1. Conflict: Assumes religion and science ask the same questions and must necessarily disagree.  Proponents are often at the extremes of the discussion.  For example, scientific materialists, who reject religion as nonsense, who assume that scientific method is the only reliable guide to knowledge and that matter is the fundamental reality in the universe, find themselves arrayed against biblical literalists, who advocate a literal reading of the Bible, hold a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, reject evolution and advocate "creation science."  

2. Independence: Assumes religion and science ask essentially different questions and therefore cannot disagree.  Proponents assert that religion and science use different languages.  The language of science is a language of observation open to empirical testing.  The language of religion is a language of norms not open to empirical testing.  In other words, science tells us what "is," and religion (and ethics) tells us what "ought" to be.

3. Dialogue:  Assumes that religion and science ask similar questions and can generally talk to each other.  Proponents tease out broad points of contact between religion and science (e.g., methodological parallels), focusing on the general characteristics of both, rather than the relationship of specific religions to specific sciences.

4. Integration:  Assumes that religion and science ask the same questions and can agree.  Proponents attempt to go beyond the generalities of dialogue and seek tight integration between specific theories of religion and science.  An example would be Christian "natural theology," which carefully examines the natural world (and science) and claims to find evidence there for the existence of a transcendent order generally, and Christian truth specifically.