Science Vs. Religion: Can They Coexist

Religion and Science. Billy Graham and Stephen Hawking. An understanding of the world based on personal experiences of faith, and one based on proven hypothesis. Religion and Science seem to be such polar opposites that they could not even share the same room together without majorly distorting each other’s understandings. But what we do not realise is that not only can Religion and Science coexist in today’s world, the two are constantly working side by side to create the world we live in today.

In the last few centuries, scientific advancement has accelerated exponentially. From electricity to nuclear weapons to mobile phones, development has multiplied hundreds of thousands of times, expanding outward to encompass the entire human race. Thousands of lives are now fixated on the next discovery, the next observation, the next tiny grasp of knowledge that we can snatch from the wide, empty void of ignorance. But what people don’t realise is that this has been happening for millennia. According David Wooten, Professor of History at the University of York, the development of modern science occurred between 1572 and 1704, years that were incredibly influential in our understanding of the world. Comparatively, Religious history dates back to the invention of writing in 3200bc. However, this does not mean that Religion has been around for a lot longer than Science, this simply shows that for most of history, Science and religion have not only coexisted, they have been the same thing. Religion has always been there in some shape or form, because we have always yearned for explanations to everything. Science only became what it is now, because we finally had a base from which to prove certain people’s faith in aspects of the natural world. Some people believed that the earth was round, but until fairly recently, they had no way to prove it so people understood it as another faith, and one that went against their own. Of course, the Greeks were the first to think analytically, but it was the church that gave impetus to the scientists of the enlightenment. The first scientists were clergymen. And people like Newton, who identified gravity, and Copernicus, who put the sun at the centre of the solar system, were very aware of the belief in a God, and many of them, especially biologists, thought that by studying nature and the stars, they would learn more about their God. The fact is, both science and religion are concerned with how the world works, and while they occasionally arrive at different conclusions, this is because they ask different questions. The two are like subsections, under an overarching thirst for knowledge and understanding. Of course, they are not the same thing, but they have to work together to present future awareness and appreciation of the world in which we live.