Summary Of Rocks Of Ages By Stephen Jay Gould

Rocks of Ages by Stephen Jay Gould argued a concept called NOMA, which stands for Non-Overlapping Magisteria which is a philosophy of non-interference in certain domains of thought and inquiry, and in this specific book, Gould uses the idea of NOMA to argue for the separation of religion and science. His arguments revolved around three main topics: Defining NOMA, the history of science versus religion, and the psychology behind the rejection of NOMA. Although he touches almost every base for every question I could think of, I did not see the book as an easy read--the points seemed scattered and I couldn’t keep up with his thought process and its relation to his thesis. When one boils it down to whether or not his idea would work, the answer would have to be yes, but under unobtainable conditions, in my opinion. Gould makes sure to stress that under NOMA, science and religion are of equal importance. I believe that it would have benefitted Gould to try to dive a bit into religion before he wrote this book. It is obvious that his upbringing did not involve a strong religious foundation, and his

God and nature are heavily interconnected in almost every religion. God does not even need to be involved--basic religions revolving around aminism are entirely nature based. When Gould states “[t]he facts of nature are what they are, and cannot, in principle, resolve religious questions about God, meaning, and morality” according to NOMA, then he is stating that nature belongs to science (p.193). Another concept of NOMA is “rules of evolution violate all standards of human ethical conduct,” which brings me to ask, does that mean science cannot question if social constructs and basic ethics and morality are susceptible to evolution, too (p.195-196)? In my view, NOMA places limits on both the domains of science and religion, but it prioritizes