It is my proposal to demonstrate that almost all of the apparent conflicts between science and faith arise from models of reality and not from reality itself. Such conflicts may be resolved by reexamining the models of reality we hold that are based on obsolete information.

In recent years, scientific approaches have been developed to treat some “fertility disorders” through in vitro fertilization or IVF, an alternative to the natural route of sperm fertilization of the egg in the womb of the mother. IVF has been used in many situations around the world to help couples who are unable to conceive children by natural means.

To take an aspirin for a headache, and then to repudiate Darwinian evolution, is hypocrisy. For aspirin’s work in our bodies, and the biochemistry of the willow tree from which it is derived, are inextricably bound to evolution. To drive a car and repudiate evolution is hypocrisy. For the car consumes fossil fuel, the knowledge, extraction, and use of which are, again, bound to evolution, which explains the formation of petroleum from ancient sea creatures. If we live in the modern world, enjoying the fruits of science, then we cannot reject its theories.

Taxonomy, the science of classification, is a basic means of understanding the world around us. In biology, organisms are classified according to the well-known system of kingdom, phylum, class, and subsequent levels of increasing specificity, all the way down to species and subspecies. Taxonomy is not inherent in the organisms themselves, however.

To understand the deep connection between science and religion, we need to study the assumptions lying at the roots of scientific thought. No discourse ever starts from nothing; we always make assumptions. When a discourse is young, these assumptions are debated and open to the light of day, but with the passage of time they start to be taken for granted and gradually slip into subconsciousness.

Rod Dreher’s idea of a “Benedict option” is ostensibly drawn from the closing paragraph of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s monumental book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Writing in 1981, MacIntyre pointed to the efforts of Christians during the decline of the Roman Empire to salvage their moral tradition by constructing “local forms of community.”