On the relationship between science and religion

Zein, Rizqy (2025): On the relationship between science and religion: theory, measurement, and early evidence for the psychological mechanism. Dissertation, LMU München: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Abstract

While some people may prefer to think of a conflict between science and religion, others may believe that it is not necessarily the case. Drawing on Ian G. Barbour’s taxonomy of the science-religion relationship, this dissertation offers an examination through three pillars: theoretical integration, measurement practice, and mechanistic testing. The first pillar integrates theoretical work and empirical evidence from various scientific disciplines to illustrate the psychological process of relating these domains via a flowchart. This process can lead people to adopt one of five conceptualizations: Conflict, Compartment, Context-Switch, Complementary, or Consonance. The second pillar aims to develop a measure that captures these conceptualizations by assuming that the construct is unidimensional and bipolar, and that people respond to the scale items according to an unfolding response process. The third pillar experimentally tests how these mental models affect people’s evaluation of the utility of scientific or religious explanations. The results show that perceptions of conflict and religiosity predict evaluations of religious, but not scientific, explanations. This asymmetry suggests that scientific explanations are primarily evaluated on their epistemic merits, while religious explanations are filtered through pre-existing beliefs. This dissertation, which consists of one theoretical paper and four empirical studies, offers novel insights into how people navigate competing belief systems and has some practical implications for science communication.

• Item Type: Theses (Dissertation, LMU Munich)
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology; 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 150 Psychology
• Faculties: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
• Language: English
• Date of oral examination: 12. November 2025
• 1. Referee: Gollwitzer, Mario
• Signature of the printed copy: 0001/UMC 31601