This is a list of notable individuals who have focused on studying the intersection of religion and science.
The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and "mutual independence", among others.
John Charlton Polkinghorne was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.
"God of the gaps" is a theological concept that emerged in the 19th century and revolves around the idea that gaps in scientific understanding are regarded as indications of the existence of God. This perspective has its origins in the observation that some individuals, often with religious inclinations, point to areas where science falls short in explaining natural phenomena as opportunities to insert the presence of a divine creator. The term itself was coined in response to this tendency. This theological view suggests that God fills in the gaps left by scientific knowledge, and that these gaps represent moments of divine intervention or influence.
Arthur Robert Peacocke was an English Anglican theologian and biochemist.
Ian Graeme Barbour was an American scholar on the relationship between science and religion. According to the Public Broadcasting Service his mid-1960s Issues in Science and Religion "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."
In philosophy, theophysics is an approach to cosmology that attempts to reconcile physical cosmology and religious cosmology. It is related to physicotheology, the difference between them being that the aim of physicotheology is to derive theology from physics, whereas that of theophysics is to unify physics and theology.
Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.
Keith Ward is an English philosopher and theologian. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a priest of the Church of England. He was a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, until 2003. Comparative theology and the relationship between science and religion are two of his main topics of interest.
Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.
Ecotheology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the interrelationships of religion and nature, particularly in the light of environmental concerns. Ecotheology generally starts from the premise that a relationship exists between human religious/spiritual worldviews and the degradation or restoration and preservation of nature. It explores the interaction between ecological values, such as sustainability, and the human domination of nature. The movement has produced numerous religious-environmental projects around the world.
A Scientific Theology is a set of three books by Alister McGrath that explores the parallels between the working assumptions and methods of Christian theology and those of the natural sciences. Scientific Theology is also the "running title" of the project which gave rise to the trilogy. The work is preceded by three volumes that McGrath describes as "landmarks" in the development of his scientific theology: The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism, The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion and Thomas F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography. The trilogy was later summarised in The Science of God. McGrath is working on a "scientific dogmatics" which will deal with the content of Christian theology following the method developed in the trilogy.
Faith, Science, and Understanding is a book by John Polkinghorne which explores aspects of the integration between science and theology. It is based on lectures he gave at the University of Nottingham and Yale and on some other papers.
Harold K. Schilling was a professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University. He had served as chairman of the physics department and then as dean of the graduate school. He also wrote extensively about science and religion.
Donald Dwight Evans was a Canadian educator, psychotherapist, and spiritual counsellor.
Issues in Science and Religion is a book by Ian Barbour. A biography provided by the John Templeton Foundation and published by PBS online states this book "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."
Karl Heim was a professor of dogmatics at Münster and Tübingen. He retired in 1939. His idea of God controlling quantum events that do and would seem otherwise random has been seen as the precursor to much of the current studies on divine action. His current influence upon religion and science theology has been compared in degree to that of the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour and of the scientist and theological organizer Ralph Wendell Burhoe. His doctrine on the transcendence of God has been thought to anticipate important points of later religious and science discussions, including the application of Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm to religion and Thomas F. Torrance's theory of multileveled knowledge. Mention of Heim's physical and theological concept of extra-dimensional space can be found in a 2001 puzzle book by the popular mathematics writer Martin Gardner. His concept of space has also been discussed by Ian Barbour himself, who in a review of the book Christian Faith and Natural Science and in a mention of "its more technical sequel" The Transformation of the Scientific World-View, found it to be "an illuminating insight."
Philip Clayton is an American philosopher of religion and philosopher of science. His work focuses on the intersection of science, ethics, and society. He currently holds the Ingraham Chair at Claremont School of Theology and serves as an affiliated faculty member at Claremont Graduate University. Clayton specializes in the philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of religion, as well as in comparative theology.
