INTRODUCTION: A VARIETY OF STRATEGIES

Humans too ‘are the earth in one of its manifestations’. We are part and parcel of nature. Our mental life, consciousness, and culture, our sciences and our religious convictions ‘do not flow unsupported’, nor do they merely ‘rest upon’ our physical constitution. We are natural, limited, biological beings. This has consequences for our self-understanding, our views of human religion and science included.

We are atoms and molecules, but we are not just piles of them. We are much more structured and shaped. Reality allows for a rough division into levels of complexity, from quarks to atoms, and from molecules to organisms and cultures, and our knowledge ranges accordingly from physics and biology to the social sciences and humanities. Religion and morality belong to the ‘highest’ level, that of human persons, cultures, and traditions. However, that level does not ‘flow unsupported’, but is rooted in, or rather a manifestation of, the rich possibilities of the natural world. In this study I seek to articulate such a view of reality and attempt to think through perspectives for religion in a world best understood in scientific terms. In chapter I I will articulate my understanding of the main partners, that is, of science and the naturalist view of reality which, in my opinion, is the most adequate interpretation of the sciences [2], and of religion [3].