Religion v. Science? No and Yes

Abstract

Many participants in bioethical debate believe the long-standing myth about the religiously oriented members of the public—that they disagree with scientific fact claims about the natural world. While there are a few conflicts over such claims for a few religious traditions, largely concerning human origins, these fact claims are not relevant for bioethics. Instead, social science research has shown widespread moral conflict between scientists and the actively religious in the United States. The prevalence of moral conflict and the absence of fact conflict is illustrated by the Covid pandemic, where religious objections to vaccines were moral, not factual, in nature. It is important to accurately represent conflicts so that the public sees bioethical input to policy debates as legitimate.