Theories and Viewpoints on Relationship between Science and Religion: An Introduction to Research about the Possibility of Religious Science

The cosmological findings of Nicolas Copernicus in sixteenth century marked the beginning of conflict between religion and science in the Christian West, but with the spread of modern science across the globe the relationship between science and religion has emerged in new and diverse formulations. In the first place, the present paper discusses the history of conflicts between science and religion. This issue began with astronomy and cosmology in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the eighteenth century the Newtonian physics demonstrated its depth more than ever. The nineteenth century is the period of biology and the notion of evolution that turned the conflict between science and religion into its severest form. In the twentieth century, on the one hand, the old philosophical propositions in the formulation of relationship between science and religion were doubted and, on the other, scientific findings, particularly in quantum physics, moderated the certainty of conflict between sci- ence and religion. The spread of modern science engaged the world of Islam in the new form of this conflict. After a historical review of these issues, attempts have been made in the present article to complete and document the typology of John F. Haught (1995) presented in his book, “Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation”. In this book Haught discusses the relationship between science and religion in four types, that is, conflict, distinction, completion and affirmation. Also a new approach in which science is linked to social action will be discussed in the present paper.