A INFLUÊNCIA DA RELIGIÃO NO ENSINO DE BIOLOGIA: PERSPECTIVAS DE RELACIONAMENTO ENTRE A FÉ E A CIÊNCIA

Abstract

Since the emergence of humanity, we have noticed the presence of religion as part of people and nations’ culture. The belief in something supernatural has accompanied and guided the human being in his way of living, acting and understanding the universe. Religion has always presented itself as one of the social pillars, with the capacity to directly influence the formation of concepts and knowledge of the world. On the other hand, society is living a process of constructing its conceptions, and there is a need to explain facts and phenomena science has presented itself as the appropriate tool to foster all transformations, since the whole modern educational system is based on the structuring of scientific thought, where the critical and rationalist model of observing the world and its phenomena is introduced. With the development of science, which brought to light a truth based on new theories, this new science ended up clashing mainly with the fundamentalist wing of religion. Until the end of the seventeenth century during the rise of modern science, it remained directly linked to religion. The Renaissance, and then the Enlightenment movement, began the process of breaking religion with modern science. Conceptualizing the historical position of the religious and scientific phenomena it is possible to seek a methodological tool capable of providing a coherent parallel between such areas of action. The theologian-scientist Ian Graeme Barbour offers such tools through his quadruple methodology of understanding the relationship between science and religion. Barbour presents a taxonomic sketch capable of identifying the ways in which people relate science and religion, and such typology offers help to those who seek to investigate the relationship between complex and deeply interrelated areas. The quadruple typology is defined as: 1) conflict, between scientific materialism and biblical literalism. 2) Independence, defended by methods of investigation and scientific and religious language. 3) Dialogue, with limit-questions, methodological parallelism and spirituality centered on nature. 4) Integration, centered on natural theology, theology of nature and systematic synthesis with the theology of the process. The descriptive research seeks to reveal how high school students experience religion and faith, in other words, how religion influences the process of teaching-learning in Biology, specifically in schools in the municipality of Iúna-ES. The fieldwork in the form of a questionnaire, a method used to observe the phenomenon described, seeks to report the reality of the facts observed in the educational institutions where the research is developed.