The question

I am concerned about what we teach children regarding the apparent contradictions between science and religion. One view  about the relationship is that that there are no contradictions, if you accept that God created the Universe and it now runs on scientific rules. In other words God, the first mover, started the universe off, and it now runs like a line of falling dominoes. 

This is the view described on the DfES website for children in year 7. The concern I have with this solution is that it implies that God was very busy in the beginning but is now "passively watching". The idea of a deterministic universe is further presented to children through their studies of Newtonian physics. Indeed, students spend a lot of science lessons learning about and "discovering" these rules (eg Hooke's law, Newtons laws, Boyle's law). Thus children are not left with any reason to explore other views of science and religion. If they did, they might conclude - as Polkinghorne and others have - that there is room for an active God if you reconsider your understanding of the nature of science.

The following pages present ideas about the nature of science with a view to you asking yourself - do I have to believe in Deism (the idea of a passive Creator God) in order to see religion and science as harmonious. Can research and reflection produce a respectable alternative understanding of science for Theists - those who believe that we are praying to an active God.

Background 

My PhD thesis looked at how students think about the apparent contradictions between science and religion. Working in Australia, I carried out semi-structured interviews with students to discover their views about the nature of science, the nature of religion, and how they saw the two fields as interacting. I found that students' ideas about the relationship seemed to follow a sequence of steps that depended on their cognitive stage. 

In particular by the time students reached the end of secondary school, their view of science was heavily influenced by their studies of Newtonian physics. The "laws" of science were said to be unbreakable and (for those who saw no conflict between the fields) their view of the relationship was Deism combined with determinism. (God made the universe and now rests or talks to us only through our feelings). Students regarded the idea of an active current God as very problematic, in the light of what they had learnt at school.

When I looked at the DfES site for year 7 RE I was interested to see that there is a section called "Can the Universe Reveal God" which says that students should think about "the argument that God is the first mover: God started everything off, just like someone had to in the [dominoes falling] experiment". 

This section seems to present the Deism-Determinism view which I found is so prevalent in the minds of students in Australia. The problem is that if this view is presented as "the solution to the conflict", it seems to close off any consideration of the option of an active God combined harmoniously with science. 

My research found that science teachers and students benefit if they think more about the nature of science - and reflect on the role they see the "laws" of science playing. What are these laws - and how did we find them out? Can the laws ever be "broken"? Are they without boundaries? Students can then explore ways of combining different views of science and different views of religion both harmoniously and non-harmoniously. 

My research also seemed to indicate that individuals who are more advanced in this kind of thinking, such as experts in the field, are aware that there are different views of science and religion, whichever views they choose to believe.

On the basis of my research, I'm very interested in how the natures of science and religion are presented to children, especially now that we are teaching these ideas to ever younger children.