Religion and Science from a Postsecular Perspective
know about reality is given by the phenomena that one observes and with which one interacts. Religious ideas are deemed historically, yet naively relevant, but fundamentally superstitious, figments of the imagination, and therefore dangerous in derailing human knowledge on its path to the truth. The danger is highlighted when religious zealots discredit scientifically proven ideas and ensure that young disciples continually mistrust science (as is the case with some extreme orthodox communities) because it will corrupt them. Copernicus’ discovery of a heliocentric solar system and Charles Darwin’s evolution theory of 1859 stand as perhaps the biggest perceived threats to those wishing to discredit science in order to maintain religious authority.
With the understanding that the earth was not the center of the universe, much less our
own small solar system, and that random mutations are the source of evolutionary change in
species, the uniqueness of humanity as God’s special creation received a devastating blow,
according to this view. Divine intervention is superfluous, and any prefigured design of a
predetermined trajectory unnecessary in light of these two discoveries. Drawing on the
implications of these and other scientific developments, Friedrich Nietzsche’s proposal that
“God is dead” in 1881 and the Logical Positivists’ claim in the 1920s that all metaphysical
propositions have no role to play in the human understanding of the universe, the
replacement of religion by science has moved into the wider culture by the twentieth-first
century. The “new atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, add a moralizing warning against
anything religious as the “God delusion.” For them, all moral statements that appeal to
religion are misplaced and bound to unravel once fully examined. Alternatively, the
persistence of human morality, as argued by the likes of Edward O. Wilson, Martin A.
Nowak, and Sam Harris, is given a scientific grounding. For them, the evolutionary record
provides a robust explanation for multi-level evolution that, at times, fosters competitive
self-interest at the individual level of natural selection and, at others, collaborative action of
species groups to fend off other predator species. This process eventually selects for human
traits that include both tendencies and thus allows for the development of diverse moral
systems at the individual, social, or political level over time.
From the postsecular view, the competitive view of the relation between religion and
science is misguided because it suggests that either discourse is correct but not both. This
necessitates a replacement of one discourse with the other instead of realizing that when a
displacement takes place, both remain intact. A recent example of displacement occurring in
American culture involves the response to Hurricane Katrina in southern Louisiana in 2005.
On the scientific level, the Army Core of Engineers was called in to strengthen and heighten
the levees to prevent future flooding. Technoscientific expertise was crucial to this project,
but it was limited in satisfying other dire needs of the flood victims. Local churches stepped
in to provide spiritual and material help before FEMA could respond appropriately. Here,
religion is displaced (Pat Robertson’s analysis aside) by science in one area while science is
displaced by religion in another. Both remain intact and mutually reinforce each other
without one taking all the credit for the recovery.
Despite Barbour’s statement that “[t]he image of warfare [between religion and science] is common today” and the difference between scientific materialism and religious literalism (77-78), and despite the convenience of having a singular view of an ordered universe (once one discourse gains full ascendency over the other), the postsecularist would resist such
