More than half of people in the UK believe science and religion are incompatible

Recent research from Theos and the Faraday Institute describes public and elite attitudes towards science and religion in the UK, the study is called “Science and Religion: Getting Out of the Shallows”.

Second Evangelistic focusIt’s a three-year project that aims to map the landscape of conflict between science and religion in the UK, exploring what exactly people disagree about about science and religion, with the aim of emphasizing that the debate has so far been largely superficial.

So the researchers conducted interviews with leading academics and science communicators, and commissioned a public survey of 5,153 adults across the UK. Half of British adults think that science and Christianity are incompatible, while 36% say they are incompatible.

“The argument of this report is that the science and religion debate has been distorted by viewing it primarily through a few narrow lenses, specifically, evolution, the Big Bang, and neuroscience, and these are ‘conflict’ lenses, resulting in a picture of a conflict that the public perceives but has difficulty identifying or explaining. is,” the study says.

According to the survey, 57% of respondents think science and religion are incompatible, while 30% say they are compatible. Men (60%) are more likely than women (55%) to say that science and religion are incompatible.

Additionally, 68% of white respondents feel they are incompatible, compared to 48% of respondents from non-white ethnic groups. When questioned by specific religions, the notion of enmity between “science and Christianity” or “science and Islam” is more prevalent than that of “science and religion”.

Hence, the study indicates that it appears to be a conflict of image, not substance. Half of British adults think science and Christianity are incompatible, while a third (36%) say they are compatible.

More so, the survey revealed that 46% of respondents agreed that “all religions have some element of truth”, 49% agreed that “humans are spiritual beings at heart”, and 64% agreed that “science has some elements”. can never be explained.”