1. Questions

Conflict

The goal for this class session is to consider whether science and faith are inherently opposed.

Beginning with the activity Faith and Science at War? and moving on to Not Just Warfare provides a pathway for students to explore the difficulties of a simplistic faith-versus-science view. They will work to classify increasingly complex claims, in order to expose the limitations of a two-view account of the world.

Sometimes conflicts between faith and science appear to be a zero-sum game—a lose-lose situation. The activity Zero-Sum Games challenges these assumptions and works well after the previous two activities. Students see interactions between science and faith that reveal important truths through both disciplines—win-win situations.

Debrief what students have learned from these three activities, perhaps including some perspectives on the topic through history. A good resource to prepare for this is Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion.