We hear a lot these days about the “conflict” between science and religion ”” the atheists and the fundamentalists, it seems, are constantly blasting one another. But what’s rarely noted is that even as science-religion warriors clash by night, in the morning they’ll see the battlefield has shifted beneath them.
Across the Western world ”” including the United States ”” traditional religion is in decline, even as there has been a surge of interest in “spirituality.” What’s more, the latter concept is increasingly being redefined in our culture so that it refers to something very much separable from, and potentially broader than, religious faith.
Nowadays, unlike in prior centuries, spirituality and religion are no longer thought to exist in a one-to-one relationship.
This is a fundamental change, and it strongly undermines the old conflict story about science and religion. For once you start talking about science and spirituality, the dynamic shifts dramatically.
Mooney has his finger on a trend, but he misses the boat, IMHO. There is a real desire among many members of Generation X, and possibly younger generations as well, for a ceasefire in the conflicts between science and religion. It’s a recurrent theme in films and TV shows made by Generation X-aged artists, and it’s clearly a heartfelt issue. Both science and religion are seen to have value; spirituality does too, but it is not always viewed as a substitute for, or antithetical to, religion as Mooney describes. The science fiction television series LOST and Battlestar Galactica possibly provide the best examples of this point of view, and they stand in marked contrast to mid-to-late 20th century science fiction productions that hoped for humanity to evolve beyond religion (e.g., the original Star Trek). Now, the hope is for science, religion, and spirituality to coexist.
But that hope seemingly is in competition with the desire of a rising number of younger Westerners to dispense with religion altogether; this latter view seems to be most prevalent among generations younger than Generation X. Ironically, you could see this conflict in the polarized reaction to the outcome of the two previously mentioned television series; a significant number of viewers reacted extremely negatively to both series’ stance, building throughout their run and finally made explicit in their finales, that there is a (left vague and undefined) god that human beings cannot fully understand but who nonetheless works in world affairs.
Recent polls regarding religion and spirituality point to this difference. Members of Generation X are said to be more religious than Baby Boomers, while post-Gen Xers tend to call themselves spiritual but do not practice their spirituality outwardly, much less with other people. Mooney’s analysis doesn’t take this conflict into account.