Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow

Does religion get in the way of science, or more specifically, does it get in the way of teaching science to the general public? This is the hot topic debated by Richard MacKenzie and Lawrence Krauss, who have continued a debate they had at a physics meeting in Saskatoon in 2007 with two new papers on the arXiv collection of pre-prints (MacKenzie paper, Krauss paper, blog pick up).

Krauss says: Faith is not the enemy. Ignorance is the enemy.

MacKenzie’s line: I disagree with this statement – to the point where I would be inclined to go so far as to interchange the words “faith” and “ignorance.”

Overall, MacKenzie and Krauss generally agree, within the semantics which are inevitably present when arguing religion and science: faith does not stop someone from being a good scientist. But, as MacKenzie poses, does faith obstruct non-scientists from learning science?

MacKenzie argues that the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in schools as scientific theories, and religious institutes with pseudo-scientific names that support science by asking ‘the big questions’ about spiritual realities, blurs the line between science and religion for the non-scientific audience. MacKenzie also believes in a need for “a healthy amount of skepticism” in life, as well as critical thinking in science, and feels that the blind acceptance necessary for faith might “compromise one’s ability to think critically, a key ingredient in scientific thinking”.

Krauss agrees that science and faith in organized religion are generally incompatible, but that also humans are not logical and can hold on to two inconsistent ideas. Krauss says “as long as someone’s religious faith does not get in the way of their learning about nature, their ability to assess empirical data, and to predict results of future experiments, then I view it as no more obstructionist that the faith they may have that money can’t buy happiness, or that marriage produces happiness ever after.” But regrettably he stops short of addressing MacKenzie’s concern of what happens when that person’s religious faith stops others from learning about science.