Navigating Faith and Science

By Joseph Vukov

Religious belief is often perceived as being in conflict with science—but does it have to be? 

Not usually, says Joseph Vukov. In this short, accessible guide, Vukov advances three models for Christians to utilize when navigating the relationship between science and faith: conflict, independence, and dialogue. He argues that dialogue is the ideal model to follow most of the time—but not necessarily all the time. Through a philosophical approach grounded in compelling real-world examples, Vukov shows how no single model can be universally adequate, and how Christians must proceed with discernment according to the nature of the matter at hand. 

Considering a wide variety of illustrative issues—including cosmology, evolutionary biology, extraterrestrial life, miracles, brain death, and theoretical physics—Vukov introduces and describes each of the three models of interaction between faith and science, surveys their applications, and evaluates the effectiveness of each. Throughout, he encourages Christians to embrace a spirit of intellectual humility and remember that, at their best, faith and science converge in their relentless human pursuit of truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781467463256

Joseph Vukov

Joseph Vukov is assistant professor of philosophy and graduate program director in the philosophy department at Loyola University Chicago.

Book preview

Introduction

I was coasting through my midterm in Mr. Anderson’s tenth-grade biology class. No hiccups, until I stumbled on this question: What is the age of life on Earth? I knew (or thought I knew) what evolutionary science taught—that simple life emerged on Earth around 3.5 billion years ago, just one billion years after the formation of Earth itself. I also knew (or thought I knew) what I was supposed to believe as a Christian—that life on Earth was much younger than that. So I had to choose: science or my faith? As a serious Christian (and as a student who had otherwise aced the test), the choice was easy: mark the incorrect choice, take the point deduction, and go home with a clear conscience.

I wouldn’t face this dilemma today. I have since learned quite a bit about both science and Christianity. And although I am still a serious Christian, I don’t see a problem affirming the claim that Earth is very old. So answering questions about the age of life on Earth would not give me pause today. My tenth-grade self, however, found the question deeply troubling—troubling enough that the moment has stuck with me for almost twenty years. Maybe you have had a similar moment, one in which the world of your faith and the world of science collided.

If so, you’re not alone. Among young adults with a Christian background, 29 percent feel churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in, and another 25 percent believe that Christianity is anti-science.¹ Likewise, when asked to indicate the relative importance of reasons for their disaffiliation from Catholicism, 36 percent of respondents in a survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate indicated that the conflict between faith and science was an important or very important reason for their leaving (by contrast, only 30 percent of respondents indicated that their reason was that they stopped believing in God).² More anecdotally, as a college professor, I meet a steady stream of students who have left Christianity because they believe a scientific outlook to be at odds with a life of faith.

It isn’t clear, though, that young adults—or adults generally—base these judgments on an accurate understanding of either Christianity or science. The Pew Research Center has found that 45 percent of Catholics do not know their church’s teaching on the sacrament of Communion and 53 percent of Protestants cannot identify Martin Luther as the figure who inspired the Reformation.³ Likewise, 55 percent of Americans recently agreed with the statement, Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, even though this is a near verbatim statement of the Arian heresy, rejected by early Christians at the Council of Nicaea.⁴ And don’t go thinking our collective scientific knowledge fares any better: a whopping 61 percent of Americans can be classified as having only medium (32 percent) or low (29 percent) scientific knowledge.⁵

These statistics paint a picture: there is a common perception that science and religion are at loggerheads. And yet, there is also a common lack of knowledge about both science and religion. The astute observer should conclude that the perception of outright conflict between the two may be a misperception, one derived from ignorance rather than understanding. To determine whether the widespread perception of conflict is in fact a misperception, we must clarify the nature of the relationship between science and religion. That’s where this book steps in.

Unlike other books exploring the intersection of science and the life of faith, however, this one does not gloss over the perception of conflict. Many academic books and essays dismiss the conflict between science and religion as superficial. While that thesis is attractive, I find it overly simplistic—and heavy-handed. After all, you may be in a moment like the one I experienced in tenth-grade biology class. You may be grappling with an issue in which you are confronted with a pivotal choice of leaving behind some aspect of science or some aspect of your faith. It would not be particularly helpful for me to tell you that the conflict you are facing is merely superficial and that at bedrock, science and religion can work together harmoniously—that all truth is God’s truth, and there can’t be any deep conflict between paths that aim to uncover it. I do believe those statements, and we’ll investigate the ideas later. As a rhetorical strategy, however, attempting to salvage both science and religion in the face of conflict has the ring of having your cake and eating it too. Moreover, it glosses over the messiness of how we, in our actual experiences, grapple with difficult questions. Even if conflicts between science and religion turn out to be superficial, we certainly don’t experience them that way.

