The Creator Gators

Science and Religion

Religion and science have had an uneasy relationship. Science tries to evade the question God. Traditional religion tries to evade science when it conflicts with their scriptures. It was not always so. Religion and science were the same thing when both were primitive and religion was not dogmatic.

Both have grown, but grown in what we can now see as limiting ways, and they have been forced into uncomfortable contact with each other. They have been coerced unwillingly to begin to overlap their boundaries.

Science still has to jump through hoops to explain phenomena that intersect with religion; things like evolution and the creation of life. Science is embarrassed that it can't adequately deal with such problems. If science would allow for the possibility of a spirit world, then Occam's Razor implies that the spirit explanation is correct when it is simpler. But science can't make that leap as long as hard, visible proof of a theory is required. So it continues to invent complex explanations, but these explanations are also unprovable or only partly provable.

Traditional religion still has to jump through hoops to explain Biblical concepts like the age of the earth and the history of humanity, and the early existence of other humanoids like Neanderthal Man and even older races. Religion embarrasses itself when it tries to accomodate the idea of a vengeful and angry God, which seems like a self-contradiction.

Attitudes change very slowly because "I'm going to keep believing what I want to believe, no matter what" is still the norm. The psychological component is strong.

The essential difficulty is that science is fact-based and proof-based, and religion is neither. But that should not prevent science from expanding its horizons, to allow for possibilities that are not directly provable, when those possibilities offer the simplest and best explanation. Science doesn't want to do this but it is being forced in that direction by quantum physics, string theory, the Big Bang theory and other cutting-edge ideas. If at the same time religion can discard its questionable factual assumptions, especially the infallibility of scripture, then religion and science can at least coexist.