Science and religion have been described as the “two dominant forces in our culture”. As such, the relation between them has been a matter of intense debate, having profound implications for deeper understanding of our place in the universe. One position naturally associated with scientists of a materialistic outlook is that science and religion are contradictory, incompatible worldviews; however, a great deal of recent literature criticises this “conflict thesis” as simple-minded, essentially ignorant of the nature of religion and its philosophical and theological underpinnings. In this first part of a two-part article, I set out the wide-ranging background required for a proper understanding of the debate as a preliminary for the second part, in which Ian Barbour ’s influential four-fold typology of science-religion relations is critically assessed, leading to the conclusion that the conflict model is not to be so easily dismissed.

科学和宗教被描述为“我们文化中的两大主导力量”。因此，它们之间的关系一直是一个激烈争论的问题，对于更深入地了解我们在宇宙中的位置具有深远的影响。与唯物主义观点的科学家自然相关的一个立场是，科学和宗教是矛盾的、不相容的世界观。然而，最近的大量文献批评这种“冲突论点”头脑简单，根本不了解宗教的本质及其哲学和神学基础。在这篇由两部分组成的文章的第一部分中，我列出了正确理解辩论所需的广泛背景，作为第二部分的预备，