Making Sense of Science and Religion: Strategies for the Classroom and Beyond

By Joseph W Shane, Lee Meadows, Ronald S. Hermann and Ian Binns

The authors of Making Sense of Science and Religion believe that addressing interactions between science and religion is part of all science educators' collective job— and that this is the book that will help you facilitate discussion when the topic of religion comes up. Designed for teachers at all grade levels, the book will help you anticipate and respond to students' questions— and help students reconcile their religious beliefs even as you delve into topics such as evolution, geochronology, genetics, the origin of the universe, and climate change. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Historical and cultural context, plus a framework for addressing science-religion issues in a legal, constitutional manner. 2. Guidance on teaching specific scientific concepts at every grade level: elementary, middle, and high school science, as well as college and informal science settings. 3. Advice for engaging families, administrators, school boards, legislators and policy makers, and faith communities. The book' s authors are all personally and professionally invested in the subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NSTA
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781681405773

Book preview

PART I

Broadening Perspectives on Science-Religion Interactions

1

Science and Religion as Part of Our Professional Responsibilities

Joseph W. Shane, Lee Meadows, Ronald S. Hermann, and Ian C. Binns

Teaching is often more about establishing and building trust with our students and less about the conventional content and practices of biology, chemistry, Earth and space sciences, environmental science, and physics. Simply put, when there is mutual trust and respect in a classroom, enduring learning occurs. This is obvious to say, difficult to achieve, and marvelous when it happens!

Like many people, our students will sometimes come to us with religiously based understandings of the natural world and their roles in it. Other students may be antagonistic toward these perspectives. Others still will wonder what all the fuss is about and would just as soon stick to the science. As usual, our job is to convey and model science in the midst of all of our students’ complex preconceptions, misconceptions, beliefs, values, joys, and social anxieties.

We believe interactions between science and religion are an inevitable part of teaching science in 21st-century America. As all good teachers do, we’ve learned to thoughtfully anticipate, and respond to, our students’ prior knowledge and beliefs regardless of their origins or our personal perspectives. We do not, however, expect this to be easy, and the authors in this book will make their separate cases as to why you should care and what specifically you can do to, quoting a good friend that you will meet in Chapter 7, bring the threat level down when religion is brought up.

In this first chapter, we make the argument that addressing science and religion is, in fact, part of our collective job. We review four domains of science teaching to make our case, and to assist you in explaining, justifying, and defending your choices to your students, colleagues, and community. In our view, science-religion interactions are perfectly consistent with the well-known nature of science (NOS) literature, with professional standards, with general ethical principles and responsibilities of all teachers, and with scientific inquiry. Science educators at all levels have the potential to move the needle on how students understand similarities and differences between scientific and religious worldviews. We also have the professional responsibility for doing just that.

DISTINGUISHING SCIENCE AND RELIGION VIA THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Before reviewing the various aspects of NOS, we need to ask a broader question—namely, what is science? As science teachers you may not ask yourself this question very often. But it is important because this understanding is a key part of addressing science-religion interactions, and basic misunderstandings about NOS are often central to the distrust in science and scientists that is expressed by people of faith.

One particularly concise definition states that science is the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process (National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine 2008, p. 10). This definition includes key characteristics that distinguish science from other ways of knowing: empirical evidence, testable explanations and predictions, and natural phenomena. An additional characteristic is that science involves a scientific community. This reinforces the notion that scientific research is ultimately collaborative, reproducible, and subject to expert peer review. Each of these characteristics is an essential part of the development and acceptance of scientific knowledge.

With this general understanding, let’s move to NOS, which is in essence the epistemology of science, science as a way of knowing, or the values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge and its development (Lederman 2007, p. 833). While there are many lists outlining aspects of NOS, the following characteristics are commonly cited:

Science requires empirical evidence. This one is straightforward. In order for something to be accepted as scientific, there must be evidence based on observable, verifiable data. No scientific explanations are considered without empirical evidence. It is important to note that empirical evidence can be both quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the natural world.

Science is tentative. Scientific knowledge is not absolute, meaning it is subject to change. This happens when either new evidence is discovered or new ways are discovered to evaluate existing evidence. This process may not always be quick, but over time when new instrumentation or new evidence comes to light, scientific explanations can, and will, change.

Science is subjective. This suggests that scientists’ backgrounds influence what they investigate, what they observe, and how they interpret evidence. To be a detached observer in a purely objective sense is simply not possible, even though many people think that is how science works.

Science is creative. Scientists use creativity and imagination throughout the scientific process. This includes developing research questions, designing investigations, and formulating explanations of their findings.

Science is influenced by social and cultural values. What scientists and scientific communities value guides questions that scientists ask, influences ways scientists conduct research, and potentially advances or impedes scientific progress.

Scientific knowledge comes from both observations and inferences. Seeing is believing is a common idiom and implies that if you cannot directly see something, then it is not real. In reality, however, scientists cannot artificially separate observations from their inferred explanations and provisional hypotheses.

Scientific theories and laws are distinct, but equally important, aspects of science. Theories are not merely hunches or guesses, but rather they are the overarching frameworks based on overwhelming evidence that guide inquiry within a scientific discipline. Theories explain and predict observed phenomena. Laws, on the other hand, are the most basic descriptions of observed phenomena that apply across all disciplines. In science, theories do not grow up and become laws. Atomic theory and the law of conservation of energy (i.e., the first law of thermodynamics) are straightforward examples.

