QuestionsShould we believe without proof?Two magisteria that do not overlap
Should we believe without proof?Two separate domains

Two magisteria that do not overlap

NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria)

Stephen Jay Gould 1941 · 2002Palaeontologist. The oddities of living things, like the panda's "thumb", are traces of a history, not an engineer's signature.
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What it claims

No conflict between science and religion should exist: each has a legitimate magisterium, and these magisteria do not overlap.

Why

Science answers questions of fact, religion questions of meaning and value: no question gets two competing answers.

The same idea through history
Galileo Galilei1615Galileo already distinguishes what the Holy Spirit wants to teach us (salvation) from what nature shows (the motion of the heavens). But he keeps a true Scripture to be interpreted; Gould does not deal with the truth of Scripture.Benedictus de Spinoza1670Spinoza separates faith (obedience, justice, charity) from philosophy (truth): another way of saying each has its own domain.
Stephen Jay Gould1997The version presented here: an American palaeontologist, an agnostic, borrows the word "magisterium" from a Pius XII encyclical (1950) to propose peace between science and religion. He sums it up: "we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven".
Albert Einstein1941"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind": for Einstein, science says what is, religion judges ends. Like Gould, he holds that a real conflict is impossible, but he ties the two domains together more than he separates them.
In short

"Two magisteria that do not overlap" is an argument by Stephen Jay Gould ("Nonoverlapping Magisteria", 1997; Rocks of Ages, 1999, 1997) on the question "Should we believe without proof?" (answer: two separate domains). Its claim: No conflict between science and religion should exist: each has a legitimate magisterium, and these magisteria do not overlap. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2, P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"Nonoverlapping Magisteria", 1997; Rocks of Ages, 1999
Valid with an implicit premise

In October 1996 Pope John Paul II defends before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences both the evidence for evolution and its consistency with Catholic doctrine, and the world press makes it front-page news. Gould, a palaeontologist and Darwinian, sees an opportunity to end a war he judges pointless. He proposes a simple rule: science and religion each have a domain of authority, a "magisterium", and these two domains do not overlap. So there is no reason for conflict. He adds that religion does not dictate the facts and that science has no head start on values.

P1Science covers the empirical universe: what it is made of (fact) and why it works as it does (theory). Religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.
P2 · implicit premiseIf science answers only questions of fact and religion only questions of meaning and value, no question receives two competing answers: the two domains do not overlap.
P3 · implicit premiseThere is conflict between two authorities only if they claim to answer the same question.
Therefore no conflict between science and religion should exist: each has a legitimate magisterium, and these magisteria do not overlap.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P2 and P3, the computer finds a case where science deals with facts, religion with values, and there is nonetheless a conflict (for example if a religious text asserts a fact that science denies).
With P2 and P3, the conclusion follows. Without them, one can accept the division of P1 and still see a conflict, if a religious text also makes claims of fact. All the weight thus rests on P2, a hidden premise: it assumes religion makes no claims about the world. That is exactly what its critics deny (Dawkins, miracles). Gould admits that the two magisteria "bump right up against each other" and that many deep questions call on both; he thinks sorting them is difficult, not impossible.
Analogy. A referee and a statistician watch the same match. The first says whether the goal is valid under the rules, the second counts the shots. They cannot contradict each other, since they do not answer the same question. But if the referee starts announcing the number of shots, he enters the statistician's domain, and there disagreement becomes possible again.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Richard Dawkins 2006 · attacks premise 2

Dawkins rejects NOMA. Religions make claims about the world: a universe with a supernatural creative intelligence is a different universe from one without. Whether God exists is thus a scientific question, even if it cannot yet be settled. Religion cannot take refuge in the domain of values alone.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 2006, after the author's death (2002).
The debate goes on (our summary) Gould died in 2002, four years before this book. The basic disagreement: is "God exists" a question of fact like any other (Dawkins), or does religion speak of something other than a hypothesis about the origin of the world? See also Dawkins's argument on the improbability of God. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: no widely accepted answer. Dawkins treats God's existence as an empirical hypothesis; his opponents say that this way of putting the question changes what believers mean by God.
David Hume 1748 · attacks premise 2

Religions tell of miracles, that is, events in the world that would violate the laws of nature. These accounts are claims of fact: they can be weighed against experience, as Hume does. Religion thus overlaps the domain of facts, and can be judged there.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Gould in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume did not write against Gould (he precedes him by more than two centuries): the objection is our application of his reasoning. Gould's 1997 essay does not discuss miracles. A defender of NOMA may reply that miracles are a minor part of religion, or that the statement "God intervened" need not be judged by science. Believers who hold to miracles will reject that reply. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)The basic disagreement: is a miracle an observable fact, which can be tested through testimony and experience, or a sign whose meaning escapes scientific inquiry?
Alvin Plantinga 2011 · attacks the conclusion

Plantinga, a believer and a philosopher, also rejects the separation, but for a different reason from Dawkins. For him, Christian faith asserts that God created the world and acts in it. Theism therefore says something about the world with which science deals. He holds that science and theism are in deep concord, and that the real conflict is between science and naturalism, not religion.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 2011, after the author's death (2002).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Dawkins and Plantinga agree on one point against Gould: religion makes claims about the world. They differ on what follows: do these claims conflict with science (Dawkins) or agree with it (Plantinga)?
What today's voices say
Criticize it
Richard DawkinsHe disagreed with Gould's idea that science and religion are separate domains.