The notion that science and religion are in conflict seems to have been debunked by historians. Does history provide the best stage for the debate?
Published: Nov 29, 2025 written by Agana Nsiire, PhD Philosophical Theology, MTh World Christianity, BA Theological Studies
Published: Nov 29, 2025written by Agana Nsiire, PhD Philosophical Theology, MTh World Christianity, BA Theological Studies
The existence of necessary conflict between science and religion is now so widely discredited that the matter appears decided. Branded “the conflict thesis,” the idea is ridiculed as uncritical, uninformed, and superficial, nothing more than a myth. Many scholars are surprised—and often frustrated—that it persists in popular thinking at all. Yet, even if we reject a thoroughgoing conflict thesis, we must concede that there remain deep and irresolvable conflicts. These occur on two levels: incompatibility of epistemological assumptions, and mutually contradictory claims or conclusions. The matter hinges on how we understand conflict.
In their seminal edited volume, God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, historians David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (1986) launch one of the strongest attacks against the conflict thesis to date. They identify and refute four species of the thesis, an approach that has continued in more recent histories.
First, there is a naïve conflict thesis that presents science and religion as “mortal enemies” engaged in all-out war. It uses “militaristic language” inherited from two discredited 19th-century writers, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. Colin A. Russel agrees, noting that Draper’s book “is no longer regarded as even a reliable secondary source for historical study” (Russel, 2000).
A second type of conflict comes in the form of a “crisis of faith” experienced by individual Christians encountering scientific claims. Historian of science Geoffrey Cantor (2010) describes it as cognitive dissonance.
Third, some conflict theorists claim science and religion hold opposing epistemologies. Finally, many point to specific episodes of conflict and exaggerate their overall importance.
None of these cases, they maintain, can establish a fundamentally conflictual relationship between science and religion. They favor a view in which the relationship is seen as complex, in which cooperation plays an overwhelmingly larger role. They are buddies, not belligerents. Their view enjoys widespread support among academic historians of science and religion. But does it answer the question?
Let us first consider the claim of all-out war. It is true that often, scientists and historians who have championed a fundamental conflict between science and religion have done so with an evangelistic or apologetic fervor. Draper was a rational theist who may indeed have been motivated by his animosity for certain developments in Roman Catholic dogma in the late 19th century. White was driven by the need to create a haven for the free study of science at his new secular university.
Such motivations are easily served by making fleeting disputes into trenchant warfare, to make the victory claimed that much more significant. This is what Lindberg and Numbers believe happened with the “scientific triumphalism” of the late 19th century CE. They claim some scientists, motivated by a desire to supplant Anglican clerics in the echelons of power and public prestige, deliberately perpetuated a myth of conflict in which they announced science as the perennial victor. To exaggerate the conflict, instances of cooperation between scientists and theologians were ignored or downplayed.
One of these instances includes the 17th-century Puritan cultivation of “a system of values that sanctioned scientific effort,” which enabled the flourishing of modern science. Likewise, philosopher Alvin Plantinga is adamant that “it was Christian Europe that fostered, promoted, and nourished modern science. It arose nowhere else” (Plantinga 2011, p. 266).
Ian Barbour (1990) famously traces a typology of four modes of interaction between science and religion, in which he similarly identifies periods in which Christianity nurtured scientific study. As a matter of historical fact, then, thoroughgoing conflict is an admittedly dubious claim.
The second type of conflict—individual crises of faith—is more readily conceded by historians. In this account, the differences between the propositions of religious dogma and those of science create a subjective tension or cognitive dissonance. This is felt as a conflict. Geoffrey Cantor sees this crisis of faith as the reason for a more cautious approach to the dismissal of the conflict thesis. He wonders whether (reacting to the trenchancy of Richard Dawkins and other contemporary conflict theorists) historians have overreacted:
“It is true that there are powerful arguments against the strong version of CT. However, have we overreacted to the very notion of conflict? Are there weaker accounts of conflict that are commensurable with good historical practice?” (Cantor 2010, p. 287).
The crisis of faith, for him, constitutes one such “weaker account.” It proliferated massively when Christians first encountered Darwin’s account of evolution and had to deal with the apparent discrepancy between that theory and the contents of their faith traditions.
Many of the attempts made by historians to explain away conflict are really manifestations of this dissonance. For instance, claims that science and religion are independent domains may protect individual Christians from the tension that otherwise arises from the collision of their faith with scientific claims.
But is cognitive dissonance a genuine case of conflict between science and religion? After all, subjective angst can arise from a failure to understand either one, both, or the relationship itself. This does not necessarily speak to a conflict between science and religion itself. And when it does, is the dissonance a symptom or an expression of that conflict?
