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

Charles Cremer of Austin, Texas, asks: I disagree with the premise of this forum: that science and religion are incompatible. A trip to the card catalog reveals that many scientists have published expressions of their faith. Is their a problem with theologians? Are they in denial regarding scientific discoveries? Prof. Barbour responds: Yes, many scientists are also persons of religious faith. In a 1997 survey of people listed in American Men and Women of Science, 39 percent said they believed in a God who answers prayer. This is a lower fraction than in the populace as a whole, but it suggests that science and religion are not incompatible. Some scientists defend both science and religion by treating them as separate domains or watertight compartments of their lives -- which avoids conflicts, but at the price of preventing any creative interaction. Many theologians also consider science and religion to be separate domains, but a significant number hold that traditional ideas of God and of human nature can be reformulated in the light of science (especially evolutionary biology) without giving up the central affirmations of their religious tradition. I think both scientists and theologians today are more willing to recognize that neither field has all the answers, and that they can learn from each other. But the media have often given more attention to dogmatic assertions on both sides. A good fight makes a more interesting story than an open-minded dialogue!