Non-overlapping magisteria

In a 1997 essay "Non-overlapping Magisteria" for Natural History magazine, and later in his book Rocks of Ages (1999), Gould put forward what he described as "a blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution to ... the supposed conflict between science and religion", He draws the term magisterium from Pope Pius XII's encyclical, Humani generis (1950), and defines it as "a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution", He did not, however, consider this diplomatic aspect to be paramount, writing in 1997: "NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance." In 1997 he had elaborated on this position by describing his role as a scientist with respect to NOMA: Ciarán Benson sees a tendency to re-negotiate the borders between the "human sciences and the natural sciences", as in Wilhelm Dilthey's 1883 claim for the distinction between (humanities) and (science). The astrophysicist Arnold O. Benz proposes that the boundary between the two magisteria is in the different ways they perceive reality: objective measurements in science, participatory experience in religion. The two planes of perceptions differ, but meet each other, for example, in amazement and in ethics. ==National Academy of Sciences==

Also in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences adopted a similar stance. Its publication Science and Creationism stated that "Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each." ==Humani generis==

Gould wrote that he was inspired to consider non-overlapping magisteria after being driven to examine the 1950 encyclical Humani generis, in which Pope Pius XII permits Catholics to entertain the hypothesis of evolution for the human body so long as they accept the divine infusion of the soul. Gould cited the following paragraph: ==Reception==

Richard Dawkins has criticized Gould's position on the grounds that religion is not divorced from scientific matters or the material world. He writes, "it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims." Dawkins also argues that a religion free of divine intervention would be far different from any existing ones, and certainly different from the Abrahamic religions. Moreover, he claims that religions would be only too happy to accept scientific claims that supported their views. For example, if DNA evidence proved that Jesus had no earthly father, Dawkins claims that the argument of non-overlapping magisteria would be quickly dropped. The theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf has been sympathetic to the approach, but claims it for the theological side—Graf assumes that e.g. creationism may be interpreted as a reaction of religious communities on the Verweltanschaulichung (i.e. interpretation as a worldview) of (natural) science in social Darwinism. That said, attempts to compete with religion by natural science may generate a backlash that is detrimental to both sides. Ciarán Benson, a secular humanist, defends the spiritual as a category against both. He assumes that while Gould claims for NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria of science, morality and religion), and Richard Dawkins for, verbally, "a brand of SM (bondage of the others by the scientific magisterium)", Benson preferred OM (overlapping magisteria), especially in the case of art and religion. This exceeds the greatest interconnection allowed by Gould in his original 1997 essay "Nonoverlapping Magisteria" in which he writes: Matt Ridley notes that religion does more than talk about ultimate meanings and morals, and science is not proscribed from talking about the above either. After all, morals involve human behavior, an observable phenomenon, and science is the study of observable phenomena. Ridley notes that there is substantial scientific evidence on evolutionary origins of ethics and morality. Sam Harris has heavily criticized this concept in his book The Moral Landscape. Harris notes that "Meaning, values, morality and the good life must relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures – and, in our case, must lawfully depend upon events in the world and upon states of the human brain." ==See also==