Dua Fatima (BBA171037)

Q: Is there contradiction between science and Religion?

In order to understand the scope of science and religion and what interactions there are
between them, we must at least get a rough sense of what science and religion are. After all,
“science” and “religion” are not eternally unchanging terms with unambiguous meanings.
Indeed, they are terms that were coined recently, with meanings that vary across times and
cultures. Before the nineteenth century, the term “religion” was rarely used. For medieval
authors, such as Aquinas, the term religio meant piety or worship, and was denied of
“religious” systems outside of what he considered orthodoxy. The term “religion” obtained
its considerably broader current meaning through the works of early anthropologists, such as
E.B. Tylor who systematically used the term for religions across the world. The term
“science” as it is currently used also became common only in the nineteenth century. Prior to
this, what we call “science” was referred to as “natural philosophy” or “experimental
philosophy”. In my opinion, there is no conflict between science and religion. They deal with
two different spheres of understanding. Science deals with man’s effort to understand how
the world operates scientifically. Religion deals with how the world operates supernaturally.
The two should not be mixed. Science attempts to define the laws of nature and how they
affect events. There always will be certain things that science cannot explain or understand.
The effects of God on nature are some of these things. In a science class, the proper answer
to these questions is that we do not know. This is how a scientist properly talks about God
and His actions. Miracles are defined as those occurrences which are outside the laws of
nature. A religious person would say they are actions of God, very properly so, and a
scientist would say he does not know how they happened. Much of this discussion has
occurred over the arguments between evolution and creation. These arguments never should
occur since they are talking about two different things. Evolution is an attempt to explain the
development of life through scientific principles and laws. Creation is the attempt to explain
the development of life by the miracles of God. Any scientific attack on the theory of
evolution should be done scientifically. The age of Earth can be understood in the same way.
God could have created the world any time he wanted to, with age. He would have created it
so that the laws of nature he wanted man to understand would not be violated. In fact, God
could have created the whole universe this morning with all we have on earth and created all
of us with our memories and we would not know the difference. This is because when God is
brought in to the equation of understanding the world, anything is possible.