Modern Science and Christianity

David Luft will introduce the series with a general discussion of the issue of science and religion in Western culture since about 1500, emphasizing the relationship between modern science and Christianity.  He is particularly concerned with how religion, especially Christianity, is different from science, and he argues that a religion is not a formulation about great theoretical overviews, but a spiritual practice, a way of living and being in the world.  The talk will discuss the problem of science and religion in contemporary American culture, the history of secularization in modern Western history, and some twentieth-century approaches to religious experience.