Is Religion a Threat to Science?
Some scientists see religion as a threat to the scientific method that should be resisted. But faith “is really asking a different set of questions,” says Collins.
I think one of the fallacies atheists run to is objecting that questions that science can’t answer are inappropriate or invalid. Unfortunately, science can only answer scientific questions using its scientific method. This limitation is a sort of incompleteness embedded in it. Faith and religion answer a different set of questions beyond the realm of scientific comprehension.
At best, science is descriptive, providing explanations of ‘how’ something works; faith prefers to explain ‘why’, and often with ‘how’ — both search for truth, often different realities. And while science revolves around the seen, faith addresses issues in the unseen and philosophical realm. Franck Collins, speaking to @bigthink, explains that:
“‘Why are we all here?’ ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ ‘Is there a God?’ Isn’t it clear that those aren’t scientific questions, and that science doesn’t have much to say about them?”
Questions like this often lead to a conclusion that something besides science is required to explain these curiosities — Whether faith, philosophical theories, or ideologies.
Albert Einstein is widely credited with believing that science without religion was lame, and religion without science was blind. Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of California, arguing on the issue of contradiction/co-existence between science and religion, said:
“I am convinced that evolution and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. Indeed, if science and religion are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because they concern different matters.”
This belief is valid, primarily because of the earlier points; both view the world differently for a whole perfect picture. However, Victor Stegner, an emeritus Professor of Physics, objects that while religion and science might co-exist, they cannot produce a homogeneous mixture, as they differ in the method of obtaining information.
Nevertheless, Williams Briggs, another physicist, provided nuance to this acclaimed opposition, saying that:
“They’re at odds in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.”
Furthermore, he inclined toward separating roles by suggesting that religion gives a man his purpose and science provides him with the power to achieve it. An observable fact as early scientists were clergymen of either of the Abrahamic religions. E.g., Al-Khwārizmī, a Muslim, is famous for his mathematical works in algebra, and Newton, a Christian, for his Newtonian mechanics.
This co-existence is true today.
Components that modern-day atheism believes to have participated in the failure of religion, of which Dan Brown, author of angels and demons, clarified that they are those due to the flaw of humanity.
“Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. Science tells me god must exist.”
So to review the question of whether religion is a threat to science, the closing remark from Francisco provides a subtle and remarkable closure:
“Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and of human life, the proper relation of people to the Creator and to each other, the moral values that inspire and govern people’s lives. Apparent contradictions only emerge when either the science or the beliefs, or often both, trespass their own boundaries and wrongfully encroach upon one another’s subject matter.”
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