The Warfare between Science and Religion
The Warfare between Science and Religion

Author: Jeff Hardin

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1421426188

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Why is the idea of conflict between science and religion so popular in the public imagination? The “conflict thesis”—the idea that an inevitable and irreconcilable conflict exists between science and religion—has long been part of the popular imagination. In The Warfare between Science and Religion, Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley have assembled a group of distinguished historians who explore the origin of the thesis, its reception, the responses it drew from various faith traditions, and its continued prominence in public discourse. Several essays in the book examine the personal circumstances and theological idiosyncrasies of important intellectuals, including John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who through their polemical writings championed the conflict thesis relentlessly. Other essays consider what the thesis meant to different religious communities, including evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Finally, essays both historical and sociological explore the place of the conflict thesis in popular culture and intellectual discourse today. Based on original research and written in an accessible style, the essays in The Warfare between Science and Religion take an interdisciplinary approach to question the historical relationship between science and religion. This volume, which brings much-needed perspective to an often bitter controversy, will appeal to scholars and students of the histories of science and religion, sociology, and philosophy. Contributors: Thomas H. Aechtner, Ronald A. Binzley, John Hedley Brooke, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Noah Efron, John H. Evans, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Frederick Gregory, Bradley J. Gundlach, Monte Harrell Hampton, Jeff Hardin, Peter Harrison, Bernard Lightman, David N. Livingstone, David Mislin, Efthymios Nicolaidis, Mark A. Noll, Ronald L. Numbers, Lawrence M. Principe, Jon H. Roberts, Christopher P. Scheitle, M. Alper Yalçinkaya

Media and Science-Religion Conflict
Media and Science-Religion Conflict

Author: Thomas Aechtner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-01-22

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1000030717

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This book examines why the religion-science skirmishes known as the Evolution Wars have persisted into the 21st century. It does so by considering the influences of mass media in relation to decision-making research and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, one of the most authoritative persuasion theories. The book’s analysis concentrates on the expression of cues, or cognitive mental shortcuts, in Darwin-sceptic and counter-creationist broadcasts. A multiyear collection of media generated by the most prominent Darwin-sceptic organizations is surveyed, along with rival publications from supporters of evolutionary theory described as the pro-evolutionists. The analysed materials include works produced by Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design media makers, New Atheist pacesetters, as well as both agnostic and religious supporters of evolution. These cues are shown to function as subtle but effective means of shaping public opinion, including appeals to expertise, claims that ideas are being censored, and the tactical use of statistics and technical jargon. Contending that persuasive mass media is a decisive component of science-religion controversies, this book will be of keen interest to scholars of Religion, Science and Religion interactions, as well as researchers of Media and Communication Studies more generally.

For God's Sake
For God's Sake

Author: Antony Loewenstein

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Aus.

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1743289138

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Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Rethinking History, Science, and Religion
Rethinking History, Science, and Religion

Author: Bernard Lightman

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 082298704X

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The historical interface between science and religion was depicted as an unbridgeable conflict in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1970s, such a conception was too simplistic and not at all accurate when considering the totality of that relationship. This volume evaluates the utility of the “complexity principle” in past, present, and future scholarship. First put forward by historian John Brooke over twenty-five years ago, the complexity principle rejects the idea of a single thesis of conflict or harmony, or integration or separation, between science and religion. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the forefront of their fields to consider whether new approaches to the study of science and culture—such as recent developments in research on science and the history of publishing, the global history of science, the geographical examination of space and place, and science and media—have cast doubt on the complexity thesis, or if it remains a serviceable historiographical model.

Where the Conflict Really Lies
Where the Conflict Really Lies

Author: Alvin Plantinga

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-01

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0199812101

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In this long-awaited book, pre-eminent analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.

Media and the Science-Religion Conflict
Media and the Science-Religion Conflict

Author: Thomas Aechtner

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780429356544

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"This book examines why the religion-science skirmishes known as the Evolution Wars have persisted into the 21st century. It does so by considering the influences of mass media in relation to decision-making research and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, one of the most authoritative persuasion theories. The book's analysis concentrates on the expression of cues, or cognitive mental shortcuts, in Darwin-sceptic and counter-creationist broadcasts. A multiyear collection of media generated by the most prominent Darwin-sceptic organizations is surveyed, along with rival publications from supporters of evolutionary theory described as the pro-evolutionists. The analysed materials include works produced by Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design media makers, New Atheist pacesetters, as well as both agnostic and religious supporters of evolution. These cues are shown to function as subtle but effective means of shaping public opinion, including appeals to expertise, claims that ideas are being censored, and the tactical use of statistics and technical jargon. Contending that persuasive mass media is a decisive component of science-religion controversies, this book will be of keen interest to scholars of Religion, Science and Religion interactions, as well as researchers of Media and Communication Studies more generally"--

The Methods of Science and Religion
The Methods of Science and Religion

Author: Tiddy Smith

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-07-05

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1498582397

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Tiddy Smith argues that the conflict between science and religion is ultimately a disagreement about what kinds of methods we should use for investigating the world. Specifically, scientists and religious folk disagree over which belief-forming methods are reliable. In the course of justifying any scientific claim, scientists typically appeal to methods which generate agreement between independent investigators, and which converge on the same answers to the same questions. In contrast, religious claims are typically justified by methods which neither generate agreement nor converge in their results (for example, dreams, visions, mystical experiences etc.). This fundamental difference in methodologies can neatly account for the conflict between science and religion.

Galileo and the Conflict between Religion and Science
Galileo and the Conflict between Religion and Science

Author: Gregory W. Dawes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-22

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 131726889X

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For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen.

Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition
Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition

Author: James C. Ungureanu

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780822945819

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The story of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion—the notion of perennial conflict or warfare between the two—is part of our modern self-understanding. As the story goes, John William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) constructed dramatic narratives in the nineteenth century that cast religion as the relentless enemy of scientific progress. And yet, despite its resilience in popular culture, historians today have largely debunked the conflict thesis. Unravelling its origins, James Ungureanu argues that Draper and White actually hoped their narratives would preserve religious belief. For them, science was ultimately a scapegoat for a much larger and more important argument dating back to the Protestant Reformation, where one theological tradition was pitted against another—a more progressive, liberal, and diffusive Christianity against a more traditional, conservative, and orthodox Christianity. By the mid-nineteenth century, narratives of conflict between “science and religion” were largely deployed between contending theological schools of thought. However, these narratives were later appropriated by secularists, freethinkers, and atheists as weapons against all religion. By revisiting its origins, development, and popularization, Ungureanu ultimately reveals that the “conflict thesis” was just one of the many unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation.