ST.

XAVIER’S COLLEGE, KOLKATA

THE RELATION BETWEEN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

FDNC PROJECT

SUBMITTED BY
NAME- GOURABH CHOUDHARY
ROLL NO – 549
CMSA, FIRST YEAR
THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract:

The relationship between religion and science is the subject of continued debate in
philosophy and theology. To what extent are religion and science compatible? Are
religious beliefs sometimes conducive to science, or do they inevitably pose
obstacles to scientific inquiry? The interdisciplinary field of “science and religion”,
aims to answer these and other questions. It studies historical and contemporary
interactions between these fields, and provides philosophical analyses of how they
interrelate.
Belief in God does not mean disbelief in science. One may believe in both and the
time has come when the scientists have realized that religion begins where science
ends. Sometimes the scientist is not able to fully comprehend the mystery of the
universe and at that time he believes that there is some invisible power.
There are a number of models that can be useful for understanding how science
and religion interact. These models can be either descriptive – simply describing
how science and religion relate, or prescriptive – telling us how science and
religion should relate. No single model can really do the situation justice, but
together they are useful for beginning to think about the interrelationships between
science and faith.

Conflict. Among the people who support the conflict model are atheistic scientists
such as Richard Dawkins, who declare that science and religion are at war with
each other and that science will win the war. Others, such as Young Earth
Creationists believe that religion will win the war. There is no doubt that at times
there has been conflict between science and religion, or at least between particular
scientific and religious views, but there are often other ways of understanding the
situation. The most important points that count against this model are that religion
provided the foundations for modern science, and that many successful scientists
have held (and still hold today) religious beliefs without seeing any conflict
between their faith and science.

Separation. The basic idea in this model is that science and religion ask different
kinds of questions about the world. Science seeks to understand how things work,
while religion asks the ‘why’ questions. But, throughout history, key figures in
science have been motivated by their religious beliefs. And it’s difficult to see how
anyone could separate these two areas of their life: ‘The scientist with religious
beliefs working in a research team at the laboratory bench on Mondays is the same
person who worships God communally in church on Sundays. Science and religion
may ask different kinds of questions, but they are each addressing the same reality,
the same world. For this reason, it is not easy to draw a clear separation between
the two.

Fusion. This model blurs the distinction between scientific and religious types of
knowledge. Those who advocate fusion use the content of science to determine the
content of religious belief, and vice versa. The danger of building religious belief
on science is that while the details of scientific theories change over time, for
Christians, the Word of God in the Bible is unchanging.

Complementarity. This model suggests that science and religion provide

complementary insights by addressing the same reality from different perspectives.
Explanations derived from science and religion do not have to rival one another.
They can be understood as different ways of looking at the same thing. Thus, a
scientist who is also a Christian can understand the world as the creation of God
while still seeking scientific explanations for things in the world and for the origins
of the world itself. In this model, science can be understood as investigating God’s
creation. The best thing about this approach is that it values both science and
religion as ways of understanding the world.

Science can both falsify and verify claims of religion. 

When religions make claims about the natural world, they intersect the domain of
science and are, in effect, making predictions which scientific investigation can
either verify or falsify.

The clearest and most direct formal expression of the relationship between faith
and science is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 159:

Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real
discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries
and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot
deny Himself, nor can truth contradict truth […] Consequently, methodical
research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly
scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the
faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same
God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led,
as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all
things, who made them what they are."

Science encounters metaphysical problems which religion can help

to solve. 
Science has an insatiable thirst for explanation. But eventually, science reaches the
limits of its explanatory ability. For example, in explaining why various things in
the universe exist, science ultimately confronts the question of why the universe
itself exists. Notice that this need not be a question about the temporal origin of the
universe. Even if spacetime is beginningless and endless, we may still ask why
spacetime exists. Physicist David Park reflects, “As to why there is spacetime, that
appears to be a perfectly good scientific question, but nobody knows how to
answer it.”

Here theology can help. Traditional theists conceive of God as a necessary being
whose non-existence is impossible, who is the Creator of the contingent world of
space and time. Thus, the person who believes in God has the resources to slake
science’s thirst for ultimate explanation. We can present this reasoning in the form
of a simple argument:

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity
of its own nature or in an external cause).
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.

