## 1. Science, religion, and how they interrelate


### 1.1 A brief history



Since the 1960s, scholars in theology, philosophy, history, and the
sciences have studied the relationship between science and religion.
Science and religion is a recognized field of study with dedicated
journals (e.g., *Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science*),
academic chairs (e.g., the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and
Religion at Oxford University), scholarly societies (e.g., the Science
and Religion Forum), and recurring conferences (e.g., the European
Society for the Study of Science and Theology's biennial
meetings). Most of its authors are theologians (e.g., John Haught,
Sarah Coakley), philosophers with an interest in science (e.g., Nancey
Murphy), or (former) scientists with long-standing interests in
religion, some of whom are also ordained clergy (e.g., the physicist
John Polkinghorne, the molecular biophysicist Alister McGrath, and the
atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe). Recently, authors in science
and religion also have degrees in that interdisciplinary field (e.g.,
Sarah Lane Ritchie).



The systematic study of science and religion started in the 1960s,
with authors such as Ian Barbour (1966) and Thomas F. Torrance (1969)
who challenged the prevailing view that science and religion were
either at war or indifferent to each other. Barbour's *Issues
in Science and Religion* (1966) set out several enduring themes of
the field, including a comparison of methodology and theory in both
fields. *Zygon,* the first specialist journal on science and
religion, was also founded in 1966. While the early study of science
and religion focused on methodological issues, authors from the late
1980s to the 2000s developed contextual approaches, including detailed
historical examinations of the relationship between science and
religion (e.g., Brooke 1991). Peter Harrison (1998) challenged the
warfare model by arguing that Protestant theological conceptions of
nature and humanity helped to give rise to science in the seventeenth
century. Peter Bowler (2001, 2009) drew attention to a broad movement
of liberal Christians and evolutionists in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries who aimed to reconcile evolutionary theory with
religious belief. In the 1990s, the Vatican Observatory (Castel
Gandolfo, Italy) and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
(Berkeley, California) co-sponsored a series of conferences on divine
action and how it can be understood in the light of various
contemporary sciences. This resulted in six edited volumes (see
Russell, Murphy, & Stoeger 2008 for a book-length summary of the
findings of this project). 



The field has presently diversified so much that contemporary
discussions on religion and science tend to focus on specific
disciplines and questions. Rather than ask if religion and science
(broadly speaking) are compatible, productive questions focus on
specific topics. For example, Buddhist modernists (see
 section 2.4)
 have argued that Buddhist theories about the self (the no-self) and
Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness meditation, are compatible and
are corroborated by neuroscience.



In the contemporary public sphere, a prominent interaction between
science and religion concerns evolutionary theory and
creationism/Intelligent Design. The legal battles (e.g., the
Kitzmiller versus Dover trial in 2005) and lobbying surrounding the
teaching of evolution and creationism in American schools suggest
there's a conflict between religion and science. However, even
if one were to focus on the reception of evolutionary theory, the
relationship between religion and science is complex. For instance, in
the United Kingdom, scientists, clergy, and popular writers (the
so-called Modernists), sought to reconcile science and religion during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whereas the US saw the
rise of a fundamentalist opposition to evolutionary thinking,
exemplified by the Scopes trial in 1925 (Bowler 2001, 2009).



Another prominent offshoot of the discussion on science and religion
is the New Atheist movement, with authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam
Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. They argue that
public life, including government, education, and policy should be
guided by rational argument and scientific evidence, and that any form
of supernaturalism (especially religion, but also, e.g., astrology)
has no place in public life. They treat religious claims, such as the
existence of God, as testable scientific hypotheses (see, e.g.,
Dawkins 2006).



In recent decades, the leaders of some Christian churches have issued
conciliatory public statements on evolutionary theory. Pope John Paul
II (1996) affirmed evolutionary theory in his message to the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, but rejected it for the human soul,
which he saw as the result of a separate, special creation. The Church
of England publicly endorsed evolutionary theory (e.g., C. M. Brown
2008), including an apology to Charles Darwin for its initial
rejection of his theory.



This entry will focus on the relationship between religious and
scientific ideas as rather abstract philosophical positions, rather
than as practices. However, this relationship has a large practical
impact on the lives of religious people and scientists (including
those who are both scientists and religious believers). A rich
sociological literature indicates the complexity of these
interactions, among others, how religious scientists conceive of this
relationship (for recent reviews, see Ecklund 2010, 2021; Ecklund
& Scheitle 2007; Gross & Simmons 2009).



For the past fifty years, the discussion on science and religion has
*de facto* been on Western science and Christianity: to what
extent can the findings of Western sciences be reconciled with
Christian beliefs? The field of science and religion has only recently
turned to an examination of non-Christian traditions, providing a
richer picture of interaction.


### 1.2 What is science, and what is religion?



In order to understand the scope of science and religion and their
interactions, we must at least get a rough sense of what science and
religion are. After all, "science" and
"religion" are not eternally unchanging terms with
unambiguous meanings. Indeed, they are terms that were coined
recently, with meanings that vary across contexts. Before the
nineteenth century, the term "religion" was rarely used.
For a medieval author such as Aquinas, the term *religio* meant
piety or worship, and was not applied to religious systems
outside of what he considered orthodoxy (Harrison 2015). The term
"religion" obtained its considerably broader current
meaning through the works of early anthropologists, such as E.B. Tylor
(1871), who systematically used the term for religions across the
world. As a result, "religion" became a comparative
concept, referring to traits that could be compared and scientifically
studied, such as rituals, dietary restrictions, and belief systems
(Jonathan Smith 1998).



The term "science" as it is currently used also became
common in the nineteenth century. Prior to this, what we call
"science" fell under the terminology of "natural
philosophy" or, if the experimental part was emphasized,
"experimental philosophy". William Whewell (1834)
standardized the term "scientist" to refer to
practitioners of diverse natural philosophies. Philosophers of science
have attempted to demarcate science from other knowledge-seeking
endeavors, in particular religion. For instance, Karl Popper (1959)
claimed that scientific hypotheses (unlike religious and philosophical
ones) are in principle falsifiable. Many authors (e.g., Taylor 1996)
affirm a disparity between science and religion, even if the meanings
of both terms are historically contingent. They disagree, however, on
how to precisely (and across times and cultures) demarcate the two
domains.



One way to distinguish between science and religion is the claim that
science concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns the
supernatural world and its relationship to the natural. Scientific
explanations do not appeal to supernatural entities such as gods or
angels (fallen or not), or to non-natural forces (such as miracles,
karma, or *qi*). For example, neuroscientists typically explain
our thoughts in terms of brain states, not by reference to an
immaterial soul or spirit, and legal scholars do not invoke karmic
load when discussing why people commit crimes.



Naturalists draw a distinction between *methodological
naturalism*, an epistemological principle that limits scientific
inquiry to natural entities and laws, and *ontological or
philosophical naturalism*, a metaphysical principle that rejects
the supernatural (Forrest 2000). Since methodological naturalism is
concerned with the practice of science (in particular, with the kinds
of entities and processes that are invoked), it does not make any
statements about whether or not supernatural entities exist. They
might exist, but lie outside of the scope of scientific investigation.
Some authors (e.g., Rosenberg 2014) hold that taking the results of
science seriously entails negative answers to such persistent
questions into the existence of free will or moral knowledge. However,
these stronger conclusions are controversial.



The view that science can be demarcated from religion in its
methodological naturalism is more commonly accepted. For instance, in
the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, the philosopher of science Robert
Pennock was called to testify by the plaintiffs on whether Intelligent
Design was a form of creationism, and therefore religion. If it were,
the Dover school board policy would violate the Establishment Clause
of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Building on
earlier work (e.g., Pennock 1998), Pennock argued that Intelligent
Design, in its appeal to supernatural mechanisms, was not
methodologically naturalistic, and that methodological naturalism is
an essential component of science. 



Methodological naturalism is a recent development in the history of
science, though we can see precursors of it in medieval authors such
as Aquinas who attempted to draw a theological distinction
between miracles, such as the working of relics, and unusual natural
phenomena, such as magnetism and the tides (see Perry & Ritchie
2018). Natural and experimental philosophers such as Isaac Newton,
Johannes Kepler, Robert Hooke, and Robert Boyle regularly appealed to
supernatural agents in their natural philosophy (which we now call
"science"). Still, overall there was a tendency to favor
naturalistic explanations in natural philosophy. The X-club was a
lobby group for the professionalization of science founded in 1864 by
Thomas Huxley and friends. While the X-club may have been in part
motivated by the desire to remove competition by amateur-clergymen
scientists in the field of science, and thus to open up the field to
full-time professionals, its explicit aim was to promote a science
that would be free from religious dogma (Garwood 2008, Barton 2018).
This preference for naturalistic causes may have been encouraged by
past successes of naturalistic explanations, leading authors such as
Paul Draper (2005) to argue that the success of methodological
naturalism could be evidence for ontological naturalism. 


### 1.3 Taxonomies of the interaction between science and religion



Several typologies probe the interaction between science and religion.
For example, Mikael Stenmark (2004) distinguishes between three views:
the independence view (no overlap between science and religion), the
contact view (some overlap between the fields), and a union of the
domains of science and religion; within these views he recognizes
further subdivisions, e.g., contact can be in the form of conflict or
harmony. The most influential taxonomy of the relationship between
science and religion remains Barbour's (2000): conflict,
independence, dialogue, and integration. Subsequent authors, as well
as Barbour himself, have refined and amended this taxonomy. However,
others (e.g., Cantor & Kenny 2001) have argued that this taxonomy
is not useful to understand past interactions between both fields.
Nevertheless, because of its enduring influence, it is still
worthwhile to discuss it in detail.



The *conflict model* holds that science and religion are in
perpetual and principal conflict. It relies heavily on two historical
narratives: the trial of Galileo (see Dawes 2016) and the reception of
Darwinism (see Bowler 2001). Contrary to common conception, the
conflict model did *not* originate in two seminal publications,
namely John Draper's (1874) *History of the Conflict between
Religion and Science* and Andrew Dickson White's (1896)
two-volume opus *A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology
in Christendom*. Rather, as James Ungureanu (2019) argues, the
project of these early architects of the conflict thesis needs to be
contextualized in a liberal Protestant tradition of attempting to
separate religion from theology, and thus salvage religion. Their work
was later appropriated by skeptics and atheists who used their
arguments about the incompatibility of traditional theological views
with science to argue for secularization, something Draper and White
did not envisage.



