SCIENCE & RELIGION

June 1999
		Ian Barbour, a Carleton College professor emeritus, was awarded the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in recognition of efforts to create a dialogue between the worlds of science and religion. He answers your questions about his work.

Where does science end and religion begin? Can theologians embrace science? Can biblical literalists be brought into the discussion? Can scientific questions be reconciled with religious faith? How can religion and science be reconciled with other disciplines?     May 28, 1999 Elizabeth Farnsworth interviews 1999 Templeton Prize winner Ian Barbour. May 17, 1999 Prof. Barbour's Templeton Prize acceptance speech. Prof. Barbour's biography. A history of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.     The John Templeton Foundation Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences Carleton College Yale University Duke University Swarthmore College

Scientists and theologians appear to inhabit two incompatible worlds. Scientists work largely through experimentation, disregarding unsubstantiated ideas and theories. The theologian, meanwhile, often deals in the unknowable and immeasurable, examining articles of faith that are central to centuries of spiritual reflection and tradition. Prof. Ian Barbour But one man believes that these worlds can be joined to create a unified whole. Ian Barbour, the professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and Society at Carleton College, has been awarded the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his efforts. After earning a doctorate in high-energy physics, Barbour earned a degree from the Yale Divinity School. In a NewsHour interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth, Barbour said he wanted to start a dialogue between the scientific and spiritual communities. "The popular image is of science and religion in conflict or in warfare - atheistic scientists on the one hand and creationists or biblical literalists on the other," Barbour said. "But what about the people in between who believe in God and evolution or who see evolution as God's way of creating?" Barbour argues that theologians can help scientists answer the tough ethical questions that their research creates, and theologians can look to science when pondering the nature of God and human nature. "No discipline has all the answers," Barbour said. Our forum asks: Can a dialogue exist between religion and science? What can science add to religion or vice versa? Are religious and ethical elements missing from science?