Rather than offering easy resolutions, this book aims to provide a framework for approaching issues at the intersection of science and religion. The framework will be helpful for those who have begun thinking about these issues, as well as for those for whom conversations about this topic are new. Think of what follows as a guidebook that offers an overview of the most infamous interactions between science and religion, that surveys tried-and-true methods for approaching these issues, and that, along the way, evaluates what works and what doesn’t.

If the book is a guidebook, however, it is an opinionated one. When I’m traveling, those are the kind of guidebooks I most appreciate. They don’t merely list dining venues and theaters, but also weigh in on which shows are a flop and where to find the best vistas along a hiking trail. Likewise, in guiding you through the contemporary landscape of scholarship in science and religion, I’ll offer my own takes. This perspective boils down to three theses:

The relationship between science and religion is often best understood as one of dialogue rather than conflict.

But not always. In some contexts, we experience science and religion differently, and outright conflict may sometimes indeed be the best way to approach their relationship.

No matter how we approach issues at the intersection of science and religion, we ought to approach them with intellectual humility. In other words, we ought to embrace wholeheartedly the limited vision that comes with being human.

The first thesis of the book is that the relationship between science and religion is often best understood as one of dialogue. Think about the most productive dialogue you have had: maybe it turned on some hot-button political issue; maybe it was a years-long exchange about your preference for an Android over an iPhone; maybe it was a debate about baseball with a friend who is a diehard fan of your team’s rival. If your dialogues are like mine, the most productive ones are full of unexpected turns, dramatic tensions, and new insights. You’ll notice a new feature on your friend’s iPhone, recognize a weakness in the Minnesota Twins’ pitching game, or realize your take on politics wasn’t as settled as you thought. Through these twists and turns, your understanding and appreciation of the topic—as well as of the person with whom you are dialoguing—increases. Issues at the intersection of science and religion are often best approached like this. While there may at times be tension between the two, the give-and-take between them can lead to an expanded vision—and a deeper understanding and appreciation of each.

The second thesis of the book, however, qualifies this optimistic vision. It says that we can’t always understand the relationship between science and religion as one of productive dialogue because sometimes we experience the two as being in conflict with or independent from each other. The central observation behind this idea is that the relationship between science and religion—and our human approach to this relationship—is too complex to be understood as a dialogue in every instance. We wouldn’t expect fundamentalist Christians, Reform Jews, and Tibetan Buddhists to approach evolutionary theory the same way. Nor should we expect to approach the evidence for God’s existence, the religious implications of intelligent extraterrestrial life, or the scientific study of miracles in the same way. In the pages that follow, we’ll cover each of these topics, and I will suggest that different issues in science and religion demand different approaches. It would be myopic to suppose otherwise.

The third thesis of the book has less to do with which approach we take and more with the attitude we should adopt in taking it. I’ll suggest that our approach to issues at the intersection of science and religion is best carried out with an attitude of intellectual humility. Roughly put, intellectual humility is the virtue of knowing our own intellectual abilities and limitations. You may have a friend who is modestly confident about what she knows yet perfectly willing to admit what she doesn’t. That’s a sketch of the intellectually humble person. I will say quite a bit more about intellectual humility. We will also explore the ways in which intellectual humility is called for in different contexts. We’ll see that it is a crucial ingredient in approaching issues in science and religion, allowing us to pursue the truth while tempering our optimism with a realistic perspective. Intellectual humility, moreover, is a thoroughly human attitude; it leans into the humanity of our perspectives and experiences rather than shies away from these perspectives and experiences.

