Science versus Religion
While many theorists and philosophers believe that science and religion are separate of each other, they are co-existent and co-dependent. In other words, there is a rivalry which has grown from science and religion’s dependence on each other to decipher the mysteries of the universe. The search for knowledge is one of the oldest professions in the world, and religion is among the oldest paths to knowledge. Science was once a part of religious studies; however as religion evolved science took a different path to discovery. An example of religion and science working together can be seen in the studies of astrology and astronomy. Today, they are known as two different branches of study, but in the past they were one and the same. In ancient Greece, Rome, and Middle East, philosophers and scientists would conduct scientific experiments and discuss philosophy in buildings which stood in the shadows of temples, and quite often their schools were sponsored by religious establishments. The movement of stars, comets, planets, and solar cycles were often part of Aztec and Mayan religious ceremonies where even an Aztec priest could predict a solar eclipse just as accurately as modern day astronomers. It was not until the European Renaissance that a true division or divorce was recognized between science and religion with the argument that the sun was the center of the solar system. The final thread in religion and science’s separation was Darwin and his philosophy of evolution.
“In its simplest terms, the conflict is between two ways of understanding the world: evidence and logic versus unquestioned authoritative texts and faith.” (Fish, 2010, p.27). This may be the absolute truth. Science builds its “truths” around empirical evidence. Everything must be tested and proven, while religion builds its “truths” on faith. The text book (2010) states it plainly, “Science, that is, can tell us the what, but religion or spirituality often provides the profound and meaningful responses to "why?"” (Kindle 3430-3431). This shows that religion and science must work together in order to get a holistic answer to many of the universes questions.
Religious officials and followers belief in their truths based on what they read in the bible. Over the years many scientists, historians, and archaeologists have tried to use science to prove or disprove many of the stories from the bible: stories such as the beginning of the earth, humans, and animal life, the great flood, the birth of Christ, his burial place, and his resurrection. “For physicists, introducing God as a cause would interfere with or contradict their extremely powerful explanatory models that go all the way back to the Big Bang” (p. 28). On the other hand, religious leaders felt as if science was “interfering with or contradicting” their explanations of the bible stories. For religious leaders, Jesus’ miracles and miracles performed in his name were all the evidence they needed of a God and his inspired words. However, for scientist’s, tests had to be run and hypotheses had to be controlled, tested, and proven.
Wilson denotes a science versus religion conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church. Galileo ranks right up there with Copernicus and Martin Luther, who all challenged the beliefs and teachings of the church. Luther disagreed with the church’s belief in paying for a place in heaven. Copernicus believed that the sun was the center of the universe and that the earth was round in a time when the church preached that the earth was flat and the center of the universe. Luther’s disagreement with the church was more philosophical than scientific, but Copernicus’ beliefs were based on science and were eventually proven through scientific exploration. Interestingly enough, a religious believer, Tycho used science to try and disprove science. “ The bible presented the earth as stationary…two cannon balls shot with and against the direction of the earth’s alleged spin went approximately the same distance” (Wilson, 1999, p. 68). Galileo was one of those scientific minded individuals who set out to test Copernicus’ hypotheses. Galileo observed the movement of the tides, and was able to watch the night sky with a telescope, where he discovered the moons of Jupiter and Earth. Many of Galileo’s findings did not find support within the Catholic Church, and definitely not within the government.
Just as the religious believers tried to disprove scientific findings, Galileo tried to convince people of faith to “approach nature not through revelation but through observation and reason…since nature was as much God’s work as the Bible” (p. 79). The church in their response to Galileo believed Galileo elevated himself to a position of higher than God, and of knowing more than God. They stated, “Galileo wrongly asserts and declares certain equality between the human and the divine intellect in the understanding of geometrical matters” (p. 81). The church went as far as to call Galileo a fool, and the Pope was adamant about the inequality between God’s mind and man’s mind. The church also refuted Galileo’s evidence of the tides being caused by the movement of the earth (p. 81).
Galileo’s fate was not a happy one, and he had very little support among his peers, but his hypotheses would hit a cord with many scientists over the years and divide science and religion farther apart. By the time Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution in On the Origins of Species, society was not as dependent on the word of the church. There were a lot of scientific developments and people began to question the biblical stories and philosophies of the bible they were being taught. While many people found Darwin’s theories to be crazy and outlandish and very revolutionary for his day, there were more supporters than with Galileo’s theories. Imagine a society who had been taught to belief that God had imagined and made humans, animals, and a world in which to put them. Single handedly, God had made Adam and Eve in his own image and gave them reign over everything on Earth. And then, imagine a man comes along and says it’s all a lie. He claims the humans evolved from other species and that there was evidence of “relatedness and succession among closely allied species” (Quammen, 2009 p. 4 of 7). He finds fossils and documents all his findings in order to share it with people. His findings were controversial and “have been attacked for more than 150 years, most recently by advocates for faith who argue that this world shows all the hallmarks of “intelligent design,” i.e., divine creation” (Stengel & Lacayo (eds), 2010, p. 98). One important factor to note is that Darwin does not refute the existence of God, but how God actually started his work. He believed that God’s timeline could be traced through the evidence left behind: the fossils.
The twentieth century did not see an end to the controversy of science and religion, but an explosion Evolution, while revolutionary in its time, really did not become an issue until “the enormous growth of public high schools between 1900-1920) that exposed rural population to modern science” (Levinson, 2006, p 422). Then there was a group known as the Creation Science Society, which began in 1963. They tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the United States Supreme Court from “overturning a state ban of evolution” (p 427). And in 1987, the “Supreme Court recognized creation science as religious doctrine, not science” (p. 427). The creationist group’s largest religious opponent seems to be the Scientism group. They are a group who embraced a religion which “exalts the view of science and scientific inquiry to an absolutely predominant position, capable of solving, explaining, and/or passing judgment on everything” (p 427). According to the article, Scientism is science as a religion.
Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus have all been dubbed the fathers of modern science. They all opposed the church and various doctrines taught by the church, but as the years travel by more scientists would pick up the torch and education would expand, and faith based educations seemed to decline. According to one article (2009), “the American media exacerbate[d] the problem” (p. 17) by comparing religion and science as two fighters in a cage match. Religious “dogmatists” are in one corner and scientists in another corner. There is a group of men whom Gregory calls ‘the New Atheists”, who belittle religion and religious followers because they have no belief in religion. Gregory states, “findings of science do not demand an atheistic denial of God, but can instead be rationally interpreted in different terms consistent with a traditional Christian view of God and theology of creation” (p. 18). This echoes the belief of Darwin’s theory that God was responsible for the Earth and it’s creations, but that God’s image may not be what we belief the bible states because humans evolved from different organisms.
One of the biggest conflicts between religion and science in the modern time is the theories of intelligent design and natural selection (evolution). The New World Encyclopedia defines intelligent design as “the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that certain features of the universe and of things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection” ( Young (ed), 2004, p 6). Obviously, the major conflict is how or when life evolved on Earth. The evolutionists believe that all life evolved by chance and only the strong survived without any grand theme or reason. This does not include Darwin since he did belief in the existence of God. The intelligent designers believe life evolved on a grand program started by an intelligent being not necessarily the God in religious texts. It has nothing in common with the creationism or natural theology. Evolutionists believe that any theory that contradicts evolution is a false theory. When the theory of genetics was first published, the evolutionist was fast to attack the theory until it could explain evolutional traits and how they could be passed on the next generation.
Both theories complement each other. While evolution theory explains how we got here, it also explains how life on Earth changed due to the different climates around the world and throughout history. “Both YEC and ID, that is, insist that to separate religion and science does irreparable harm to our understanding of both because religion informs our scientific understanding just as our science complements our religious understanding.” (Kindle ed 3436-3438). Evolution can be explained through Mendel’s study of genetics and Darwin’s various designs of fossils, but DNA can only be explained through intelligent design. The double helix of DNA twirls around in the human body, providing information to the cells, and providing information into the offspring. The sophistication and the design have not, nor ever will be duplicated by a human being or natural selection. The powers to be within the religious world are adamant that only one entity could be responsible for the design of humans: God.
No matter how much some people believe that religion and science must work together to encompass the entirety of universal thought and answer many of the universes questions, some theorists or philosophers such as Stephen Jay Gould believe that Science and religion are two different “magisteria”. According to the text book (2010) Gould believed:
“if they [Science and Religion] are careful not to overstep their own boundaries, those who operate in the two magisteria can have respectful and productive conversations with each other, and each has much to learn from the other. Gould insists that scientists must recognize that many of life's most important questions cannot be answered by science alone, but he, along with many other scientists, also wants it to be recognized that religion should not attempt to address legitimate scientific claims with techniques that fall outside the magisterium of science.” (Kindle 3415-3421).
In other words, Gould recognizes that some questions require both disciplines to conclude some truths, but one discipline should not attempt to answer a question which obviously belongs to the other discipline. It is not clear by Gould’s theory which questions belong to the religious discipline or which belongs to the scientific discipline of study.
The battle between science and religion may have begun with the Aztecs. Religion and science may examine one aspect of life, but from different ends of the spectrum. While Science relies on empirical data and proof, religion relies on faith alone. While science seeks to answer the how or what, religion seeks to answer the why. While some of the events of the Bible can be and have been proven through DNA testing, not all miracles can be proven scientifically. Science, once a strong part of religion, became an entity on its own. Science continues to branch into sub-levels such as biology, earth science, and chemistry. On the other hand, religion has also developed changes over the years. Religion has seen separation and division among its followers with the different denominations and radical beliefs. Science was used in religion to come up with the first calendar (Aztec calendar). Science and religion have been argued by some very influential men. Whether one believes in religion and science as one, or as divorced entities, one has to admit that one could not exist without the other. Evolution still remains a vital argument between science and religion. It will be the proverbial which came first, the chicken or the egg. Did God make us and then we evolved? Or did life evolve on Earth without us long before God made us?
References
Fish, J. M. (2010). Science vs. Religion debate. Humanist, 70(4), 27-31. Retrieved from
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Gregory, B. S. (2009). Science Versus Religion?. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought &
Culture, 12(4), 17-55. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Levinson, M. H. (2006). SCIENCE VERSUS RELIGION: A FALSE DICHOTOMY?. ETC: A
Review of General Semantics, 63(4), 422-429. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. New World
Encyclopedia contributors (2009, October 19). Intelligent design. New World
Encyclopedia. Page version ID 945570. Retrieved at
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/intelligentdesign (Young was one of many editors.)
Mosser, R. (2010). PHI 200: A Concise Introduction to Philosophy(Kindle edition). Bridgepoint
Education Inc..
Quammen, D. (February 2009). Darwin’s First Clues. National Geographic Magazine online.
Retrieved on 3/1/2011 at
Stengel, R., & Lacayo, R. (eds)(2010). Time: 100 ideas that Changed the World. Time Home
Entertainment, Inc. New York.
Wilson, D. B. (1999). Galileo's Religion Versus the Church's Science? Rethinking the History of
Science and Religion. Physics in Perspective, 1(1), 65. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Being a man of faith and a subscriber of a business broadband in Australia, I learned that technology is not really a threat to a religious faith. It is more of a tool to enhance our faith.
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