden in 1958 by AGA. The camera’s ability to produce a crisp image in total darkness and through smoke meant it became a valuable tool in combat zones. Today thermal imaging cameras help police to track down suspects in the dark, sailors to navigate at night, fire crews to search smoke-filled buildings for survivors, and rescue teams to locate earthquake victims trapped under tons of rubble. FLIR Systems, the world leader for thermal imaging cameras, said they were also often used to detect gas leaks and scan buildings for signs of poor insulation and damp. The world’s first electronic digital computer was designed by engineers for the US military during the Second World War to help them calculate artillery firing ranges. When ENIAC, as it was known, was finally shown to the public on February 15, 1946, in Philadelphia at Penn’s Moore Building, the press hailed it as a ‘giant brain’. It had cost almost $500,000 but this revolutionary device – as we all now know – changed the world forever. “Without ENIAC, we would not have Google, we would not have Microsoft or many of the things that are driving today’s economy,” said Bill Green, a former Democratic Councilman-at-Large on the City Council of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another technology that originated in the military is radar, which was developed by several nations before and during the Second World War, and was heavily deployed across the UK as part of an early warning system to detect incoming enemy aircraft. Today radar is used to forecast the weather, help aircraft fly and land safely and enable the police to catch speeding drivers. The British engineer, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, who contributed significantly to the development of radar, was reportedly pulled over for speeding in Canada in the 1950s by a policeman armed with a radar gun. As the officer spoke to him, he is believed to have replied: ‘Had I known what you were going to do with it, I would never have invented it.’ Radar technology also led to the first microwave oven. During an experiment with magnetrons in his Raytheon lab in Massachusetts, American scientist Percy Spencer discovered that the radar transmitters had melted a chocolate bar in his pocket. Amazed, he sent his assistant for a bag of popcorn, spread the corn over the table near the magnetrons and then waited. Less than a minute later, the kernels began exploding. Today drones, first developed as target practice for the military in the 1930s and now heavily used for surveillance and bombing missions, are gaining ground in the commercial world. Civilian air space is expected to be opened up to all kinds of drones in the US by 2015 and in Europe by 2016. And The Federal Aviation Administration in the US estimates that 30,000 civil and commercial unmanned aircraft could be in the skies by 2030. “I certainly saw how the military technology could be used in a commercial environment when I was in the RAF,” said Mark Sickling, who flew drones over Afghanistan and Iraq on both reconnaissance and armed missions from a control base in Las Vegas. He is now chief pilot at Cyberhawk, which uses remotely-operated aerial vehicles to inspect everything from live flare tips at INEOS and Petroineos sites, to wind turbines and off-shore oil and gas installations. Mark said a lot of commercial technology was now being leveraged by the military because of shrinking military budgets. One commercial enterprise, which is carrying out its own extensive research into the use of unmanned drones, is Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer. Last year it announced that it was testing ‘Octocopters’ to deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order. “I know this looks like science fiction, but it’s not,” said chief executive Jeff Bezos. “I don’t want people to think this is just around the corner. It is years of additional work. But it will work. It will happen. And it’s going to be a lot of fun.” Craig Roberts, CEO at Cyberhawk, isn’t quite as optimistic as Jeff at Amazon. “It is a lovely idea,” he said. “But it is science fiction at the moment because it could not be done safely within the current CAA restrictions on flying.” In the UK, for example, unmanned aircraft cannot fly higher than 150 metres or within 50 metres of a built-up area or road and pilots must be able to see the aircraft at all times. “Amazon’s idea is a long, long way off,” said Craig.

Rise Of The Drones

Successful innovation starts when someone finds a gap in the market. Malcolm Connolly, a chemical engineering graduate, found his – dangling off the end of a rope. For 10 years he had been ‘working at height’, inspecting North Sea oil and gas installations, often hundreds of feet in the air and in challenging and dangerous conditions. “He thought there must be an easier way to do this,” said Craig Roberts, who is now CEO of the company that Malcolm founded. There was. Malcolm and his team at Cyberhawk guided the development of a fleet of remote-controlled aerial vehicles that could fly in 28mph winds, operate in high ambient temperatures and inspect flares while live and, it turned out, do a week’s work in an afternoon. One such job saved an off-shore gas drilling and production platform in South East Asia more than $2 million and eliminated the need for their staff to work at height, dramatically improving safety. “In the past they would have had to shut down the plant for seven days to allow time for a rope access crew to access and inspect the flare,” said Craig. Today Cyberhawk, which uses remotely-operated aerial vehicles to inspect everything from live flare tips to chimney stacks, ducting and pipe racks to the underdeck of off-shore oil and gas installations, has an impressive list of clients including Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxonmobil, Total and INEOS and has worked for many of the world’s largest energy companies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. While the public debate rages on over the ethics of using drones for bombing missions, Cyberhawk is proud of the pioneering work it is doing to lift people out of danger. Video In 2010 when Cyberhawk agreed to inspect an on-shore flare for INEOS Grangemouth, it was venturing into the unknown. No one had attempted to fly an unmanned aerial vehicle within a few metres of a flare tip. After several on-shore flare inspections, Cyberhawk conducted what it understands to be the world’s first off-shore inspection in the North Sea in 2011 for ConocoPhillips. And in 2012 it became the first company to inspect an off-shore wind turbine off the UK coast. “Leading the field, though, has meant we have had to establish our own training and R&amp;D centre,” said Craig. “We believe if you want to grow your company in a dynamic manner, you need to invest in research and development.” INEOS initially hired Cyberhawk to inspect its live flare stacks and chimneys at its Grangemouth plant in Scotland, UK. “In the past INEOS would have had to shut down the flare, with the associated loss in production, perhaps erect scaffolding around the flare tip and then send a technician to the top of the stack, ” said Craig. “Now production can now continue as normal while we inspect the flare and there’s no need for people to work at height or in dangerous areas.” High definition video, photographic and thermal images – captured by the remotely-operated aerial vehicles – allow anomalies to be identified and thermal images help to identify potential problems such as “burn back” where the gases are igniting within the body of the flare. “We can see what a person would see inspecting a shut-down flare but, because we inspect the flares while they are live, we can also obtain thermal images,” he said. “We also inspect all the flare whereas a person would only note the points of interest.” Once the job is done, the results are discussed on-site immediately. Each aerial vehicle is battery-powered, has eight propellers, and may be fitted with a still camera, HD video recorder, gas sensor and a thermal imaging camera. But even with all that kit on board, it still weighs less 2kg. “To illustrate how light and small our aerial vehicles are, we often compare it to a large seagull – at least when we’re speaking to clients who operate in the North Sea,” said Craig. Accidents have been known to happen. But to others. In April this year a UK shop owner became the first person successfully prosecuted by the Civil Aviation Authority for dangerously flying a small unmanned surveillance aircraft within 50 metres of the Jubilee Bridge on the Walney Channel in Cumbria. “It can be a problem because it is easy to buy a hobby kit and fly in a public area without an understanding of how to safely operate the remotely-operated aerial vehicle,” said Craig. “What Cyberhawk does is a million miles away from that.” Cyberhawk’s ‘pilots’ are trained to the highest possible standard – and trained to expect the unexpected. To qualify as an off-shore pilot, Cyberhawk staff must first pass four levels of internal training and certification over-and-above the basic qualification supported by the Civil Aviation Authority. And its services are proving invaluable. “Because we are able to monitor a problem very easily, companies can, despite having an issue, often avoid unplanned shutdowns and stick with their planned shutdown programme,” said Craig. Inspecting live flare tips, though, is only part of Cyberhawk’s success story. It has also used its remotely-piloted aerial vehicles to record the construction progress of a whisky bottling plant, survey a restored opencast mine, inspect meteorological masts at sea and monitor a herd of seals without disturbing their natural environment. INEOS has also used Cyberhawk to film sites for use in short films to help inform its communities.

