In 1949 Robert B. Heilman published the essay "Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark': Science as Religion."^ The year of the Soviet Union's first successful test of an atomic bomb and four yeiirs after the United States' use of atomic weapons against the Japanese, 1949 was a year inclined to provoke concern about the practice of science as religion. Heilman's reading of Aylmer as a tragic overreacher who...

About the Author The Revd Dr John Polkinghorne KBE FRS worked in theoretical elementary particle physics for 25 years and was previously Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University and then President of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Dr Polkinghorne was the Founding President of the International Society for Science and Religion (2002-2004) and is the author of numerous books on scie...

In the dialogue between science and the spiritual, prior metaphysical commitments can radically alter the ground of discussion. I survey the effect of certain metaphysical commitments on the dialogue between science and religion, noting that commitments which appear to favor some sort of dualism, entailing a strict separation between the realm of science and the realm of the spiritual, seem to ...

Among portrayals of evolutionary biology and intelligent design, some evolutionary biologists and organizations have claimed religion and science are compatible, commonly referred to as ‘accommodationism.’ This claim is, from the perspective of science, wholly incorrect. While religion and science are similar in that both seek causal explanations for natural phenomena, this does not render the ...