Are science and religion at odds with each other?
This is a seemingly age-old debate. Are science and religion incompatible with each other? This debate might look age-old, but is relatively new in human history. The two things were not separate a few 100 years ago as it is now. Why is there an apparent contrast between the two now?
Is it something like astronomy and astrology? After all, astrology and astronomy were not entirely distinct things a few thousand years back. Over time, astronomy branched out of astrology, and what’s left is pseudoscience. Is the story between science and religion similar? Maybe/Maybe not, but the apparent success of naturalistic science is definitely one of the catalysts for this distinction.
My personal opinion is that science and religion are fundamentally different. We only recognize it now. We don’t need to muddle the two to make them compatible. Attempting to make them compatible with each other would only complicate the matter. Religion and science are like oil and water. They might co-exist, but producing a homogeneous mixture of the two is difficult.
If science and religion are fundamentally different, do we need to choose between the two? Not necessarily. In the practical world, things are not always in strict binary separation.
When I say science and religion are fundamentally different, I don’t mean to say that one must choose this or that. I mean that they are different in their process and epistemology, and some people prefer one over the other. A person leaning toward a scientific way of thinking might believe in the existence of the supernatural or even certain religious doctrines as long as it makes sense. A person leaning towards a religious way of thinking might be okay with scientific knowledge as long as it can be reconciled with religious doctrines. That is the practical scenario, but to understand the differences, we need to take examples of scenarios where the choices are virtually binary.
Have you ever heard about the trolley problem? If not, then check out the Wikipedia page. As I see it, trolley problems virtually strip down all possibilities and present you with a binary choice that will never happen in the real world. But by introspecting our choices, we can understand why we made certain decisions. I will try to do something similar by giving a couple of examples to distinguish between the scientific and religious ways of thinking.
Example 1: Young Earth creationism
To be honest, this is not a binary scenario for most people. For most people, this is not even trivial. It’s nonsense. This is a binary scenario for certain religious individuals, but the question here is why they see it as a binary scenario.
Young earth creationism is the idea that the creation days of Genesis 1 were six literal (24-hour) days, which occurred 6,000–12,000 years ago. They also believe that about 2,300–3,300 years before Christ, the surface of the earth was radically rearranged by Noah’s Flood.
What compels people to reject established scientific studies ranging across different fields like biology, geology, astrophysics, etc.? For some people, believing in these established sciences rather than their interpretation of the Scripture would be a comprise. When human-acquired knowledge conflicts with seemingly divine-inspired knowledge, they think the latter should be preferred, and natural sciences should be restructured to reconcile with divine-inspired knowledge.
And that’s the key difference between a scientific way of thinking and a religious way of thinking. The scientific way of thinking tends to prefer logic and reason (which has limitations.) In contrast, the religious way of thinking tends to prefer Scripture and divine-inspired knowledge (which not only have limitations, but are often contradictory.)
You may be thinking, but not everyone is a young earth creationist. Why accuse all religious people based on a subset of people? I am not accusing anyone, but pointing out the significant differences. Everyone might not be a young earth creationist, but methodology and epistemology differences still exist. The goal was to point out that difference. If you are still not convinced that the methodology is different, let me take another example from Christianity, which is an established belief in Christianity.
Example 2: The Doctrine of the Trinity
This is not exactly an either-or case in the same sense that young earth creationism is, but this is a fundamental doctrine in Christianity.
Let’s try to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At first glance, this might not look that interesting, but this is probably the most absurd concept proposed by Christian theologians.
Let me explain why. When they say God is three people, they don’t mean God is composite. God is not one-third Father, one-third Son, and one-third holy spirit. All three are fully God. Not only fully God, but they are equally God. There is no hierarchy among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus is not some avatar of God that manifested at some point in time. All three are fully God existing eternally.
Does that mean Christianity is polytheistic? No, Christians claim themselves to be strictly monotheistic. They are fully and equally God but with three distinct personalities. Got it; God sometimes acts as the Holy Spirit, Son, or Father. God has different modes; for example, the same water can be liquid, solid, or gas. That’s modalism and a heresy. Christians don’t believe that either. What! Then what do Christians believe? Only God knows (pun intended.)
This raises the question of why Christians believe in the doctrine of the Trinity in the first place. There are many things, even if not understood properly that can be inferred. There are also possibilities of inference being wrong.
For example, many scientists used to believe in the existence of Aether, which is now a disproven hypothesis. Is the case with Trinity similar? Is it just an inference? What is the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity?