The vast majority of authors in the science and religion field is
critical of the conflict model and believes it is based on a shallow
and partisan reading of the historical record. While the conflict
model is at present a minority position, some have used philosophical
argumentation (e.g., Philipse 2012) or have carefully re-examined
historical evidence such as the Galileo trial (e.g., Dawes 2016) to
argue for this model. Alvin Plantinga (2011) has argued that the
conflict is not between science and religion, but between science and
naturalism. In his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (first
formulated in 1993), Plantinga argues that naturalism is epistemically
self-defeating: if both naturalism and evolution are true, then
it's unlikely we would have reliable cognitive faculties.



The *independence model* holds that science and religion
explore separate domains that ask distinct questions. Stephen Jay
Gould developed an influential independence model with his NOMA
principle ("Non-Overlapping Magisteria"):



> 
> 
> The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack
> of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise.
> (2001: 739)
> 
> 
> 



He identified science's areas of expertise as empirical
questions about the constitution of the universe, and religion's
domain of expertise as ethical values and spiritual meaning. NOMA is
both descriptive and normative: religious leaders should refrain from
making factual claims about, for instance, evolutionary theory, just
as scientists should not claim insight on moral matters. Gould held
that there might be interactions at the borders of each magisterium,
such as our responsibility toward other living things. One obvious
problem with the independence model is that if religion were barred
from making any statement of fact, it would be difficult to justify
its claims of value and ethics. For example, one could not argue that
one should love one's neighbor because it pleases the creator
(Worrall 2004). Moreover, religions do seem to make empirical claims,
for example, that Jesus appeared after his death or that the early
Hebrews passed through the parted waters of the Red Sea.



The *dialogue model* proposes a mutualistic relationship
between religion and science. Unlike independence, it assumes a common
ground between both fields, perhaps in their presuppositions, methods,
and concepts. For example, the Christian doctrine of creation may have
encouraged science by assuming that creation (being the product of a
designer) is both intelligible and orderly, so one can expect there
are laws that can be discovered. Creation, as a product of God's
free actions, is also contingent, so the laws of nature cannot be
learned through *a priori* thinking which prompts the need for
empirical investigation. According to Barbour (2000), both scientific
and theological inquiry are theory-dependent, or at least
model-dependent. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity colors how
Christian theologians interpret the first chapters of Genesis. Next
to this, both rely on metaphors and models. Both fields remain
separate but they talk to each other, using common methods, concepts,
and presuppositions. Wentzel van Huyssteen (1998) has argued for a
dialogue position, proposing that science and religion can be in a
graceful duet, based on their epistemological overlaps. The Partially
Overlapping Magisteria (POMA) model defended by Alister McGrath (e.g.,
McGrath and Collicutt McGrath 2007) is also worth mentioning.
According to McGrath, science and religion each draw on several
different methodologies and approaches. These methods and approaches
are different ways of knowing that have been shaped through historical
factors. It is beneficial for scientists and theologians to be in
dialogue with each other.



The *integration model* is more extensive in its unification of
science and theology. Barbour (2000) identifies three forms of
integration. First, natural theology, which formulates arguments for
the existence and attributes of God. It uses interpretations of
results from the natural sciences as premises in its arguments. For
instance, the supposition that the universe has a temporal origin
features in contemporary cosmological arguments for the existence of
God. Likewise, the fact that the cosmological constants and laws of
nature are life-permitting (whereas many other combinations of
constants and laws would not permit life) is used in contemporary
fine-tuning arguments (see the entry to
 fine-tuning arguments).
 Second, theology of nature starts not from science but from a
religious framework, and examines how this can enrich or even revise
findings of the sciences. For example, McGrath (2016) developed a
Christian theology of nature, examining how nature and scientific
findings can be interpreted through a Christian lens. Thirdly, Barbour
believed that Whitehead's process philosophy was a promising way
to integrate science and religion.



While integration seems attractive (especially to theologians), it is
difficult to do justice to both the scientific and religious aspects
of a given domain, especially given their complexities. For example,
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1971), who was both knowledgeable in
paleoanthropology and theology, ended up with an unconventional view
of evolution as teleological (which put him at odds with the
scientific establishment) and with an unorthodox theology (which
denied original sin and led to a series of condemnations by the Roman
Catholic Church). Theological heterodoxy, by itself, is no reason to
doubt a model. However, it shows obstacles for the integration model
to become a live option in the broader community of theologians and
philosophers who want to remain affiliate to a specific religious
community without transgressing its boundaries. Moreover, integration
seems skewed towards theism: Barbour described arguments based on
scientific results that support (but do not demonstrate) theism, but
failed to discuss arguments based on scientific results that support
(but do not demonstrate) the denial of theism. Hybrid positions like
McGrath's POMA indicate some difficulty for Barbour's
taxonomy: the scope of conflict, independence, dialogue, and
integration is not clearly defined and they are not mutually
exclusive. For example, if conflict is defined broadly then it is
compatible with integration. Take the case of Frederick Tennant
(1902), who sought to explain sin as the result of evolutionary
pressures on human ancestors. This view led him to reject the Fall as
a historical event, as it was not compatible with evolutionary
biology. His view has conflict (as he saw Christian doctrine in
conflict with evolutionary biology) but also integration (he sought to
integrate the theological concept of sin in an evolutionary picture).
It is clear that many positions defined by authors in the religion and
science literature do not clearly fall within one of Barbour's
four domains.


### 1.4 The scientific study of religion



Science and religion are closely interconnected in the scientific
study of religion, which can be traced back to seventeenth-century
natural histories of religion. Natural historians attempted to provide
naturalistic explanations for human behavior and culture, including
religion and morality. For example, Bernard Le Bovier de
Fontenelle's *De l'Origine des Fables* (1724)
offered a causal account of belief in the supernatural. People often
assert supernatural explanations when they lack an understanding of
the natural causes underlying extraordinary events: "To the
extent that one is more ignorant, or one has less experience, one sees
more miracles" (1724 [1824: 295], my
translation). Hume's *Natural History of Religion* (1757)
is perhaps the best-known philosophical example of a natural
historical explanation of religious belief. It traces the origins of
polytheism--which Hume thought was the earliest form of religious
belief--to ignorance about natural causes combined with fear and
apprehension about the environment. By deifying aspects of the
environment, early humans tried to persuade or bribe the gods, thereby
gaining a sense of control.



In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors from newly
emerging scientific disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and
psychology examined the purported naturalistic roots of religious
beliefs. They did so with a broad brush, trying to explain what
unifies diverse religious beliefs across cultures. Auguste Comte
(1841) proposed that all societies, in their attempts to make sense of
the world, go through the same stages of development: the theological
(religious) stage is the earliest phase, where religious explanations
predominate, followed by the metaphysical stage (a non-intervening
God), and culminating in the positive or scientific stage, marked by
scientific explanations and empirical observations.



In anthropology, this positivist idea influenced cultural
evolutionism, a theoretical framework that sought to explain cultural
change using universal patterns. The underlying supposition was that
all cultures evolve and progress along the same trajectory. Cultures
with differing religious views were explained as being in different
stages of their development. For example, Tylor (1871) regarded
animism as the earliest form of religious belief. James Frazer's
*Golden Bough* (1890) is somewhat unusual within this
literature, as he saw commonalities between magic, religion, and
science. Though he proposed a linear progression, he also argued that
a proto-scientific mindset gave rise to magical practices, including
the discovery of regularities in nature. Cultural evolutionist models
dealt poorly with religious diversity and with the complex
relationships between science and religion across cultures. Many
authors proposed that religion was just a stage in human development,
which would eventually be superseded. For example, social theorists
such as Karl Marx and Max Weber proposed versions of the
secularization thesis, the view that religion would decline in the
face of modern technology, science, and culture.



Functionalism was another theoretical framework that sought to explain
religion. Functionalists did not consider religion to be a stage in
human cultural development that would eventually be overcome. They saw
it as a set of social institutions that served important functions in
the societies they were part of. For example, the sociologist
Emile Durkheim (1912 [1915]) argued that religious beliefs are
social glue that helps to keep societies together.



Sigmund Freud and other early psychologists aimed to explain religion
as the result of cognitive dispositions. For example, Freud (1927) saw
religious belief as an illusion, a childlike yearning for a fatherly
figure. He also considered "oceanic feeling" (a feeling of
limitlessness and of being connected with the world, a concept he
derived from the French author Romain Rolland) as one of the origins
of religious belief. He thought this feeling was a remnant of an
infant's experience of the self, prior to being weaned off the
breast. William James (1902) was interested in the psychological roots
and the phenomenology of religious experiences, which he believed were
the ultimate source of all institutional religions.



From the 1920s onward, the scientific study of religion became less
concerned with grand unifying narratives, and focused more on
particular religious traditions and beliefs. Anthropologists such as
Edward Evans-Pritchard (1937) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1925) no
longer relied exclusively on second-hand reports (usually of poor
quality and from distorted sources), but engaged in serious fieldwork.
Their ethnographies indicated that cultural evolutionism was a
defective theoretical framework and that religious beliefs were more
diverse than was previously assumed. They argued that religious
beliefs were not the result of ignorance of naturalistic mechanisms.
For instance, Evans-Pritchard (1937) noted that the Azande were well
aware that houses could collapse because termites ate away at their
foundations, but they still appealed to witchcraft to explain why a
particular house collapsed at a particular time. More recently,
Cristine Legare et al. (2012) found that people in various cultures
straightforwardly combine supernatural and natural explanations, for
instance, South Africans are aware AIDS is caused by the HIV virus,
but some also believe that the viral infection is ultimately caused by
a witch.



