A new British project aimed at reconciling religion and science is unlikely to end the long and sometimes bitter debate about their relationship. However, it will bring together seminarians and Christian scholars in the study of modern science.
More than 700 thousand pounds (about 1.05 million dollars) have been allocated for the project, supported by the Church of England. It is part of a three-year program at the University of Durham and aims to deepen the interaction between science and Christian believers.
Future priests and other project participants will have access to the resources of modern science. In addition, the program will study the attitude towards science among the hierarchs of the church.
The program is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which invites grant applications up to £ 10,000 to be sent to scholars in the parish who wish to foster a deeper understanding of the relationship between faith and science.
Among the scientific community today, there is no single attitude towards the issue of faith.
Thus, some modern scholars speak from atheistic positions and have an extremely negative attitude towards religion. For example, the popularizer of the materialistic view of the world, Richard Dawkins, known for his many years of struggle with religion, in his book "God as an Illusion" calls faith untrustworthy and even delusional.
Others do not consider science and faith to be mutually exclusive concepts. Among them is one of the program's curators, the Reverend David Wilkinson, professor of astrophysics at the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham.
“Too often Christian leaders viewed science as a threat or were afraid to address it,” he laments.
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Battle of ideas
Professor Wilkinson became a Methodist minister after training and working in theoretical astrophysics; his specialization is the study of the origin of the universe.
“Many of the questions that faith and science have posed to each other have borne significant fruit,” he notes.
“People inside and outside the church are convinced that science and religion have an uneasy relationship, but the simplistic model of science being opposed to religion does not explain the very interesting relationships that have developed historically between these spheres,” adds the scholarly priest.
“Today, cosmologists are finding that some questions go beyond science, such as where we get our sense of awe,” he explains.
The very idea of a struggle between science and religion has its roots in the Middle Ages, to the time of Galileo's persecution by the Catholic Church for his claims that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa. It took hundreds of years for the church to admit that Galileo was right.
But the real conflict between science and religion began to blaze from the late 19th century. It has proven surprisingly resilient, still generating a lively controversy on television, radio and the Internet.
Many say that science deals with facts, while religion deals with faith, although today there are many who claim that there are areas in which the interests of religion and science intersect. These include, for example, the question of who or what caused the Universe to exist and exist.
Often, these interests develop into mutual enmity, growing, for example, from the ongoing disputes between believers and atheists on the topic of creationism or intelligent design.
Simplified definitions
“The old definition that science deals with facts and religion with faith is too simplistic," says Professor Wilkinson. "Science includes evidence, but it also includes judgment and assessment skills."
“After all, you only have a limited set of evidence with which you can substantiate your theory, and you have to believe them, which is not too far from the position of a Christian believer,” Wilkinson said.
“This is not about blind faith, and in fact, a religion based only on blind faith is not very good,” says the Reverend David Wilkinson. "Christianity must be open to interpretations of its judgments about the world and experience."
In his opinion, science and religion are by no means mutually exclusive.
He cites the book of physicist Paul Davis "The Cosmic Jackpot", which says that the Earth, like a bed in the tale of Masha and the three bears, turned out to be ideally suited for life according to a number of surprising and independent parameters.
“I had such a moment when I stopped and thought: wow! I was amazed by the beauty and grace of the Universe itself, as well as by the beauty and simplicity of the laws of physics that underlie the Universe,”says Professor Wilkinson.
This sense of amazement is shared by a Catholic priest and particle physicist Andrew Pinzent at the CERN laboratory and head of the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion at Oxford University.
Father Andrew Pinzent is confident that today is an extremely promising time for the study of science and religion.
At the same time, he fears that the old “paradigm of conflict” is also undergoing a rebirth, and it is shaping the way of thinking for many people - especially those who are poorly versed in both science and religion.
The priestly scientist welcomes the opening of access to scientific knowledge for church ministers.
“Many priests have already received significant scientific training,” he says. - When I was preparing for the role of a Catholic priest in Rome, 10% of the seminarians in my college had a higher scientific and medical education. At the same time, on average in the UK, less than 1.5% of the population has such an education."
“Moreover, two of the most important theories of modern science - genetics and the Big Bang theory - were developed by priests,” he adds.
As a particle physicist, Pinzent says, he has always been amazed at discoveries of amazing forms and symmetry in nature, the mathematics that underlies everything, and the incredible features of light.
“These discoveries by themselves cannot be used to formally prove the existence of God, but they generate a sense of beauty, for which a religious response is quite natural,” he notes.
Increased understanding
Other scholars agree that the long-standing idea of a war between science and religion is an outdated and incorrect concept, although they do not see science and religion as natural allies.
James Williams, a science teacher at the University of Sussex, says: "Problems tend to arise in circles of people who try to combine science and religion, or who try to use religion to question science."
“This is the misunderstanding of the nature of science,” he says. "Science deals with the natural, and religion deals with the supernatural."
"Science seeks explanations for natural phenomena, while religion tries to understand the meaning of life."
“In my opinion, science and religion cannot be integrated, that is, science cannot answer many of the questions that religion raises and, similarly, religion cannot answer scientific questions,” Williams notes.
Caroline Wyatt
