The “Conflict Thesis”: A Resilient Idea’s Journey

“When historians of science and religion write about the ‘conflict thesis,’ what are they talking about?”

So begins today’s story from Dr. James C. Ungureanu. 

For further reading:
Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict by James C. Ungureanu (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

Transcript

90 Second Narratives
Season 8: “Journeys”
Episode 8: “The ‘Conflict Thesis’: A Resilient Idea’s Journey” 

Sky Michael Johnston:

Welcome to 90 Second Narratives, the podcast that brings you little stories with BIG historical significance. I’m Sky Michael Johnston and today’s storyteller is Dr. James C. Ungureanu, a humanities teacher at Trinity Classical Academy in Santa Clarita, California. Here he is with the story, “The ‘Conflict Thesis’: A Resilient Idea’s Journey.”

James Ungureanu:

When historians of science and religion write about the “conflict thesis,” what are they talking about?

Well, in a nut shell, the “conflict thesis” is the idea that science and religion are fundamentally in conflict. Always have been and always will be. This is a history of war. In that sense, it is an historical argument. Most proponents of the conflict thesis maintain if you look back in history (particularly Christian history but not exclusively Christian history), if you look back, at every moment in the advance of science or new learning, religion has attempted to oppose, oppress, deny scientific progress.

The conflict thesis has been used by many as a meta-narrative, an overarching view that encompasses the entire course of Western civilization. It attempts to explain how modern humans, secular humans came to be.

For several decades now, historians of science, philosophers, and theologians have tried to make sense of this belief that science and religion are at war.

They typically trace the origins of the conflict thesis to the late nineteenth century, specifically among Anglo-American writers. For instance, many scholars point to the scientific naturalists, a Victorian clique made up of biologist Thomas H. Huxley (1828-1895), physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893), and evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), among others, who supposedly employed the thesis in their attempt to professionalize and secularize the sciences. More precisely still, most scholars see New York University chemist John William Draper (1811-1882) and historian and first president of Cornell University Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) as co-founders of a philosophy of history that has endorsed the belief that science and religion have been and always will be at odds.

Now, there is a great deal of truth here. But the story is a bit more complicated, and we are only now beginning to recognize that many of the accused did not, in fact, envision a conflict between science and religion at all. Including Draper and White. The “conflict thesis” itself has had an incredibly complex journey.

“Conflict” occurred, they believed, not between scientific truth and religious truth, but between contesting theological traditions.

The scientific naturalists Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and the even Draper and White, all made such distinctions between theology and religion. What enabled them to make such distinctions were the changes in religious thought that occurred during the century. Draper, for example, argued in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, which was published in 1863, that Christianity had been “paganized” under Emperor Constantine. Interestingly, he believed that early Christianity was a gift of God whereas ecclesiastical organizations, the Church, in other words, was the product human invention.

With the paganization of Christianity, Draper argued, came what he called the “tyranny of theology over thought.” He declared that those “who had known what religion was in the apostolic days, might look with boundless surprise on what was now ingrafted upon it, and was passing under its name.” Even his notorious History of the Conflict, under closer inspection, continues to make such distinctions, as when he argued that he would only consider the “orthodox” or “extremist” position, and not the moderate ones.

White shared much of the same sentiments. By separating religion from theology, White could denounce that the “most mistaken of all mistaken ideas” was the “conviction that religion and science are enemies.” While science has conquered “dogmatic theology,” he argued, it will “go hand in hand with Religion.” For White, science was an aid to religion, encouraging its “steady evolution” into more purified forms.

In short, Draper, White, and the scientific naturalists did not see the conflict as one between science and religion but between “dogmatic theology and science.” More precisely still, the conflict was between contending theological traditions. They believed that theology was not only in conflict with science but also with religion.

Sky Michael Johnston:

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Ungureanu’s insightful research on the “conflict thesis” and historical conceptions of the relationship between science and religion, take a look at his 2019 book, Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

And please subscribe to 90 Second Narratives to hear a new episode every Monday.