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.

Forum introduction 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

William DuBroff of Hendersonville, NC, asks: Reconciling theological dogma and scientific "fact" appears to be one of the principle barriers between the two "worlds." Some scientists say that they will take their science as far as it will take them and then there is God. Whereas some theologians will not permit that much freedom. How do you suggest closing the gap? Prof. Ian Barbour responds: Science does raise questions that it cannot itself answer. It can trace a sequence of events back to the Big Bang, but it cannot tell us why there is a universe at all, or why the cosmos is orderly and intelligible. Why do the fundamental constants seem to have been fine-tuned so that the universe expanded at just the right rate; neither life nor consciousness would have been possible if the gravitational constant, for example, had been even very slightly larger or smaller. The atheist can suggest that perhaps there are billions of universes with differing constants, and we just happen by chance to live in one where life and consciousness are possible. But this is a philosophical interpretation, not a scientific conclusion, and many scientists today are willing to acknowledge the limitations of science. Some theologians do claim to have a monopoly on truth, or they believe the Bible provides us with scientific as well as religious understanding. But many of them hold that the writers of the Bible were inspired to express enduring religious wisdom, not to provide scientific knowledge long before the rise of science.