Against the New Conflict Thesis

What makes for the appearance of incompatibility between science and religion? Some contributors to the »After Science and Religion« project attribute incompatibility to scientists' assumption of methodological naturalism. In this paper, I argue that the appearance of incompatibility actually stems from upstream theological assumptions about the meaning of the Christian doctrine of creation. In particular, an overemphasis on the intrinsic relation between creaturely being and divine Being can lead to a view that finds the practice of methodological naturalism totally incompatible with theism. I offer an alternative reading of creation as a corrective, which emphasizes the difference between creatures and Creator. Keeping this difference in view creates room for the study of the natural world apart from explicit reference to God, and for a theological reason: the 'ever greater dissimilarity' between Creator and creature warrants a mode of explanation that seeks to understand creatures as different than God.