Reconsidering Religion and Science

The resent debate between Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum, has fueled the unnecessary conflict between science and religion.  Ultimately, science and religion present two different means of knowing that make different assumptions about reality.

T'ai Chi Ch'uan

Consider this analogy:  T’ai Chi Ch’uan (T’ai chi) and Krava Maga are two different martial arts.  These disciplines have the common goal of self-defense. 

However, both styles make different assumptions about how one should defend themselves. 

For example, T’ai Chi Ch’uan encourages students to redirect an attackers strength against their opponent and is a passive, yet effective, fighting style.  Krav Maga encourages students to end a fight as quickly as possible by attacking vulnerable body parts and is an aggressive and efficient style.

Krav Maga

Both martial arts have pros and cons. While one may be better suited in a particular context over the other, it would be unreasonable to say that one is inherently better than the other.  They have similar goals but make different assumptions about how to achieve these goals.

Likewise, both religion and science represent different processes in the distillation of knowledge. While they are not completely incompatible, it is unnecessary to pit them against each other.  They make different etymological and cosmological assumptions. These assumptions are not based on Truth, but are necessary for any progress to be made.

To illustrate, science requires the assumption of a measurable and material universe with consistent laws. This is a lofty assumption and is often rejected by theoretical and quantum physicists, among other scholars.  Science can only study what is empirically falsifiable.  Science can make no statement for or against the transcendent or the divine which do not exist materially.

On the contrary, most religions operate on the assumption that humans can somehow know and interact with a transcendent principle of reality.  Both science and religion adequately describe the world around but make different assumptions.  To say that one is inherently better than the other is to say that T’ai Chi Ch’uan is better than Krav Maga.