Psychologists and sociologists of religion also began to doubt that
religious beliefs were rooted in irrationality, psychopathology, and
other atypical psychological states, as James (1902) and other early
psychologists had assumed. In the US, in the late 1930s through the
1960s, psychologists developed a renewed interest for religion, fueled
by the observation that religion refused to decline and seemed to
undergo a substantial revival, thus casting doubt on the
secularization thesis (see Stark 1999 for an overview). Psychologists
of religion have made increasingly fine-grained distinctions between
types of religiosity, including extrinsic religiosity (being religious
as means to an end, for instance, getting the benefits of being a
member of a social group) and intrinsic religiosity (people who adhere
to religions for the sake of their teachings) (Allport & Ross
1967). Psychologists and sociologists now commonly study religiosity
as an independent variable, with an impact on, for instance, health,
criminality, sexuality, socio-economic profile, and social
networks.



A recent development in the scientific study of religion is the
cognitive science of religion (CSR). This is a multidisciplinary
field, with authors from, among others, developmental psychology,
anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive psychology (see C. White 2021
for a comprehensive overview). It differs from other scientific
approaches to religion in its presupposition that religion is not a
purely cultural phenomenon. Rather, authors in CSR hold that religion
is the result of ordinary, early developed, and universal human
cognitive processes (e.g., Barrett 2004, Boyer 2002). Some authors
regard religion as the byproduct of cognitive processes that are not
evolved for religion. For example, according to Paul Bloom (2007),
religion emerges as a byproduct of our intuitive distinction between
minds and bodies: we can think of minds as continuing, even after the
body dies (e.g., by attributing desires to a dead family member),
which makes belief in an afterlife and in disembodied spirits natural
and spontaneous. Another family of hypotheses regards religion as a
biological or cultural adaptive response that helps humans solve
cooperative problems (e.g., Bering 2011; Purzycki & Sosis 2022):
through their belief in big, powerful gods that can punish, humans
behave more cooperatively, which allowed human group sizes to expand
beyond small hunter-gatherer communities. Groups with belief in big
gods thus out-competed groups without such beliefs for resources
during the Neolithic, which would explain the current success of
belief in such gods (Norenzayan 2013). However, the question of which
came first--big god beliefs or large-scale societies--is a
continued matter of debate.


## 2. Science and religion in various religions



As noted, most studies on the relationship between science and
religion have focused on science and Christianity, with only a small
number of publications devoted to other religious traditions (e.g.,
Brooke & Numbers 2011; Lopez 2008). Since science makes universal
claims, it is easy to assume that its encounter with other religious
traditions would be similar to its interactions with Christianity.
However, given different creedal tenets (e.g., in Hindu traditions God
is usually not entirely distinct from creation, unlike in Christianity
and Judaism), and because science has had distinct historical
trajectories in other cultures, one can expect disanalogies in the
relationship between science and religion in different religious
traditions. To give a sense of this diversity, this section provides a
bird's eye view of science and religion in five major world
religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.


### 2.1 Christianity



Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, currently the
religion with the most adherents. It developed in the first century CE
out of Judaism. Christians adhere to asserted revelations described in
a series of canonical texts, which include the Old Testament, which
comprises texts inherited from Judaism, and the New Testament, which
contains the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (narratives on
the life and teachings of Jesus), as well as events and teachings of
the early Christian churches (e.g., Acts of the Apostles, letters by
Paul), and Revelation, a prophetic book on the end times.



Given the prominence of revealed texts in Christianity, a useful
starting point to examine the relationship between Christianity and
science is the two books metaphor (see Tanzella-Nitti 2005 for an
overview): God revealed Godself through the "Book of
Nature", with its orderly laws, and the "Book of
Scripture", with its historical narratives and accounts of
miracles. Augustine (354-430) argued that the book of nature was
the more accessible of the two, since scripture requires literacy
whereas illiterates and literates alike could read the book of nature.
Maximus Confessor (c. 580-662), in his *Ambigua* (see
Louth 1996 for a collection of and critical introduction to these
texts) compared scripture and natural law to two clothes that
envelop the Incarnated Logos: Jesus' humanity is revealed by
nature, whereas his divinity is revealed by the scriptures. During the
Middle Ages, authors such as Hugh of St. Victor (ca. 1096-1141)
and Bonaventure (1221-1274) began to realize that the book of
nature was not at all straightforward to read. Given that original sin
marred our reason and perception, what conclusions could humans
legitimately draw about ultimate reality? Bonaventure used the
metaphor of the books to the extent that "*liber
naturae*" was a synonym for creation, the natural world. He
argued that sin has clouded human reason so much that the book of
nature has become unreadable, and that scripture is needed as an aid
as it contains teachings about the world.



Christian authors in the field of science and religion continue to
debate how these two books interrelate. Concordism is the attempt to
interpret scripture in the light of modern science. It is a
hermeneutical approach to Bible interpretation, where one expects that
the Bible foretells scientific theories, such as the Big Bang theory
or evolutionary theory. However, as Denis Lamoureux (2008: chapter 5)
argues, many scientific-sounding statements in the Bible are false:
the mustard seed is not the smallest seed, male reproductive seeds do
not contain miniature persons, there is no firmament, and the earth is
neither flat nor immovable. Thus, any plausible form of integrating
the book of nature and scripture will require more nuance and
sophistication. Theologians such as John Wesley (1703-1791) have
proposed the addition of other sources of knowledge to scripture and
science: the Wesleyan quadrilateral (a term not coined by Wesley
himself) is the dynamic interaction of scripture, experience
(including the empirical findings of the sciences), tradition, and
reason (Outler 1985).



Several Christian authors have attempted to integrate science and
religion (e.g., Haught 1995, Lamoureux 2008, Murphy 1995), making
integration a highly popular view on the relationship between science
and religion. These authors tend to interpret findings from the
sciences, such as evolutionary theory or chaos theory, in a
theological light, using established theological models such as
classical theism or the doctrine of creation. John Haught (1995)
argues that the theological view of kenosis (self-emptying of God in
creation) anticipates scientific findings such as evolutionary theory:
a self-emptying God (i.e., who limits Godself), who creates a distinct
and autonomous world, makes a world with internal self-coherence, with
a self-organizing universe as the result.



The dominant epistemological outlook in Christian science and religion
has been critical realism, a position that applies both to theology
(theological realism) and to science (scientific realism). Barbour
(1966) introduced this view into the science and religion literature;
it has been further developed by theologians such as Arthur Peacocke
(1984) and Wentzel van Huyssteen (1999). Critical realism aims to
offer a middle way between naive realism (the world is as we
perceive it) and instrumentalism (our perceptions and concepts are
purely instrumental). It encourages critical reflection on perception
and the world, hence "critical". Critical realism has
distinct flavors in the works of different authors, for instance, van
Huyssteen (1998, 1999) develops a weak form of critical realism set
within a postfoundationalist notion of rationality, where theological
views are shaped by social, cultural, and evolved biological factors.
Murphy (1995: 329-330) outlines doctrinal and scientific
requirements for approaches in science and religion: ideally, an
integrated approach should be broadly in line with Christian doctrine,
especially core tenets such as the doctrine of creation, while at the
same time it should be in line with empirical observations without
undercutting scientific practices.



Several historians (e.g., Hooykaas 1972) have argued that Christianity
was instrumental to the development of Western science. Peter Harrison
(2007) maintains that the doctrine of original sin played a crucial
role in this, arguing there was a widespread belief in the early
modern period that Adam, prior to the Fall, had superior senses,
intellect, and understanding. As a result of the Fall, human senses
became duller, our ability to make correct inferences was diminished,
and nature itself became less intelligible. Postlapsarian humans
(i.e., humans after the Fall) are no longer able to exclusively rely
on their *a priori* reasoning to understand nature. They must
supplement their reasoning and senses with observation through
specialized instruments, such as microscopes and telescopes. As the
experimental philosopher Robert Hooke wrote in the introduction to his
*Micrographia*:



> 
> 
> every man, both from a deriv'd corruption, innate and born with
> him, and from his breeding and converse with men, is very subject to
> slip into all sorts of errors ... These being the dangers in the
> process of humane Reason, the remedies of them all can only proceed
> from the real, the mechanical, the experimental Philosophy
> [experiment-based science]. (1665, cited in Harrison 2007: 5)
> 
> 
> 



Another theological development that may have facilitated the rise of
science was the Condemnation of Paris (1277), which forbade teaching
and reading natural philosophical views that were considered
heretical, such as Aristotle's physical treatises. As a result,
the Condemnation opened up intellectual space to think beyond ancient
Greek natural philosophy. For example, medieval philosophers such as
John Buridan (fl. 14th c) held the Aristotelian belief that there
could be no vacuum in nature, but once the idea of a vacuum became
plausible, natural philosophers such as Evangelista Torricelli
(1608-1647) and Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) could experiment
with air pressure and vacua (see Grant 1996, for discussion).



Some authors claim that Christianity was unique and instrumental in
catalyzing the scientific revolution. For example, according to the
sociologist of religion Rodney Stark (2004), the scientific revolution
was in fact a slow, gradual development from medieval Christian
theology. Claims such as Stark's, however, fail to recognize the
legitimate contributions of Islamic and Greek scholars to the
development of modern science, and fail to do justice to the
importance of practical technological innovations in map-making and
star-charting in the emergence of modern science. In spite of these
positive readings of the relationship between science and religion in
Christianity, there are sources of enduring tension. For example,
there is still vocal opposition to the theory of evolution among
Christian fundamentalists. In the public sphere, the conflict view
between Christianity and science prevails, in stark contrast to the
scholarly literature. This is due to an important extent to the
outsize influence of a vocal conservative Christian minority in the
American public debate, which sidelines more moderate voices (Evans
2016).


### 2.2 Islam



Islam is a monotheistic religion that emerged in the seventh century,
following a series of purported revelations to the prophet
Muhammad. The term "Islam" also denotes
geo-political structures, such as caliphates and empires, which were
founded by Muslim rulers from the seventh century onward, including
the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman caliphates. Additionally, it refers
to a culture which flourished within this political and religious
context, with its own philosophical and scientific traditions (Dhanani
2002). The defining characteristic of Islam is belief in one God
(Allah), who communicates through prophets, including Adam,
Abraham, and Muhammad. Allah's revelations to
Muhammad are recorded in the Qur`an, the central
religious text for Islam. Next to the Qur`an, an important
source of jurisprudence and theology is the hadith, an oral
corpus of attested sayings, actions, and tacit approvals of the
prophet Muhammad. The two major branches of Islam, Sunni and
Shia, are based on a dispute over the succession of Muhammad. As
the second largest religion in the world, Islam shows a wide variety
of beliefs. Core creedal views include the oneness of God
(*tawhid*), the view that there is only one
undivided God who created and sustains the universe, prophetic
revelation (in particular to Muhammad), and an afterlife. Beyond
this, Muslims disagree on a number of doctrinal issues.



