In this talk I examine recent sociological research on the relationship between religion and science for the public. This research suggests that while religion may have at one time been concerned with fact claims in the natural world that could be contradicted by science, it largely is no longer. This post-1960s development has coincided with the rise of moral conflict between religious traditions and science. However, social science and humanities research on this relationship largely assumes that religion and science are epistemic – not moral – systems, and thus misunderstands the situation in the public.

John H. Evans is the Tata Chancellor’s Chair in Social Sciences, Associate Dean of the Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego. He has been a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University and has held visiting professorial fellowships or honorary professorships at the Universities of Edinburgh, Muenster, Ben Gurion, and Queensland. He specializes in examining debates that involve religion and science in the public sphere, trying to use social science to contribute to humanistic and ethical debates. He has particularly focused on ethical debates about human genetics.

The talk will be held in Haines 279.