Although historians have suggested for some time that we move away from the assumption of a necessary clash between science and religion, the conflict narrative persists in contemporary discourse. But why? And how do we really know what people actually think about evolutionary science, let alone the many and varied ways in which it might relate to individual belief? In this multidisciplinary volume, experts in history and philosophy of science, oral history, sociology of religion, social psychology, and science communication and public engagement look beyond two warring systems of thought. They consider a far more complex, multifaceted, and distinctly more interesting picture of how differing groups along a spectrum of worldviews--including atheistic, agnostic, and faith groups--relate to and form the ongoing narrative of a necessary clash between evolution and faith. By ascribing agency to the public, from the nineteenth century to the present and across Canada and the United Kingdom, this volume offers a much more nuanced analysis of people's perceptions about the relationship between evolutionary science, religion, and personal belief, one that better elucidates the complexities not only of that relationship but of actual lived experience.
Author(s): Fern Elsdon-Baker; Bernard Lightman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 312
City: Pittsburgh
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction | Fern Elsdon-Baker and Bernard Lightman
Part I. The Public Sphere
1. From Conflict to Complexity: Historians and Nineteenth-Century Public Perceptions of Science and Religion | Bernard Lightman, Sylvia Nickerson, and Parandis Tajbakhsh
2. Creating Hard-Line “Secular” Evolutionists: The Influence of Question Design on Our Understanding of Public Perceptions of Clash Narratives | Fern Elsdon-Baker
3. Science and Religion Conflict in the United States: A Closer Look at the Polls | Jonathan P. Hill
4. Evolution on the Small Screen: Reflections on Media, Science, and Religion in Twentieth-Century Britain | Alexander Hall
Part II. Conflict and Identity
5. Life Story: Oral Histories in the Field of Science and Religion | Paul Merchant
6. Science and Religion as Lived Experience: Narratives of Evolution among British and Canadian Publics and Life Scientists | Stephen H. Jones and Tom Kaden
7. Beyond Belief Systems: Promoting a Social Identity Approach to the Study of Science and Religion | Carissa A. Sharp and Carola Leicht
Part III. Secularization
8. The Conflict Narrative, Group Identity, and the Uses of History | Peter Harrison
9. Secularization: What Has Science Got to Do with It? | Amy Unsworth
10. Science as Secular: Dynamics of Reflection, Tolerance, and Contestation in British and Canadian Scientific Workplaces | Rebecca Catto
Part IV. Future Directions: Methodological and Theoretical
11. The Methodological Challenges and Possibilities of Social Scientific Study of Religion and Science across National Contexts | Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson, and Robert A. Thomson Jr.
12. Possibilities for Future Elite Conflict between Science and Religion | John H. Evans
Coda | Fern Elsdon-Baker and Bernard Lightman
Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