In chapter 1, I’ll introduce the idea of intellectual humility—what it is, why it is important, and how it is relevant to our purposes. The chapter will deal with issues in science and religion at a distance yet lay a foundation on which the rest of the book will be built. Chapter 2 will then dive headlong into debates about science and religion, starting with an approach that, as I have suggested, is both popular and problematic: the idea that science and religion are in conflict. I will argue that while we are not misguided to sometimes approach science and religion as being in conflict, we often make the mistake of approaching these conflicts with the wrong attitude. It is a problem, however, that a good dose of intellectual humility can remedy. Chapter 3 will consider a different approach to science and religion, one that posits science and religion to inhabit separate spheres. Like an approach based in conflict, this take can be productive yet has important limitations. And it too is best undertaken with humility. Chapter 4 will then turn to what I have suggested is often the best approach to issues in science and religion: dialogue. We will see the benefits of approaching science and religion in this way, some exciting examples of the dialogue model in action (aliens! miracles! fine-tuned physical laws!), and also the ways in which intellectual humility is crucial in these contexts. The discussion, however, won’t be an unqualified endorsement of dialogue. Instead, chapter 5 argues against an overreliance on the dialogue model and focuses instead on the crucial question: When faced with an issue at the intersection of science and religion, which model to choose? Spoiler alert: there is no easy answer. Although dialogue may be ideal, it won’t work as a one-size-fits-all approach to issues at the intersection of science and religion. Rather, we should allow the particularities of issues to determine the approach we take to them.

Science and religion—those are broad terms. Too broad to define with any kind of precision, at least in a book of this scope. But here is a brief word about how I will use the terms. As the contemporary philosopher Helen De Cruz observes: "One way to distinguish between science and religion is the claim that science concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns both the natural and the supernatural. Scientific explanations do not appeal to supernatural entities such as gods or angels (fallen or not), or to non-natural forces (like miracles, karma, or Qi)."⁶

That’s a fair enough description of how I’ll understand science in what follows—as areas of study that limit their concern to the natural world. I won’t distinguish between the so-called hard sciences (such as physics and chemistry) and soft sciences (such as psychology and sociology), even though in other contexts that’s an important distinction to make. Religion, by contrast, does not limit its concern to the natural world. And so, as De Cruz notes, religion can appeal to supernatural entities such as gods or angels (fallen or not) as well as "non-natural forces (like miracles, karma, or Qi)."

I will also focus my discussion of science and religion on beliefs and bodies of knowledge rather than on practices. For example, I will focus on the theist’s belief in God rather than on her practices of worship, on the physicist’s affirmation of dark matter rather the method by which he discovered it. We will cover the belief in miracles rather than how to pray for one, the results of the search for extraterrestrial life rather than the methodologies by which this search has proceeded. Limiting our discussion of science and religion in this way is, in a way, unfair to both. Both science and religion are practices and methodologies as much as they are bodies of knowledge. Scientists don’t memorize textbooks; they run experiments in labs. Likewise, people with religious commitments don’t primarily know about their religion; they practice it. Yet in what follows I’ll be primarily concerned with scientific and religious beliefs—and the ways in which these beliefs interact—and so for the most part will limit my discussion to that dimension.

Another way in which I’ll artificially limit my discussion of religion is that I will focus almost exclusively on Christianity. Why? A couple of reasons: first, Christianity is my own tradition, the one with which I am most theologically familiar; and second, it is the tradition that has received most critical attention in discussions about science and religion and thus provides a broad scholarly base for building upon. Still, while Christianity will provide a guiding example throughout the book, much of what I have to say may apply to other religious traditions as well. Science and religion touch our lives in myriad ways. While Christianity provides a way into our discussion, the discussion need not (and should not) end there.

One final note: I will understand science and religion in what follows as pursuits that aim at the truth. Both, in other words, concern themselves with achieving a more accurate understanding of ourselves and the world around us. A word about what I mean by truth: to say something is true means it accurately describes ourselves or the world around us. One upshot of this definition of truth is that while I may have my own opinions about what is true, I’m not allowed to help myself to my own truth. Something either accurately describes the world or it does not. Truth is truth, regardless of what I think about it. That’s not to say uncovering the truth is an easy task. In fact, I will emphasize the limits we humans face in pursuing the truth. But the fact that truth can be difficult to recognize does not detract from what it is: an accurate description of ourselves or the world around us.

How does this idea apply to science and religion? I have already gestured at the idea that both are concerned (at least in part) with getting at what is true. This is probably more apparent for