The Church of England has decided to spend as much as £700,000 for a program that is targeted towards promoting greater engagement between religious leaders and science enthusiasts. The launch of the three-year long program that was initiated by Durham University was announced last month during British Science Week, a 10-day gala pertaining to technology, science, mathematics and engineering.
The program aims to offer trainee priests and other religious figures access to information and resources related to contemporary science. It will also survey church leaders to assess their attitude towards science. It hopes to give more confidence to clergy members with which they would be able to answer critical questions credibly without losing any self-respect.
Durham University professor Reverend David Wilkinson spoke of why there are so many differences between faith and science.
“Our personal motivation was to ask: how do we give confidence to Christian leaders in a world where there are many questions which impact theology,” he said. “Our hunch, brought out by an initial pilot project, was that many Christian leaders at a senior level leading churches would often see science as a threat, and not see it as an opportunity to engage people with their interest in the really big questions: [such as], where the universe comes from, what does it mean to be human, are we unique, are we alone, and what's the future for technology.”
As part of the program, research would be carried out to analyze the attitudes towards science among 1,000 church leaders in the United Kingdom. Durham University would organize a series of conferences for religious leaders so they can learn how to approach questions related to cosmology, the origins of existence, neuroscience and the complexity of God’s operations in the world. The clergy members would be introduced to highly acclaimed scientists, including Christians and non-Christians.
“We'll actually take the science seriously,” said Wilkinson. “And reflect on what it means for theology.”
It seems the Church of England is working towards changing Christians’ attitudes toward science with such an initiative that has promised to offer priests and bishops suitable resources to answer scientifically-driven questions.
Many leading scientists, like Richard Dawkins, believe science is incompatible with faith and religion and often label religious individuals as being delusional.
“The rise of new atheism, as exemplified in Richard Dawkins and other thinkers, is probably very complex and has to do with a whole number of movements within our culture. But certainly, there is a fear and aggressiveness in some parts of the church, which has bought into the conflict model that science and religion are constantly in battle,” said Wilkinson. “Actually, you've got to be on one side of the conflict or the other. That's something the new atheism has talked about in general. The triumph of science over religion. But it's all based on this conflict model.”
Wilkinson said the Church need not be part of this conflicting model. Citing the past, he said how science and faith were perceived by most to be compatible with one another. However, Wilkinson, who also works as an astrophysicist, said there are some questions that even science cannot answer, which is why people turn to God.
Speaking of the laws of physics and their intelligent structure, Wilkinson said, “These are questions that lie beyond sciences ability to answer, but are raised by the very discoveries of the origin of the universe that a number of us have been involved in.”
In conclusion, Wilkinson hoped that the new program would help do away with the conflicting model that exists currently, which he believes is the reason behind skepticism, new atheism as well as a kind of Christianity that dismisses valid scientific explanations to most questions.
Photo Credits: Aleteia
