Conflict, Compatibility, and Crisis: Measuring and Understanding Positions about Religion and Science, and Predicting Attitudes toward Climate Change and COVID-19
Summary: Some people see teachings from religion/spirituality (r/s) as conflicting with science, but others see r/s and science as independent—or even complementary. Prior research on positions about the relationships between r/s and science is limited in several key respects: This work (a) relied mainly on Christian samples from the United States (U.S.), (b) measured positions with few items, which precluded formal tests of reliability and validity, (c) was mostly descriptive rather than informed by theory, and (d) in large part did not examine implications of different positions for social issues. Our central aim is to advance understandings of positions regarding relationships between r/s and science by collecting data from diverse, cross-cultural samples, employing cutting-edge measurement strategies, and using sophisticated quantitative analyses to test hypotheses about how positions relate to other r/s and scientific worldviews as well as attitudes toward global crises. The main research output of this project will be