Getting The Chemistry Right

Without scientists pushing boundaries, the world would be a very different place. Many of the things we take for granted just would not exist. So how do you convince young people to pursue a career in science and chemistry? It’s a problem for many countries. But planet earth needs scientists if it is to tackle global poverty and global climate change. There’s no doubting that Albert Einstein was a genius. The German-born American physicist may not have learned to swim, but he turned the world upside down with his theory of relativity. Say ‘Einstein’ to the man in the street, though, and he sees ‘an old man, with piercing eyes, wild grey hair in a crumpled laboratory coat’. And that is part of science’s problem. “To many people, science looks like an old man’s game, but it isn’t,” Professor Brian Cox said during a recent interview with a British national newspaper. “Most of the science in the UK is done by people in their 20s. Even Einstein did all his world-changing work when he was a young, good-looking man who drank and misbehaved a bit. So it’s possible to do both.” Professor Cox, a former pop star who had a hit in the 1990s with D:Ream and Things Can Only Get Better, is passionate about opening up science to the masses in the UK. Last year he presented five BBC programmes, entitled Wonders of Life, in which he revealed how a few fundamental laws of science gave birth to life. Beth Regan, a publicist at BBC Factual in the UK, said the series attracted an average of almost three million viewers. “Broadcasters have a big responsibility to rebuild the image of science,” Professor Cox told Daily Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon. “They need to show that it is not necessarily a game just for super genius people either.” Recent research by King’s College London found that many British children aged 10 to 14 would rather be hairdressers or beauticians than scientists. Although they agreed science was interesting and felt that scientists made a difference in the world, they saw it as a career for ‘highly-talented geeks’ only. “Liking science clearly is not enough,” said Professor Louise Archer, director of the ASPIRES study which presented the findings of the five-year UK Government Department of Education &amp; Professional Studies report. But she felt the negative views of school science and scientists were not the problem. The issue, she said, was a lack of awareness of where science could lead. “Most science qualifications were seen to lead only to jobs as a scientist, a science teacher or a doctor,” she said. Many governments and organisations throughout the world are concerned that not enough young people are opting to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) after the age of 16. It has become an international priority issue for governments and industry with widespread concern about the knock-on effects on a country’s ability to compete and innovate in a global economy. “National governments are striving to improve the competitiveness of their countries and, with few exceptions, are emphasising the key role STEM industries have in helping them to achieve their goals,” said Derek Bell, Professor of Education, College of Teachers. Professor Bell was speaking at a global conference of science academies. In all 100-plus delegates from 58 countries came to hear what could be done to improve science education. That was in 2012. Five years earlier The European Commission had warned that there had been an ‘alarming decline’ in young people’s interest in science and mathematics in Europe. It said despite efforts to reverse the trend, any signs of improvement had been modest, and feared Europe’s long-term ability to innovate and remain competitive would be damaged unless more effective action were taken. One of its recommendations was to radically change the way science was taught in primary and secondary schools to a more inquiry-based style. Since then more and more countries have adopted inquiry-based science education, a method of teaching which encourages pupils to pose the questions. In Germany, where inquiry-based science education is now part of the curriculum in many schools, INEOS in Köln is very much in the driving seat. “Since 2008 we have formed strong, well-established, long-term partnerships with 23 primary and eight secondary schools which have adopted the TuWaS! programme,” said Dr Anne-Gret Iturriaga Abarzua, communications manager at INEOS in Köln. “We understand the need to bring relevance to the school curriculum with visits to our sites and employees in the classroom. These partnerships help us as a company, as an industry and also as a developed industrial country to attract young people – especially girls – who are curious, enthusiastic and motivated to make the world a better place through science.” So far, four German states have adopted the TuWaS! programme for children aged 6 to 12. The programme was founded by Freie Universität Berlin Professor Dr Petra Skiebe-Corrette after she had seen a similar model working wonders in Sweden. Teachers attend a one-day seminar during which they are taught the natural science and technical experiments first. They then return to the classroom, armed with a school year’s worth of experiments and the confidence to teach them. INEOS in Köln is the biggest financial supporter in the Rhineland sponsoring almost half of the 70 schools which have adopted the TuWaS! programme. INEOS employees act as ambassadors, and have so far reached more than 6,000 children. “The TuWaS! programme forces children to ask questions rather than receive ready-made answers,” said Andreas Niessen, dean of the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Pulheim. At a global academies conference in Finland in 2012, Anne-Gret was invited to speak about how science education and industry could successfully work together. “It was the first time that someone from industry had actually been invited to speak at their conference,” she said. Inquiry-based science education owes its existence to America, where it originated, but the US is also facing an uphill battle in selling science to the masses. In June this year Lisa Coico, President of the City College of New York, said that she was concerned about the dearth of American high school students wanting to major in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “There is much more to the STEM disciplines than memorisation of formulas and mind-numbing repetitive calculations,” she said. “These fields are on the front line of addressing the most significant challenges facing society, from climate change to environmental health and diseases to next-generation computing and communication technology.” To try to address the decline, the city college has adopted a holistic approach to learning created by the Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center. “When we expose students early on to what STEM professionals do, the more likely they will be interested in becoming scientists, engineers, physicians, and more,” she said. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by the year 2018 there will be 1.2 million new job opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics but fears there will be a significant shortage of qualified college graduates to fill those jobs. Dennis Seith, CEO of INEOS O&amp;P USA, is a member of the Texas A&amp;M University Engineering Council, which is working with the dean of engineering to define industry’s needs and work on teaching methods. The goal is to enrol 25,000 engineering students by 2025 – twice the current number of students signing up. INEOS O&amp;P USA has also set up an initiative to increase INEOS’ access to talent by cultivating relationships with local regional technical schools and training centres and is already helping to develop skills internally by taking on apprentices. It all helps. As a company which needs a continuous supply of highly-skilled, highly disciplined employees, INEOS cannot afford to ignore the problem. Nor is it. At INEOS’ Grangemouth site in Scotland in the UK, INEOS organises a major, two-week Science Engineering and Technology Fair every year, where 2,000 local children are able to gain hands-on experience of science and engineering. “It’s the best way to get young people excited about engineering and manufacturing and dispel any preconceptions that they have about science being a ‘boring’ career,” said Tom Crotty, Corporate Affairs Director. In addition, every year the Royal Society of Chemistry organises the UK Chemistry Olympiad for pupils in the UK, and INEOS has been sponsoring the competition since 2007 to help inspire the next generation to take up science as a career. “INEOS’ support has enabled us to significantly widen participation in the competition,” said Jim Iley, Director of Science and Education at the Royal Society of Chemistry. Others are also driving home the message that science is cool. Elise Andrew launched website www.iflscience.com when she was in her final year of her biology degree at Sheffield University in the UK in March 2012 and in October last year told The Guardian newspaper: “I love that science can never be finished. In science every question answered leads to two more.” Someone who wouldn’t argue with that is Professor Dave Charlton at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland. He said he hoped the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson – the so-called ‘God particle’ – would help to inspire a new generation of physicists and scientists. “At CERN we are always keen to explain our science, and how we do it, to non-experts because an understanding of the methods and concepts of science lies at the basis of our society,” he said. Crisis? What crisis? asks China Science does not have an image problem in China which is now the second biggest economy in the world. A recent report by America’s National Science Board found that over the past 20 years, China had been devoting more and more money to science and technology. In 2011 China became the largest Patent office in the world with 526,000 applications being filed, compared to the USA which in the same year filed some 503,000 applications. And the gap continues to widen. Suwatchai Songwanich, CEO Bangkok Bank, said in a recent article for The Nation Multimedia Group that China’s goal was to be a leader in science education and that China viewed science and technology as critically important to its economic success. “The goal is to transform China from an industrial society into an innovative society,” he wrote. “And one way the government plans to achieve this is to greatly increase the level of investment in research and development, with a target of R&amp;D contributing 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2020.”

INEOS Journeys Into The World Of The Electric Car

Electric cars are nothing new. Thomas Parker, an Englishman, actually came up with one that ran on rechargeable batteries in 1884. But dwindling resources of fossil fuels and concerns about CO2 emissions are now forcing us as a society to consider them as a serious alternative. Unsurprisingly INEOS has been quick to explore whether to switch to electric cars at its sites around the world. Video Electric cars on their own won’t save the planet. No one disputes that. But it’s perhaps a start. A move in the right direction, at least, towards lowering carbon emissions and creating a more sustainable world for future generations. The difficulty, though, is how do you convince people to change their way of life today without paying more? INEOS’ own journey into the world of the electric car has already begun. At its Antwerp site in Belgium, Köln in Germany and Lavéra in France. Antwerp is currently deciding which road to travel after trialling an e-car on the site, Köln is currently running trials, but at Lavéra, site policy is now to use an electric car for on-site journeys wherever possible. In France companies in the Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur region, which employ more than 250 people, must pledge to help reduce air pollution caused by their own staff. And last year Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur made it mandatory for 30% of a company’s car fleet to be electric or at least cars with low carbon emissions. “There were no sanctions at that time so not everyone abided by these rules,” said Bernard de Chanville, general services manager who also led the project. “But INEOS was – and is – considered as exemplary in this region by its community and local authorities.” Staff at Lavéra actually began testing a range of different e-cars five years ago. “I don’t remember exactly how many we have tested but it is a lot,” said Bernard. “Every time a new model came on the market, we tried it out.” Overall the staff liked the Renault Kangoo ZE van, which has been France’s best-selling all-electric vehicle since 2010. “It is the first really industrial model,” said Bernard. Despite the limited mileage before the battery needs recharging, staff said the van felt safe and was a pleasure to drive. INEOS currently operates nine vehicles for use on the Lavéra site near Marseilles. “Every time a car lease expires, we now look at whether it is possible to choose an e-car,” said Bernard. “Some of our vehicles, though, are also used off-site so the limited battery range of an e-car then becomes an issue.” Despite the drawbacks, the trials at its sites both fit very well with INEOS’ ethos as a company which prides itself on seeking out – where possible – safe, sustainable solutions to today’s challenges. INEOS’ purchasing directors are now investigating what would be needed to equip all its European and US sites with electric cars. “Electric cars are interesting for our site as we don’t need wide ranges, we have low speed limits on site so a reduced speed is a benefit, not a penalty,” said Bernard. If the price – and conditions – are right, INEOS could also become one of the first chemical companies to use energy generated by its own Combined Heat and Power processes to move people and goods around on site. “It is certainly a very innovative idea that would have a positive impact to reduce emissions from on-site vehicles and change attitudes,” said Peggy Gerits, Planning and Logistics Manager at INEOS Oxide in Antwerp, where staff have just finished a lengthy evaluation into the use of e-cars on their site. It would also be good for business for the chemical industry which is involved in the production of many of the components that are used in today’s e-cars, such as polypropylene for bumpers and butadiene for ‘green’, fuel-efficient tyres. The cost, though, is one of the main reasons given by the public for not making the switch to electricity. A two-seater Renault Twizy with a maximum speed of 50mph (80kph) costs about £7,000 (€9,000, $11,000). The short distances that can be travelled before the battery needs recharging is another perceived problem. After about 60 miles (100 km), it will need charging again. But Renault says that by 2020, a subcompact electric car will be cheaper to buy, it will go much further – possibly 250 miles (402 km) before it needs recharging – and be quicker to recharge. Antwerp trials e-car By Jenny Franken (Intern) Staff at INEOS’ site in Antwerp, Belgium started on an interesting journey when they began testing an electric car last year. Back in 2003 Essent build a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Plant at INEOS Oxide’s site in Antwerp, with surplus power to be fed into the Belgian electricity grid. More recently both companies have sought additional cooperation for using the electricity produced by the cogen unit onsite, to extend the environmental benefits beyond production units on site. Discussions with Essent led to a partnership with 4iS a consulting firm that focuses on electromobility and a trial of electric cars agreed. For two months they were encouraged to use the car to transport equipment and pipes on short journeys around the site. “The car was used for basically every journey that could not be done by bicycle,” said Peggy Gerits, Planning and Logistics Manager at INEOS NV. The trial was a major team effort, involving INEOS, Essent, 4iS, which supports businesses that may want to switch to electric cars, Renault, which offered use of a test car, and Blue Corner, which provided the charging station. Their mission was to raise awareness of what it’s like to drive an electric car and gather feedback. And the feedback was largely positive. Staff said the car was safe, quiet and comfortable, and perfect for the short journeys around the site. Some, though, were concerned that the car posed a potential safety hazard because it was so quiet. They feared people might not hear it approaching or reversing. The other downside was remembering to charge the car’s battery, which could take up to an hour. “Driving an e-car is a different experience,” said Peggy. “It is more relaxed.” The electric car, tested by INEOS staff, had a top speed of 81mph (130kph). “That wasn’t an issue for us because there are strict speed restrictions on the site anyway,” said Peggy. Overall, though, the staff liked it. Cost is the main issue restricting public demand for this new technology. The high cost of e-cars today and the short distances that can be travelled of “just” 140 km-200 km means they are as yet not widely popular. But things are changing rapidly Renault says that by 2020, the range of a compact electric vehicle could be as much as 402 km (250 miles), the charging time will be significantly shorter and the overall cost to produce will be lower. Electric cars on INEOS sites would typically travel short distances. They would be parked on site out of hours, when they can be recharged, so they are a very helpful addition to the sites operation. To make these cars more popular and easier to handle the market has to develop. Future challenges will include reliability and durability of batteries and cost reduction. Antwerp now plans to review their internal car fleet to investigate the possibility of switching to e-cars. If it makes financial sense, INEOS may go down that road. What staff liked 100% emission free Safe Quiet to drive What staff disliked The need to recharge after short distances Time-consuming to recharge Expensive to buy

