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Stephen Jay Gould Nonoverlapping Magisteria Summary

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Argument of Gould’s Nonoverlapping Magisteria The relationship of science and religion has a long and troubled past that a multitude of theologians, philosophers and scientists have attempted to explain the correlation between the two realms. Stephen Jay Gould explains science as the “empirical constitution” and religion on the other hand is primarily concerned with ethics and spiritual value. Gould states that the lack of conflict is due to the fact that they are incommensurable. This strict independence of each other is not entirely true. Advocates of NOMA, mostly religious, fail to give the same protection to science to be free from any religious input. Essentially religion now has a say in what can and cannot be studied such as the issue …show more content…

Essentially dialogue is states that they’re not different enough to be incommensurable. The primary problem lies with how religion is represented in this case. Religion seems to be thinned to just the belief that of a god that created a coherent universe, which is not the case. This thin form of religion would be unrecognizable as any modern religion due to the confining characteristics defined by the idea of dialogue. Gould’s statement, “remain all neat and clean if the nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an extensive no man's land. But, in fact, the two Magisteria bump right up against each other” shows his acknowledgement of the some controversial questions that concern both religion and …show more content…

Once the foolishness of a religious idea is revealed by science, the religion soon disregards that as a part of their beliefs. It now becomes a part of science and leaves the realm of religion. The interesting bit is that even when ideas have been disproven in the realm of science, religion still seems to be plagued by belief perseverance. A Case that is heated between these two Magisterias is the age of the earth; science states that the earth is 4.54 Billon years old which was deduced from radiometric dating. On the other end of the spectrum the earth is claimed to be only 6000 years old which is evidently not true. Religion had made a claim about the natural world which NOMA states to be in the Magisteria of Science. This isn’t the only case where religion has interfered with the actions of science; some examples are Evolution, Stem Cell research and dismissing hard evidence due to religious views. According to the doctrine, religion should have never made statements that science could examine empirically in the first place which is still occurs today. This often leads to a “one way street” in the regard that science is not allowed to scrutinize miracles or prayer or to conduct research that would sway people’s views on religious intervention. The example of the negative prayer studies shows an over stepping of the domain of

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