Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) is essentially the “have your cake and eat it too” version of religion. It’s the view that science answers questions about the nature of the universe and religion answers questions about the meaning of life and nature of existence.
Someone who takes the NOMA view would believe that all life on earth, including humans, is descended from a common ancestor, that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, and that the “saved” will spend eternity in paradise. This requires what is known as a low view of scripture, which allows passages that were clearly intended to be taken literally to be taken figuratively instead.
This fails on two counts:
- NOMA acknowledges that the Bible, a “divinely inspiried” ancient text, got every detail about our origins and how the entire cosmos works wrong. Who in their right mind, knowing that, would look to it for answers about how to live their lives?
- NOMA is little more than a “god of the gaps” theology. Considering how many mysteries have been answered by science, why should someone call the last few “divine”?
Rejecting NOMA is one of the handful of things that conservative Christians and atheists actually agree on.