Out Of This World

This summer millions of people around the globe tuned in to watch the 2014 FIFA World Cup. But believe it or not, some would say that there was more to life than football as INCH discovered when it went in search of some of life’s more unusual, if extreme, sports and quirky events. Marathon des SablesYou would think Mauro Prosperi’s incredible story of survival would be enough to deter anyone from signing up for the Marathon des Sables, a 158-mile (254km) race across the Sahara desert. But people are queuing up to fork out at least 2,700 Euros to take part. The race, dubbed the ‘toughest footrace on earth’, is the equivalent of running six marathons in temperatures of up to 120°F (49°C). Running in the sand dunes can cause your feet to swell. After three days your feet can feel like concrete slabs. Everyone must carry everything he/she needs for the six-day race except for water. The organisers kindly provide that. All 14 gallons a day of it for each competitor. Mauro, though, is unlikely to ever want to do it again. Twenty years ago the Italian policeman got lost during a sandstorm, ran out of food and water after 36 hours and spent nine days alone in the desert before he was found 186 miles (299km) off course by a nomadic family. He had survived by drinking his own urine and eating bats and snakes. La TomatinaSpain’s Tomatina is the food fight to end all food fights. There are no winners or losers; just a sea of red faces once the battle ends. In the past up to 50,000 people have thronged the streets of Bunol, near Valencia, to pelt each other with 140 tons of overripe, squashed tomatoes. Today organisers sell tickets to just 20,000. Shopkeepers use huge plastic covers to protect their shop fronts throughout the hour-long street battle. A cannon signals the start of the fight and another marks the end. Once it’s over, the town’s streets and walls are hosed down while everyone else takes a shower. The annual festival is believed to have been inspired by a group of teenagers who grabbed tomatoes from a vegetable stall and began to throw them at one another during a parade through Bunol in August 1945. The North Pole Marathon As marathons go, The North Pole Marathon is arguably the coolest. This year armed guards patrolled the marathon route as the 48 athletes from 16 countries braved the threat of hungry polar bears, temperatures of -47C and drifting ice floes to complete the 26.2-mile route. There are always so few competitors that they all merit a mention on the organisers’ official website. Competitor Robert Plijnaar from Holland wore three pairs of socks and three layers of clothing to keep warm. “I started off also wearing a mask and a pair of ski glasses but after 100 metres it was just like looking through an aquarium, so I had to take them off. Unfortunately, it meant I got frostbite around my eyes and nose,” he said. World Tuna TossingIt’s a hammer throwing competition with a twist. Instead of a heavy ball, contestants whirl a frozen tuna around their heads with a rope and then fling it as far as they can. Whoever throws the 17lb blue fin tuna the furthest during the Tunarama Festival at Port Lincoln, in South Australia, is crowned world champion. The Jungle MarathonIf you are frightened of piranhas, it’s probably best to avoid The Jungle Marathon. Organisers say only the brave register for this event, which is deemed to be one of the toughest, wettest and hottest ultra-marathons in the world. And you can see why. Apart from the sweltering temperatures, competitors have to wade through swamps where anacondas lurk, scale steep, slippery muddy slopes, tackle dense undergrowth, cross piranha-infested rivers and spend more than one night in the depths of the Amazon jungle with jaguars and howling monkeys for company. All runners must carry a knife, a copy of their medical insurance and enough food for the seven-day, 158-mile (254km) race to the finish. If you are unlucky enough to need an IV drip, you’ll also find two hours added to your finishing time. Cheese RollingAn American Army veteran last year travelled more than 4,000 miles from his home in Colorado Springs to chase a 3kg large wheel of cheese down a steep hill in Gloucestershire in the UK. Thankfully the trip paid off; he won one of the races and some Double Gloucester cheese. The age-old cheese rolling event at Cooper’s Hill is an annual spectacle that draws huge crowds. Every year spectators watch a bunch of cheese rollers tumble down the hill after the cheese, which can reach speeds of up to 70mph (112km/h). The first person to reach the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. There have been a few minor injuries over the years. In 2009 a spectator was hurt when he fell out of a tree and had to be stretchered off with suspected fractures. Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race pits man and animal against nature, and has been called the ‘last great race on earth’. Mushers and their dogs cover 1,000 miles of the roughest, most beautiful terrain Alaska has to offer, including jagged mountain ranges, frozen rivers, dense forest, and miles of windswept coast, in temperatures often far below zero and winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility. World Bog SnorkellingThere’s not a great deal to see at the World Bog Snorkelling Championships, not least because competitors can only surface from the gloomy, 55-metre, water-filled trenches to check they are heading in the right direction. Still that doesn’t stop the crowds lining the two muddy trenches nor the competitors who last year jetted in from France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to dive into the freezing, smelly peat bog. The championships are held every year in Llanwrtyd Wells, the smallest town in Britain. Competitors must ‘swim’ two lengths of the 6ft deep trench without using conventional swimming strokes. But they are not alone. There are lot of creepy crawlies in the water, including the apparently harmless water scorpion. Baby Jumping FestivalOne of the most bizarre – and perhaps mildly alarming – events is The Baby Jumping Festival during which men depicting the devil leap over newborn babies lying on a mattress in the street. The festival, which dates back to the 1620s, is held every year in Castrillo de Murcia of Spain, and is part of the celebrations for the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi. The idea is to purify the babies’ souls, ward off evil spirits and protect them from sin. Tenzing-Hillary Everest MarathonMost of the Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon may be downhill but don’t be fooled into thinking that will make your life easy. Organisers of this annual event insist competitors are in Nepal three weeks before the race so they can acclimatise to the high altitude. The three-week ‘holiday’ includes a 14-day trek to the marathon starting point – Everest Base Camp (5364m/17,598ft) – under medical supervision, and an ascent of Kala Patthar (5545m/18200ft) for the best views of Everest. The race itself, which includes two steep uphill sections, criss-crosses highland Sherpa trails of the Khumbu icefall en route to the finish line at Namche Bazaar. Wife-carrying World ChampionshipsFinland may be the birthplace of the Wife-carrying World Championships but men come from far and wide to compete in this epic display of brute strength. Competitors must wade through a metre-deep pool of water, clear hurdles and run as fast as they can with their wives dangled upside down over their shoulders. A wife has to weigh at least 49kg (about 7.7st) or she will be given a heavy rucksack to carry. Dropping her incurs a 15-second time penalty. The man, who completes the 253-metre obstacle course in the shortest time, receives his wife’s weight in beer. The competition began in 1992 and is believed to be rooted in the legend of a hard-faced gang leader who made a habit of stealing women from neighbouring villages. Comrades Ultra Marathon It might only be a recent phenomenon that ultra marathons have gained such popularity but some of them, such as 90km Comrades Ultra Marathon in South Africa have been around for many years. It was run for the first time on 24 May 1921 between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. It is believed to be the world’s largest and oldest ultra marathon race. The direction of the race alternates each year between the “uphill course” (87 km) starting from Durban and the “down hill course” (89 km) starting from Pietermaritzburg. It was the idea of World War I veteran Vic Clapham, to commemorate the South African soldiers killed during the war. Clapham, who had endured a 2,700-kilometre route march through East Africa, wanted the memorial to be a unique test of the physical endurance of the entrants. The constitution of the race states one of its primary aims is to “celebrate mankind’s spirit over adversity”. The race attracts 18,000 runners each year, which included a team from INEOS in 2013, when Jim Ratcliffe, Leen Heemskerk, Chris Woods, Oliver Hayward-Young, George Ratcliffe and Alessia Maresca all successfully completed the course.

INEOS Campaign Gains Ground – And Host Of Supporters

Last year INEOS said it wanted to inspire thousands of children in the UK to give the TV, the Internet and video games a rest – to get off the sofa – and start enjoying life outdoors. It was an ambitious plan. A huge challenge. But INEOS is not one to run from a challenge. And with the help of little feet, INEOS’ GO Run For Fun campaign has been making huge strides. One of Britain’s most successful Olympic athletes has publicly backed INEOS’ ambitious plans to create the biggest children’s running initiative in the world. Double Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe, who was chairman of London Olympics’ organising committee, told guests at the launch of INEOS’ GO Run For Fun Foundation that much had been written about the importance of creating a lasting legacy of the 2012 Games. “GO Run for Fun is exactly what we were talking about,” he said. “INEOS has picked up the torch and run with it in the most profound way.” He was speaking just minutes before 500 children, aged five to 10, from 11 schools celebrated the national launch of GO Run For Fun with a 2km race at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park London, in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium. The run, which mirrored events that have been held all over the UK since August last year, coincided with the launch of the GO Run For Fun Foundation, a new charity aimed at encouraging Britain’s youngsters to run for fun. Earlier INEOS chairman Jim Ratcliffe had also addressed guests and potential sponsors. “I do not feel comfortable asking for money,” he said. “But there has been such an insatiable appetite for us to stage these events that we cannot cope with the demand.” INEOS, which has invested £1.5million (€1.9m, $2.5m) to ensure the campaign’s success over the next three years, said there was enormous potential for it to grow way beyond the initial aim of 100,000 children. The Foundation is the first step to securing vital funding from government and businesses so that the GO Run For Fun team can run even more events with schools and local clubs across the UK and beyond. “Children used to be a lot more active when I was young,” said Jim. “We used to cycle, run or walk everywhere. Today they have a lot more distractions, and spend more time indoors playing on games consoles and smart phones than outside playing. It also doesn’t help that governments sell off school playing fields.” The World Health Organisation now regards childhood obesity as one of the most serious global public health challenges for the 21st century. And obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia. And more worryingly for the UK, Public Health England says 30% of children aged two to 15 are now overweight or obese. “The biggest health issue in my parents’ day was smoking,” said Jim. “Now it’s obesity.” INEOS’ campaign is about encouraging children to get active, and start running again. For fun. So far the campaign has won an army of supporters, including some of Britain’s best athletes - Brendan Foster, Baroness Tani Grey Thompson, Colin Jackson and Sharron Davies. Teachers, whose schools have taken part in one of the all-inclusive events all over the UK, are equally as impressed and understand the importance of leading by example. “I think teachers can be huge role models in encouraging children, who may never have run before, to take part in events like this,” said Claire Snailham, a teacher Ivy Chimneys Primary School, Epping, Essex. Claire, whose father was a PE teacher, escorted 90 children to Olympic Park for the celebrity-led fun run. “The children didn’t take any notice of the rain,” she said. “It was so exciting for them to be running at Olympic Park and they loved it mostly because it was for fun and not just a competition for the fastest runners.” The run, which was started by Sky Sports News presenter Charlie Webster, also signalled the start of the race to find sponsors. And that, by all accounts, is now going well too, with INEOS’ a number of companies already inspired to offer their support for the upcoming year. “We have had positive support from quite a few companies already and we are in discussion with many more,” said Leen Heemskerk, the Chief Financial Officer at INEOS O&amp;P Europe (North) who is also leading the GO Run For Fun campaign. The appeal for more support, though, did not end there. On June 5, Jim – plus 20 school children and one very large mascot called DART – lobbied politicians at the Houses of Parliament about the growing need to tackle childhood obesity. “Parents worry about their children’s increasingly inactive lifestyles and we want to help them,” said Jim. “But decisive action is needed by the Government immediately in support of kids, to give them the opportunity to do more exercise. Inactivity can no longer be ignored.” He said despite the number of reports highlighting the problem, little had been done by any of the political parties. “I met a number of parliamentarians and they all agreed that something must be done so it is disappointing that there is so little action being taken on this issue,” said Jim. The parliamentary reception was hosted by Alex Cunningham and provided Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Charlie Webster and Brendan Foster, with an opportunity to remind politicians of the need to build on the Olympic legacy and agree a clear policy. Video GO Run For Fun goes on tour Continental Europe also got a taste of INEOS’ GO Run For Fun campaign this summer. Events were held in Rolle (Switzerland) home to INEOS’ head office, and in communities close to INEOS sites in Antwerp (Belgium) and Köln (Germany). In all, more than 3,000 children aged between four and 12 took part in 11 runs. On hand to cheer them on and ensure each event ran smoothly were hundreds of staff from all three sites who willingly turned out to act as first aiders, marshals and hand out T-shirts. “It was heart-warming to see so many big smiles on the little faces,” said Katrien Poppe, Personnel and Communications Manager at INEOS Oxide who helped to co-ordinate the events with Nadine Ceustermans from the Geel site in Belgium. “Everyone was very enthusiastic.” The events in Belgium proved so popular – more than 1000 children, aged between four and 12, took part in six runs – that the local athletics clubs and schools are already asking INEOS to run them again next year. “The organisers were all very surprised at how fit Belgium children are but obesity is not really a problem in Belgium,” said Katrien. In June 1,500 children took part in four events in Germany. Olympic medallist, pole vaulter Björn Otto attended the first run. “It is very important that children get an early interest in sport because sport in any form is important for the future and development of children,” he said. The Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Schule in Pulheim was one of the schools which took part. “It was a wonderful event,” said teacher Steffi Nickel. “And I am so glad that I encouraged my class to take part in it.” Dr Anne-Gret Iturriaga Abarzua, Communications Manager at INEOS in Köln, said childhood obesity was now becoming a problem in Germany. “Many schools already have a yearly sponsored run as part of their curriculum,” she said. The Swiss event saw 800 children from schools and sports clubs in Rolle, Nyon, Vich and Lausanne run 1.6km at the at the football ground in Rolle. “Getting Children excited by running at an early age is so important and means that they are more likely to continue later in life,” said Marisa Lavanchy, the Swiss record holder for the 4 x100 metre relay who started the race with Lausanne Hockey Club defender Federico Lardi. “Go Run For Fun is a wonderful initiative that helps achieve this. Who knows we might be encouraging the next generation of Swiss champions.” GO Run For Fun is planning to include more venues in its programme next year as it builds on a successful 2014 programme, which has attracted more than 35,000 children to date.

