What
is the Relationship between Science and Religion?
The short answer is
'none!'. It is like asking what is the relationship between a shadow
and a tooth pick. There is no relationship between them. You can
examine a tooth pick in the laboratory but you can't examine a
shadow. Religion has NOTHING to teach science and science has
NOTHING to teach religion. Religion is trying to discover if there
is an invisible reality behind the universe and what it might be
like. Science is trying to learn as much as it can about the physical
universe that we can examine.
We ought to be quite
trusting of the results of the work of honest scientists. It is a
self correcting field of study. In the long run, it will get things
right. (but some times it takes some time). We believe that if
the clear established teaching of science conflicts with any
INTERPRETATION of religious books, we ought to take such scientific
conclusions very seriously. For instance, for many years it was
thought that the age of the earth could
be determined by studying the genealogies in the New Testament of the
Bible. It was concluded that the creation of the universe was about
6000 years ago.
This was an interpretation
that is very seriously challenged by a very large host of
archeologists, paleontologist, geologists, chemists, cosmologists,
biologists, physicists, and a host of other methods of study to be
impossible. A very significant number of these scientists hold
strong religious beliefs.
There has been a long
conflict between people who hold religious beliefs and some scientist
about evolution. It is popularly been labeled as the war between
'Religion and Science” or “Science and the Bible”. We would
assert that this is an meaningless conflict. The word evolution
simply means change. It is perfectly obvious that many, many changes
in plants and animals have happened and it has been firmly
established that this has been caused by genetic mutations over a
very, very long period of time. So, yes, that kind evolution is
true. Humans evolved from a microscopic speck. But there is a
second kind of evolutionary thinking that claims to know that the
universe created itself. That is not science, it is philosophy.
When scientists assert that there is no creator they not speaking as
scientists but as humans with no more authority than anybody else.
There are lots of things
that are very widely and rightly believed that are beyond the ability
of science to examine. Science can not directly examine emotions,
ideas, beauty, truth, values, etc. Science can not verify most of
what we read in history books. We believe what we believe about
history because we trust authority. You can't put historical claims
in a test tube. If a person could only believe what science can
prove we would have to be content with very little knowledge.
