- Author: The Doctrine Committee of the Scottish Episcopal Church
- Price: £2.50
- Published: 2006
Mention 'the Church' and 'science' in any conversation, and the chances are that the words 'Galileo' and 'the Inquisition' would follow hot on their heels. The way such a conversation is likely to develop is captured succinctly by the actor Richard Griffiths, who played the part of Galileo in a production of Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo: "By stifling the truth, which was there for anyone to see, the Church destroyed its credibility with science."
Griffiths' caricature, or something like it - that 'science' and 'religion' are mutually hostile to one another - is strongly embedded in the popular imagination. Before we can attempt to build a theology of science, a certain amount of 'ground clearing' is necessary.
First we will show that the one-sided 'conflict' model of the relation between science and religion has little historical basis. Of course, there has been friction, and the friction has frequently arisen out of a putative incompatibility between science and the Bible. We therefore move on to a consideration of the nature of biblical and scientific texts by way of the opening chapters of Genesis. Finally, science and theology are often conceived as necessarily incompatible because of the latter's appeal to authority. We end this section with a consideration of the nature of authority in science and theology, showing that it plays a surprisingly similar role in the two disciplines.
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How to order
This publication can be ordered online from the Cornerstone Bookshop, Edinburgh, or ordered from the Scottish Episcopal Church General Synod Office. Please note that orders outwith the UK must be made through the Cornerstone Bookshop.
