Secondary School Students’ Epistemic Insight into the Relationships Between Science and Religion—A Preliminary Enquiry

Berry Billingsley,Helen Newdick,Keith Taber,Fran Riga

doi:10.1007/s11165-012-9317-y

Abstract

Abstract A number of previous studies have shown that there is a widespread view among young people that science and religion are opposed. In this paper, we suggest that it requires a significant level of what can be termed “epistemic insight” to access the idea that some people see science and religion as compatible while others do not. To explore this further, we draw on previous work to devise a methodology to discover students’ thinking about apparent contradictions between scientific and religious explanations of the origins of the universe. In our discussion of the findings, we highlight that students’ epistemic insight in this context does seem in many cases to be limited and we outline some of the issues emerging from the study that seem to boost or limit students’ progress in this area.

Highlights

Does the universe have a purpose? Is life here by anything other than an accident? These are the so-called Big Questions (Shipman et al, 2002) that occupy the minds of many people at some time during their lives
None of the 12 students we interviewed for this study said that there are no contradictions between science and religion
Many students seemed tied to the view that science and religion are in competition to address a common set of questions

Summary

Introduction

Does the universe have a purpose? Is life here by anything other than an accident? These are the so-called Big Questions (Shipman et al, 2002) that occupy the minds of many people at some time during their lives. We report on secondary level students’ thinking about what they perceived science and religion to say about the origins of the universe and of life. The central aim was to discover whether students were able to access a range of perspectives on how science and religion relate when they are asked to explain what they believe about the origins of life and the universe. 321) says, for example, that “There is no such thing as the relationship between science and religion. It is what different individuals and communities have made of it in a plethora of different contexts”. One perspective is that science and religion are compatible. Gould (1999, p. 6) explains that, if we agree that science “covers the empirical realm” while religion “extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value”, neither can comment on the claims of the other and there can be no contradictions between them

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Conclusion