BETWEEN ADDITION AND DIFFERENCE - A PLACE FOR RELIGIOUS UNDERSTANDINGIN A WORLD OF SCIENCE

Among contemporary religious believers, some follow in the footsteps o f Newton, allowing their religious understanding to fill in gaps left by the sciences. Others take a more Wittgensteinian approach, discrete ly separating religious from scientific ways of thinking. Because neit her of these relatively irenic positions captures the important elemen t of cultural reform that is prevalent in so much of the religious lif e of the past, George Lakoff's recent work in cognitive studies is use d to suggest ways that religious ideas may be used to challenge and en rich scientific thought. A scrutiny of Richard Dawkins's biological an alyses of human behavior reveals the distorting limitations of exclusi vely scientific understanding, thereby clearing conceptual space for g enuinely religious values, actions, responsibilities, and forms of hum an life.