The relationship between Islam and science is complex. Today,
predominantly Muslim countries, such as the United Arabic Emirates,
enjoy high urbanization and technological development, but they still
underperform in common metrics of scientific research, such as
publications in leading journals and number of citations per
scientist, compared to other regions outside of the west such as India
and China (see Edis 2007). Some Muslims hold a number of
pseudoscientific ideas, some of which it shares with Christianity such
as Old Earth creationism, whereas others are specific to Islam such as
the recreation of human bodies from the tailbone on the day of
resurrection, and the superiority of prayer in treating lower-back
pain instead of conventional methods (Guessoum 2011: 4-5).



This contemporary lack of scientific prominence is remarkable given
that the Islamic world far exceeded European cultures in the range and
quality of its scientific knowledge between approximately the ninth
and the fifteenth century, excelling in domains such as mathematics
(algebra and geometry, trigonometry in particular), astronomy
(seriously considering, but not adopting, heliocentrism), optics, and
medicine. These domains of knowledge are commonly referred to as
"Arabic science", to distinguish them from the pursuits of
science that arose in the west (Huff 2003). "Arabic
science" is an imperfect term, as many of the practitioners were
not speakers of Arabic, hence the term "science in the Islamic
world" is more accurate. Many scientists in the Islamic world
were polymaths, for example, Ibn Sina (Avicenna,
980-1037) is commonly regarded as one of the most significant
innovators, not only in philosophy, but also in medicine and
astronomy. His *Canon of Medicine*, a medical encyclopedia, was
a standard textbook in universities across Europe for many centuries
after his death. Al-Farabi (ca. 872-ca. 950), a
political philosopher from Damascus, also investigated music theory,
science, and mathematics. Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)
achieved lasting fame in disparate domains such as poetry, astronomy,
geography, and mineralogy. The Andalusian Ibn Rusd (Averroes,
1126-1198) wrote on medicine, physics, astronomy, psychology,
jurisprudence, music, and geography, next to developing a Greek-inspired
philosophical theology.



A major impetus for science in the Islamic world was the patronage of
the Abbasid caliphate (758-1258), centered in Baghdad. Early
Abbasid rulers, such as Harun al-Rashid (ruled 786-809) and his
successor Abu Ja'far Abdullah al-Ma'mun
(ruled 813-833), were significant patrons of science. The former
founded the *Bayt al-Hikma* (House of Wisdom), which
commissioned translations of major works by Aristotle, Galen, and many
Persian and Indian scholars into Arabic. It was cosmopolitan in its
outlook, employing astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians from
abroad, including Indian mathematicians and Nestorian (Christian)
astronomers. Throughout the Islamic world, public libraries attached
to mosques provided access to a vast compendium of knowledge, which
spread Islam, Greek philosophy, and science. The use of a common
language (Arabic), as well as common religious and political
institutions and flourishing trade relations encouraged the spread of
scientific ideas throughout the Islamic world. Some of this
transmission was informal, e.g., correspondence between like-minded
people (see Dhanani 2002), some formal, e.g., in hospitals where
students learned about medicine in a practical, master-apprentice
setting, and in astronomical observatories and academies. The decline
and fall of the Abbasid caliphate dealt a blow to science in the Islamic world, but it
remains unclear why it ultimately stagnated, and why it did not
experience something analogous to the scientific revolution in Western
Europe. Note, the decline of science in the Islamic world should not
be generalized to other fields, such as philosophy and philosophical
theology, which continued to flourish after the Abbasid caliphate
fell.



Some liberal Muslim authors, such as Fatima Mernissi (1992), argue
that the rise of conservative forms of Islamic philosophical theology
stifled more scientifically-minded natural philosophy. In the ninth to
the twelfth century, the Mu'tazila (a philosophical theological
school) helped the growth of science in the Islamic world thanks to
their embrace of Greek natural philosophy. But eventually, the
Mu'tazila and their intellectual descendants lost their
influence to more conservative brands of theology.
Al-Ghazali's influential eleventh-century work,
*The Incoherence of the Philosophers* (*Tahafut
al-falasifa*), was a scathing and sophisticated critique of
Greek-inspired Muslim philosophy, arguing that their metaphysical assumptions
could not be demonstrated. This book vindicated more orthodox Muslim
religious views. As Muslim intellectual life became more orthodox, it
became less open to non-Muslim philosophical ideas, which led to the
decline of science in the Islamic world, according to this view.



The problem with this narrative is that orthodox worries about
non-Islamic knowledge were already present before Al-Ghazali
and continued long after his death (Edis 2007: chapter 2). The study
of law (*fiqh*) was more stifling for science in the Islamic
world than developments in theology. The eleventh century saw changes
in Islamic law that discouraged heterodox thought: lack of orthodoxy
could now be regarded as apostasy from Islam (*zandaqa*) which
is punishable by death, whereas before, a Muslim could only apostatize
by an explicit declaration (Griffel 2009: 105). (Al-Ghazali
himself only regarded the violation of three core doctrines as
*zandaqa*, namely statements that challenged monotheism, the
prophecy of Muhammad, and resurrection after death.) Given that
heterodox thoughts could be interpreted as apostasy, this created a
stifling climate for science. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, as science and technology became firmly entrenched in Western
society, Muslim empires were languishing or colonized. Scientific
ideas, such as evolutionary theory, became equated with European
colonialism, and thus met with distrust. The enduring association
between western culture, colonialism, and science led to a more
prominent conflict view of the relationship between science and
religion in Muslim countries.



In spite of this negative association between science and Western
modernity, there is an emerging literature on science and religion by
Muslim scholars (mostly scientists). The physicist Nidhal Guessoum
(2011) holds that science and religion are not only compatible, but in
harmony. He rejects the idea of treating the Qur`an as a
scientific encyclopedia, something other Muslim authors in the debate
on science and religion tend to do. Moreover, he adheres to the
no-possible-conflict principle, outlined by Ibn Rusd: there
can be no conflict between God's word (properly understood) and
God's work (properly understood). If an apparent conflict
arises, the Qur`an may not have been interpreted
correctly.



While the Qur`an asserts a creation in six days (like the
Hebrew Bible), "day" is often interpreted as a very long
span of time, rather than a 24-hour period. As a result, Old Earth
creationism is more influential in Islam than Young Earth creationism.
Adnan Oktar's *Atlas of Creation* (published in 2007
under the pseudonym Harun Yahya), a glossy coffee table book that
draws heavily on Christian Old Earth creationism, has been distributed
worldwide (Hameed 2008). Since the Qur`an explicitly
mentions the special creation of Adam out of clay, most Muslims refuse
to accept that humans evolved from hominin ancestors. Nevertheless,
Muslim scientists such as Guessoum (2011) and Rana Dajani (2015) have
advocated acceptance of evolution.


### 2.3 Hinduism



Hinduism is the world's third largest religion, though the term
"Hinduism" is an awkward catch-all phrase that denotes
diverse religious and philosophical traditions that emerged on the
Indian subcontinent between 500 BCE and 300 CE. The vast majority of
Hindus live in India; most others live in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and
Southeast Asia, with a significant diaspora in western countries such
as the United States (Hackett 2015
 [Other Internet Resources]).
 In contrast to the Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not
always draw a sharp distinction between God and creation. (While there
are pantheistic and panentheistic views in Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam, these are minority positions.) Many Hindus believe in a
personal God, and identify this God as immanent in creation. This view
has ramifications for the science and religion debate, in that there
is no sharp ontological distinction between creator and creature
(Subbarayappa 2011). Religious traditions originating on the Indian
subcontinent, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are
referred to as dharmic religions. Philosophical points of view are
referred to as *darsana*. 



One factor that unites the different strands of Hinduism is the
importance of foundational texts composed between ca. 1600 and 700
BCE. These include the Vedas, which contain hymns and prescriptions
for performing rituals, Brahmana, accompanying liturgical
texts, and Upanisad, metaphysical treatises. The Vedas discuss
gods who personify and embody natural phenomena such as fire (Agni)
and wind (Vayu). More gods appear in the following centuries
(e.g., Ganesa and Sati-Parvati in the 4th century). Note
that there are both polytheistic and monotheistic strands in Hinduism,
so it is not the case that individual believers worship or recognize
all of these gods. Ancient Vedic rituals encouraged knowledge of
diverse sciences, including astronomy, linguistics, and mathematics.
Astronomical knowledge was required to determine the timing of rituals
and the construction of sacrificial altars. Linguistics developed out
of a need to formalize grammatical rules for classical Sanskrit, which
was used in rituals. Large public offerings also required the
construction of elaborate altars, which posed geometrical problems and
thus led to advances in geometry. Classic Vedic texts also frequently
used very large numbers, for instance, to denote the age of humanity
and the Earth, which required a system to represent numbers
parsimoniously, giving rise to a 10-base positional system and a
symbolic representation for zero as a placeholder, which would later
be imported in other mathematical traditions (Joseph 1991 [2000]). In
this way, ancient Indian dharma encouraged the emergence of the
sciences.



Around the sixth-fifth century BCE, the northern part of the
Indian subcontinent experienced an extensive urbanization. In this
context, medicine (*ayurveda*) became standardized. This
period also gave rise to a wide range of heterodox philosophical
schools, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Carvaka. The
latter defended a form of metaphysical naturalism, denying the
existence of gods or karma. The relationship between science and
religion on the Indian subcontinent is complex, in part because the
dharmic religions and philosophical schools are so diverse. For
example, Carvaka proponents had a strong suspicion of
inferential beliefs, and rejected Vedic revelation and supernaturalism
in general, instead favoring direct observation as a source of
knowledge.