Market Forces At Work

INEOS is on the brink of creating a world-class chlorvinyls business. But the INOVYN joint venture with Solvay has achieved something else; it has given one of its other businesses, which until now had kept a relatively low profile, a chance to shine, as Ralston Skinner explained to INCH. Video Demosthenes – arguably the greatest of Greek orators – once said that small opportunities were often the beginning of great enterprises. One who firmly believes that is Ralston Skinner, General Manager of newly-formed INEOS ChloroToluenes. The speciality chemicals business, which employs about 100 people, is about to stand on its own merits for the very first time. And Ralston is excited at the prospect of what it can deliver. To its customers around the world. And to the bottom line. “The business used to be part of the much larger INEOS ChlorVinyls where it was understandably a low priority strategically,” he said. “But all that has now changed with the INOVYN joint venture.” In short, a perhaps neglected bit of the business is about to take centre stage. Most of those who work for INEOS ChloroToluenes are based in Tessenderlo, Belgium. The rest are either in Maastricht in The Netherlands or Runcorn in the UK. The business, which has an annual turnover of 80 million Euros, sells about 50,000 tons of products every year. “With the right strategy, we’d hope to double turnover in the next three years,” said Ralston. Despite its current size, it is one of the top three manufacturers of chlorinated toluene derivatives in the world. “There aren’t many of us,” said Ralston. “In Europe there are only two or three big players who produce benzylchloride. There are no producers in Japan and just one in the US. That presents a massive opportunity for us. The market is there. We just need to develop our innovative logistics platform and we know the customers will want to do business with us.” In the world of chemistry, benzylchloride is the one we cannot live without. “It really is the building block for everything you can imagine,” said Business Manager Bruno Stockhem. “You name it – cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, paints – it owes its life to it.” INEOS’ main competitor is in Europe. It may have similar technology but there the similarity ends. “Their heritage is completely different to ours,” said Ralston. “We have developed our products into different sectors.” ”They focus on cresols, the precursors for anti-oxidants, pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene such as toothpastes and mouthwash, whereas we produce products that are used to make things such as disinfectants, agrochemicals, paints, fragrances and resins,” he adds. The demand for agrochemicals – fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides, which are used by farmers in the production of crops – is one that is growing rapidly in the developing world. The United Nations believes that 9.2 billion people will be living on Earth in 2075. More people means more mouths to feed and a shortage of arable land. Agrochemicals improve productivity by helping farmers to tackle pests and weeds that can wipe out entire harvests. Last year Latin America’s agrochemical market grew by around a quarter to around $14 billion, with the world agrochemical market predicted to reach $223 billion by next year. In May The Crop Protection Association welcomed the UK Government’s commitment to do more to boost domestic agricultural productivity, but urged the European Union to adopt a similar approach. “Unfortunately, our European colleagues seem to be unaware of the role their continent must play in optimising agricultural productivity,” said Nick von Westenholz, CEO of The Crop Protection Association. “We see this most vividly with EU policy-makers taking an overly precautious approach to crop protection technologies. This has meant that many of the key crop protection products our farmers rely on are, or are at risk of, being taken off the market, even though they have been proven to be safe and are subject to one of the most stringent approvals processes in the world.” INEOS says the demand for agrochemicals is coming from Brazil, China and South Africa – all countries which have seen rapid agricultural development and want to become more efficient. “There is a real growth market for this kind of product in those countries,” said Ralston. “The growth is certainly not coming from Europe.” INEOS ChloroToluenes’ benzyl alcohol is also used in the production of anti-fouling marine paint which stops barnacles and algae from clinging to the hulls of ships, and slowing them down. It may be a small market, but it’s an important one. “Barnacles are actually a real problem because ships burn excess fuel when their hulls are encrusted with sealife,” said Ralston. “That in turn leads to increased carbon emissions.” Producing niche, speciality chemicals, which are not easy to replicate, is what INEOS ChloroToluenes is good at. “A lot of our customers are also relative specialists,” said Ralston. “So we might make one product for one customer. But we benefit when our customers find new, innovative uses for our products.” Looking ahead, there are opportunities, challenges and threats. INEOS faces a logistical challenge if it wants to increase exports to Japan and the US. “Japan has traditionally been supplied by China but we are looking at what we need to do to compete with China,” said Ralston. “It is going to be down to clever logistics but what we are good at is finding innovative ways to reach awkward destinations with awkward quantities.” The fear of increased EU regulation, which makes it difficult or uneconomic to exports chemicals, is always a danger. “There’s always the chance that one of our chemicals could be added to the ‘at risk’ list which makes it uneconomical,” said Ralston. As INEOS ChloroToluenes’ plans to grow its business by shipping chemicals around the world, it is also important that it is able to secure its supplies of toluene, which it mixes with chlorine to make all its products. INEOS ChloroToluenes currently buys most of its toluene from other companies. It knows that a reliable supply is key to its success and is continually looking at new ways to make sure this is not left to chance. “That’s why we are looking at projects which can also bring toluene from INEOS’ facility in Koln, Germany, to our plant in Belgium,” said Ralston. “That way we ‘keep it in the family’.”

Chorus Of Approval

Safety is INEOS’ top priority. And everyone in the company knows it. But it’s always heart-warming when industry experts recognise what the company is striving to achieve – and publicly acknowledge it. The voice of the chemical industry in France has named Petroineos as worthy winners of a prestigious national award for its innovative approach to caring for the well-being of its staff. The Union des Industries Chimiques, The French trade association for the chemicals sector, presented the Lavera site with the Responsible Care award in the occupational health category for the way the company now prevents staff being exposed to certain products. “The use of biological indicators of exposure in itself is not new,” said Jacques Willocquet, HSSE manager at the French site. “But in most cases it is limited to a yes/no response. What we have done is introduce a rigorous statistical analysis of thousands of results, which allows us to detect the slightest change so we know if a member of staff has been exposed to even a small amount.” The award is presented every three years. This year’s award ceremony coincided with the Journées de la Chimie, which meant the event was attended by many high-profile guests, including Arnaud Montebourg, France’s Industry Minister. “Apart from the fact that the award reflects well on INEOS’ reputation in the petrochemical industry, it also shows the staff how tracking relentlessly weak signals is helping us to better care about their health,” said Jacques. Petroineos beat 17 other companies to win the occupational health category. Across the Atlantic, staff at INEOS’ O&amp;P Battleground Manufacturing Complex (BMC) in Texas were also celebrating after picking up four awards at the Texas Chemical Council’s (TCC) annual awards. The plant won the Caring for Texas Award, the Zero Contractor Incident Rate Award and the Distinguished Safety Service Award in recognition of its exemplary safety performance last year. But the big award of the night went to Bob Bradshaw for his outstanding leadership skills in managing the plant safely. He won The Gerald R. Ehrman Award for Management in honour of Jerry Ehrman, a retired plant manager of the Sabine River Works in Orange, Texas, who was extremely dedicated to occupational safety. The award is presented to just one site manager every year – if one merits it. But so far it has only been presented to two people in the past four years and one of those was Bob. “The award is only given to a plant manager who embodies the same leadership and dedication to safety management as Mr Ehrman,” said Morgan French, BMC SSHE Manager. “Bob is unrelenting in his goal to make sure everyone who works at the site goes home at the end of their shift safely, every day. He demonstrates a genuine personal commitment to safety excellence and challenges everyone who works with him to attain a comparable level of personal safety excellence.”

The late German-born physicist Albert Einstein believed that science without religion was lame, and religion without science was blind. But the debate over whether science and religion can co-exist has been going on since the dawn of mankind and continues to divide opinion even today, as INCH discovered. I am convinced that evolution and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. Indeed, if science and religion are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because they concern different matters. Science and religion are like two different windows for looking at the world. The two windows look at the same world, but they show different aspects of that world. Science concerns the processes that account for the natural world: how planets move, the composition of matter and the atmosphere, the origin and adaptations of organisms. Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life, the proper relation of people to the Creator and to each other, the moral values that inspire and govern people’s lives. Apparent contradictions only emerge when either the science or the beliefs, or often both, trespass their own boundaries and wrongfully encroach upon one another’s subject matter.Francisco Ayala, biologist, University of California, Irvine Observe: science and religion *do* coexist. The first scientists were clergymen. Today, religious institutions from universities to the Vatican Observatory support professional science. And the proportion of scientists who are themselves believers mirrors the fraction in the general population. Science is based on the religious assertion that Creation is orderly, free from the interference of nature gods, and worthy of study. So who continues to push this myth of a “conflict”? What is their agenda?&nbsp;Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer at the Vatican Observatory Religion and science are like oil and water. They might co-exist, but they can never mix to produce a homogeneous medium. Religion and science are fundamentally incompatible. They disagree profoundly on how we obtain knowledge of the world. Science is based observation and reasoning from observation. Religion assumes that human beings can access a deeper level of information that is not available by either observation or reason. The scientific method is proven by its success. The religious method is refuted by its failure.Victor J. Stenger, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Hawaii Personally I’m not religious at all, but I have religious scientists as friends and they seem to manage just fine. I think those people are more likely to take some religious things a bit less literally though, like a religious geologist probably wouldn’t think that the Earth and everything else was actually made by God 6000 years ago, since their science tells them that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.Grant Kennedy, astrophysicist, University of Cambridge Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand. Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths, all faiths, are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.Dan Brown, author of Angels &amp; Demons Science&nbsp;is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognise our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.The late Carl Sagan, American astrophysicist From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.The late William H. Bragg, British physicist Religion and science are indeed incompatible. Religion and science both offer explanations for why life and the universe exist. Science relies on testable empirical evidence and observation. Religion relies on subjective belief in a creator. Only one explanation is correct. The other must be discarded. Explanations require evidence. None exists for a creator outside the human mind, whereas the evidence for evolution and the origins of life mounts every day. In the face of this uncontradicted evidence, religious belief in a divinity is no more viable than belief in the now-proverbial Flying Spaghetti Monster.Lorna Salzman, American environmental activist There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. When you look at the vast size of the universe, and how insignificant and accidental human life is in it, the existence of a God seems most implausible.Physicist Stephen Hawking

INEOS Joins The Revolution

INEOS has gone into partnership with a company that has developed a unique product which could help to save the rainforest. INEOS Compounds will be using its expertise to help increase the company’s sales of Resysta, a recyclable material made primarily from rice husks and PVC that looks and feels like wood but, unlike wood, does not splinter, crack, rot, swell or fade. “Japanese companies have been trying to mix rice husks and polymers since the 1960s but they have never come up with a sellable product,” said Roland Stoiber, chief operations officer at Resysta International. INEOS Compounds’ Swiss site in Sins, near Lucerne, began working with Resysta International last year. “Since then it has become the second biggest business for us at Sins,” said Managing Director Thomas Breitwieser who is championing the project. Resysta International was won over by INEOS’ innovative approach, its ability to think and act quickly, its hard-working ethos, its knowledge of the European market, its excellent contacts and its manufacturing capabilities. “We had a good relationship right from the beginning and we trusted each other to work hard together to build a market that is worth billions of Euros,” said Thomas. INEOS Compounds, one of the top manufacturers of PVC compounds in Europe, will manufacture Resysta at its plants in the UK, Switzerland and Sweden and sell it directly to INEOS’ customers. It will also sell some of the raw materials, on behalf of Resysta International, to its biggest customers who may wish to mix the chemicals themselves. “It is wonderful to be part of placing a brand new PVC-based product in the market,” said Thomas. “That sort of thing only happens maybe every 30 years because PVC is already the most field-tested plastic in the world. But we will be developing the product alongside Resysta International as new sales opportunities are unearthed. It has huge market potential.” Leroy Merlin, one of the top five D-I-Y stores in France, recently named it as their product of the year. The main ingredient of the material, which can be used in a huge range of ways in the construction and furniture industries, are rice husks which would otherwise be burned as a waste product in the Far East where it was first developed. The rice husks are then mixed with PVC components. The trade in tropical hardwoods, such as mahogany and teak, has long been seen as a major reason for the destruction of the rainforests. This changes all that. “Some miracles happen and some are invented,” said Roland. “Even salt water, sun and wind, when other materials give up, Resysta carries on. This is the key innovation to what was needed to address the shrinking rainforests and the inferior quality of previous wood composite products. It has opened a new market to all PVC resin producers.”

