Category Archives: Science, Religion & Society

Pew Research Center: How highly religious Americans view evolution depends on how they’re asked about it

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 700 words Level: all audiences This brief discussion by Cary Funk of the Pew Research Center, published in 2019, shows the extent to which the response of people to questions about evolution depends on the way that the question is framed.  Funk writes: More than a century and a half after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking thesis on the development of life, the subject of evolution remains a contentious one for Americans and, in particular, for those who are religious. But when it comes to exploring the views of highly religious groups – white evangelical Protestants and black Protestants – a new survey approach finds their responses vary depending on how the question is asked. Pew simultaneously published a longer discussion on “The Evolution of Pew Research Center’s Survey Questions About the Origins and Development of Life on Earth” along with the Funk discussion, for readers who want more details on this subject. Click here for “How highly religious … Continue reading →

What is it Like Being Catholic and a Scientist?

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 900 words Level: all audiences This August 2020 article by Ray Cavanaugh, published in Aleteia, features two Catholic scientists, Kate Bulinski of Bellarmine University and Stephen Barr of the University of Delaware, who discuss what it is like to be Catholic and a scientist. Barr advises any aspiring young Catholic scientists to “not be afraid to go into science” because of their beliefs. “You will not be alone!”  Bulinski echoes this sentiment, saying it is “perfectly possible to thrive as a Catholic scientist, and while we may not always be the most vocal about our faith identities, we are out there.” Click here to access this article from Aleteia.    

Continue reading →

Astronomy, Religion, and the Art of Storytelling

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Video 48 minutes Level: All audiences This March 2020 video presentation by Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory, was made for The Catholic Theological Union’s Science For Seminaries conference. Consolmagno says that one thing astronomy and religion have in common is that they are both interested in the big questions; and they depend on the art of storytelling to present their strange and wonderful ideas in ways that people can understand, appreciate, and evaluate. Consolmagno examines why stories are fundamental to our understanding of religion; when being a good storyteller is essential in doing science; and how way we tell these stories influences how we think about the big ideas.    

Continue reading →

The Ethics of Exploration: Planetary Astronomy

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 3000 words Level: all audiences Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. of the Vatican Observatory writes that while we might not expect many ethical questions to arise in astronomy, since it is a science based on remote observations of distant objects, such questions do crop up nevertheless. He addresses some of these in this 2008 paper. [Click here to download PDF]    

Continue reading →

The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Video 17 minutes Level: all audiences A 2019 TED Talk by climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katherine Hayhoe.  Hayhoe argues that rehashing data and facts does not help with achieving mutual understanding and progress on the subject of climate change.  Rather, what is needed is that we talk with each other, and the key to that is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion.    

Continue reading →

One of America’s top climate scientists is an evangelical Christian

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 2300 words Level: all audiences This 2019 article written by Dan Zak of the Washington Post discusses Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, and a lead author on the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment. Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian. Her husband is a pastor of a non-denominational Christian church.  Hayhoe is known for being able to lead and foster discussions on climate science with a broad range of people.  Zak writes: Her skills of communication do seem miraculous by the standards of modern climate politics: She can convert nonbelievers — or, to put it in her terms, make people realize that they’ve believed in the importance of this issue all along. She knows how to speak to oilmen, to Christians, to farmers and ranchers, having lived for years in Lubbock, Tex., with her pastor husband. She is a scientist who thinks that we’ve talked enough about science, that we need to talk more about … Continue reading →

Science + religion

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 3200 words Level: high school and above Tom McLeish argues in this 2019 article from Aeon for the importance of theology in addressing and understanding modern scientific questions. Noting that the idea of science and religion as being in conflict has long been intellectually unsupportable, McLeish, who is professor of natural philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York in the UK, asks: All well and good – so the history, philosophy and sociology of science and religion are richer and more interesting than the media-tales and high-school stories of opposition we were all brought up on. It seems a good time to ask the ‘so what?’ questions, however, especially since there has been less work in that direction. If Islamic, Jewish and Christian theologies were demonstrably central in the construction of our current scientific methodologies, for example, then what might such a reassessment imply for fruitful development of the role that science plays in our … Continue reading →

Dealing with Darwin

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book 265 pages Level: university In this 2014 book published by Johns Hopkins University Press, author David N. Livingstone explores reactions to Charles Darwin’s ideas among different groups of people with apparently the same religious beliefs. The groups he considers are all people with ties to Scottish Presbyterianism. Livingstone shows that these different groups all responded to Darwin in dramatically differing ways. From this Livingstone argues that what might be considered “religious” opposition to Darwin’s ideas, or to other ideas in science, might not be “religious” at all. If “religion” was the driving force in the how these Presbyterians responded to Darwin, then we would expect their responses to be somewhat similar. But since their responses were not, then other factors such as “place, politics, and rhetoric” must carry the greater weight in religious engagements with evolution and other ideas. The full title of the book is Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution. From … Continue reading →

The Secret History of Science and Religion

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Radio program 90 minutes in 3 segments Level: all audiences This series aired on the BBC Radio 4 in 2019 and is hosted by Nick Spencer of Theos Think Tank in the UK. The show features accomplished scholars such as John Hedley Brooke and Bernard Lightman, and touches on scientific figures ranging from Robert Grosseteste to Isaac Newton to James Clerk Maxwell to Georges Lemaître. Spencer argues that the supposed conflict between science and religion hinges on ideas about what it means to be human. Therefore often the conflict is not really about religion and science in the usual way that people think about them. For example, Spencer interviews Fern Elsdon-Baker (Professor of Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at Birmingham University in the UK), whose research suggests that professed atheists reject a strictly materialistic evolutionary explanation for human origins at a similar rates as professedly religious people. Click here to access the web site of this program, courtesy of … Continue reading →