Religion vs Science

For thousands of years, religion and science were one and the same subject, since all perception of material existence included the notion of a subtler spiritual reality lying behind, above or beyond it. That all changed in the seventeenth century when the scientists began to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of physical mechanisms. The resulting conflict soon grew into an embittered and almost total schism, and now we have a curious, even paradoxical, situation in which atheism has become the new religion. What is even more surprising is that scientists, who profess to pride themselves on the pre-eminence of rationalism, can be oddly irrational in their reaction to religion.

I find this all rather silly, since I think the argument can be resolved with the statement of a few simple principles. We need to consider what religion and science have the right to do and not to do.

Religion has no right to tell people what to believe, since nothing of what they teach is provable. What it does have the right to do is offer people a spiritual road to follow, should they be inclined to the view that there is more to existence than appears on the surface. In order to do this, they have the right to draw on the opinions and experiences of teachers down the ages. Many of these teachers were wise and intelligent people whose views are worthy of respect.

Science, on the other hand, has no right to tell people what not to believe, since, by their own admission, it is impossible to prove a negative. The purpose of science is to study and demonstrate the workings of material reality. They may tell us what to believe about that reality, once they have proved it. It is not part of their remit, however, to pass judgement on whether or not there are other levels of reality lying beyond the material.

In short, fundamentalism on either side is irrational. Science is passing judgement on an area which it cannot know, and religion is often guilty of ignoring scientific fact in favour of superstition. The only rational view is agnosticism, allied with the inalienable right of everybody to believe whatever they choose to believe.