INEOS To Buy Out BASF Stake In Styrolution

INEOS has agreed to buy out fellow chemical company BASF’s 50% stake in its styrene plastics joint venture for €1.1 billion. The deal, subject to regulatory approval, will see INEOS take full control of Styrolution which makes plastics for cars, electronics, toy and the construction industry. “We are pleased to bring Styrolution fully into the INEOS family,” said INEOS Capital chairman Jim Ratcliffe. As part of the joint venture agreement signed in October 2011, INEOS always had the right to buy out BASF. The joint venture had been set up to create a company that was capable of competing effectively with large-scale producers from Asia and the Middle East.&nbsp; “Styrolution has fulfilled that promise,” said Jim. Styrolution is the leading, global supplier of styrenics, which also ensure computer casings and monitors are strong and heat resistant. Four out of five printers in the world are produced with a casing made from Styrolution. Today the business employees about 3,200 people worldwide at 17 manufacturing sites in 10 countries. Once the deal is completed, the business will operate as a standalone company within INEOS Industries Holdings Limited.

World Class Thinking

Innovation isn’t just about developing&nbsp;new products. Sometimes it’s about just thinking differently, as INEOS did in 2009 and has now been publicly recognised for it. At the 2nd annual Petrochemicals Awards of Excellence in Berlin, Germany, INEOS beat strong competition from industry giants DOW and BASF to win the prestigious award for its ‘outstanding contribution to the chemical industry’. The award recognised INEOS’ ambitious and innovative plan to be the first company to ship ethane derived from shale gas from America to Europe to secure the long-term competitiveness of its European crackers. “We are one of the very few who&nbsp;could have undertaken such a move,” said Fernando Mota, INEOS Feedstock, Energy &amp; CO2 Manager. “We saw the opportunity early and moved quickly in this rapidly developing arena.” The first shipments of gas will arrive next year, heralding an exciting new phase in the European petrochemicals industry and effectively moving INEOS’ crackers at Rafnes in Norway and Grangemouth in Scotland into pole position to compete.&nbsp;

European Commission Clears Way For Joint Venture With Solvay

INEOS and Solvay have signed a definitive Joint Venture Agreement to create a leading PVC Producer to be called INOVYN. The two companies announced their plans to join forces in May last year but it took until May this year for the European Commission to approve the proposed joint venture.&nbsp; Together they will have combined sales of 4.3 billion Euros, employ about 5,650 staff in nine countries and rank among the top three producers in the world. But first they must implement an agreed remedy package for the divestment of five INEOS-owned assets – the membrane chlorine plant and EDC/ VCM plants at Tessenderlo, Belgium, the PVC plants in Mazingarbe, France, and Beek in the Netherlands, the PVC and VCM plants at Wilhelmshaven in Germany, and the British EDC plants in Runcorn. The Commission also wants Runcorn’s membrane chlorine plant to be placed in a joint venture between the INEOS/ Solvay joint venture and the new owner of the five affected plants. Once all that has been done, the JV can go-ahead. “The newly combined business, which will be of world scale, will be able to better respond to rapidly changing European markets and to match increasing competition from global producers,” said INEOS chairman Jim Ratcliffe.

EPS Qatar Signs Deal With INEOS Technologies

INEOS has licensed its expandable polystyrene (EPS) technology to EPS Qatar for its planned complex in Qatar. The plant, which will produce a wide range of expandable polystyrene grades to satisfy the growing regional demand, will be the biggest EPS unit in the Middle East and North&nbsp;Africa region.&nbsp; EPS is a lightweight, strong thermoplastic product with excellent thermal insulation, which makes it ideal for the packaging and construction industries. &nbsp; Initially the plant will be able to produce 50,000 tons per year but will have the capacity to&nbsp;double production.

INEOS’ Global Appeal

INEOS Technologies has agreed to supply four state-of-the-art BICHLOR™ bipolar electrolysers to HF Chlor-Alkali’s new manufacturing plant in the US state of Iowa. Using INEOS’ technology, the new plant in Eddyville will be able to manufacture caustic soda, muriatic acid and bleach for an adjacent food processing facility and other Midwest facilities. INEOS BICHLOR™ electrolysers have now been sold to 56 projects around the world.&nbsp; The biggest plant using the technology is in Runcorn in the UK, where 20 BICHLOR™ electrolysers produce more than 1,000,000te of chlor-alkali products each year.

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Science, faith, reason should go hand in hand

By deseret news , sam brownback, for the new york times.

WASHINGTON — In our sound-bite political culture, it is unrealistic to expect that every complicated issue will be addressed with the nuance or subtlety it deserves. So I suppose I should not have been surprised last month when, during the first Republican presidential debate, the candidates on stage were asked to raise their hands if they did not "believe" in evolution. As one of those who raised his hand, I think it would be helpful to discuss the issue in a bit more detail and with the seriousness it demands.

The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.

The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: They deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Dar- winism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident. That being the case, many believers — myself included — reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality.

Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

Biologists will have their debates about man's origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science continues to explore the details of man's origin, faith can do its part as well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our understanding of the human person.

The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth that must be safeguarded. I am wary of any theory that seeks to undermine man's essential dignity and unique and intended place in the cosmos. I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose.While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man's origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

Without hesitation, I am happy to raise my hand to that.

Sam Brownback is a Republican senator from Kansas.

Science and Faith

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In recent years, there has been growing interest in the relation of Christianity in the natural sciences. More and more people are appreciating that the nineteenth century idea that science and religion were somehow permanently in conflict is simply inconsistent with the facts, not least the very substantial number of Christians who are active in the fields of scientific research. Although I am now best known as a Christian theologian, my own background was in the natural sciences. I studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Oxford University, before going on to get a D.Phil. (Oxford’s version of a Ph.D.) in molecular biophysics. I have given much thought to the relation of the Christian faith and the natural sciences, and am delighted to have been invited to speak on this theme by the C. S. Lewis Institute in October.

The basic theme of my lectures will be the way in which the natural sciences can help our thinking about our faith, and the way our faith can help those who are actively working in the natural sciences. We will be looking at the way that the Christian faith helps us make sense of the world, and lays the foundation for a ‘spirituality of nature’. How can our faith help us to appreciate the natural world? How can we learn more about the creator from his creation? This point was explored by Bonaventura (1217-74), a medieval Franciscan philosopher and theologian, who shared St. Francis of Assissi’s keen eye for the importance of the creation as a guide to its creator:

All the creatures of this sensible world lead the soul of the wise and contemplative person to the eternal God, since they are the shadows, echoes and pictures, the vestiges, images and manifestations of that most powerful, most wise and best first principle, of that eternal origin, light and fullness, of that productive, exemplary and ordergiving Art. They are set before us for the sake of our knowing God, and are divinely given signs. For every creature is by its very nature a kind of portrayal and likeness of that eternal Wisdom.

If the world is indeed created, it follows that the beauty, goodness, and wisdom of its creator are reflected, however dimly, in the world around us. All of us have known a sense of delight at the beauty of the natural world. Yet this is but a shadow of the beauty of its creator. We see what is good, and realize that something still better lies beyond it. And what lies beyond is not an abstract, impersonal, and unknowable force, but a personal God who has created us in order to love and cherish us.

We will also give careful consideration to the writings of Richard Dawkins, who argues that the sciences are necessarily atheist. I will also say a few words about the three-volume work that I have just completed publishing, entitled A Scientific Theology. This work—which reviewers have already described as “the best systematic theology to appear for some years”— sets out to use the natural sciences as a dialogue partner for Christian theology, with some very interesting and significant results.

For C. S. Lewis, the discovery of Christianity was like taking hold of and possessing something intrinsically precious and beautiful, which allowed the rest of the world to be seen in its reflected radiance. He put the significance of his discovery like this: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen—not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” The point that Lewis makes here is that our faith offers us a framework by which we can make sense of what we see around us. What might at first seem pointless or meaningless becomes immensely important. So what difference does this make? Let me explore this with reference to one question that we will consider in the course of the October lectures—the interpretation of the world.

Before discovering Christianity, I had seen the stars of the heavens as heightening our sense of transience and finitude, forcing us to ask whether this life is all that we can hope for. My growing knowledge of astronomy helped me appreciate the beauty of the universe. Yet it was a deeply melancholy beauty, in that I was unable to detach the glory of the heavens from the transience and fragility of the one observing that glory. It was as if the stars proclaimed the insignificance and transience of those they allowed to observe them.

I was totally in sympathy with the ideas I found in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a classic work of Persian literature, which gives powerful expression to the deep sense of despondency evoked by the heavens. We are powerless to change our destiny. The sun, moon, and stars declare both our transience and apparent inability to change our situation.

And that inverted bowl we call “the Sky,” Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help—for It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

I thus saw the stars as a melancholy reminder of the vastness of the universe, and the utter insignificance of humanity within it. However, as this was the way things were, I had no problem in accepting it. It wasn’t especially attractive, but I somehow had to make the most of it.

That sort of thought has gone through the minds of many natural scientists, and is particularly well expressed in Ursula Goodenough’s reflective book The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998). As one of North America’s leading cell biologists, Goodenough recalls how she used to gaze at the night sky, reflecting on what she observed. Each of the stars she saw was dying, as would our own special star, the sun. “Our sun too will die, frying the Earth to a crisp during its heat-death, spewing its bits and pieces out into the frigid nothingness of curved spacetime.” She found such thoughts to be overwhelming and oppressive:

The night sky was ruined. I would never be able to look at it again. . . .  A bleak emptiness overtook me whenever I thought about what was really going on out in the cosmos or deep in the atom.  So I did my best not to think  about such things.

I felt exactly that same sense of melancholy, and devised more or less the same coping plan. It was best not to think about the pointlessness of life. One of those who lectured to me on quantum theory at Oxford at this time was Peter Atkins, a physical chemist with a strong commitment to atheism. He would later write as follows concerning this sense of purposelessness, which he had no difficulty in affirming:

We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and that unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.

All rather bleak, no doubt, but a perfectly legitimate angle on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I was perfectly prepared to accept this intellectually, although it was emotionally a little challenging.

Although I once shared that angle on things, I do so no longer. When I began to think of the world as created, my outlook changed entirely. Different perspectives were opened up for me. The stars, of course, remained as they were. Yet the way I viewed them altered radically. No longer were they harbingers of transience. They were now symbols of a wisdom and care of a God who knew and loved me. The words of Psalm 8 expressed my new attitude rather well:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers The moon and stars that you have established; What are human beings that you are mindful of them, Mortals, that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, And crowned them with glory and honor.

