science and religion

Proving the miraculous nature of the Qur’an as one of the methods to believe in the Qur’an as a divine text has always attracted the attention of the researchers of the Qur’an; nevertheless, the published efforts on this subject are facing numerous methodological challenges. This research attempts to introduce a new and original method exempt from the challenges of the present methods by utilizing some of the techniques in mathematical sciences, logic and statistics. This scientific case-based method rates the effective parameters in the recognition of scientific miracle for one case. Accordingly, it will calculate the certainty of each case and proceeds to combine the ratings of various cases of scientific miracle to calculate the degree of certainty of the divine nature of the book based on those results. In combining the ratings, a threshold will be determined based on human belief behavior. An advantage of this method is that it is extra-religious, data driven, quantitative, applicable to all texts, and generalizable to the entire content. 

The influential physicist Richard Feynman became interested in the relationship between religion and science during a mid-career phase. He proposed that their interface was embroiled in unresolvable difficulties. He felt that science demanded an attitude of uncertainty for its claims, while religion contrarily required certain belief in its core doctrines. Though possessing several non-contradictory dimensions, Feynman felt that the nature of the truth claims of science and religion suffered from insurmountable elemental conflicts. This was by contrast to Karl Popper, the leading critical rationalist of the 20th century, who argued that there could be no tension between science and religion. This paper will argue that the ‘Feynman Problem’ is not as insoluble as it appears. Rather, several solutions exist within critical rationalism. Two will be presented-the first revolves around the conjectural basis of knowledge and is already a well characterised critical rationalist notion. The second is a novel solution based on the separate categorisation of psychological, pragmatic, and epistemological attitudes to religion and science. Karl Popper’s view of religion-science dissimilarity was a minimalist point of departure for critical rationalists, who have developed increasingly sophisticated frameworks for investigating the relationship between faith and reason. Critical rationalism represents an equally inspirational methodology for the pursuit of scientific and religious truth. Though both Feynman and Popper’s views on religion were underdeveloped, they foreshadowed the religion-science frameworks advocated by many late 20th century scientists, especially in the form of New Atheism and Gould’s NOMA theory. 

The scientific theology is a new branch of contemporary Christian theology that defends the rationality and believability of theology by resorting to science. Nancy Murphy is one of the theologians pioneering in this arena. She has made great efforts to this end and it is advisable to get benefits from the results of such studies. The main issue in this article is to find out the features of the scientific theology in Murphy’s view and the critiques one can pose on it. To answer, using a descriptive-analytical method, we will first explain Murphy’s approach and, then, evaluate it. By referring to Murphy’s works, it is revealed that in offering her model of scientific theology, she has made use of hypothetical-deductive method of science and Lakatos’ scientific research program, placing theology in the hierarchy of other sciences. While enjoying some strong points, Murphy’s model suffers from serious weaknesses. Some of them are as follows: placing fundamental Christian beliefs in opposition to suppositional theories and hypotheses, temporary nature of theology due to its reliance on transient methods of science, not offering any reason for using science, relying on philosophy of science instead of science itself, and not following a certain rule of theology implementation of Lakatos’ scientific research program.