Natural theology also flourished in the pre-colonial period,
especially in the Advaita Vedanta, a *darsana* that
identifies the self, *atman*, with ultimate reality,
Brahman. Advaita Vedantin philosopher Adi Sankara
(fl. first half eighth century) was an author who regarded Brahman as
the only reality, both the material and the efficient cause of the
cosmos. Sankara formulated design and cosmological
arguments, drawing on analogies between the world and artifacts: in
ordinary life, we never see non-intelligent agents produce purposive
design, yet the universe is suitable for human life, just like benches
and pleasure gardens are designed for us. Given that the universe is
so complex that even an intelligent craftsman cannot comprehend it,
how could it have been created by non-intelligent natural forces?
Sankara concluded that it must have been designed by an
intelligent creator (C.M. Brown 2008: 108).



From 1757 to 1947, India was under British colonial rule. This had a
profound influence on its culture as Hindus came into contact with
Western science and technology. For local intellectuals, the contact
with Western science presented a challenge: how to assimilate these
ideas with Hinduism? Mahendrahal Sircar (1833-1904) was one of
the first authors to examine evolutionary theory and its implications
for Hindu religious beliefs. Sircar was an evolutionary theist, who
believed that God used evolution to create current life forms.
Evolutionary theism was not a new hypothesis in Hinduism, but the many
lines of empirical evidence Darwin provided for evolution gave it a
fresh impetus. While Sircar accepted organic evolution through common
descent, he questioned the mechanism of natural selection as it was
not teleological, which went against his evolutionary theism. This was
a widespread problem for the acceptance of evolutionary theory, one
that Christian evolutionary theists also wrestled with (Bowler 2009).
He also argued against the British colonists' beliefs that
Hindus were incapable of scientific thought, and encouraged fellow
Hindus to engage in science, which he hoped would help regenerate the
Indian nation (C.M. Brown 2012: chapter 6).



The assimilation of Western culture prompted various revivalist
movements that sought to reaffirm the cultural value of Hinduism. They
put forward the idea of a Vedic science, where all scientific findings
are already prefigured in the Vedas and other ancient texts
(e.g., Vivekananda 1904). This idea is still popular within
contemporary Hinduism, and is quite similar to ideas held by
contemporary Muslims, who refer to the Qur`an as a harbinger
of scientific theories.



Responses to evolutionary theory were as diverse as Christian views on
this subject, ranging from creationism (denial of evolutionary theory
based on a perceived incompatibility with Vedic texts) to acceptance
(see C.M. Brown 2012 for a thorough overview). Authors such as
Dayananda Saraswati (1930-2015) rejected evolutionary theory. By
contrast, Vivekananda (1863-1902), a proponent of the monistic
Advaita Vedanta enthusiastically endorsed evolutionary theory and
argued that it is already prefigured in ancient Vedic texts. His
integrative view claimed that Hinduism and science are in harmony:
Hinduism is scientific in spirit, as is evident from its long history
of scientific discovery (Vivekananda 1904). Sri Aurobindo Ghose, a
yogi and Indian nationalist who was educated in the West, formulated a
synthesis of evolutionary thought and Hinduism. He interpreted the
classic *avatara* doctrine, according to which God incarnates
into the world repeatedly throughout time, in evolutionary terms. God
thus appears first as an animal, later as a dwarf, then as a violent
man (Rama), and then as Buddha, and as Krsna. He
proposed a metaphysical picture where both spiritual evolution
(reincarnation and avatars) and physical evolution are ultimately a
manifestation of God (Brahman). This view of reality as
consisting of matter (*prakrti*) and consciousness
(*purusa*) goes back to *samkhya*, one
of the orthodox Hindu *darsana,* but Aurobindo made
explicit reference to the divine, calling the process during which the
supreme Consciousness dwells in matter *involution* (Aurobindo,
1914-18 [2005], see C.M. Brown 2007 for discussion).



During the twentieth century, Indian scientists began to gain
prominence, including C.V. Raman (1888-1970), a Nobel Prize
winner in physics, and Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974), a
theoretical physicist who described the behavior of photons
statistically, and who gave his name to bosons. However, these authors
were silent on the relationship between their scientific work and
their religious beliefs. By contrast, the mathematician Srinivasa
Ramanujan (1887-1920) was open about his religious beliefs and
their influence on his mathematical work. He claimed that the goddess
Namagiri helped him to intuit solutions to mathematical problems.
Likewise, Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), a theoretical
physicist, biologist, biophysicist, botanist, and archaeologist who
worked on radio waves, saw the Hindu idea of unity reflected in the
study of nature. He started the Bose institute in Kolkata in 1917, the
earliest interdisciplinary scientific institute in India (Subbarayappa
2011).


### 2.4 Buddhism



Buddhism, like the other religious traditions surveyed in this entry,
encompasses many views and practices. The principal forms of Buddhism
that exist today are Theravada and Mahayana.
(Vajrayana, the tantric tradition of Buddhism, is also sometimes
seen as a distinct form.) Theravada is the dominant form of
Buddhism of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. It traditionally refers to
monastic and textual lineages associated with the study of the Pali
Buddhist Canon. Mahayana refers to a movement that likely
began roughly four centuries after the Buddha's death; it became
the dominant form of Buddhism in East and Central Asia. It includes
Chan or Zen, and also tantric Buddhism, which today is found mostly in
Tibet, though East Asian forms also exist.



Buddhism originated in the historical figure of the Buddha
(historically, Gautama Buddha or Siddhartha Gautama, ca.
5th-4th century BCE). His teaching
centered on ethics as well as metaphysics, incapsulated in the Four
Noble Truths (on suffering and its origin in human desires), and the
Noble Eightfold Path (right view, right aspiration, right speech,
right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right
concentration) to end suffering and to break the cycle of rebirths,
culminating in reaching Nirvana. Substantive metaphysical teachings
include belief in karma, the no-self, and the cycle of rebirth.



As a response to colonialist attitudes, modern Buddhists since the
nineteenth century have often presented Buddhism as harmonious with
science (Lopez 2008). The argument is roughly that since Buddhism
doesn't require belief in metaphysically substantive entities
such as God, the soul, or the self (unlike, for example,
Christianity), Buddhism should be easily compatible with the factual
claims that scientists make. (Note, however, that historically most
Buddhist have believed in various forms of divine abode and
divinities.) We could thus expect the dialogue and integration view to
prevail in Buddhism. An exemplar for integration is the fourteenth
Dalai Lama, who is known for his numerous efforts to lead dialogue
between religious people and scientists. He has extensively written on
the relationship between Buddhism and various scientific disciplines
such as neuroscience and cosmology (e.g., Dalai Lama 2005, see also
the  *Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics*
series, a four-volume series conceived and compiled by the Dalai Lama,
e.g., Jinpa 2017). Donald Lopez Jr (2008) identifies compatibility as
an enduring claim in the debate on science and Buddhism, in spite of
the fact that what is meant by these concepts has shifted markedly
over time. As David McMahan (2009) argues, Buddhism underwent profound
shifts in response to modernity in the west as well as globally. In
this modern context, Buddhists have often asserted the compatibility
of Buddhism with science, favorably contrasting their religion to
Christianity in that respect.



The full picture of the relationship between Buddhism and religion is
more nuanced than one of wholesale acceptance of scientific claims. I
will here focus on East Asia, primarily Japan and China, and the
reception of evolutionary theory in the early twentieth century to
give a sense of this more complex picture. The earliest translations
of evolutionary thought in Japan and China were not drawn from
Darwin's *Origin of Species* or *Descent of Man*,
but from works by authors who worked in Darwin's wake, such as
Ernst Haeckel and Thomas Huxley. For example, the earliest translated
writings on evolutionary theory in China was a compilation by Yan Fu
entitled *On Natural Evolution* (*Tianyan lun*), which
incorporated excerpts by Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley. This work
drew a close distinction between social Darwinism and biological
evolution (Ritzinger 2013). Chinese and Japanese Buddhists received
these ideas in the context of western colonialism and imperialism.
East Asian intellectuals saw how western colonial powers competed with
each other for influence on their territory, and discerned parallels
between this and the Darwinian struggle for existence. As a result,
some intellectuals such as the Japanese political adviser and academic
Kato Hiroyuki (1836-1916) drew on Darwinian thought and
popularized notions such as "survival of the fittest" to
justify the foreign policies of the Meiji government (Burenina 2020).
It is in this context that we can situate Buddhist responses to
evolutionary theory.



Buddhists do not distinguish between human beings as possessing a soul
and other animals as soulless. As we are all part of the cycle of
rebirth, we have all been in previous lives various other beings,
including birds, insects, and fish. The problem of the specificity of
the human soul does not even arise because of the no-self doctrine.
Nevertheless, as Justin Ritzinger (2013) points out, Chinese Buddhists
in the 1920s and 1930s who were confronted with early evolutionary
theory did not accept Darwin's theory wholesale. In their view,
the central element of Darwinism--the struggle for
existence--was incompatible with Buddhism, with its emphasis on
compassion with other creatures. They rejected social Darwinism (which
sought to engineer societies along Darwinian principles) because it
was incompatible with Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. Struggling to
survive and to propagate was clinging onto worldly things. Taixu
(1890-1947), a Chinese Reformer and Buddhist modernist, instead
chose to appropriate Pyotr Kropotkin's evolutionary views,
specifically on mutual aid and altruism. The Russian anarchist 
argued that cooperation was central to evolutionary change, a view
that is currently also more mainstream. However, Kropotkin's
view did not go far enough in Taixu's opinion because mutual aid
still requires a self. Only when one recognizes the no-self doctrine
could one dedicate oneself entirely to helping others, as bodhisattvas
do (Ritzinger 2013).



Similar dynamics can be seen in the reception of evolutionary theory
among Japanese Buddhists. Evolutionary theory was introduced in Japan
during the early Meji period (1868-1912) when Japan opened
itself to foreign trade and ideas. Foreign experts, such as the
American zoologist Edward S. Morse (1838-1925) shared their
knowledge of the sciences with Japanese scholars. The latter were
interested in the social ramifications of Darwinism, particularly
because they had access to translated versions of Spencer's and
Huxley's work before they could read Darwin's. Japanese
Buddhists of the Nichiren tradition accepted many elements of
evolutionary theory, but they rejected other elements, notably the
struggle for existence, and randomness and chance, as this contradicts
the role of karma in one's circumstances at birth.



