o get it right Th dt sce nd gon ae par om nt reali hte tes aes took at aire eves of exstene, ere focused on the tee and concen’ Battems of everyday te Religion e hens the sated ad concened ath aon, of ultimate meaning nd prone Ghun: I think someday science will prove relighon to be fase asnet: | don’t think science and religion are {talking about the same thing at al bout 400 years ago, the Kalan phys A fee stroner Sis (2564-1642) helped launch the Se entific Revolution witha sere of starting discoveries. Dropping objets rm the Len ing Tower of Pen, ie cistovered some ofthe laws of gravity: making his on telescope, he ebrerved the stars and found tat Earth exited the sun not the other way around For his trol, Galleo was challenged by the Roman Cato Church, which hed preached for centuries that Earth stood Iationless atthe centro he urvers, Galeo ony race matters worse by respond ing that religous leaders hao o busines inking about matter of scence. Betre on, he found his work banned and himself under house aes As Gallo treatment sho, ight fom the sa, science has had an uneasy relation ship wth eligi. Inthe twentieth cent, the two clashed again over te issue of ee- ation: Charles Darwin's mesterork, On the Origin of Species, state that humanity evolved from lowe forms of ie ora bilion Years, Vet tis theory seems tin the face Of the biblical account of ration fund in Genes, wich tats that “God created the heavens andthe ext" ntoducing ite on the third day and, onthe fith and sch days, animal ite, inluding human beings fashioned in God's om imag. Galileo would certainly have been an eager observer ofthe famous “Scopes tmonkey tral" In 1925, the state of Ten nessee put a small-town science teacher famed John Thomas Sopes on tal for teaching Darwinian evolution nthe local high schoo. Stat law forbade teaching > Controversy & Debate Does Science Threaten Religion? Bip Reading the box below, notice how the tension between religion and scence has existed for centuries, ‘any theory that denies the stry ofthe Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bile” and especialy the idea that "man descended from lower order of animals." Scopes was found suilty and fined $100. His eanvetion was reversed on appeal, so the case never reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Tennessee law stayed on the books until 1967. A year later, the Supreme Court, in Epperson . Arkansas, struck down all such laws as uncon stitutional government support of religion. Today-—almost four centuries after Galileo was silence¢—many people stil debate the apparently conflicting claims of science and religion. A third of U.S. adults believe that the Bible isthe literal word of God, and ‘many of them reject any scientific findings that run counter to it (NORC, 2005:198). la 2008, all eight memiers ofthe school board in Dover, Pennsyivania, were voted out of office after they took a stand that many townspeople saw as weakening the teaching of evolution; at the samé time, the Kansas state school board oxdered the teaching of evolution to include its weaknesses and limi tations from a religious point of view ("Much ‘Ado about Evolution,” 2005) But a middle ground is emerging: Half of U.S. adults (and also many church leaders) say the Bible is a book of truths inspired by God without being correct in a literal, scien tific sense, That is, science and religion are two different ways of understanding that answer different questions. Both Galileo and Darwin devoted their lives to investigating how the natural wotld works. Yet only religion ‘can address why we and the natural world exist inthe fist place. This basic difference between science and religion helps explain why our nation is both the most scientific and the most rel gious in the world. As one scientist noted, ‘the mathematical odds that a cosmic “big bang” 12 billion years ago created the uni verse and led tothe formation of life as we know it are even smaller than the chance of winning a state lottery twenty weeks in a row. Doesn't such a scientific fact suggest an inteligent and purposeful power in our cre- ation? Can't a person be a religious believer and atthe same time a scientific invest gato? In 1992, a Vatican commission con cluded that the church's silencing of Galileo was wrong. Today, most scientific and rel ious leaders agree that science and religion represent important but different truths. Many also believe that in today’s rush to sel entific discovery, our world has never been more in need of the moral guidance provided by religion WHAT DO YOU THINK? 1, Why do you think some scientific peo ple reject religious accounts of human creation? Why do some religious peo ple reject scientific accounts? 2. Does the sociological study of religion challenge anyone's faith? Why or why nt? 3. About half of U.S. adults think science is changing our way of life too fast. Do you agree? Why or why not? ‘rc Goi 980, Rochngn 950) a Pelee 1996, RELIGION CHAPTER 19 513,