The philosophical and cultural tension between science and religion reached its peak in the period of scientism, which was dominant in nineteenth-century society.
Olson (2008) defines scientism as the displacement of opinions, perspectives, methodologies, and practices from the framework of research of the ordinary world into the study of people and their social associations, without criticizing the validity of such allowance. The researcher mentions that leading economists and dominating elites amply borrowed from the natural sciences. He remarks that prominent figures of art and literature, along with social philosophers, also expressed their perceptions of people and societies with the help of natural science achievements (Olson, 2008).
Such a manner of thought and expression could not leave the church satisfied due to the fact that it undermined some church postulates and took away a great deal of attention from it. Thus, a tension between religion and science appeared (Leffel, 2006; Fuller, 2007). These two spheres do not necessarily exclude each other, but at the same time they cannot be called equal (Fulle, 2007). The problem partially depends on the fact that people tend to be more acquainted with religion than science.
While the supporters of scientism believed that everything relies upon the naturalistic worldview, postmodernists have argued that such an opinion is grounded on an incongruous foundation of knowledge, thus leading to an incompetent “metanarrative” and “ethnocentric marginalization” of other people’s views (Leffel, 2006, p. 50). However, researchers remark that applying scientific principles to religion, and vice versa does not undermine the meaningfulness of either of the two (Fuller, 2007).
In my opinion, the appearance of tension between science and religion was inevitable, but on the condition of structural dialogue, it is possible to make them successfully coexist.
References
Fuller, S. (2007). Science v. Religion? Intelligent design and the problem of evolution. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Leffel, J. (2006). Science and postmodern criticism. The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, 4(1), 50-55.
Olson, R. G. (2008). Science and scientism in nineteenth-century Europe. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.