The stars now became signs of the providence of God, who knows them and calls them by name (Psalm 147:4). No longer were the stars silent pointers to human transience; they were scintillating heralds of the love of God. I was not alone in the universe, but walked and lived in the presence of a God who knew me, and would never forget me. And the natural world was somehow “charged with the grandeur of God” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). And once nature is seen as God’s creation, it can never be seen as ordinary again.

This is the difference that Christianity makes to the way we see the world. Yet the ability of our faith to help our thinking about science goes far beyond this. The Cambridge theoretical physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne points to the importance of the Christian doctrine of creation, noting the need for offering an explanation of why the human mind is able to uncover and grasp the structures of the world:

We are so familiar with the fact that we can understand the world that most of the time we take it for granted. It is what makes science possible. Yet it could have been otherwise. The universe might have been a disorderly chaos rather than an orderly cosmos. Or it might have had a rationality which was inaccessible to us….There is a congruence between our minds and the universe, between the rationality experienced within and the rationality observed without.

That human beings have been remarkably successful in investigating and grasping something of the structure and workings of the world is beyond dispute. Precisely why the rationality of the world should be so accessible to human beings remains rather more puzzling. Polkinghorne offers a Christian explanation of this phenomenon as follows:

If the deep-seated congruence of the rationality present in our minds with the rationality present in the world is to find a true explanation, it must surely lie in some more profound reason which is the ground of both. Such a reason would be provided by the Rationality of the Creator.

The basic Christian idea that humanity is created in the “image of God” has long been seen by Christian theologians as offering both an explanation of the human capacity to understand the world, and also a stimulus to a greater encounter and engagement with the natural order. While this idea can be found throughout Christian history, it is stated with particular clarity by Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century:

The image of the creator is to be found in the rational or intellectual soul of humanity . . . [which] has been created according to the image of God in order that it may use reason and intellect in order to apprehend and behold God.

This basic idea lies behind the Christian engagement with the natural world, especially in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Thus the astronomer Johann Kepler, who made huge advances in our understanding of planetary orbits, had no doubt that the reason for the success of mathematics in clarifying the nature of these orbits lay in the creation of the world and the human mind by God.

In that geometry is part of the divine mind from the origins of time, even from before the origins of time (for what is there in God that is not also from God?) it has provided God with the patterns for the creation of the world, and has been transferred to humanity with the image of God.

A similar point was made by Galileo Galilei, who attributed the success of his astronomical theories to mathematics being grounded in the being of God. And needless to say, it also plays an important role in the thought of C. S. Lewis.

The way Richard Dawkins presents things, of course, religious people should have been—and should still be!—implacably hostile to the sciences. For religious people to like the sciences is about as likely as turkeys looking forward to Thanksgiving. The historical evidence simply does not permit such an extravagant conclusion to be drawn, although there has been no shortage of those who sought to do so. For example, the controversy between Galileo and the church authorities is often portrayed as a direct confrontation between science and religion, especially by those writers wishing to perpetuate the myth that science and religion are perpetually at war. As close historical scrutiny of this episode has shown, however, the reality is quite different, and rather more interesting, involving the complexities of political patronage at a particularly unstable juncture in the history of the papal court, leaving Galileo on the losing side of a court intrigue. That, however, is another story, which deserves to be told in more detail elsewhere. And as recent surveys have made clear, the relationship between faith and science is much more complicated—and much more interesting!—than aggressively atheist writers such as Dawkins allow.

These thoughts are just samplers for October’s more detailed engagement with the issues. I hope you will come and enjoy our time together!

Alister McGrath

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Science and religion go hand in hand

Science and Mormonism have far too much in common to continue to behave as embittered enemies, BYU law professor John Welch said at the 12th annual Summerhays lecture last Thursday.

Welch, the Robert K. Thomas professor of law and editor-in-chief at BYU Studies, spoke of the importance of staying current on topics where science and religion intersect and of building bridges between science and religion in addition to his comments on the similarities between modern Mormon and scientific belief.

“It is time for us to call a peace treaty,” Welch said. “If there is a war between religion and science, it has gone on long enough.”

Welch pointed out that both Mormonism and science strive to obtain truth, giving the two a common goal.

“Anyone who shares this principal with us is our friend,” he said.

But, Welch said there is a need for humility in both Mormonism and science as well. Neither knows all truth, but must admit that some truths have yet to be revealed or understood. According to Welch, both science and religion attempt to answer old problems with new thinking, but use different tools to do so — with religion relying on revelation from the spirit and science on experimentation.

“Because no one tool can know all truth, no tool should be discarded,” Welch said.

Because these similarities are more important than the differences between the two, Welch said Mormons must work to bridge the gap between science and religion.

“Our ongoing task is to be building bridges,” he said, “even if it means laying ourselves down as a bridge over troubled waters, taking fire from both sides.”

To do so, Welch said Mormons must stop “shooting [them]selves in the foot with bad arguments,” and read current publications on the connection between LDS beliefs and modern science. Each of those in attendance received a list of recommended readings compiled by Welch.

Summerhays lectures, each of which deal with topics that intersect scientific and religious issues, take place annually at BYU. The series is sponsored by the Summerhays family, and is hosted by the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

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Science and Faith, Hand in Hand

What God teaches us through science and engineering

Science and faith went hand in hand for centuries, as numerous pioneers of mathematics and science were devout Christians, including Kepler, Pascal, Mendel, Kelvin, and Carver. They would have affirmed what David wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). These scientists saw study of the laws of nature as an expression of their faith, like an act of worship.

Today talk about God and science gets clouded by evolution or cosmology, though I consider these in the category of empirical models of the past, rather than the scientific method of repeatable experiments.

PERSONAL TESTIMONY

In my own life the faith-science nexus has brought meaning and focus, personal development, ethics, and humility. As an engineering professor, I use targeted experiments to solve a problem. My own work at the intersection of materials, mechanical and chemical engineering, focuses on metal production and energy generation, conversion, and storage for greenhouse emissions reduction, elimination, or drawdown. Indeed, my focus on this topic is based in large part on my faith as a way to use my gifts to address an urgent problem.

The most direct intersection between my faith and work comes when I pray for insight. This is clearest when my own effort fails, as prayer clears my mind and focuses me, and humbles me. In one situation, after a conference presentation in which I had results only by God’s grace, an audience member approached me and asked whether I was Christian—he said that he could see humility in my demeanor, humility that had come from seeing God’s power in my weakness (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9).

Faith has also led me to prioritize people and their development. I often encourage students to change to a different institution or research group after completing a degree or milestone to further their careers, when my research might benefit more if they kept working with me. Again, this is not unique to science; all of us can and should promote the interests of those around us.

More specific to science, being at the forefront of a discipline, however narrow that discipline is, helps one see how much we don’t know and will likely never know. Harvard’s original crest had one of its three books facedown to represent the limits of reason, and the need for God’s revelation. Two hundred years after its design, Harvard turned the third book forward, as in 1843 its regents saw rapid progress in science and believed that all knowledge had either been revealed or soon would be. Because nearly all compulsory science education and media coverage of technology focus on settled facts and accomplishments, it is hard for many to understand limits and uncertainty.

PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE

But it is even more humbling when people don’t act based on well-established knowledge, like the buried talents referenced by Jesus (Matt. 25:14-30), or Psalm 127. For example, in the COVID pandemic, United States scientists learned quickly about the virus and developed the first and most effective vaccines. But mixed messaging hobbled prevention efforts, and the infection rates and excess death rate of the United States dwarfed many significantly less developed economies.*

It is similar in my field of climate mitigation, where the United States is humbled by Norway’s switch to electric vehicles—many made in the USA; and even more by Bhutan and Costa Rica, which already are or soon will be carbon-neutral.

As a high school student, I verbalized this dichotomy between technology and its useful deployment. As an engineer, I wanted to help solve the world’s “little problems,” which I listed as:

• agriculture, to feed a growing planet;
• medical research, allowing people to lead longer, healthier lives;
• human interactions with the environment, for sustainable development;
• information access, as the biggest enemy of a dictator is the truth.

All of these are important, but if scientists and engineers do our jobs well, we help the artists, economists, social workers, church leaders, and politicians to address the “big problems,” which I listed as:

• peace between nations, and security in our neighborhoods;
• averting and mitigating famines;
• education to build agency and confidence, particularly for the marginalized;
• health care for those who need it most;
• justice, including fair economic distribution;
• truth in journalism and history;
• purpose and meaning for our lives, and artistic expression of that purpose and meaning;

TOLERANCE OF DIFFERENCES

An important consequence of this understanding of “little problems” and “big problems” is that being a scientist or engineer requires faith that our work will be used for good and not for evil. Even if we don’t work on nuclear science or weaponry, the events of September 11, 2001, showed that even if one focuses on nonmilitary technologies, a civilian jetliner— built to bring people together—can be abused, by people with sufficient hatred, as a weapon of mass destruction. This frightened me as an engineer, and I believe it requires us to have more faith in the people, institutions, and systems surrounding technology.

I would rather live in a world in which we solve the big problems but not the little ones—one with democracy, but also challenges with energy or nutrition, rather than the other way around, as in fascism or in dark visions of technological perfection. This doesn’t mean that work in STEM (science, technology, engineering , and math) doesn’t matter. Rather, it’s an enabler: new technology can dramatically reduce the impact of a pandemic, and the cost of reducing climate emissions. With economic incentives and research and development funding , wind and solar energy prices fell by 75 percent and 90 percent, respectively, from 2007 to 2019.

Thus we continue to explore God’s creation, more vast than even our imaginations can fathom. And we work hard to use God’s gifts of material and knowledge to fashion tools for improving each other’s lives. But we are humbled by our limitations, and must remain open to considering that what we think we know could be wrong. This openness is the essence of scientific pursuit, of engineering design, and of the Christian walk, as they go forward hand in hand.

* See https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/05/27/covid-19-is-a-developing-country-pandemic/ .

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Science and Faith Walking Hand in Hand?

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” – Galileo

What is science? What does it take to be a real scientist or to think in a scientific manner? Does science have anything to do with religion or faith? Or, is there a distinct dividing line between science and religion?

Of course the word “science” was originally derived from the Latin word scientia , which meant “knowledge.” But what kind of knowledge is included here? And are there different ways, beyond scientific methods, of obtaining knowledge?

Most modern definitions of science, such as those one might find in a modern dictionary, include the idea that there is a building and organizing of knowledge based upon testable explanations and predictions about the physical universe in which we live. These explanations are called hypotheses, or, if more extensive in what they propose to explain, are called theories.

So, what about religion? How do we know that what we believe about the Bible or God or Jesus is really true? Is there a way to test our religious beliefs or faith in a scientific manner? Or, should our faith be immune from testing or even the potential of being wrong? How did we arrive at our faith position to begin with? Are we Seventh-day Adventists just because we were born into this particular faith tradition? Do we believe in the Bible as the Word of God just because that is how we were raised? What if someone were to ask one of us, “What about the Qur’an or the Book of Mormon or the Hindu Vedas? How do you know that the Bible, and not some other book or text, is the true Word of God?”

