Science and Religion

My latest effort for the New York Times Learning Network is a text-based lesson designed to get students thinking about the relationship between science and religion.

Using the NYT LN’s text-to-text format, we’ve put a 1930’s NYT editorial by Albert Einstein on “Religion and Science” together with a recent article about efforts between physicists and Tibetan monks to improve understanding between the two groups.  Students read the two pieces with some guiding questions, looking for similarities and differences between what Einstein and the Dalai Lama are describing.

The Einstein piece is especially good.  Here is a favorite excerpt.

It is therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science, and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research … What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work!

In any event, I’m proud to have brought Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and the Dalai Lama together in one piece!  You can read it here.