Religion and Science from a Postsecular Perspective
discourses, be it religion and science or other sets. It is to alternative, interaction views that are more realistic in a postsecular world that we now turn.
Interaction Views of the Relationship between Religion and Science
If the separation view can be rejected because of the so-called silos into which religion
and science are relegated without having to deal with each other, the views that honor their
interaction hold the potential for compliance to the postsecular. We highlight three types of
interactions between religion and science. One type is competition, where each discourse
attempts to win the hearts and minds of the public in a way that discredits the inferior
discourse. The second type is complementarity, where the two discourses are not competing
but complementing each other (different from the separation view that suggests the two
completely ignore each other). And the third type is foundation (or homo religiosus), where a
religious mindset is attributed to human nature as a fundamental feature of humanity. These
variants incorporate at least three admissions: they admit that the two discourses are in a
relationship; they admit, albeit implicitly at times, that the one is superior to the other (the
choice differs depending on the perspective); and they admit that there is also a discursive
hierarchy according to which they are culturally positioned. Though the postsecular
perspective acknowledges the first admission (that there are two discourses at play in our
culture), it resists the second two admissions because it offers an alternative way to look at
discursive differences that are always already at play with each other, informing each other
one day, critically responding the next, while all along realizing that neither discourse is going
to vanish into thin air. Put differently, unlike the power moves displayed in the standard
views, the postsecularist refuses all permanent hierarchies, acknowledging that one discourse
may be more fruitful in this or that context but never is able to gain permanent ascendency.
First, the competition view of the relationship between science and religion is both
historically informed – citing the ascendency of one of these discourses over the other at
particular epochs – and anchored in a deep concern for epistemological veracity. As the
name “competition” suggests, one will win out. At some historical juncture, so claims this
view, science (reason) began to replace religion (revelation) as the authoritative explanatory
view of the universe. Giving full credit to the power of religious institutions that have
provided comprehensive descriptions and explanations of the world for most of human
history, this view relies on the history of authoritative views. For example, while it made
sense to argue that God created and positioned the earth at the center of the universe and
put humans in charge of his creation, more recent discoveries have superseded and replaced
this view. It is not simply a matter of choice of whether we accept the religious or the
scientific explanation today but rather that history has unfolded in a way that makes one
explanation far more credible than the other. Along the lines of secularization theory,
credibility is no longer built along the lines of religious criteria – divine power or one’s own
faith and conviction as couched in theological terms – but is instead constructed in empirical
and logical terms.
A strong variant of this view demands the complete subservience of the religious perspective on reality in the face of the emerging scientific one. Religious explanations are not simply to be supplanted, displaced, or ignored; they should not be regarded as having any value whatsoever when discussing the nature of an ordered reality, as everything that we