Among the advocates of the modern Nishiren Buddhist movement is Honda
Nissho (1867-1931). Honda emphasized the importance of
retrogressions (in addition to progress, which was the main element in
evolution that western authors such as Haeckel and Spencer
considered). He strongly argued against social Darwinism, the
application of evolutionary principles in social engineering, on
religious grounds. He argued that we can accept humans are descended
from apes without having to posit a pessimistic view of human nature
that sees us as engaged in a struggle for survival with fellow human
beings. Like Chinese Buddhists, Honda thought Kropotkin's thesis
of mutual aid was more compatible with Buddhism, but he was suspicious
of Kropotkin's anarchism (Burenina 2020). His work, like that of
other East Asian Buddhists indicates that historically, Buddhists are
not passive recipients of western science but creative interpreters.
In some cases, their religious reasons for rejecting some metaphysical
assumptions in evolutionary theory led them to anticipate recent
developments in biology, such as the recognition of cooperation as an
evolutionary principle.


### 2.5 Judaism



Judaism is one of the three major Abrahamic monotheistic traditions,
encompassing a range of beliefs and practices that express a covenant
between God and the people of Israel. Central to both Jewish practice
and beliefs is the study of texts, including the written Torah (the
Tanakh, sometimes called "Hebrew Bible"), and the
"Oral Law" of Rabbinic Judaism, compiled in such works
like the Talmud. There is also a corpus of esoteric, mystical
interpretations of biblical texts, the Kabbalah, which has influenced
Jewish works on the relationship between science and religion. The
Kabbalah also had an influence on Renaissance and early modern
Christian authors such as Pico Della Mirandola, whose work helped to
shape the scientific revolution (see the entry on
 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola).
 The theologian Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon, 1138-1204,
aka Rambam) had an enduring influence on Jewish thought up until
today, also in the science and religion literature.



Most contemporary strains of Judaism are Rabbinic, rather than
biblical, and this has profound implications for the relationship
between religion and science. While both Jews and Evangelical
Christians emphasize the reading of sacred texts, the Rabbinic
traditions (unlike, for example, the Evangelical Christian tradition)
holds that reading and interpreting texts is far from straightforward.
Scripture should not be read in a simple literal fashion. This opens
up more space for accepting scientific theories (e.g., Big Bang
cosmology) that seem at odds with a simple literal reading of the
Torah (e.g., the six-day creation in Genesis) (Mitelman 2011
 [Other Internet Resources]).
 Moreover, most non-Orthodox Jews in the US identify as politically
liberal, so openness to science may also be an identity marker given
that politically liberal people in the US have positive attitudes
toward science (Pew Forum, 2021
 [Other Internet Resources]).



Jewish thinkers have made substantive theoretical contributions to the
relationship between science and religion, which differ in interesting
respects from those seen in the literature written by Christian
authors. To give just a few examples, Hermann Cohen (1842-1918),
a prominent neo-Kantian German Jewish philosopher, thought of the
relationship between Judaism and science in the light of the advances
in scientific disciplines and the increased participation of Jewish
scholars in the sciences. He argued that science, ethics, and Judaism
should all be conceived of as distinct but complementary sciences.
Cohen believed that his Jewish religious community was facing an
epistemic crisis. All references to God had become suspect due to an
adherence to naturalism, at first epistemological, but fast becoming
ontological. Cohen saw the concept of a transcendent God as
foundational to both Jewish practice and belief, so he thought
adherence to wholesale naturalism threatened both Jewish orthodoxy and
orthopraxy. As Teri Merrick (2020) argues, Cohen suspected this was in
part due to epistemic oppression and self-censuring (though Cohen did
not frame it in these terms). Because Jewish scientists wanted to
retain credibility in the Christian majority culture, they underplayed
and neglected the rich Jewish intellectual legacy in their practice.
In response to this intellectual crisis, Cohen proposed to reframe
Jewish thought and philosophy so that it would be recognized as both
continuous with the tradition and essentially contributing to ethical
and scientific advances. In this way, he reframed this tradition,
articulating a broadly Kantian philosophy of science to combat a
perceived conflict between Judaism and science (see the entry on
 Hermann Cohen
 for an in-depth discussion).



Jewish religious scholars have examined how science might influence
religious beliefs, and vice versa. Rather than a unified response we
see a spectrum of philosophical views, especially since the nineteenth
and early twentieth century. As Shai Cherry (2003) surveys, Jewish
scholars in the early twentieth century accepted biological evolution
but were hesitant about Darwinian natural selection as the mechanism.
The Latvian-born Israeli rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935)
thought that religion and science are largely separate domains (a view
somewhat similar to Gould's NOMA), though he believed that there
was a possible flow from religion to science. For example, Kook
challenged the lack of directionality in Darwinian evolutionary
theory. Using readings of the Kabbalah (and Halakhah, Jewish law), he
proposed that biological evolution fits in a larger picture of cosmic
evolution towards perfection.



By contrast, the American rabbi Morcedai Kaplan (1881-1983)
thought information flow between science and religion could go in both
directions, a view reminiscent to Barbour's dialogue position.
He repeatedly argued against scientism (the encroachment of science on
too many aspects of human life, including ethics and religion), but he
believed nevertheless we ought to apply scientific methods to
religion. He saw reality as an unfolding process without a
pre-ordained goal: it was progressive, but not teleologically
determined. Kaplan emphasized the importance of morality (and
identified God as the source of this process), and conceptualized
humanity as not merely a passive recipient of evolutionary change, but
an active participant, prefiguring work in evolutionary biology on the
importance of agency in evolution (e.g., Okasha 2018). Thus,
Kaplan's reception of scientific theories, especially evolution,
led him to formulate an early Jewish process theology.



Reform Judaism endorses an explicit anti-conflict view on the
relationship between science and religion. For example, the Pittsburgh
Platform of 1885, the first document of the Reform rabbinate, has a
statement that explicitly says that science and Judaism are not in
conflict: 



> 
> 
> We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the
> domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of
> Judaism. 
> 
> 
> 



This Platform had an enduring influence on Reform Judaism over the
next decades. Secular Jewish scientists such as Albert Einstein,
Richard Feynman, Douglas Daniel Kahneman, and Stephen J. Gould have
also reflected on the relationship between science and broader issues
of existential significance, and have exerted considerable influence
on the science and religion debate.


## 3. Central topics in the debate



Current work in the field of science and religion encompasses a wealth
of topics, including free will, ethics, human nature, and
consciousness. Contemporary natural theologians discuss fine-tuning,
in particular design arguments based on it (e.g., R. Collins 2009),
the interpretation of multiverse cosmology, and the significance of
the Big Bang (see entries on
 fine-tuning arguments and
 natural theology and natural religion).
 For instance, authors such as Hud Hudson (2013)
have explored the idea that God has actualized the best of all
possible multiverses. Here follows an overview of two topics that
continue to generate substantial interest and debate: divine action
(and the closely related topic of creation) and human origins. The
focus will be on Christian work in science and religion, due to its
prevalence in the literature.


### 3.1 Divine action and creation



Before scientists developed their views on cosmology and origins of
the world, Western cultures already had a doctrine of creation, based
on biblical texts (e.g., the first three chapters of Genesis and the
book of Revelation) and the writings of church fathers such as
Augustine. This doctrine of creation has the following interrelated
features: first, God created the world *ex nihilo,* i.e., out
of nothing. Differently put, God did not need any pre-existing
materials to make the world, unlike, e.g., the Demiurge (from Greek
philosophy), who created the world from chaotic, pre-existing matter.
Second, God is distinct from the world; the world is not equal to or
part of God (contra pantheism or panentheism) or a (necessary)
emanation of God's being (contra Neoplatonism). Rather, God
created the world freely. This introduces an asymmetry between creator
and creature: the world is radically contingent upon God's
creative act and is also sustained by God, whereas God does not need
creation (Jaeger 2012b: 3). Third, the doctrine of creation holds that
creation is essentially good (this is repeatedly affirmed in Genesis
1). The world does contain evil, but God does not directly cause this
evil to exist. Moreover, God does not merely passively sustain
creation, but rather plays an active role in it, using special divine
actions (e.g., miracles and revelations) to care for creatures.
Fourth, God made provisions for the end of the world, and will create
a new heaven and earth, in this way eradicating evil.



Views on divine action are related to the doctrine of creation.
Theologians commonly draw a distinction between general and special
divine action, but within the field of science and religion there is
no universally accepted definition of these two concepts. One way to
distinguish them (Wildman 2008: 140) is to regard general divine
action as the creation and sustenance of reality, and special divine
action as the collection of specific providential acts, such as
miracles and revelations to prophets. Drawing this distinction allows
for creatures to be autonomous and indicates that God does not
micromanage every detail of creation. Still, the distinction is not
always clear-cut, as some phenomena are difficult to classify as
either general or special divine action. For example, the Roman
Catholic Eucharist (in which bread and wine become the body and blood
of Jesus) or some healing miracles outside of scripture seem mundane
enough to be part of general housekeeping (general divine action), but
still seem to involve some form of special intervention on God's
part. Alston (1989) makes a related distinction between direct and
indirect divine acts. God brings about direct acts without the use of
natural causes, whereas indirect acts are achieved through natural
causes. Using this distinction, there are four possible kinds of
actions that God could do: God could not act in the world at all, God
could act only directly, God could act only indirectly, or God could
act both directly and indirectly.



In the science and religion literature, there are two central
questions on creation and divine action. To what extent are the
Christian doctrine of creation and traditional views of divine action
compatible with science? How can these concepts be understood within a
scientific context, e.g., what does it mean for God to create and act?
Note that the doctrine of creation says nothing about the age of the
Earth, nor does it specify a mode of creation. This allows for a wide
range of possible views within science and religion, of which Young
Earth creationism is but one that is consistent with scripture.
Indeed, some scientific theories, such as the Big Bang theory, first
proposed by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and astronomer Georges
Lemaitre (1927), look congenial to the doctrine of creation. The
theory is not in contradiction, and could be integrated into
*creatio ex nihilo* as it specifies that the universe
originated from an extremely hot and dense state around 13.8 billion
years ago (Craig 2003), although some philosophers have argued against
the interpretation that the universe has a temporal beginning (e.g.,
Pitts 2008).



