THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: MOVING FROM ANTAGONISM TO MUTUAL RESPECT

Public opposition to evolution is typically attributed to either a failure to educate the general population in the natural sciences, or to misguided religious zealotry. While there is some truth in these assessments, it is contended here that opposition is unnecessarily intensified by an equally misguided antagonism toward religion by many in the scientific community. Three reasons are offered for why religion should be embraced by the scientific community as a potentially legitimate source of truth.

1. Science, being limited in scope to that which is constrained within the bounds of time and space (the natural realm), cannot directly address that which might lie beyond those boundaries. There is no scientific methodology that can test the existence or non-existence of a God who is not confined within the boundaries of the natural realm. Rejection of religion is not a logical result of scientific inquiry, but is based on faith that only that which is scientifically testable can be true.

2. Religion is often viewed as a hindrance to scientific advancement. Misapplied religion has certainly had such an effect, but the advance of scientific discovery has also been hindered by the rejection of traditional religious beliefs. A classic example can be found in the early days of modern cosmology and Einstein’s mathematical model of the universe. Einstein’s original model implied expansion, which in turn implied a beginning and, in the view of some, a Creator. Insertion of the famed cosmological constant to achieve a static universe was not based on scientific evidence, but on a philosophical rejection of a religious concept of creation. Two decades of rigorous analysis and debate were required to purge the error from scientific thought.

3. Science offers no rational substitute for religion in the governing of society. In a purely naturalistic universe, any sense of morality is merely a chemically induced response to an environmental stimulus, and exists only because those in the population with this chemical response tend to build communities resulting in higher reproduction rates. Any individual in this population, once becoming enlightened to the randomness of its existence and the purely chemical nature of what is “moral”, has no abiding reason to perpetuate the species or to behave in any altruistic fashion.