Ultimately, NOS makes it a quintessentially human endeavor, and this is what makes science so fascinating, especially when compared to other domains where the human dimension is perhaps more obviously central like economics, politics, and, yes, religion. Individual scientists bring a finite amount of knowledge and cultural experience to bear in order to explain evidence derived from experiments, observations of nature, and artifacts from the past. Provisional hypotheses are creative, subjective assertions that are typically consistent with the currently accepted theoretical framework. Hypotheses must be tested against further evidence. Inquiries must be repeated and subjected to review by qualified experts via peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.

If sufficient evidence accumulates within the global scientific community, previously accepted ideas are discarded, often reluctantly. On occasion, entire underlying theoretical frameworks are altered so as to change how we perceive the natural world. These internal checks and balances are imperfect to be sure (plenty of examples of fraud exist), but the success and impact of the collective, global scientific endeavor are undeniable and unmatched.

In our view, this basic understanding of science goes a long way toward addressing misunderstandings that the public frequently has about science. The common dismissive statement that evolution is just a theory falls flat, as does the claim that scientists are biased. The inherently tentative nature of science is not a weakness, but rather a self-correcting historical reality and a strength of science that separates it from other ways of knowing about the world. Scientists rarely speak with absolute certainty, but this is not evidence of anxious doubt or irreconcilable gaps in scientific knowledge. The measured tones of science merely suggest that there is always more to know.

SCIENCE-RELIGION THEMES IN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

It probably comes as no surprise that the word religion or any derivations do not appear directly within any science education standards insofar as we can tell. There are no explicit statements, suggested lessons, or assessments that teachers can reference to teach students about science-religion interactions. Quite frankly, if such guidance were already available in our professional standards, this book would not be necessary.

Upon closer examination, however, science-religion themes can easily be gleaned from science standards at all levels. In particular, national and state standards unequivocally provide support for NOS instruction, the use of historical case studies, and attending to students’ prior beliefs and, in so doing, justify the responsible inclusion of religion for strictly educational purposes.

Veteran science educators might recall the beginnings of the science for all movement with the publication of Science for All Americans (SFAA) by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; 1990) and the follow-up document used to write standards and curricula, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS 19933). Entire chapters are devoted to NOS instruction, and the following statement from SFAA recognizes the limits of scientific inquiry in addressing what are often religiously based issues for our students:

There are many matters that cannot usefully be examined in a scientific way. There are, for instance, beliefs that—by their very nature—cannot be proved or disproved (such as the existence of supernatural powers and beings, or the true purposes of life). In other cases, a scientific approach that may be valid is likely to be rejected as irrelevant by people who hold to certain beliefs (such as in miracles, fortune-telling, astrology, and superstition). Nor do scientists have the means to settle issues concerning good and evil, although they can sometimes contribute to the discussion of such issues by identifying the likely consequences of particular actions, which may be helpful in weighing alternatives. (AAAS 1990, p. 100)

You may be interested to know that AAAS has an ongoing initiative to help scientists better communicate with religious individuals and institutions. Leaders from the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion program give us their insights and advice in Chapter 11.

Published shortly after Benchmarks, the National Science Education Standards (NSES; National Research Council [NRC] 1996) maintained strong support for NOS instruction, and these national documents formed the basis for state and local standards and curricula for a generation. Today, we are familiar with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; NGSS Lead States 2013) and its SFAA analogue, A Framework for K–12 Science Education (NRC 2012). While NOS instruction is not featured as prominently in the NGSS, following public input it was emphasized to a greater degree, primarily in Appendix H of the NGSS. Appendix H, easily found online, addresses NOS directly and offers an extensive rubric for the NOS understandings that children should develop at different grade levels. Broad statements about NOS made in this appendix and in A Framework for K–12 Science Education are quite consistent with previous documents used to write state and local science education standards.

Additionally, national standards have consistently supported using historical case studies to teach science. The NGSS, like its antecedents, recommends student understanding of the Copernican revolution, Newtonian mechanics, Lyell’s study of rocks and fossils, Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, and Watson and Crick’s molecular model of genetics. In each of these and many more examples, the implications for religious and other social perspectives are profound. Consider this excerpt from SFAA:

The science of Newton was so successful that its influence spread far beyond physics and astronomy. Physical principles and Newton’s mathematical way of deriving consequences from them together became the model for all other sciences. The belief grew that eventually all of nature could be explained in terms of physics and mathematics and that nature therefore could run by itself, without the help or attention of gods—although Newton himself saw his physics as demonstrating the hand of God acting on the universe. Social thinkers considered whether governments could be designed like a Newtonian solar system, with a balance of forces and actions that would ensure regular operation and long-term stability. (AAAS 1990, p. 113)

Other scientists—Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin—and their discoveries also had widespread cultural influence on domains such as economics, government, and religion. We recommend that such historical examples be used alongside more contemporary science such as Big Bang cosmology, genetic engineering, climate science, and discoveries of fundamental forces and particles. The focus, of course, should always be on the core scientific principles.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we teach the students we have and build upon their prior knowledge, beliefs, and experiences. This is the central tenet of constructivist teaching. To this end, we found the following excerpt from SFAA particularly powerful:

But effective learning often requires more than just making multiple connections of new ideas to old ones; it sometimes requires that people restructure their thinking radically. That is, to incorporate some new idea, learners must change the connections among the things they already know, or even discard some long-held beliefs about the world. The alternatives to the necessary restructuring are to distort the new information to fit their old ideas or to reject the new information entirely. Students come to school with their own ideas, some correct and some not, about almost every topic they are likely to encounter. If their intuition and misconceptions are ignored or dismissed out of hand, their original beliefs are likely to win out in the long run, even though they may give the test answers their teachers want. Mere contradiction is not sufficient; students must be encouraged to develop new views by seeing how such views help them make better sense of the world. (AAAS 1990, p.