Between Religion and Science: Complementarity in the Religious Thinking of Young People

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Abstract
One of the major reasons why adolescents lose interest in religion is the incompatibility, as they see it, between religious and scientific world views. Much of the evidence for this has come from sociological studies, but the present article takes a psychological perspective. It is the maturity of children's thinking which influences the way they see the relationship between science and religion. We must therefore study the stages of cognitive development to see how the crisis in views of the world develops. The crucial factor is whether alternative structures or interpretations can be understood as complementing each other, and we shall suggest that it is the achievement of this ‘complementarity’ which enables young people to pass through critical stages in their development. Complementarity enables people to co‐ordinate ‘conflicting’ statements and to arrive at synoptic points of view. We shall present some empirical evidence relevant to this hypothesis. The relationship between the religious and the scientific world views will be studied from the point of view of the young people themselves, and as evaluated by scientists and theologians. What emerges is by no means a consensus, but some of our findings should make it possible to alleviate the cognitive dissonance which we are discussing.

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