Two magisteria, two kinds of question, no trespass: science takes the facts, religion takes the meaning. Gould’s NOMA is the famous modern form.
The independence model assigns science and religion to separate jurisdictions: science answers questions of fact and mechanism; religion answers questions of meaning, value, and ultimate purpose. Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA) is its most cited modern form; the neo-orthodox insistence that faith speaks its own language, answerable to no laboratory, is a theological form of the same settlement.
The model’s strength is peace with clear borders. Its weakness is that the borders leak: religions make factual claims (that the world began, that a tomb was empty), and sciences generate meanings whether they intend to or not. Most working scientists and most believers live in the overlap and manage it some other way.
References
- Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages (1999)
- Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (1997)