Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Makings of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking
- 2 Phenomenalistic Perception and Rational Understanding in the Mind of an Individual: A Fight for Dominance
- 3 Metamorphosis and Magic: The Development of Children's Thinking About Possible Events and Plausible Mechanisms
- 4 The Development of Beliefs About Direct Mental-Physical Causality in Imagination, Magic, and Religion
- 5 Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Input in the Acquisition of Religious Concepts
- 6 On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children's Metaphysical Questions
- 7 Putting Different Things Together: The Development of Metaphysical Thinking
- 8 Versions of Personal Storytelling/Versions of Experience: Genres as Tools for Creating Alternate Realities
- 9 The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parental Attitudes About Children's Fantasy Behavior
- 10 Religion, Culture, and Beliefs About Reality in Moral Reasoning
- 11 Beyond Scopes: Why Creationism Is Here to Stay
- 12 Knowledge Change in Response to Data in Science, Religion, and Magic
- 13 Theology and Physical Science: A Story of Developmental Influence at the Boundaries
- Index
13 - Theology and Physical Science: A Story of Developmental Influence at the Boundaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- 1 The Makings of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking
- 2 Phenomenalistic Perception and Rational Understanding in the Mind of an Individual: A Fight for Dominance
- 3 Metamorphosis and Magic: The Development of Children's Thinking About Possible Events and Plausible Mechanisms
- 4 The Development of Beliefs About Direct Mental-Physical Causality in Imagination, Magic, and Religion
- 5 Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Input in the Acquisition of Religious Concepts
- 6 On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children's Metaphysical Questions
- 7 Putting Different Things Together: The Development of Metaphysical Thinking
- 8 Versions of Personal Storytelling/Versions of Experience: Genres as Tools for Creating Alternate Realities
- 9 The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parental Attitudes About Children's Fantasy Behavior
- 10 Religion, Culture, and Beliefs About Reality in Moral Reasoning
- 11 Beyond Scopes: Why Creationism Is Here to Stay
- 12 Knowledge Change in Response to Data in Science, Religion, and Magic
- 13 Theology and Physical Science: A Story of Developmental Influence at the Boundaries
- Index
Summary
Popular intellectual culture has often pictured science and religion as fundamental adversaries, battling for the intellectual allegiances of reflective people. That picture has been buttressed by the well-known story of the conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church at the turn of the seventeenth century and by the story of the religious conflicts surrounding the work of Charles Darwin since the middle of the nineteenth century (see Evans, this volume). The adversarial picture has been appealing both to religious people of an anti-scientific bent and to scientific people of an anti-religious bent. However, a careful study of the history of the relationship between religion and natural science does not bear out that adversarial picture.
Of course there have been episodes of conflict, such as those surrounding the ideas of Galileo and Darwin, but to view these episodes simply as battles in an ongoing “war between science and religion” would be to misread history. These famous conflicts are clearly situations in which new scientific ideas are in opposition with traditional religious ideas. A careful study of history shows, however, that those traditional religious ideas, at least in the most famous conflicts, had become accepted parts of intellectual tradition in large measure because they had been developed to fit coherently with ideas of the earlier traditional science. These stories of development will comprise the central theme of this chapter. One of the easiest things to forget about our modern distinctions among various areas of scholarly inquiry is how very modern they are.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Imagining the ImpossibleMagical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children, pp. 372 - 404Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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