SCIENCE- RELIGION DIALOGUE. THE CASE OF ECONOMICS

Abstract

Many of the present day scientists think that religion can never come to terms with science. In sharp contrast with this widespread opinion, this paper argues that, historically, scientific reasoning and religious belief joined hands in their effort to investigate and understand reality. In fact, the present-day divorce between science and religion is nothing else than the final outcome of a gradual, long-term, and deliberately assumed process of science secularization. However, especially during the latest two decades, we are all the same confronted with the advance of a new concern that some of the nowadays scientists have, the one of reviewing the sphere of problems specific to the domains of investigation they are involved in, with the face to the themes that are usually addressed by the theological thought. The paper describes this recent development as being captured by an emerging new field of investigation within the modern scientific epistemology: the dialogue between Science and Religion. It is also shown that the dialogue follows two divergent directions of analysis, namely the scholastic approach and the personalist one, respectively.

Keywords

• science secularization
• modern scientific skepticism
• social catholic theology
• patristic theology
• economic personalism