A recent study published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality explored the relationship between belief systems and perceptions of science and religion. It found that individuals with strong religious beliefs tend to see science and religion as compatible, whereas those who strongly believe in science are more likely to perceive conflict. These findings offer new insights into how different meaning systems shape people’s understanding of the relationship between these two domains.
The relationship between science and religion has been a subject of debate for centuries. Some view them as complementary ways of understanding the world, while others see them as fundamentally opposed. Previous studies have often focused on contexts where science and religion are directly compared or juxtaposed, leaving unanswered questions about how belief in one influences perceptions of their compatibility independently of the other.
The researchers aimed to address this gap by examining the extent to which belief in science and religion, as distinct systems of meaning, predicts perceptions of science–religion compatibility or conflict. By recruiting participants from diverse cultural and religious contexts, the researchers sought to provide a broader understanding of how these beliefs interact across different settings.
“My main research interest lies in understanding how people find meaning and make sense of reality,” said study author Natalia Zarzeczna, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Essex. “I see science and religion as meaning systems that can each contribute to finding meaning by answering epistemic (what are the origins of the universe?) and existential (does life have meaning?) questions. I am interested in understanding how people create worldviews based on science and religion to explain reality, to what extent these worldviews have the capacity to provide different types of meaning, and whether they come into conflict.”
The study included 684 participants from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Kazakhstan. These countries were chosen for their varying levels of religiosity and cultural backgrounds: the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are predominantly secular with Christian minorities, while Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority nation.
Participants completed an online survey designed to measure their belief in science and religious belief as independent constructs. Belief in science was assessed through participants’ agreement with statements about the reliability and comprehensiveness of science as a way of understanding reality, without explicitly comparing it to religion. Similarly, religious belief was measured through self-reported religiosity, focusing on participants’ personal faith and spiritual practices without referencing science.
To assess perceptions of science–religion compatibility, participants rated the extent to which they saw the two as harmonious or conflicting, particularly concerning existential and ontological questions, such as the origins of life and the universe.
Across all countries, participants with stronger religious beliefs were more likely to perceive science and religion as compatible. This association persisted regardless of participants’ level of belief in science, suggesting that religious individuals often integrate scientific principles into their worldview without seeing them as a threat to their faith.
In contrast, stronger belief in science was associated with perceptions of conflict between science and religion. Participants who viewed science as the best way of knowing tended to perceive religious beliefs as incompatible with scientific principles. This finding reflects the differing epistemological foundations of the two systems: science relies on empirical evidence and natural laws, while religion often incorporates supernatural explanations.
“Religious people can combine multiple sources of meaning and use both science and religion to find meaning in their lives,” Zarzeczna told PsyPost. “Believers in science seemingly only use science and possibly look for additional sources of meaning elsewhere.”
Interestingly, the association between belief in science and perceived conflict was stronger in more secular countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, while religious belief’s association with compatibility was particularly pronounced in the predominantly Muslim context of Kazakhstan.
Zarzeczna also highlighted “an interesting contradiction.” The researchers discovered that people with strong religious beliefs were more likely to view science and religion as compatible. However, they also found that stronger religious beliefs were linked to weaker belief in science.
“While religious believers, in both Christian and Muslim contexts, strongly believe in compatibility between science and religion, they also show low belief in science as a way of understanding reality,” Zarzeczna explained. “This is counter-intuitive because believing in science-religion compatibility should logically stem from a combination of equally positive (or negative) attitudes toward each. Possibly, being able to combine two meaning sources, science and religion, reduces the perceived usefulness of each as a good way of understanding reality.”
The researchers controlled for age, gender, education level, political orientation, spirituality, religious upbringing, religious orthodoxy, years of formal education, and science literacy. However, like all research, this study has some caveats.
“We looked at only one aspect of attitudes toward science—belief in science as the best way of understanding reality—to examine how it contributes to science-religion compatibility beliefs,” Zarzeczna noted. “Although it is likely that other aspects of science attitudes (e.g., scientific optimism) would be associated with conflict beliefs to the same extent as belief in science, it is important to address this directly in future research.”
“Also, our study doesn’t explain why religious believers and believers in science have conflicting views on the science and religion relationship. It would be interesting to test what psychological needs or motivations, beyond socio-cultural influences, contribute to these perceptions of compatibility and incompatibility.”
Nevertheless, by exploring these dynamics across diverse cultural and religious contexts, the research opens new avenues for understanding how individuals reconcile—or fail to reconcile—different ways of knowing. Future studies can build on this work to investigate the psychological and cultural factors that shape perceptions of compatibility and conflict.
“Using unobtrusive physiological methods measuring arousal, which are free from self-report biases, we are trying to establish whether science-religion compatibility perceptions constitute an important worldview to religious individuals and how motivated religious individuals are to defend the compatibility view when threatened,” Zarzeczna said.
“If readers are interested in learning more about the relationship between science-religion, we review the most recent literature on this topic in a book chapter in the Handbook of the Science of Existential Psychology that will be published in 2025: Zarzeczna, N. & Haimila, R. (2025). Science and Religion: Meaning-Making Tools Competing to Explain the World. K. E. Vail, III, et al. (Eds). Handbook of the Science of Existential Psychology.”
The study, “The Feeling Is Not Mutual: Religious Belief Predicts Compatibility Between Science and Religion, but Scientific Belief Predicts Conflict,” was authored by Natalia Zarzeczna email the author, Jesse L. Preston, Adil Samekin, Carlotta Reinhardt, Aidos Bolatov, Zukhra Mussinova, Urazgali Selteyev, Gulmira Topanova, and Bastiaan T. Rutjens.
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