The Dangerous Quest for Cooperation Between Science and Religion

Religion is a subcategory of supernaturalism that was formulated during the medieval period with the spurious and dangerous quest to link supernaturalism with scientific knowledge, and this quest has continued

Recently, misleading articles have appeared in newspapers and news magazines claiming that religion and science are cooperating to explore the nature of reality. Gregg Easterbrook (1999) noted that "Signs of renewed interest in science and religion are numerous. The topic has recently been a top-selling cover for both Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. Universities such as Princeton and Cambridge, which in the 1960s didn't even offer courses in the relationship between science and religion, have established chairs for its study."

Easterbrook points to the central role of the John Templeton Foundation in encouraging the cooperation between science and religion. The Foundation publishes Progress in Theology magazine but more importantly awards millions of dollars to people who reflect their philosophy of cooperation.

The 2001 Templeton prize, $1 million, was announced March 9. It went to the Rev. Arthur Peacocke, a British biochemist and Anglican priest who has written widely about God and science. The Templeton Award recipient for 2000 was Freeman J. Dyson, an emeritus professor of physics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. As reported by Larry Stammer (2000), Dyson was "baffled" at receiving the award because the Templeton prize is awarded for "Progress in Religion" and not for progress in science. Dyson claimed that he was "not a theologian" and "not a saint." In his reflections on science and religion, Dyson noted that "The universe has a mind of its own. We know mind plays a big role in our own lives. It's likely, in fact, that mind has a big role in the way the whole universe functions. If you like, you call it God. It all makes sense."

Before that, $1.2 million was awarded to Ian G. Barbour, a retired professor from Carleton College. At Carleton he was professor of physics, professor of religion, and Bean Professor of Science, Technology and Society. His book Religion and Science (1997) is described by its publisher (Harper San Francisco) as "a definitive contemporary discussion of the many issues surrounding our understanding of God and religious truth and experience in our scientific age." Earlier recipients of the Templeton Award include the Protestant Christian evangelist Billy Graham, the Catholic Christian nun Mother Teresa, the campus crusader William Bright, and the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Ian Barbour, according to Gregg Easterbrook, "promptly announced he would give $1 million of his award to the Berkeley, California, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, an affiliate of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, and an organization whose own 1981 founding and rising importance are indicators of the science-an d-religion trend."

Ralph Estling, in an essay called "Templeton and AAAS" in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (2000), pointed out that the American Association for the Advancement of Science has "a problem": This association, which "has been promoting a study known as the 'Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion,"' received for four years cash contributions of over one million dollars from the Templeton Foundation. As many board members of AAAS are also associated with the Templeton Foundation, Estling is right in raising questions about "conflict of interest," and he advises the AAAS "to get the hell out from under the John Templeton Foundation."

I suggest that the problem is a much larger one than the Templeton Foundation's attempt to influence the scope of science through monetary awards to scientific organizations and scientists. The more serious problem stems from our profound misunderstanding of why and how the concept of religion was developed by the church fathers of the early medieval period our of the Roman/Latin concept of religio. It is this misunderstanding that opens the door to organizations such as the Templeton Foundation, and to arguments that science and religion should cooperate in understanding the nature of the universe.

Religio, Religion, and Supernaturalism

Supernaturalism (i.e., beliefs and practices associated with supernatural beings and supernatural power) is a cultural universal. Religion, however, is not a cultural universal; it is a subset of supernaturalism that developed during the medieval period of the Christian tradition to represent Christian supernaturalism as scientific truth. During this period, the Roman/Latin concept of religio changed its meaning and significance from ritual activities to doctrinal statements about the nature of the world and humankind.

An excellent discussion of why and how the Roman/Latin concept of religio was transformed by the church fathers into religion (attributing different characteristics to religio) is offered in William Canrwell Smith's very important book on the subject of religion, The Meaning and End of Religion (1991). The concept of religion was developed in the Christian tradition to represent Christian truths as opposed to the untruths of "pagan" traditions of the Greeks and Romans and the satanic or demonic distortions that, from the Christian theory of religion, prevailed in non-Christian traditions.