The net result of scientific findings since the seventeenth century
has been that God was increasingly pushed into the margins. This
encroachment of science on the territory of religion happened in two
ways: first, scientific findings--in particular from geology and
evolutionary theory--challenged and replaced biblical accounts of
creation. Although the doctrine of creation does not contain details
of the mode and timing of creation, the Bible was regarded as
authoritative, and that authority got eroded by the sciences. Second,
the emerging concept of scientific laws in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century physics seemed to leave no room for special divine
action. These two challenges will be discussed below, along with
proposed solutions in the contemporary science and religion
literature.



Christian authors have traditionally used the Bible as a source of
historical information. Biblical exegesis of the creation narratives,
especially Genesis 1 and 2 (and some other scattered passages, such as
in the Book of Job), remains fraught with difficulties. Are these
texts to be interpreted in a historical, metaphorical, or poetic
fashion, and what are we to make of the fact that the order of
creation differs between these accounts (Harris 2013)? The Anglican
archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656) used the Bible to date the
beginning of creation at 4004 BCE. Although such literalist
interpretations of the biblical creation narratives were not uncommon,
and are still used by Young Earth creationists today, theologians
before Ussher already offered alternative, non-literalist readings of
the biblical materials (e.g., Augustine *De Genesi ad
litteram*, 416). From the seventeenth century onward, the
Christian doctrine of creation came under pressure from geology, with
findings suggesting that the Earth was significantly older than 4004
BCE. From the eighteenth century on, natural philosophers, such as
Benoit de Maillet, Lamarck, Chambers, and Darwin, proposed
transmutationist (what would now be called evolutionary) theories,
which seem incompatible with scriptural interpretations of the special
creation of species. Following the publication of Darwin's
*Origin of Species* (1859), there has been an ongoing
discussion on how to reinterpret the doctrine of creation in the light
of evolutionary theory (see Bowler 2009 for an overview).



Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett (2003) have outlined a divine action
spectrum to clarify the distinct positions about creation and divine
action in the contemporary science and religion literature that
focuses on Christians, agnostics, and atheists. They discern two
dimensions in this spectrum: the degree of divine action in the
natural world, and the form of causal explanations that relate divine
action to natural processes. At one extreme are creationists. Like
other theists, they believe God has created the world and its
fundamental laws, and that God occasionally performs special divine
actions (miracles) that intervene in the fabric of those laws.
Creationists deny any role of natural selection in the origin of
species. Within creationism, there are Old and Young Earth
creationism, with the former accepting geology and rejecting
evolutionary biology, and the latter rejecting both. Next to
creationism is Intelligent Design, which affirms divine intervention
in natural processes. Intelligent Design creationists (e.g., Dembski
1998) believe there is evidence of intelligent design in
organisms' irreducible complexity; on the basis of this they
infer design and purposiveness (see Kojonen 2016). Like other
creationists, they deny a significant role for natural selection in
shaping organic complexity and they affirm an interventionist account
of divine action. For political reasons they do not label their
intelligent designer as God, as they hope to circumvent the
constitutional separation of church and state in the US which
prohibits teaching religious doctrines in public schools (Forrest
& Gross 2004). Theistic evolutionists hold a non-interventionist
approach to divine action: God creates indirectly, through the laws of
nature (e.g., through natural selection). For example, the theologian
John Haught (2000) regards divine providence as self-giving love, and
natural selection and other natural processes as manifestations of
this love, as they foster creaturely autonomy and independence. While
theistic evolutionists allow for special divine action, particularly
the miracle of the Incarnation in Christ (e.g., Deane-Drummond 2009),
deists such as Michael Corey (1994) think there is only general divine
action: God has laid out the laws of nature and lets it run like
clockwork without further interference. Deism is still a long distance
from ontological materialism, the view that the material world is all
there is. Ontological materialists tend to hold that the universe is
intelligible, with laws that scientists can discover, but there is no
lawgiver and no creator.



Views on divine action were influenced by developments in physics and
their philosophical interpretation. In the seventeenth century,
natural philosophers, such as Robert Boyle and John Wilkins, developed
a mechanistic view of the world as governed by orderly and lawlike
processes. Laws, understood as immutable and stable, created
difficulties for the concept of special divine action (Pannenberg
2002). How could God act in a world that was determined by laws?



One way to regard miracles and other forms of special divine action is
to see them as actions that somehow suspend or ignore the laws of
nature. David Hume (1748: 181), for instance, defined a miracle as
"a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of
the deity, or by the interposal of some invisible agent", and,
more recently, Richard Swinburne (1968: 320) defines a miracle as
"a violation of a law of Nature by a god". This concept of
divine action is commonly labeled interventionist. Interventionism
regards the world as causally deterministic, so God has to create room
for special divine actions. By contrast, non-interventionist forms of
divine action require a world that is, at some level,
non-deterministic, so that God can act without having to suspend or
ignore the laws of nature.



In the seventeenth century, the explanation of the workings of nature
in terms of elegant physical laws suggested the ingenuity of a divine
designer. The design argument reached its peak during the seventeenth
and early eighteenth century (McGrath 2011). For example, Samuel
Clarke (1705: part XI, cited in Schliesser 2012: 451) proposed an
*a posteriori* argument from design by appealing to Newtonian
science, calling attention to the 



> 
> 
> exquisite regularity of all the planets' motions without
> epicycles, stations, retrogradations, or any other deviation or
> confusion whatsoever. 
> 
> 
> 



A late proponent of this view of nature as a perfect smooth machine is
William Paley's *Natural Theology* (1802).



Another conclusion that the new laws-based physics suggested was that
the universe was able to run smoothly without requiring an intervening
God. The increasingly deterministic understanding of the universe,
ruled by deterministic causal laws as, for example, outlined by
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), seemed to leave no room for
special divine action, which is a key element of the traditional
Christian doctrine of creation. Newton resisted interpretations like
these in an addendum to the *Principia* in 1713: the
planets' motions could be explained by laws of gravity, but the
positions of their orbits, and the positions of the stars--far
enough apart so as not to influence each other
gravitationally--required a divine explanation (Schliesser 2012).
Alston (1989) argued, contra authors such as Polkinghorne (1998), that
mechanistic, pre-twentieth century physics is compatible with divine
action and divine free will. Assuming a completely deterministic world
and divine omniscience, God could set up initial conditions and the
laws of nature in such a way as to bring God's plans about. In
such a mechanistic world, every event is an indirect divine act.



Advances in twentieth-century physics, including the theories of
general and special relativity, chaos theory, and quantum theory,
overturned the mechanical clockwork view of creation. In the latter
half of the twentieth century, chaos theory and quantum physics have
been explored as possible avenues to reinterpret divine action. John
Polkinghorne (1998) proposed that chaos theory not only presents
epistemological limits to what we can know about the world, but that
it also provides the world with an "ontological openness"
in which God can operate without violating the laws of nature. One
difficulty with this model is that it moves from our knowledge of the
world to assumptions about how the world is: does chaos theory mean
that outcomes are genuinely undetermined, or that we as limited
knowers cannot predict them? Robert Russell (2006) proposed that God
acts in quantum events. This would allow God to directly act in nature
without having to contravene the laws of nature. His is therefore a
non-interventionist model: since, under the Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum mechanics, there are no natural efficient causes at the
quantum level, God is not reduced to a natural cause. Murphy (1995)
outlined a similar bottom-up model where God acts in the space
provided by quantum indeterminacy. These attempts to locate
God's actions either in chaos theory or quantum mechanics, which
Lydia Jaeger (2012a) has termed "physicalism-plus-God",
have met with sharp criticism (e.g., Saunders 2002; Jaeger 2012a,b).
After all, it is not even clear whether quantum theory would allow for
free human action, let alone divine action, which we do not know much
about (Jaeger 2012a). Next to this, William Carroll (2008), building
on Thomistic philosophy, argues that authors such as Polkinghorne and
Murphy are making a category mistake: God is not a cause in the way
creatures are causes, competing with natural causes, and God does not
need indeterminacy in order to act in the world. Rather, as primary
cause God supports and grounds secondary causes. While this
neo-Thomistic proposal is compatible with determinism (indeed, on this
view, the precise details of physics do not matter much), it blurs the
distinction between general and special divine action. Moreover, the
Incarnation suggests that the idea of God as a cause among natural
causes is not an alien idea in theology, and that God incarnate as
Jesus at least sometimes acts as a natural cause (Sollereder
2015).



There has been a debate on the question to what extent randomness is a
genuine feature of creation, and how divine action and chance
interrelate. Chance and stochasticity are important features of
evolutionary theory (the non-random retention of random variations).
In a famous thought experiment, Gould (1989) imagined that we could
rewind the tape of life back to the time of the Burgess Shale (508
million years ago); the chance that a rerun of the tape of life would
end up with anything like the present-day life forms is vanishingly
small. However, Simon Conway Morris (2003) has insisted species very
similar to the ones we know now, including humans, would evolve under
a broad range of conditions.



Under a theist interpretation, randomness could either be a merely
apparent aspect of creation, or a genuine feature. Plantinga suggests
that randomness is a physicalist interpretation of the evidence. God
may have guided every mutation along the evolutionary process. In this
way, God could



> 
> 
> guide the course of evolutionary history by causing the right
> mutations to arise at the right time and preserving the forms of life
> that lead to the results he intends. (2011: 121)
> 
> 
> 



By contrast, other authors see stochasticity as a genuine design
feature, and not just as a physicalist gloss. Their challenge is to
explain how divine providence is compatible with genuine randomness.
(Under a deistic view, one could simply say that God started the
universe up and did not interfere with how it went, but that option is
not open to the theist, and most authors in the field of science and
religion are not deists.) The neo-Thomist Elizabeth Johnson (1996)
argues that divine providence and true randomness are compatible: God
gives creatures true causal powers, thus making creation more
excellent than if they lacked such powers. Random occurrences are also
secondary causes. Chance is a form of divine creativity that creates
novelty, variety, and freedom. One implication of this view is that
God may be a risk taker--although, if God has a providential plan
for possible outcomes, there is unpredictability but not risk. Johnson
uses metaphors of risk taking that, on the whole, leave the creator in
a position of control. Creation, then, is akin to jazz improvisation.
Why would God take risks? There are several solutions to this
question. The free will theodicy says that a creation that exhibits
stochasticity can be truly free and autonomous:



> 
> 
> Authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation. Such freedom is
> best supplied by the open contingency of evolution, and not by strings
> of divine direction attached to every living creature. (Miller 1999
> [2007: 289])
> 
> 
> 



The "only way theodicy" goes a step further, arguing that
a combination of laws and chance is not only the best way, but the
only way for God to achieve God's creative plans (see, e.g.,
Southgate 2008 for a defense).