The Society of Ordained Scientists (SOSc) is an international religious order of priest-scientists within the Anglican Communion. The organisation was founded at the University of Oxford by biologist-theologian Arthur Peacocke following the establishment of several other similar societies in the 1970s, in order to advance the field of religion and science. Membership in the Society of Ordained Scientists is open at the invitation of the Warden to ordained ministers of any Christian denomination upholding belief in the Holy Trinity. As a result, the ecumenical religious order includes individuals from the Anglican Church, Catholic Church, Methodist Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Reformed Church, and Lutheran Church, among other Christian denominations.
The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity is a reference work in science and religion, edited by James B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett, and published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. It contains 54 new essays written by an international list of 55 authors, many of them leading scholars in the discipline of science and religion, and others new or up-and-coming voices in the field. The editors claim, "We are seeking to introduce and advance serious thinking and talking about science and Christianity, particularly as they interconnect. We are reflecting on the work of scientists and theologians, trying to find points of contact and points of tension which help to illuminate these practices and doctrines in clear, scholarly light." The book has received positive reviews in Choice, Reference Reviews, Themelios and Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The article by Sean M. Carroll generated significant attention when it was discussed on the Huffington Post.
Although biological evolution has been vocally opposed by some religious groups, many other groups accept the scientific position, sometimes with additions to allow for theological considerations. The positions of such groups are described by terms including "theistic evolution", "theistic evolutionism" or "evolutionary creation". Of all the religious groups included on the chart, Buddhists are the most accepting of evolution. Theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God, that God is the creator of the material universe and all life within, and that biological evolution is a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life. According to the American Scientific Affiliation, a Christian organization of scientists:
A theory of theistic evolution (TE) — also called evolutionary creation — proposes that God's method of creation was to cleverly design a universe in which everything would naturally evolve. Usually the "evolution" in "theistic evolution" means Total Evolution — astronomical evolution and geological evolution plus chemical evolution and biological evolution — but it can refer only to biological evolution.
"The problem of Part Two is the relation between religion and the methods of science. Is the scientific method the only path to knowledge? Are theology and science similar enterprises (as Coulson and Schilling argue) or are they radically different (as Evans suggests)? Such questions about the relation of religion to science as a way of knowing are more basic than problems arising from particular scientific theories. Many persons today find that their religious beliefs are challenged not by any specific scientific discoveries but by the conviction that assertions in science can be proven while those in religion cannot. Science has been one of the influences on the "death of God" movement, as Ferre's essay indicates. Both Ferre and Evans provide careful philosophical analyses of the problem of verifying or evaluating theological statements. The central issue of Part Two, then, is the status of religious beliefs in an age of science.
"With suitable changes of language and illustration, Coulson's Science and Christian Belief could be rewritten for the present day without having to remove any of his fundamental arguments. Indeed, his observation that the rise of science has led to a loss of tradition throughout the world is a view which is now held very widely as well as being a noted cause for concern."
It has its own ideals and characteristic way of life; its own standards, mores, conventions, signs and symbols, language and jargon, professional ethics, sanctions and controls, authority, institutions and organizations, publications; its own creeds and beliefs, orthodoxies and heresies--and effective ways of dealing with the latter. This community is affected, as are other communities, by the usual vagaries, adequacies, and shortcomings of human beings. It has its politics, its pulling and hauling, its pressure groups; its differing schools of thought, its divisions and schisms; its personal loyalties and animosities, jealousies, hatreds, and rallying cries; its fads and fashions.
"There remain however persistent, half-conscious, impressions among the religious that science is somehow a danger to true spirituality, and among the non-religious that science has once and for all refuted the claims of religion. Professor Schilling's book has the important merit of taking seriously the intellectual and social aspects of these half-conscious impressions, and of showing how mis- taken is the belief that science and religion can go their separate ways in utter disregard of each other. ...reading this book no one ought to doubt that the stereotypes described at the outset are not merely caricatures, but serious distortions. But still the synthetic view which is surely the aim of the book somehow fails to come across with the requisite punch. Is this because yet deeper issues remain to be discussed? Can the claim of Christianity to be based on experience in a way parallel to science really be sustained? And if not, then what is its relation to expe- rience? And what about the vexed question of religious language?"