Editorial: The science vs. religion conflict is ‘none’ of your business

The less people know about religion, the more likely they are to think faith is fighting with science, a recent survey shows. What does that tell us about other ideas and concepts we think we know?

Nearly six in 10 American adults (59 percent) believe science and religion often conflict, according to a new survey released by the Pew Research Center. 

Editor Marv KnoxHowever, Americans are more prone to project that fight onto other people rather than onto themselves.

“People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs,” reported Pew staff members Cary Funk and Becka A. Alper. 

For example, even though a strong majority of Americans believe science and religion conflict, more than two-thirds (68 percent) say their own religious beliefs do not conflict with science.

A comparison between how often people participate in religious services and their sense of a religion/science conflict clarifies this perception. Americans who worship weekly are the least likely to say religion and science often conflict, with 50 percent saying they think faith and science clash. In contrast, 54 percent of people who attend worship only monthly or yearly believe in the conflict. And a whopping 73 percent of those who seldom or never attend religious services—the so-called “nones”—think faith collides with science.

Interesting, isn’t it?

To be sure, some Americans’ beliefs do clash with science. Forty percent of evangelical Protestants claim the conflict, with the primary flashpoints focusing on creation of the universe and evolution.

Still, even that number—taken from the most conservative spectrum of religious Americans—is significantly smaller (19 percentage points) than the national expectation of contention between religion and science.

Two related factors skew the discord between the reality and the expectation of a religion/science schism.

First, and most obviously, almost three-fourths of the irreligious—people who seldom or never attend religious services—expect faith and science to conflict. 

How would they know?

This raises an obvious question: How would they know? Some of them may be well-read in theology and thus well-informed. But since members of this group rarely engage people as they practice their faith, they have little opportunity to base their assumption upon reality.

Second, a majority of people who actually worship regularly and overwhelmingly say their own faith does not conflict with science still think somebody’s faith conflicts with science. Hmmm.

Apparently then, anti-science Christians who declaim with the greatest decibels or proclaim from the most prominent pulpits shape public opinion all out of proportion to their numbers. Example 1: Unbelievers hear an avowedly Christian politician lambasting science, and they say: “See there? (All) Christians don’t believe in science.” Example 2: Science-affirming believers hear a seminary president say the earth is only 6,000 years old, and they say: “Well, there you go. A Christian leader disagrees with science, so most of my fellow believers must not believe in science.”

Who and why

Christians who balance what they believe about their faith and what they understand about science instinctively understand a simple fact: Both religion and science seek truth, but their searches follow different paths. Science seeks to explain what and how. Faith suggests Who and possibly why.

Faith and science don’t conflict when they work within their natural frameworks. For example, as a Christian, I believe God created the whole universe. Scientific hypotheses and research do not threaten that faith. God also created science, and God has all the laws and mysteries of physics explored by scientists at God’s own disposal. 

Honest theologians and scientists admit they don’t comprehend even a scintilla of all that is to be explored and known. 

Speaking of exploring and knowing, the Pew survey raises an interesting related question: How much of what we think we know about others and their beliefs is just plain wrong?

People who rarely attend worship of any kind overwhelmingly think religion conflicts with science. But the strong majority of people of faith say their beliefs do not clash with science.

Be candid and transparent

How often does this happen in other spheres? Human nature causes people to project their ignorance, assumptions and—Dare we say it?—fears onto others. The Pew study of faith and science indicates those biases could be wrong, too. 

If we would be candid and transparent about our beliefs on a range of topics—from faith to science to politics and everything in-between—we might help others understand us better. And if we would take the time to study other perspectives and talk, actually talk, to adherents of those beliefs, we also might learn we’re not as far apart as we seem.