### 3.2 Human origins



Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have similar creation stories, which
ultimately go back to the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis).
According to Genesis, humans are the result of a special act of
creation. Genesis 1 offers an account of the creation of the world in
six days, with the creation of human beings on the sixth day. It
specifies that humans were created male and female, and that they were
made in God's image. Genesis 2 provides a different order of
creation, where God creates humans earlier in the sequence (before
other animals), and only initially creates a man, later fashioning a
woman out of the man's rib. Islam has a creation narrative
similar to Genesis 2, with Adam being fashioned out of clay. These
handcrafted humans are regarded as the ancestors of all living humans
today. Together with Ussher's chronology, the received view in
eighteenth-century Europe was that humans were created only about 6000
years ago, in an act of special creation.



Humans occupy a privileged position in these creation accounts. In
Christianity, Judaism, and some strands of Islam, humans are created
in the image of God (*imago Dei*). Humans also occupy a special
place in creation as a result of the Fall. In Genesis 3, the account
of the Fall stipulates that the first human couple lived in the Garden
of Eden in a state of innocence and/or righteousness. This means they
were able to not sin, whereas we are no longer able to refrain from
sinning. By eating from the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Good and
Evil they fell from this state, and death, manual labor, as well as
pain in childbirth were introduced. Moreover, as a result of this
so-called "original sin", the effects of Adam's sin
are passed on to every human being. The Augustinian interpretation of
original sin also emphasizes that our reasoning capacities have been
marred by the distorting effects of sin (the so-called noetic effects
of sin): as a result of sin, our original perceptual and reasoning
capacities have been marred. This interpretation is influential in
contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. For example, Plantinga
(2000) appeals to the noetic effects of sin to explain religious
diversity and unbelief, offering this as an explanation for why not
everyone believes in God even though this belief would be properly
basic.



There are different ways in which Christians have thought about the
Fall and original sin. In Western Christianity, Augustine's
doctrine of original sin is very influential, though there is no
generally accepted Christian doctrine on original sin (Couenhoven
2005). For Augustine, humans were in a state of original righteousness
before the Fall, and by their action not only marred themselves but
the entirety of creation. By contrast, Eastern Orthodox churches are
more influenced by Irenaeus, an early Church Father who argued that
humans were originally innocent and immature, rather than righteous.
John Hick (1966) was an influential proponent of "Irenaean
style" theodicy in contemporary Christianity. 



Over the past decades, authors in the Christian religion and science
literature have explored these two interpretations (Irenaean,
Augustinian) and how they can be made compatible with scientific
findings (see De Smedt and De Cruz 2020 for a review). Scientific
findings and theories relevant to human origins come from a range of
disciplines, in particular geology, paleoanthropology (the study of
ancestral hominins, using fossils and other evidence), archaeology,
and evolutionary biology. These findings challenge traditional
religious accounts of humanity, including the special creation of
humans, the *imago Dei*, the historical Adam and Eve, and
original sin.



In natural philosophy, the dethroning of humanity from its position as
a specially created species predates Darwin and can already be found
in early transmutationist publications. For example, Benoit de
Maillet's posthumously published *Telliamed* (1748, the
title is his name in reverse) traces the origins of humans and other
terrestrial animals from sea creatures. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed
chimpanzees as the ancestors to humans in his *Philosophie
Zoologique* (1809). The Scottish publisher and geologist Robert
Chambers' anonymously published *Vestiges of Creation*
(1844) stirred controversy with its detailed naturalistic account of
the origin of species. He proposed that the first organisms arose
through spontaneous generation, and that all subsequent organisms
evolved from them. Moreover, he argued that humans have a single
evolutionary origin: 



> 
> 
> The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from one
> stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism
> (1844: 305) 
> 
> 
> 



a view starkly different from the Augustinian interpretation of
humanity as being in a prelapsarian state of perfection.



Darwin was initially reluctant to publish on human origins. While he
did not discuss human evolution in his *Origin of Species*, he
promised, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his
history" (1859: 487). Huxley (1863) wrote *Man's Place
in Nature*, the first book on human evolution from a Darwinian
point of view which discussed fossil evidence, such as the then
recently uncovered Neanderthal fossils from Gibraltar. Darwin's
(1871) *Descent of Man* identified Africa as the likely place
where humans originated, and used comparative anatomy to demonstrate
that chimpanzees and gorillas were closely related to humans. In the
twentieth century, paleoanthropologists debated whether humans
separated from the other great apes (at the time wrongly classified
into the paraphyletic group *Pongidae*) about 15 million years
ago, or about 5 million years ago. Molecular clocks--first immune
responses (e.g., Sarich & Wilson 1967), then direct genetic
evidence (e.g., Rieux et al. 2014)--favor the shorter
chronology.



The discovery of many hominin fossils, including *Ardipithecus
ramidus* (4.4 million years ago), *Australopithecus
afarensis* (nicknamed "Lucy"), about 3.5 million years
old, the Sima de los Huesos hominins (about 400,000 years old,
ancestors to the Neanderthals), *Homo neanderthalensis*, and
the intriguing *Homo floresiensis* (small hominins who lived on
the island of Flores, Indonesia, dated to 700,000-50,000 years
ago) have created a rich, complex picture of hominin evolution. These
finds are supplemented by detailed analyses of ancient DNA extracted
from fossil remains, bringing to light a previously unknown species of
hominin (the Denisovans) who lived in Siberia up to about 40,000 years
ago. Taken together, this evidence indicates that humans did not
evolve in a simple linear fashion, but that human evolution resembles
an intricate branching tree with many dead ends, in line with the
evolution of other species. Genetic and fossil evidence favors a
predominantly African origin of our species *Homo sapiens* (as
early as 315,000 years ago) with limited gene-flow from other hominin
species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans (see, e.g., Richter et al.
2017).



In the light of these scientific findings, contemporary science and
religion authors have reconsidered the questions of human uniqueness,
*imago Dei*, the Incarnation, and the historicity of original
sin. Some authors have attempted to reinterpret human uniqueness as a
number of species-specific cognitive and behavioral adaptations. For
example, van Huyssteen (2006) considers the ability of humans to
engage in cultural and symbolic behavior, which became prevalent in
the Upper Paleolithic, as a key feature of uniquely human behavior.
Other theologians have opted to broaden the notion of *imago
Dei.* Given what we know about the capacities for morality and
reason in non-human animals, Celia Deane-Drummond (2012) and Oliver
Putz (2009) reject an ontological distinction between humans and
non-human animals, and argue for a reconceptualization of the
*imago Dei* to include at least some nonhuman animals. Joshua
Moritz (2011) raises the question of whether extinct hominin species,
such as *Homo neanderthalensis* and *Homo floresiensis*,
which co-existed with *Homo sapiens* for some part of
prehistory, partook in the divine image.



There is also discussion of how we can understand the Incarnation (the
belief that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, became a human being)
with the evidence we have of human evolution. Some interpret
Christ's divine nature quite liberally. For instance, Peacocke
(1979) regarded Jesus as the point where humanity is perfect for the
first time. Christ is the progression and culmination of what
evolution has been working toward in the teleological, progressivist
interpretation of evolution by Teilhard de Chardin (1971). According
to Teilhard, evil is still horrible but no longer incomprehensible; it
becomes a natural feature of creation--since God chose evolution
as his mode of creation, evil arises as an inevitable byproduct.
Deane-Drummond (2009), however, points out that this interpretation is
problematic: Teilhard worked within a Spencerian progressivist model
of evolution, and he was anthropocentric, seeing humanity as the
culmination of evolution. Contemporary evolutionary theory has
repudiated the Spencerian progressivist view, and adheres to a
stricter Darwinian model. Deane-Drummond, who regards human morality
as lying on a continuum with the social behavior of other animals,
conceptualizes the Fall as a mythical, rather than a historical event.
It represents humanity's sharper awareness of moral concerns and
its ability to make wrong choices. She regards Christ as incarnate
wisdom, situated in a theodrama that plays against the backdrop of an
evolving creation. Like all human beings, Christ is connected to the
rest of creation through common descent. By saving us, he saves the
whole of creation.



Debates on the Fall and the historical Adam have centered on how these
narratives can be understood in the light of contemporary science. On
the face of it, limitations of our cognitive capacities can be
naturalistically explained as a result of biological constraints, so
there seems little explanatory gain to appeal to the narrative of the
Fall. Some have attempted to interpret the concepts of sin and Fall in
ways that are compatible with paleoanthropology, notably Peter van
Inwagen (2004) and Jamie K. Smith (2017), who have argued that God
could have providentially guided hominin evolution until there was a
tightly-knit community of primates, endowed with reason, language, and
free will, and this community was in close union with God. At some
point in history, these hominins somehow abused their free will to
distance themselves from God. These narratives follow the Augustinian
tradition. Others, such as John Schneider (2014, 2020), on the other
hand, argue that there is no genetic or paleoanthropological evidence
for such a community of superhuman beings.



This survey has given a sense of the richness of the literature of
science and religion. Giving an exhaustive overview would go beyond
the scope of an encyclopedia entry. Because science and religion are
such broad terms, the literature has split up in diverse fields of
"science engaged theology", where a specific claim or
subfield in science is studied in relation to a specific claim in
theology (Perry & Ritchie 2018). For example, rather than ask if
Christianity is compatible with science, one could ask whether
Christian eschatology is compatible with scientific claims about
cultural evolution, or the cosmic fate of the universe. As the scope
of science and religion becomes less parochial and more global in its
outlook, the different topics the field can engage with become very
diverse.