Religious people view both science and religion as less epistemically valuable than non-religious people view science

Abstract

Many religious people deny any conflict between religion and science, but nevertheless report less trust in science than non-religious people. We address this puzzle using insights from goal systems theory. Goal systems theory suggests that, when people have more means of achieving a goal, they perceive each individual means as less instrumental. We translate this “instrumentality hypothesis” to differences in how religious and non-religious people perceive science and religion. Religious people—who use both science and religion as means to gain knowledge—may perceive both as moderately instrumental, and as less instrumental than non-religious people view science. We support the instrumentality hypothesis in studies where participants evaluate the capacity of science and religion to explain extraordinary phenomena (Study 1), fill gaps in knowledge (Study 2), answer life's big questions (Study 3), and to help avoid COVID-19 infection (Study 4). We also find that non-religious people overperceive religious people's trust in religion and underperceive religious people's trust in science as sources of knowledge (Study 5). Non-religious people think that religion deters trust in science at the expense of high trust in religion, but instead, the typical religious person avoids extreme epistemic reliance on any single source of knowledge.