There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism
Interpretation
Science and theistic religion may appear to conflict on the surface, but fundamentally align, whereas science and naturalism superficially agree yet deeply clash.
Alvin Plantinga's quote emphasizes the nuanced relationship between science and different belief systems. He suggests that while there may be apparent disagreements between science and theistic religion, at a deeper level, they can coexist harmoniously in their pursuit of understanding. In contrast, the relationship between science and naturalism may seem aligned at the surface, but profound philosophical conflicts arise when considering their fundamental views of reality and existence.
In practice
In a debate about the compatibility of faith and science.
Suppose we concede that if I had been born of Muslim parents in Morocco rather than Christian parents in Michigan, my beliefs would be quite different. [But] the same goes for the pluralist...If the pluralist had been born in [Morocco] he probably wouldn't be a pluralist. Does it follow that...his pluralist beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable belief-producing process?
Though we may now think some sins light and little, if the Lord awaken the conscience, we shall feel even the smallest sin heavy upon our souls.
Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.
Men from children nothing differ.
It's hard to say who's a greater threat to the world, an ambitious CEO with a big ad budget or a crafty cleric with an obsolete Bible verse.
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
Time is water, and the Venetians conquered both by building a city on water, and framed time with their canals. Or tamed time. Or fenced it in. Or caged it.
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