Science, Religion, and Democracy

Debates sometimes arise within democratic societies because of the fact that findings accepted in accordance with the standards of scientific research conflict with the beliefs of citizens. I use the example of the dispute about Darwinian evolutionary theory to explore what a commitment to democracy might require of us in circumstances of this kind. I argue that the existence of hybrid epistemologies – tendencies to acquiesce in scientific recommendations on some occasions and to defer to non-scientific authorities on others – poses a serious problem for democratic decision-making. We need a shared conception of public reason, and it can only be secular.