There are many within Adventism, and many other faith traditions, who claim that they know that their faith is real and that the Bible is the true Word of God based on a type of faith that needs no critical analysis or testing or rational validation. For them faith is, by definition, internally-derived and self-validating. Such are very similar in their thinking to my Latter-day Saints friends who have often told me that they have faith in the superiority of the Book of Mormon, “Because the Holy Spirit told me so and He wouldn’t lie to me.” When I ask them how the Holy Spirit speaks to them and reveals to them these truths, they say, “I feel a burning deep down in my soul, deep in my chest, whenever I hear or see or read the truth.” Some refer to this experience as a “Burning in the Bosom.” And, let me tell you, it is pretty much impossible to have any further discussion with someone who believes that God has directly communicated truth to them in this kind of privileged manner. Any attempted conversation regarding the potential for the superior credibility of the Bible is effectively over at this point.

How then do we know that we aren’t falling into the same kind of trap on our end of things? regarding our own beliefs in the credibility of the claims of the Bible? Does God not expect individual effort and study to search out truth from error? to rationally determine if the Bible is in fact what it claims to be? Does God really desire us to follow a form of blind faith, akin to wishful thinking, when it comes to our religious beliefs?

Knowledge that is Beyond Science:

You see, science is only needed when there is limited or incomplete information regarding the nature of something that is external to one’s self, that exists outside of one’s internal world. For this reason, no scientific hypothesis or theory can be absolutely confirmed or proven to be true since its truth is independent of one’s self or one’s own absolute control. Science can establish various degrees of predictive value for a given hypothesis or theory, but there is no such thing as absolute confidence in science.  One can approach the truth, or the Truth, but one can never gain absolute knowledge or certainty about what exists outside of one’s own mind.  Such an external reality belongs to God alone and therefore can only be perfectly known by Him.

Of course, there do seem to be a few truths that God has given us as a kind of inherent knowledge. For example, the knowledge of the Royal Law of Love, the basis of all moral law and of salvation itself, is “written on the hearts” of each one of us. – James 2:8 and Romans 2:15.  This Law is the essence of the very character of God for God is Love. – 1 John 4:16  Also, like vanilla ice cream, God invites us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good” – Psalms 34:8.  Also, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” – Romans 8:16.

While such knowledge is real, it is internally derived, being written on the heart by God.  Therefore, such forms of knowledge aren’t subject to “scientific” forms of investigation since they aren’t hypothesis or theory driven. No additional “testing” is necessary to increase their “predictive value.”

The Science of Faith:

The question now is, does God reveal all truth to us in such a direct manner? Or, are there certain types of truth that God generally reveals only to those who search out and study the empirical evidence that He has provided in the world around us? For example, generally speaking, does God directly give us privileged information, regarding the origin and credibility of the Bible as the true Word of God and how, exactly, to interpret it? Or, does this type of knowledge usually require some effort, study, and hypothesis testing on our part? – with the very real potential of being wrong in any or all of our original ideas? And, should any form of scientific investigation of the empirical world have any real influence on how we read, understand, and interpret the Bible?

It is very interesting to me to note how the Biblical authors themselves viewed Scripture and how they established its credibility. Over and over again they appeal to empirical evidence and a form of scientific reasoning and rational thought and understanding to establish the credibility of Scripture in a manner calculated to attract the intelligent candid mind. The Bible quotes God Himself as asking us to come and reason with him (Isaiah 1:18) and to test His Word and His promises to see if He isn’t who He claims to be (Malachi 3:10).

Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up, take your mat and walk”? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

What would have happened to Jesus’ metaphysical claim to be able to forgive sins if his empirical claim to have the power to heal the paralyzed man had proved false? – if the man had just laid there paralyzed on his mat when Jesus gave the command to “get up and go home”?

You see, Jesus himself tied in the credibility of his metaphysical claim to be able to forgive sins to an empirical demonstration of Divine power. If the empirical demonstration failed, so would the credibility of his metaphysical claim.

I propose that the same is true for the credibility of the Bible. The credibility of the metaphysical claims of the Bible, claims that cannot be directed investigated or tested (such as the Virgin Birth, the raising of the dead, or our future life in Heaven to come), is based on the demonstrated credibility of those claims of the Bible that can be investigated and tested against known empirical realities (such as archeological discoveries, historical prophecies, the geologic and fossil evidence for the worldwide Noachian Flood, and the recent arrival of all life on this planet).

For instance, if Biblical prophecies concerning empirical reality can be shown to be false, not in line with what really happened, then the credibility of the Bible’s metaphysical claims would suffer as well – for most rational people anyway. The same is true for other Biblical statements concerning empirical reality, such as the recent formation of all life on Earth and a truly worldwide Noachian Flood. If such claims can be clearly falsified, Biblical credibility suffers. It is for this reason that many of those who have become convinced that the Bible does in fact contain many such errors no longer view the Bible as anything more than a good moral fable – if that.

So, in order to effectively support the claim that the Bible is truly superior to all others claiming to be “The Word of God”, the Bible must present superior evidence to support this fantastic claim – if it is to be believed by most intelligent honest-minded people, especially young people.

Dr. Ravi Zacharias:

Ravi was asked:

What do you say to a pastor who says, “Apologetics is just philosophy, and we do not need that. All we need is the Bible.” I desperately wish it were that simple. When pastors believe and teach, “All we need is the Bible,” they equip their young people with the very line that gets them mocked in the universities and makes them unable and even terrified to relate to their friends. If pastors want their young people to do the work of evangelism, to reach their friends, that line will not get them anywhere. Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the Resurrection. The Resurrection gave the Early Church the argument that Christ is risen: We saw, we witnessed, we felt, and we touched. The apostle Paul defended this gospel. He went to Athens and planted a church there. In Ephesus he defended the faith in the school of Tyrannus. We also need to become all things to all people. If a pastor says, “All we need is the Bible,” what does he say to a man who says, “All I need is the Qur’an”? It is a solipsistic method of arguing. The pastor is saying, “All I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that.” Even the gospel was verified by external references. The Bible is a book of history, a book of geography, not just a book of spiritual assertions. The fact is the resurrection from the dead was the ultimate proof that in history, and in empirically verifiable means, the Word of God was made certain. Otherwise, the experience on the Mount of Transfiguration would have been good enough. But the apostle Peter says in 2 Peter 1:19: “We have the Word of the prophets made more certain as to a light shining in a dark place.” He testified to the authority and person of Christ, and the resurrected person of Christ. To believe, “All we need is the Bible and nothing more,” is what the monks believed in medieval times, and they resorted to monasteries. We all know the end of that story. This argument may be good enough for those who are convinced the Bible is authority. The Bible, however, is not authoritative in culture or in a world of counter-perspectives. To say that it is authoritative in these situations is to deny both how the Bible defends itself and how our young people need to defend the Bible’s sufficiency. It is sad that some people think a person who asks, “Why the Bible?” is being dishonest. This is a legitimate question. ( Interview with Ravi Zacharias: Defending Christianity in a Secular Culture. )

Mrs. Ellen White:

God is the foundation of everything. All true science is in harmony with His works; all true education leads to obedience to His government. Science opens new wonders to our view; she soars high, and explores new depths; but she brings nothing from her research that conflicts with divine revelation. Ignorance may seek to support false views of God by appeals to science, but the book of nature and the written word shed light upon each other. We are thus led to adore the Creator and to have an intelligent trust in His word . . . Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have, however, led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the word of God. Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos; and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years . . . The vast forests buried in the earth at the time of the Flood, and since changed to coal, form the extensive coal fields, and yield the supplies of oil that minister to our comfort and convenience today. These things, as they are brought to light, are so many witnesses mutely testifying to the truth of the word of God . . . God designed that the discovery of these things in the earth, should establish the faith of men in inspired history. But men, with their vain reasoning, make a wrong use of these things which God designed should lead them to exalt him. They fall into the same error as did the people before the flood—those things which God gave them as a benefit, they turned into a curse, by making a wrong use of them . . . God never asks us to believe without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith. His existence, His character, the truthfulness of His word, are all established by testimony that appeals to our reason; and this testimony is abundant. Yet God has never removed the possibility of doubt. Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration. Those who wish to doubt will have opportunity; while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith . . . Consider also that, “perfect assurance . . . is not compatible with faith. Faith rests not on certainty, but upon evidence.” Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 115 ; Education, p. 128 ;  Education, p. 129 ; Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, pp. 90-96 ; Steps to Christ, p. 105 ; Letter 19d, 1892, cited in The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, pp. 1029, 1030 .

The Weight of Evidence:

In other words, if faith rests upon the weight of evidence, not internally derived perfect assurance, there is a form of science to faith – of testability and investigation and growth. It seems then that Biblical faith and scientific reasoning are equals, both being dependent upon each other with neither one trumping the other. Since God is the author of both, they must both walk hand-in-hand if either is to be useful. Science does not work if one is unable or unwilling to make leaps of faith beyond that which is absolutely known or knowable. And, religious faith must also be based on the weight of empirical evidence as a platform upon which to make rational leaps into the unknown that are more useful than mere flights of fancy or wishful thinking.

Famous Scientists Discover God’s Signature:

It is quite a shock. From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it. I now find myself driven to this position by logic. There is no other way in which we can understand the precise ordering of the chemicals of life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. . . . We were hoping as scientists that there would be a way round our conclusion, but there isn’t. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, as quoted in “There Must Be A God,” Daily Express, Aug. 14, 1981 and Hoyle on Evolution, Nature, Nov. 12, 1981, p. 105

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists. This rather diffuse feeling could, I suppose, be termed theism in its widest sense. (1) The force of gravity must be fine-tuned to allow the universe to expand at precisely the right rate. The fact that the force of gravity just happens to be the right number with stunning accuracy is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology… The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe. (2) Davies, Paul C.W. [Physicist and Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Adelaide at the time of writing], (1) “The Christian perspective of a scientist,” Review of “The way the world is,” by John Polkinghorne, New Scientist, Vol. 98, No. 1354, pp.638-639, 2 June 1983, p.638 ( Link ) and (2) Davies’ book, Superforce (1984).

Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan. Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.

 Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:

It seems like there are quite a number of famous scientists who are finally beginning to realize what King David discovered long ago – that, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard…” and, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” – Psalms 19:1-3 & Psalms 139:14

Science and Faith Walking Hand in Hand? — 17 Comments

Thank you for this. I have always wondered about sharing my faith with those who do not already hold the bible as true. The bible means “nothing” outside of a culture that does not believe. When I read the word, I feel the fire in my heart too; but when I share about this word to my friends, this is not the argument I give. In addition to the evidence on the flood and creation, I think empirical evidence in my own life and experience help me to show others that my God is real. I also think that God is willing to reveal Himself to all those who would like to meet Him. So when my friends ask me if God is real, I respond to them that they should ask Him themselves. I always say that if you really want to meet God, then just ask Him to reveal Himself. If you are honest in your inquiry then He will definitely show up.

This has certainly been my experience as well. Thank you for your thoughts.

Although it appears logical to our feeble minds that science is a means of discovering what God already created, it is difficult to convince some even within the Seventh day Adventist Church to accept this. Most of my fellowship members gets really angry if one tries to test any Biblical point.

They only feel angry because they are fearful that God hasn't provided the necessary evidence. They should in fact be happy and joyful when the Bible is put to the test because such will only demonstrate to the honest seeker for truth the amazing credibility and Divine origin of this Book. It's actually very exciting to discover evidence after evidence that confirms the claims of the Bible - evidence which has, time and again, completely undermined the attacks of its numerous "intellectual" critics over the centuries. As someone once said, "The Bible is an anvil that has worn out many hammers."

Answered most questions I have been having, thank you for the journal, God bless you... Now opening a dormant field, how to go about it? I think the bible should direct science and not science to direct the bible. Like that argument of which came first between the chicken and the egg. It is the chicken. But I dunno.. God created and it came to be, so science is the egg and the bible the chicken . It is mysterious! Nevertheless what God reveals to us, we rejoice and give Him glory for He is ever true.