Many historians point to a period in the late 19th century as a time when certain Anglican clergy came into conflict with notable scientific figures. Russel recounts an episode in which “certain high-church Anglicans turned on science for threatening their dominant role in society” (Russel 2000, 14). Retaliating scientists decided that “if the Church was seen to be in their way, it must be opposed by all means, including the fostering of a conflict myth, in which religion routinely suffered defeat at the hands of triumphalist science” (Russel 2000, p. 14). For Russel, Aldous Huxley was one such figure, and his followers, Huxleyite warriors, as Russel calls them, benefited greatly by perpetuating this myth.
Still, for all the heat generated, social conflict is not total conflict. It occurs in episodes and is not the default mode of interaction. The exaggeration of such short-lived episodes of social conflict constitutes a lapse into naïve history. For Russel, “such exaggeration is an almost inevitable accompaniment to the exposition of a conflict theory. It is an excellent drama, but impoverished history” (Russel 2000, p. 16).
And yet, one is left wondering if social conflicts are merely episodic. Are these isolated “episodes” or unsurprising flare-ups from an underlying infection? Cantor (2010, p. 287) notes rightly that conflict may be understood as potential or actual, structure or manifestation. Is there an underlying structure giving rise to these episodes of social conflict? This appears to be the case when we compare their epistemological commitments.
Epistemology is often described as a branch of philosophy dealing with how knowledge is established—how we can “know” what we (think we) know. Epistemological claims provide foundations for much of the work done in any field of study. Even when they are not deliberately chosen, they can be detected after the fact. In the case of science and religion, conflict seems to necessarily arise from fundamental differences between their respective basic assumptions.
For instance, it is often claimed that science advances through verification while religion thrives on faith. Cantor accuses Richard Dawkins of perpetuating this belief:
“For him [i.e. Dawkins] science is rational and based on empirical evidence; religion is irrational and not founded on evidence. ‘Science,’ he writes, ‘is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops’” (Cantor 2010, 285).
Dawkins is thus presented as a contemporary example of scientific triumphalism that thrives on a myth of conflict. Cantor believes his distinction is simplistic and Plantinga warns that Dawkins intends “to run roughshod over religion” (Plantinga 2011).
The distinction may be expressed in a number of other ways, such as between metaphysical naturalism and supernaturalism; ontological naturalism and epiphenomenalism; methodological naturalism and critical realism; or epistemological naturalism and dogmatism. These distinctions are not perfect, and they do not neatly separate scientists from religious theologians. But some broad generalizations can nevertheless be drawn.
In the main, naturalists tend to accept only explanations of reality obtainable from the observable world. Supernaturalists (most substance dualists) and epiphenomenalists tend to admit non-natural explanations. I will refer to them here as naturalism and supernaturalism for simplicity. Despite the conspicuousness of differences in this area, epistemological differences between science and religion are played down in a number of ways. We will explore two related examples.
First, as we have seen, Lindberg and Numbers locate epistemological differences in specific propositions of science and religion. They cite Darwinian evolution and creation as two competing lenses for explaining reality. For the historian of science, John Hedley Brooke, this kind of difference rests on a false assumption that science and religion constitute distinct and separate entities in the first place. Rather, science and religion are “complex social activities involving different expressions of human concern, the same individuals often participating in both” (Brooke 1991, p. 42).
He takes forward Martin Rudwick’s earlier assertion that “science and religion are engaged in a process of gradual differentiation and divergence, rather than the replacement of one by the other” (Lindberg & Numbers 1986, p. 9). For Brooke, any such differentiation has not yielded truly distinctive fields. Differences are superficial, not fundamental. Of course, the replacement hypothesis has been challenged in terms of the popular equation of modernity with religious disenchantment. But if science has not replaced religion, has it nevertheless supplanted it?
Brooke’s argument echoes a time when theology was considered the queen of the sciences. Indeed, for much of European Christian history, what is today called science was carried out under the auspices of natural philosophy, of which theology was a part. For Thomas Aquinas, theology, like geometry, derives from a higher science, “the science of God and the blessed” (ST 1.4.4). And the claim appears to be that on a very deep level, the kingdom remains undivided.
A second more specific means by which epistemological differences are suppressed is seen in Alvin Plantinga’s famous defense of harmony between science and theistic religion, but especially Christianity. Plantinga is famous for his creative argument on the problem of evil in defense of theism. In his book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, Plantinga argues strenuously for harmony between science and religion. His basic argument is, “There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism” (Plantinga 2011, p. ix).
