Two Orthodoxies and Science: Comparative Reflections.

Abstract

This essay offers a comparative discussion of attitudes to science within Jewish and Christian Orthodoxies. When it touches on the contemporary period, it deals with different varieties of Jewish Orthodoxy rather than the more liberal Jewish denominations. Debates about science and religion, rarely involving active—let alone prominent—scientists, take place within both religious traditions. The issues can be roughly divided in two categories—cognitive and social—even though the two may occasionally intersect. The first category, apparently more important for the Greek Orthodox, addresses issues of the content of research and of its influence on ethics. Social issues constitute the other important aspect of the interaction between religion and modernity: Is it desirable to spend time on anything but religious studies and to engage in modern society at all, lest its more permissive norms and ideas corrupt proper behavior? This aspect seems to preoccupy Jewish Orthodoxy more than Greek Orthodoxy.