Science can establish a premiss in an argument for a conclusion

having religious significance. 
The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas always assumed the eternity of the
universe in all his arguments for the existence of God, since to assume that the
universe began to exist made things too easy for the theist. “If the world and
motion have a first beginning,” he said, “some cause must clearly be posited for
this origin of the world and of motion” (Summa contra gentiles 1. 13. 30).
Moreover, there was simply no empirical way to prove the past finitude of the
universe during the Middle Ages. But the application of the General Theory of
Relativity to cosmology and the discovery of the expansion of the universe during
this century appears to have dropped into the lap of the philosophical theologian
precisely that premiss which had been missing in a successful argument for God’s
existence. For now he may argue as follows
:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

But surely that is metaphysically impossible. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So

why does the universe exist instead of just nothing? It is plausible that there must
have been a cause which brought the universe into being. Now from the very
nature of the case, as the cause of space and time, this cause must be an uncaused,
changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power which created
the universe. Moreover, I would argue, it must also be personal. For how else
could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe? If the cause
were an impersonal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could
never exist without the effect. If the cause were eternally present, then the effect
would be eternally present as well. The only way for the cause to be timeless and
the effect to begin in time is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely
chooses to create an effect in time without any prior determining conditions. Thus,
we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its
personal a creator.

All this is not to make some simplistic and naive judgement like “Science proves
that God exists.” But it is to say that science can establish the truth of a premiss in
an argument for a conclusion having religious significance.

In summary, we’ve seen six different ways in which science and religion are
relevant to each other:

1. Religion furnishes the conceptual framework in which science can flourish.

2. Science can both falsify and verify claims of religion.
3. Science encounters metaphysical problems which religion can help to solve.
4. Religion can help to adjudicate between scientific theories.
5. Religion can augment the explanatory power of science.
6. Science can establish a premiss in an argument for a conclusion having religious
significance.

Now some people acknowledge that science and religion should not be regarded as
foes, but nonetheless they do not think that they should be considered friends
either. They say that science and religion are mutually irrelevant, that they
represent two non-over-lapping domains. Sometimes you hear slogans like
“Science deals with facts and religion deals with faith.” But this is a gross
caricature of both science and religion. As science probes the universe, she
encounters problems and questions which are philosophical in character and
therefore cannot be resolved scientifically, but which can be illuminated by a
theological perspective. By the same token, it is simply false that religion makes no
factual claims about the world. The world religions make various and conflicting
claims about the origin and nature of the universe and humanity, and they
cannot all be true. Science and religion are thus like two circles which intersect or
partially overlap. It is in the area of intersection that the dialogue takes place.

Religion, on the other hand, aided by scientific and historical evidence, is able to
provide us with the answers to our existential "why?" questions: Why am I here?
Why is there something rather than nothing? Like science, religion without a
rational basis can also be an extremely dangerous weapon primed for atrocities

Putting this all together, then, we can see that science and religion are never really
completely divorced from one another, but rather serve complementary roles.
Science, guided in the moral spirit of the Church, provides us with answers to
"how?" questions: How does gravity work? How does a baby progress from a
zygote to a fetus? How can we better improve the quality of human life? As noted
in one of the Spiderman movies, "With great power comes great responsibility."
Such is the case especially with science. Science is an incredibly powerful tool, but
if that power is left to its own devices without a moral compass, it is an evil, fatal,
and disastrous weapon that advances the most horrific violations to human dignity
and worth and the Work of God (including the natural, physical world and the laws
that govern it). Both are equally valid forms of truth, as they stem from the same
Source. And since truth can never contradict truth, a truth revealed in one cannot
ever be in conflict with a truth revealed in the other. Once this is fundamentally
understood, fear about science overthrowing religion becomes obsolete, and
science has a moral compass guiding discovery and innovation.
Conclusion:
Used in their appropriate roles, science and religion give us the complete set of
tools for understanding and interpreting the Work and Word of God. If we accept
science, yet neglect religion, we miss out on a full volume of God's two-part
revelation! We are brains without a heart. If we accept religion, and reject science,
then we likewise miss out on a full volume of God's revelation, and are hearts
without a brain. Both scenarios are equally despicable.

God gave us reason, and God gave us faith. Both are gifts. Both are to be used in
their maximum capacity. Thank God for science and religion, so that we can have
our heart and brain working in unison in comprehending His revelation in the
fullest way that we can, at least on this side of heaven!
References:

1) https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-relationship-between-science-and-
religion
(last accessed on 21st September, 2017 at 2 AM)

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_religion_and_science
(Last accessed on 21st September, 2017 at 2 30 AM)

3) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
(Last accessed on 21st September, 2017 at 2: 32 AM)

4) https://powertochange.com/discover/world/science-religion/
(Last accessed on 21st September, 2017 at 2: 25 AM)

5) http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/the-science-and-religion-relationship
(Last accessed on 21st September, 2017 at 2: 35 AM)