Helen De Cruz (2017), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
Key takeaways
- The science–religion relationship is not one relationship: it varies by religious tradition and by specific claim, and the field is moving from global compatibility questions to “science-engaged theology” on particular pairs of claims.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-107. What follows is what the work says about itself.
The entry introduces the interdisciplinary field of science and religion and the questions of compatibility and mutual influence it studies. It outlines the history and scope of both terms and the main taxonomies of their interaction, then surveys how science has related to five traditions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism. It closes with contemporary topics where they meet, focusing on divine action and creation and on human origins.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 0 seconds of active reading over 0 sessions. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-107 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as the standard orientation to the science–religion literature and as a map of the divine-action and naturalism debates; it is a survey, so its claims are only as strong as the works it cites, and it is written from within the (largely Christian) field it describes.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-107, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: low — t=0, a general survey only peripherally related to the record’s interests.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-107 is that reading):
- Relevant to the record’s philosophy-of-science thread only at the edges: the demarcation discussion in §1.2 and the divine-action/causal-closure material in §3.1.
- Check whether §3.1 engages with interpretations of quantum mechanics as loci for non-interventionist divine action (a quantum-foundations link).
Access when seeded: Fetched the full entry from plato.stanford.edu with curl; read preamble, all section openings, the discussion of Barbour’s taxonomy in §1.3 and the closing paragraph. First published Tue Jan 17, 2017; current revision is the substantive revision of Sat Sep 3, 2022 (copyright 2022, Helen De Cruz).