The paper explores the question of the relationship between science and religion today in light of its modern origin in the Galileo affair. After first presenting Ian Barbour’s four standard models for the possible relationships between science and religion, it then draws on the work of Richard Blackwell and Ernan McMullin to consider the Augustinian principles at work in Galileo’s understanding of science and religion. In light of this the paper proposes a fifth, hybrid model, “dialogical convergence,” as a more (...) adequate model of the relationship in-between science and religion because it is epistemically just in its coherence with the last fifty years of philosophy of science by which it affords more than the mere tolerance of an independence view which leaves no space for the possibility of a theological understanding of nature. (shrink)

The paper explores the question of the relationship between science and religion today in light of its modern origin in the Galileo affair. After first presenting Ian Barbour’s four standard models for the possible relationships between science and religion, it then draws on the work of Richard Blackwell and Ernan McMullin to consider the Augustinian principles at work in Galileo’s understanding of science and religion. In light of this the paper proposes a fifth, hybrid model, “dialogical convergence,” as a more (...) adequate model of the relationship in-between science and religion because it is epistemically just in its coherence with the last fifty years of philosophy of science by which it affords more than the mere tolerance of an independence view which leaves no space for the possibility of a theological understanding of nature. (shrink)