I was excited about what looked like an interesting article in the Church Times a couple of days ago on the Science/Religion interface and the conversations which I know from personal experience have been going on for some 50 years, and probably longer. So the article was a bit disappointing in that it covered the institutions, the meetings and the conferences that are looking at this interface, but gave little information about the interface itself or where the conversations have got to.
One paragraph, however, stood out. Towards the end of the article it talked of three critical emphases in ‘science-and-religion engagement’, namely:
- ‘first, a genuine recognition of the impact of context and a real valuing of different perspectives, including indigenous knowledge systems;
- ‘second, creating a community of conversation which both respects our differences and engages with the search for a deeper truth that is beyond the limits of any single context; and,
- ‘third, an effective way of communicating the results of those conversations to Churches, education systems, and wider society.’
It is important that there are institutions and conferences that are taking this vital dialogue forward. But may be, within each of us we need to revisit the red lines that we have perhaps been brought up with and discover what we could give up in the search for that “deeper truth that is beyond the limits of any single context”.
To quote American environmental scientist, Donella Meadows, “The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right”.
Read the article here.