Religion is about reality, that is about creation and about God. Science informs us about reality. If the central concerns of each enterprise are seen thus, how do science and religion interact? We will consider in chapter 3 two areas of interaction, namely in relation to the discoveries of science, the insights about the world, and to the discovery of science, the rise of science to a major, if not the major, position in our attempts to find out about the world. In the terms of the earlier 3 × 3-classification [5], we are dealing with the first column (a cognitive understanding of religion), and especially with areas 1a (new knowledge, the discoveries of science) and 1b (new conceptions of knowledge, the discovery of science).

We will begin with theological responses to the discoveries of science. A major issue is the impact of these discoveries on our understanding of the world as a tightly knit web of processes described by laws. What possibilities are there for an understanding of divine activity within the processes of the world? I will argue that a quest for gaps in natural processes is unsuccessful, given the coherence of scientific insights, but that the denial of such gaps within natural processes does not foreclose all options for a view of divine action, since divine action may also be conceived as a unique creative-sustaining (not causal-temporal) action with respect to everything [13]. We will also consider alternative conceptions of the divine which do not involve anything that resembles divine activity in the world. Rather, they emphasise a cosmic sense of meaning or mystery [14].