Well, I'd say that they are equals in that both science and Scripture shed light on each other. The credibility of Scripture is itself established, according the Biblical authors themselves, by forms of scientific reasoning based on the weight of evidence that God has provided to us. On the other hand, Scripture gives us details about God and His love and sacrifice for us that the scientific study of nature and human history alone, independent of the Bible, could never demonstrate.

Hi Sean, It seems to me that what you say about the Bible and science being equal applies if both are studied under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

However, science, as currently defined by the world (without any reference to God), must be kept subservient to Scripture, if we wish to know the truth - both in the natural realm and the spiritual realm. That is, if science seems to contradict Scripture, we can usually know that science is wrong, although there might be exceptions, when we have misunderstood Scripture.

It seems to me that not only does science without God lead to false conclusions about God, but it also leads to false conclusions about the evidence in the natural world.

Of course, as mentioned in my article, we're talking about true science here - a process of investigating the world in which we live with an honest and sincere heart and a firm desire to know the truth. The Holy Spirit will always guide the mind of such an individual and lead such a one toward God.

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." - Jeremiah 29:13

Generally speaking, God gives us no other way to rationally determine Biblical credibility than to use our God-given reasoning abilities - which are based on forms of scientific reasoning. That is why I suggest that true science and true Biblical faith or religion walk hand-in-hand.

There is also another aspect of this as stated by Paul, "for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel" (Rom. 2:14-16 NKJV). Sometimes I think we forget that the Holy Spirit works with everyone even in the world of atheism (Jn 16:8-11). For the Gentiles that Paul was speaking of the Holy Spirit was placing those people under the new covenant in spite of themselves, "I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Heb. 8:10 NKJV) and as long as they do not reject the leading of the Holy Spirit they will be lead by God into all truth (Jn 16:13).

The problem comes when people reject the leading of the Spirit and go their own way, "with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thess. 2:10 NKJV). This can happen when people reject clear evidence in favor of their theory in an effort to bolster their egos.

What we as Christians need to keep in mind is the fact that, "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world (1 Jn. 2:2 NKJV). The majority of the saved are still out there even among the scientists, we simply don't see them now and like the thief on the cross they may never have the opportunity to become what we consider savable yet they will be in Heaven along with everyone else who does not reject revealed truth.

I absolutely agree with everything you just said. Thank you for posting your thoughts...

You covered your subject well and I enjoyed the various aspects! I especially like this, "There are many within Adventism... a type of faith that needs no critical analysis or testing or rational validation. For them faith is, by definition, internally-derived and self-validating. ... “Because the Holy Spirit told me so and He wouldn’t lie to me.” When I ask them how the Holy Spirit speaks to them and reveals to them these truths, they say, “I feel a burning deep down in my soul, deep in my chest, whenever I hear or see or read the truth.” Some refer to this experience as a “Burning in the Bosom.” I have never heard of this phrase, "Burning in the Bosom" but have seen it played out over and over! And I like Dr. Zacharias, "If a pastor says, “All we need is the Bible,” what does he say to a man who says, “All I need is the Qur’an”? It is a solipsistic method of arguing. The pastor is saying, “All I need is my own point of reference and nothing more than that.” Thanks for such an deep discussion!

Thanks for your encouraging comment Jane. I really appreciate it.

I like and agree with your comments and scripture Rom. 2:14-16. I grew up Catholic (until age 14) and then went my own way for about ten years. It's helpful to remember that those who go their own way aren't freaks or people that have totally closed God out of their lives. During the time I went my own way, I adopted a healthy diet and the SDA health message (six years before I became a SDA). Jewelry never interested me, even as a child, and the whole extended family knew. Fiction and and TV weren't on my radar, because I loved reading books and so many other activities. I don't think TV is bad, I just made other choices. I don't even know cartoons because was too busy to watch!! There must be other clues of God's leading. So I pray we keep our hearts and minds open to people that God sends into our midst. Thanks Tyler!

Sean, it is interesting that you have used the Paul Davies quote from his review of Polkinghorne's book. John Polkinghorne, of course, is an enigma in the scientific world. He started out as a physicist and contributed a number of significant ideas to the the discipline. He then, at the middle of his working life, turned his attention to theology and became a priest in the Anglican church. Polkinghorne has been an outstanding contributor in the arena of science and faith. He is obviously a theistic evolutionist, and that does not sit well with the readership of this blog. However, his main contribution, has been to bring attention to those scientific premises on which mechanistic evolution is based and show their weakness. Few of us are in a position to do so with the authority of Polkinghorne.

Paul Davies is an atheist but has always had a respect for those who see God as the designer. He of course argues from a mechanistic approach but understands that thinking Christians want to attribute that design to God.

This current set of lessons have reminded me of the sorts of discussions and interchange that these two men have. Both are highly respected scientists but have fundamentally different explanations for origins but who understand one another.

There are a number of scientists who have contributed to my understanding of Christianity. Another is C A Coulson, one of the leaders in molecular orbital theory. I was privileged to be be taught be one of his PhD students, who used Coulson's textbook on molecular orbital theory (I still have it). At the same time I was studying a Christian Apologetics class where Coulson's book, "Science and Christian Belief" was used as a text book (I still have that too) Coulson's writings convinced me that we should be careful not to separate the natural from the supernatural in the way that we often do. He pointed out that if God created the natural world then his design would be found through it, not outside it. (and there is a lot more.)

I read Davies - currently reading "The Goldilocks Enigma"- because I think he is fairly honest in his search for answers on "How and Why" the universe and life exist at all. He is one of the atheistic scientists who is willing to ask the big questions that go beyond the mechanistic explanations.

Paul Davies is indeed interesting. He may now be an atheist (as his current writings seem to suggest), but I he wasn't an atheist at the time he wrote the review for Polkinghorne (1983) or his 1984 book Superforce . After all, if you read the original review, Davies quite clearly says,

"The belief that there is 'something behind it all' is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists. This rather diffuse feeling could, I suppose, be termed theism in its widest sense." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/creation_evolution_debate/message/162710

Also, in his 1984 book, Superforce he went on to say that,

"The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe."

Those are pretty theistic statements. Of course, Davies may wish now that he never said things quite so clearly, but he did.

That is why I used these quotes in particular - because Davies seems to be honest enough, even today now that he's more of an atheist, to admit that the universe does at least look designed. In short, I don't think he's a very confident atheist... if you know what I mean.

MORE THAN AN INTELLIGENT DESIGN

It is encouraging that some scientists discover an intelligent design behind the marvellous order of nature. In connection with the act of creation, the Bible calls it wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-30). It climaxes in Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), regarded as foolishness by the wisdom ot the world (verse 20). Our God is not just an intelligent design behind nature, although this is the first step into the right direction. In incarnation and the cross God is coming very close to us.

Winfried Stolpmann

I love God. He gives us science and faith to work with. the school that says science is non-mentioned in the Bible needs to read the Bible again. I love their (science and faith) interface as it helps me appreciate what God is and will always be. Come Sabbath and we will enjoy all the blessings the Lord has shelved for His own that are prepared to go into the creation studies

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Why do science and faith have to go hand in hand?

Science and faith have to go hand in hand because science provides focus and focus helps us solve questions, discover the truth and conceive inventions. faith provides perspective and perspective helps us see how our creations and discoveries go on to impact a combination vital for the success of societies. if the two function true to their roles, they will work together for the betterment of humanity..

do you agree with industrialisation and urbanisation go hand in hand

Lift your science book in your hand. Do you do any work?

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Others' words, not firsthand experience, shape scientific and religious belief formation, study finds

by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

An international research team led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has uncovered in a recent research project that people's beliefs in science and religion are primarily shaped by the words of others, rather than their personal experiences. The study could help enhance public understanding of people's belief formation in important scientific issues, such as climate change and vaccination.

The team's findings, realized in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, Union College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences .

Conventionally, people are generally more confident about the existence of scientific phenomena, like oxygen, than religious phenomena, like God, as it is thought that people can experience oxygen, for instance, while it is harder to observe religious entities on one's own.

The team, led by Prof. Mary Shaocong MA, a Research Assistant Professor from the Division of Social Science at HKUST, challenged the conventional view. They argued that both scientific and religious beliefs are primarily shaped by testimony or information we get from others, such as experts or our community, rather than personal experience.

The study highlights the decisive role of testimony in forming our beliefs and understanding of the world, contrary to the notion that direct experience is the main driver of scientific belief.

"Even when it seems like we're experiencing something directly, our understanding is often heavily influenced by what we've been told by experts or our community. For example, witnessing a relative falling ill, it's very hard for a child to detect that viruses cause illness; rather, they turn to others' testimony, such as parents' teaching, to understand the causal relations," says Prof. Ma.

"Recognizing this can help determine the most effective way to communicate scientific information to the public. By highlighting the credibility and consensus of scientific evidence, it is possible to promote greater acceptance and confidence in scientific facts, especially regarding emerging scientific topics, such as climate change .

"This insight is crucial for combating misinformation and enhancing public understanding and support for scientific matters, such as addressing climate change and getting vaccinated," she further explains.

In the research, by reviewing empirical evidence in the past few decades, the team proposed a theoretical model that explains how people come to believe in the existence of invisible entities, such as germs in science or God in religion.

For example, it finds that people believe in germs because doctors and scientists tell us they exist, even though we cannot see them with our own eyes. Likewise, we infer that people get sick because of germs by learning this causal relation from others rather than discovering this connection through personal observation.

The model also establishes that the more credible the source of the information and the more people who agree with it, the more likely people are to believe it. "If many people around us agree that climate change is real, their consensus strengthens our belief in these concepts," she says.

It shows that people's confidence in these phenomena is not because they have seen them directly but because they trust the sources that tell them about them.

Unlike previous models that proposed separate pathways for belief formation in science and religion, this model provides a unified explanation. It argues that others' testimony, rather than direct experience, predominantly shapes beliefs in both domains.

Journal information: Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Provided by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

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Why justice and forgiveness go hand in hand.

Featuring Bishop Robert Barron

By Abby Ponticello

August 12, 2022 |

As part of our recent partnership with  The Well  by  BigThink , the John Templeton Foundation presents a new series of spotlight conversations with our remarkable grantees.

When should we seek justice, and when should we forgive?

Justice is one of the four cardinal virtues that define a good life, along with prudence, fortitude, and temperance. But according to Bishop Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, if justice is not balanced by mercy or forgiveness, it can often lead to violent retribution.

Bishop Barron explains how Jesus’s great public teaching about turning the other cheek highlights this idea:

“I think Jesus’ greatest public teaching is the teaching about turning the other cheek, and the love of enemies. But I also think it’s a very misunderstood teaching. ‘If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and give them the other.’ ‘Resist, not evil.’ ‘Do not answer violence with violence.’ That can sound like simple passivity in the presence of evil or in the presence of injustice- just let it go, just let it be. 

That’s not what Jesus is teaching. Notice, please, he doesn’t say, ‘Oh, run away, give in.’ Nor does he say, ‘Well, haul off and punch him back.’ No, turn the other cheek. In other words, stand your ground and signal back to him that you refuse to cooperate with the world he’s living in. By turning the other cheek, you’re saying, ‘I’m not gonna let you strike me that way again.’ So, it’s meant to be a bold and courageous standing of one’s ground.”

Watch the latest video series from The Well by BigThink featuring Bishop Robert Barron to learn more about justice, forgiveness, and the evidence for God.

Still Curious?

You can view these conversations and related content on  The Well .

Learn more about the project Fiat Lux: The Word On Fire Institute On Science And Religion funded by the John Templeton Foundation and led by Bishop Robert Barron.

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