Religion and Science from a Postsecular Perspective

  • Article
  • 14 pages
  • Level: high school and above

Authors Raphael Sassower and Jeffrey Scholes argue for the existence of a “postsecular” view of religion and science in this 2015 paper from the Journal of Religion and Society.  The authors write that,

Depending on which scholar one reads, postsecularism represents the failure of secularization, an extension of the secular, a reenchantment of culture, a resurgence of religion, or the harbinger of a new political reality. Each representation may reach slightly different conclusions, some for ideological purposes, but common to all is the recognition that the secular has not made good on its promise to eliminate religion.

From the abstract of the article:

There are various ways in which religion and science have been perceived to interact in the cultural domain. After critically assessing the “separation view” of their relationship and finding it untenable, this essay recounts various “interaction views” wherein either religion or science is assumed to be taking precedence over or replacing in significance the other. This essay concludes with a “postsecular perspective” that sheds a different light on this relationship, claiming that discursively, religion and science inform and complement each other in American culture.

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