Is conflict between God and science hardwired?

By Robin Lloyd

updated 12:36 p.m. ET Jan. 15, 2009

God and science are inherently at odds, or so goes the story with roots that reach back nearly 400 years to the Inquisition's trial of Galileo on suspicion of heresy.

The ongoing effort of U.S. creationists to inject doubt about evolution into science classrooms in public schools is an example of that conflict, not to mention the polarizing arguments over the decades offered by numerous members of the clergy, politicians, and some atheist scientists and scholars including Richard Dawkins.

Now a new study suggests our minds are conflicted, making it so we have trouble reconciling science and God because we unconsciously see these concepts as fundamentally opposed, at least when both are used to explain the beginning of life and the universe.  

But what is the source of this seeming "irreconcilable difference" — are we hard-wired for it, or is it tenacious cultural baggage?

The experiments
Experiments headed up by psychologist Jesse Preston of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleague Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago provide some data to support the argument that the conflict is inherent, or hard-wired. They found that subjects apparently cannot easily give positive evaluations to both God and science as explanations for big questions, such as the origin of life and the universe, at the same time.

In one experiment, 129 volunteers, mostly undergrads, read short summaries of the Big Bang theory and the Primordial Soup Hypothesis, a scientific theory of the origin of life.

Half of the group then read a statement explaining that the theories were strong and supported by the data. The other half read that the theories "raised more questions than they answered." All of the subjects then completed a computer task where they were required to categorize various words as positive or negative.

During the task, the word "science" or "God" or a neutral control word was flashed on the screen before each positive/negative word. For instance, right before the word "awful" appeared, either the word "God" or "science" was flashed on the screen for 15 milliseconds — too brief to be seen but it registers unconsciously.

This is a standard experimental psychology approach designed to measure latent, or automatic, attitudes toward (or evaluations of) the priming word — in this case, God or science. Faster response times mean a closer association between two concepts, for example "science" and "great."

Preston and Epley found that subjects who read the statement in support of the scientific theories responded more quickly to positive words appearing just after the word "science" than those who had read statements critical of the scientific theories. Similarly, those who read the statement suggesting that the scientific theories were weak were slower than the other group (who read the theory-supportive statement) to identify negative words that appeared after they were primed with the word "God."

The results are detailed in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Financial support for the study was received from the National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Preston says her research shows that a dual belief system, for instance the idea that evolution explains biology but God set the process in motion, does not exist in our brains.

"We can only believe in one explanation at a time," she told LiveScience. "So although people can report explicitly, 'Look, I’ve been a Christian all my life, and yes, I also believe in science and I am a practicing chemist,' the question is, are these people really reconciling belief in God and science, or are they just believing in one thing at a time?"

When it comes to the ultimate questions, it's really just one thing at a time, Preston says.
People rarely think about these problems, however, so most people live their lives without paying much attention to how the universe started or how life began, Preston said.

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