I’m really glad that the topic of Religion vs. Science (or Religion WITH Science) got brought up because, as some of you already know, there was a massive debate about it on Facebook the other night. I have to agree 100 per cent that science and religion can co-exist peacefully. There will always be discrepancies, but nonetheless I feel that the two can quite easily coexist. The use of the Qur’an is a great example. There is an abundant supply of examples.
1)Pope John Paul II fully supported the theory of evolution. In fact, he used Bible verses from Genesis to justify the astounding connection.
2) St. Thomas Aquinas stated that the pursuit of scientific truth is necessary to the pursuit of truth in faith. He believed that God would want us to know as much as we could about the beautiful world that He created for us – aka pursuit of science.
3) The numbers used in “modern math” are traditionally Arabic numbers which were created by early Muslims (especially zero which was completely non-existent – no pun intended). And, without modern math we couldn’t possibly have modern science. Islam provided the root of the technology and science that we have today.
4) Protestantism gave rise to the Industrial Revolution. It was Calvinism that gave protestants such a strong belief in having a good work ethic, which spurred production rates. Eventually a traditional economy was no longer efficient enough, and the market economy took over, which is, in essence, the Industrial Revolution. Efficiency became synonymous with mass production, which became synonymous with good work ethic, which became synonymous with heaven. Christianity created the conditions for the Industrial Revolution to rise, again, without which we would have no modern technology or science.
5) Finally, giving science too much credit is just as dangerous as religious fundamentalism. Neither science nor religion have ALL the answers. There are things in science that we still do not know. For example: love. I can’t touch it, I can’t see it, or hear it, or smell it, or taste it – but I can feel it in the depths of my being. There may be neuroscientific explanations for the bodies response to the feeling of love, but this does not explain why I love or what I love or how I love. There are no sound explanations for a lot of things that are very real to a lot of people. This is not to say that science is unreliable, just that it doesn’t always have the concrete answers we crave.
My point is this: why put too much stock in one ideal – whether it be science or religion? They may not always agree, but rarely are there ideals in this world that harmonize perfectly together. Science hasn’t caused war, nor has religion. People cause war. It has been a the belief that one man’s ideals are superior to another man’s ideals. When looking at the truth of the world, science and religion have been able to co-exist peacefully, until people choose to create conflict between the two. We make the choices, not science or religion.