As he sees it, this is because science and theistic religion are both open to supernatural explanations. For him, the real conflict lies between science and naturalism. While they appear superficially to agree, nothing in the natural world proves or even evidences the nonexistence or irrelevance of the supernatural. Thus, only science that uncritically weds itself to naturalism will come into conflict with theistic religion.
For Plantinga, real science is epistemologically consonant with Christian theology and given that both disciplines seek explanations of natural phenomena, it becomes a valid question whether they are different inquiries at all.
But is Plantinga’s account convincing? Are science and theology so consonant that they are buddies rather than belligerents? The answer depends, as we will see, on how one understands the question being posed.
The debate is undoubtedly old and complex, and it does not help that science and religion are each notoriously hard to define. However, it is how we define conflict that may be decisive. In this, Hedley, Rudwick, and Plantinga may all be guilty of the superficiality they accuse others of.
By attempting in their various ways to disintegrate the boundaries between the two domains, they are in essence rearing up a metaphysical image that none of them fully describes or convincingly establishes. What is that a priori ontological undifferentiated entity, that metaphysical germ, that entails both? It seems that if they follow their own advice, the historical contingency of the use of the term “conflict” would also be uncovered.
Historians, for the most part, have focused on conflict in its manifestation, conflict as a situation. The conflict here is “a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one” (Oxford Languages). Seen this way, the whole question becomes historical. Indeed, it has been characterized as a debate within historical studies between so-called Whig historians and more sophisticated “contextualist” historians.
However, if we understand conflict as structural, as “a serious incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests,” (Oxford Languages) then a different domain for addressing the question presents itself. It is the domain of the conceptual, the domain of the knowledge contents of both fields. Brooke and others have shown successfully that these contents are historically shaped. But they are still contents distinct from the events through which they were shaped. As such, they warrant serious investigation in their own right, and history may not be the best stage for that work.
Unfortunately for Brooke, Plantinga, and others in their camp, the question presupposes real and fundamental differences between science and theistic religion. For better or worse, what is generally understood by the label of “science” entails a naturalistic outlook. It is not that non-naturalistic alternatives have not been considered but they have generally been rejected.
Nor is there any true contemporary ambiguity as to the distinctiveness of science from theology. Short of playing a very carefully curated language game, it is impossible not to see the conflicts. Science’s commitment to naturalism is defining and Dawkins is right that Christian theology is definitively espoused to supernaturalism. This very fact constitutes a conceptual dissonance, and thus a deep conflict. Similarities may be named ad nauseam, but they hardly move the needle.
Yes, there is a degree of faith involved in science, but it is not sacred; and yes, there is evidence-based reasoning in Christian theology, but it is not paramount. We should not pretend that the commitments are the same.
In the end, we must ask what question we are asking. Those who want to know how scientists and theologians have interacted throughout history may rest satisfied with the complexity thesis being advanced by historians. Those who want to know whether these bodies of knowledge contain competing, opposing, or irreconcilable claims may need to dispense with the histories and look elsewhere. I propose that even if we agree that the thoroughgoing conflict thesis is untenable, there are nevertheless, deep and sometimes irresolvable conflicts on two levels: the epistemological assumptions, and the propositional claims. History is accidental, not ontological, to the relationship.
Where then, should we look for an answer regarding conceptual disagreements between science and religion? First, epistemological discussions are fruitful. An emerging area of interest is the research program known as Science-Engaged Theology (SET).
Founded mainly by Christian theologians in Europe and the United States, it aims to treat science as one of many sources of theological content alongside scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. But more than this, it also treats science and religion as inherently unstable and intertwined (Perry and Leidenhag 2021, p. 15).
Usefully, it admits the need to establish the metaphysical basis for that entanglement. As such, theologians in this field work on problems in specific subdisciplines and topics in science and religion, such as cognitive science and religious experiences, quantum theory and predestination, and more. It is on this level of narrow topical discourse that we have any hope of seeing how concepts conflict or cohere. If SET grows to maturity, it may offer our best chance of answering the current question.
Indeed, the program is already bearing some fruit. Much of the work classed under SET has already been met with critical responses from some scientists. For instance, psychologist Jonathan Jong has provided an excellent summary critique of how SET makes use of concepts from psychology (see Jong 2021). He is not sure that many engage in science at all. He also perceives rightly that treating science as a source of theology already primes the field for conflict since the sources have always been in competition for authority.
Mark Harris, a physicist-theologian, is sympathetic to his critique. If they are right, any harmony these works claim is immediately rendered suspect. In all, despite SET’s aim to unify science and theology, even it shows that conflict is hard to brush aside.
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