"What bearing should religious convictions have on how phenomena in nature are understood and
... explained? The answer one receives to this question depends a great deal on whom one is asking. To those for whom the answer is "none whatsoever," their reasons for keeping religion out of the mix often line up with one of two common ways in which religion is construed in relation to science. For holders of the first of these, known as the "non-overlapping magisteria" view, religions simply are not explanatory entities. Responsibility for explaining phenomena in nature belongs to science, they say, while religion reigns over the domain of meaning. As palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould put it, "Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values-subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve."1 Science alone, for followers of Gould, is responsible for explaining what happens in nature, and so religion and science do not directly compete with each other"-- Provided by publisher. Read More