Archive Entry #5: January 19, 2012
For many in our culture, science and religion conflict in a way that produces clearly defined and frequently combative communities.
- In science, evolution is a well-supported theory; but to some religious people, it is a threat to the biblical declaration that humans are God's creations.
- To many religious people, the existence of God is an obvious and necessary truth; but to some science partisans, it is an arcane, sometimes insane, fantasy.
I've never understood the science-religion divide, principally because science and religion pursue answers to fundamentally different questions.
- Science wants to understand how things work – the mechanics of plants, animals, rock formations, galaxies, and such.
- Religion's focus is the meaning, purpose, character, and origins of things; it asks "why" and "who" questions, not "how" questions.
In the case of evolution, for example – and this is a VERY simplistic rendering of the issue – religion asserts that God is the "who" responsible for us humans, and science tells us how God did it. Contentious debate on the issues is not inevitable because they're not talking about the same subjects. The two camps don't formally acknowledge each other – evolutionary scientists rarely add "God" sections to their academic papers, and the Bible doesn't comment on the implications of fossilized exo-skeletons – but we shouldn't expect them to, given their fundamentally different concerns.
My purchase of a telescope at the end of 2011 gave rise to the following column's engagement with the science v. religion debate. As you read it, pay attention to your reactions. Do those reactions suggest that you're a partisan for one of the camps? Or are you more like me, someone who values each discipline's contributions and endorses their peaceful, productive coexistence?
