"Last week, I participated in a workshop on the science-religion dialogue during which I was asked: Are scientific and religious explanations philosophically incompatible?"

"I've been thinking about the question ever since. The simple answers — 'yes' or 'no' — have advocates, but they don't seem to do the issues justice."

"For someone like evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, the answer would likely have been "yes." He saw science and religion as occupying distinct spheres, or "non-overlapping magisteria." If science is concerned exclusively with facts and religion exclusively with values, for example, then they might avoid direct conflict by explaining different things."