Science and Religion 271practice of science for a Christian. It provides the context for the study of
God’s creation.”^38
Other than scientifi c creationists, the religious conservatives in the
Anglo American world who have played the most prominent role in dis-
cussing the relationship between science and religion are proponents of
what has come to be known as intelligent design theory. Although most
intelligent design advocates avoid appealing to the Bible, they share the
creationists’ conviction that theological beliefs should be brought to bear
on the scientifi c enterprise. Lying at the heart of the intelligent design
movement, which attained visible form in the 1990s, is a rejection of
the notion that “methodological naturalism” should serve as the reign-
ing norm of scientifi c investigation. Advocates of intelligent design have
steadfastly maintained that legitimate “demarcation” criteria cannot be
found to justify excluding God from the realm of scientifi c inquiry. Thus,
at a 2005 hearing of the Kansas Board of Education, they “proposed chang-
ing the defi nition of science to include explanations other than ‘natural.’”
The recourse of proponents of intelligent design to a “theistic science” is
predicated on what they regard as the commonsense notion that “Chris-
tians ought to consult all they know or have reason to believe in forming
and testing hypotheses, explaining things in science and evaluating the
plausibility of various scientifi c hypotheses, and among the things they
should consult are propositions of theology.”^39
Religious believers convinced of the inadequacy of modern scien-
tifi c perspectives have not monopolized aggressive rhetoric. During the
past few decades the level of militance among proponents of scientifi c
naturalism has also escalated. In contrast to the fi rst half of the twen-
tieth century, when scientists tended to stress the compatibility of sci-
ence with religion, a number of more recent scientifi c luminaries, such
as the physicists Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking, the biologists
Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick, and the philosopher Daniel Den-
nett, have dismissed, even scorned, the beliefs of orthodox Christians.
Although some of the critics have continued to employ such fi gures of
speech as “discovering the mind of God” in describing their work, they
clearly regard the notion of a supernatural or transcendent realm of real-
ity as an unedifying fi ction. The Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin has
suggested that a “commitment to materialism” constitutes an important
element of the apparatus of modern science. “We are forced by our a
priori adherence to material causes,” he wrote in 1997, “to create an ap-
paratus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material ex-
planations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to
the uninitiated.”^40