You would be surprised to know that the source of this absurd concept is just “religious tradition.” I know it was not an arbitrary decision. There was the council of Nicaea held over this. There were other councils also, but if we dig deeper and try to understand the reason for accepting this over other alternatives, we find out that it is ultimately based on the particular interpretation of the scriptures (which they think is the right interpretation) and supposed divine inspiration or revelation (which is just arbitrary.)
This right here is the difference between scientific methodology and religious methodology. Under scientific methodology, no random book is above questioning. Under religious methodology, the religious tradition and Scripture are the ultimate authority. Our understanding of the Scripture might evolve, but the Scripture itself is the absolute truth. Religious canon, once established, is beyond questioning, even if it’s one person being three people simultaneously.
Religious apologists try to rationalize different religious beliefs, but it’s difficult to reason about something that was not reasoned in the first place. That’s where the supposed faith comes in. You just have to believe it. Just because something doesn’t make sense doesn’t mean it is not true. The problem with this is that there are infinite things that don’t make sense to us, but could be true. Are we supposed to believe in all of those things? That’s not a tenable position for me.
Science assumes methodological naturalism, which is limited. Still, it’s not a dogmatic belief that this is the only truth, but it’s the assumption that this is the best way to understand the world. Some philosophers and scientists argue that the success of methodological naturalism and the complete failure of other systems means it is a logical leap to say that we don’t just use naturalism as an assumption in methodology, but that naturalism is actually the reality of the Universe.
Another point to note is that just because I am taking examples from Christianity doesn’t mean other religions are different. All religions virtually work in the same way. Scripture and divine revelation are the ultimate authority.
I should also clarify that there are some versions of beliefs in immaterial existence that are actually based on reasoning and not necessarily on dogma. I would say this is a kind of bottom-up approach to understanding reality. For example, The Dualistic philosophy of Rene Descartes with his famous statement, “Cogito, ergo sum.” The least we can say is I exist. Once the core of reality is established, we can construct the world around it.
Many idealist philosophers also approach the world in the same way. Many of these philosophies are treated as religious beliefs in the modern world (like Hinduism or Buddhism.) The problem here is that some of these beliefs fall outside the caricature of the religion I have given in this article. It’s convoluted because there are aspects that definitely fall under this caricature, so it isn’t easy to classify. If you were going to reply in this article that not all religious beliefs are dogma, I agree, but practically, in most cases, it is a dogma.
Is religion useless?
This raises the question. Should we get rid of religion? I don’t think so. At least for now.
For example, money is a fictional construct but has utility. Despite its apparent limitations, I would say religion has some important utilities.
First, let’s start with the intellectual field. Despite repeated failures in describing reality, religion is a great source of awe and mystery. Sometimes, we need out-of-the-box thinking. The Big Bang theory was proposed by Georges Lemaitre, a theoretical physicist and a Catholic priest. Srinivasa Ramanujan, a brilliant mathematician, credited his works to Goddess Namagiri. Issac Newton, one of the most well-known physicists, was also a devout Christian.
When I say religious ideas have been repeatedly falsified, that is an inductive argument. As such, there is still a possibility that maybe some religious ideas may come out to be true in the future. Ancient humans could philosophize something like atoms, which they could not empirically verify. Why can’t some religious beliefs turn out to be true? Religion has its utility in intellectual space.
What about the role of religion in society? Yuval Noah Harari wrote in his book The Sapiens —
The truly unique feature of our language is not its ability to transmit information about men and lions. Rather, it’s the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched, or smelled.
Religion helps build and sustain a community.
fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately. Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories. ~ Yuval Noah Harari
What else can compel people to come together every week and celebrate shared values? If science is the best available method for acquiring knowledge, religion is possibly the best method for building and sustaining a community. Unfortunately, both seem to have limitations.
What about the individual level? Religious faith has utility on a personal level also. It helps to cope with the existential dread. While the popularity of atheism has forced many thinkers to invent new ways to find value and meaning independent of religious ideologies, not everyone can connect with this.
Throughout history, we have always associated meaning with religion. It’s challenging to adopt a different framework. Maybe the problem with the religious framework is that religion places the highest value in a transcendental realm, which we can’t access, which cuts us off from these highest values and devalues what we actually experience directly.
You might have also seen or heard numerous testimonies of people coming out of alcoholic addictions or some other depressing stage of life. Religions can help some people find self-worth and increase their self-esteem (For some people, the experience could be the opposite, but that’s a topic for a different article.) You can’t rationalize with them, and I don’t intend to. It would be like going to a person in a wheelchair, kicking them down and telling them to stand up and run. I am an atheist, not a douchebag.
Religion versus science is a fascinating topic. One thing is clear: they don’t belong in the same basket. They may not be compatible with each other, but they might co-exist separately from each other and occasionally influence each other. That’s how I imagine things going, at least in the near future.
