Do science and Christianity relate and how?

Answer 1

Science and the medieval Church had a difficult relationship. After Christianity became the official religion of empire, the Church led the burning of thousands of books that did not advance the objectives of Christianity. Much of the intellectual efforts of the Egyptians, Greeks and others in fields of philosophy, mathematics and science were lost to the Christian world. Fortunately some works were preserved in the Arab world and became known once again to the west in the thirteenth century.

Copernicus chose not to publish his most important work during his own lifetime, for fear of his life. That he had good reason to fear is demonstrated by the experience of Bruno, burnt at the stake for his theories. Galileo is almost as famous for having been persecuted as for his discoveries, although to be fair he was a difficult person to reach an understanding with.

Charles Darwin published his On the Evolution of Speciesin England, outside the control of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless his work was strongly condemned and continues to be opposed by a minority of Christians, even today. The mainstream Churches now relate much better to Darwin's theory of Evolution, and the Church of England has even proposed to apologise posthumously to Darwin for its earlier rejection of his Theory.

Science and the Christian Churches now have a much better relationship. The Churches recognise that a well-educated population accepts the evidence of science and that it is not in their interests to oppose scientific knowledge. On the other side, Stephen Jay Gould proposed the concept of Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA). He said that the domain or magisterium for science is the empirical realm - what the universe is made from and why it works the way it does. He said that the magisterium of religion includes the ultimate meaning and moral values. These magisteria are nonoverlapping - science does not comment on the ultimate meaning of life, while religion should not comment on the natural world. If accepted, this concept takes questions about creation, evolution and scientific theory out of the religious magisterium.