Religion and science: two totally different ways humans devised of looking at the universe. The two traditions are very different, and often in conflict. Which one is right? Do we really need them both? Is religion still valid in today's modern age dominated by scientific achievement? One of the key areas where the two traditions have come into a great deal of conflict is the question of why humans exist. Holmes Rolston III makes an excellent case as for why the two methods of gaining knowledge are both necessary for a complete understanding of the universe and how humans came into being in his book Science and Religion. This book will be the basis for this paper, with references, where applicable, to other works and in-class lecture.

One of the most intriguing concepts I have come across in reading Rolston and others is the question of why intelligence, in the form of the human race, exists. Science describes for us the direct, causal reasons why we came into being in the short run, but it still, at this point, does nothing to help us understand why we are really here in the grand scheme of things. There are two fundamental aspects of the mystery of how the human race came into being. 1) The universe exists in such a way as to be supportive of life (the Anthropic Principle), and 2) In fact, life and mind ended up evolving here on earth. Why did the universe form in such a way as to be supportive of life, and is God responsible for this? How did the unlikely event of random mutations end up in sentient beings, also why did the molecules in the early primordial soup go against the general direction of thermodynamics to align themselves in a more complex way?

It is hardly novel to state that science asks "how" questions and religion asks "why" questions. This much is taken for granted. In both the above questions, science has provided answers to how certain processes work, but the question always remains why things are the way they are, and that question, although it can be pushed farther and farther away by science, can never be completely answered, short of a divine proclamation. Science can tell us that life on earth evolved from a collection of amino acids floating around in the water to human beings, which have as part of their bodies the most complex collection of molecules ever found. "The human being is the most sophisticated of known natural products. In our hundred and fifty pounds of protoplasm, in our three pounds of brain, there may be more operational organization than in the whole of the Andromeda galaxy."¹ (Note: is it at all questionable that the thing a race of sentient beings would find, using their own tools and techniques, to be the most complex thing in existence, would be . . . surprise, the thing asking the question in the first place -- their own brain! This could simply be an extreme form of egotism.) But it leaves unanswered the question of why the process started and meandered precisely the way it did, and why it had to happen at all. Science says life just randomly happened, an answer that is unacceptable for many people. However, there is still a lot of room for intervention from God, even though he may not have created each species directly and perfectly.

Some people, not necessarily scientists, claim that there is no place in society for religion any more. Now that we have found out so much about our environment, and the nature of the universe there is no longer any reason for these silly and primitive beliefs. There are two reasons for this: 1) Science alone can provide the only knowledge about reality, it alone can define what is real. Since it says nothing about God, He cannot exist. 2) Knowledge we get from science is knowledge of the real thing, i.e. how it really is.² Religion is just guesswork and conjecture devoid of hard evidence, they believe.

Science is now widely accepted as the method used for gaining knowledge about our society. Scientific methods are now commonly accepted by almost everyone, even in exact conclusions are not always believed (John F. Haught's scientism vs. science). An example of the expanding realm of science is the fact that what was once devoutly believed by so many, the word-for-word correctness of the Bible, is now deemed a "nice story" by most, but not taken as true verbatim. Additionally, one just needs look at all the people who put their trust in technology to see how ubiquitous science has become.

Science has not yet eliminated the need for people to believe in God, and probably never will. It is not enough to say that "God can't exist, because life is just chemistry and physics." God could easily have created chemistry and physics to work as they do. We just have to change our definition of what is sacred. After all, life has to exist somehow. God simply could not create life without creating a means by which it operated. The fact that simple material processes make up life does not at all invalidate religion, it just pushed back slightly the realm over which religion can have the sole claim. "As we have learned from history, natural occurrences that we had formerly attributed to a god-of-the-gaps can usually be explained eventually be a purely scientific exposition."³ In the past, the best available theory as to the exact workings of human beings was that God had designed us to be a certain way. Now, the best available theory as to our workings is that we evolved a certain way. However, there are still religious questions. Although we know how, we still do not know why we evolved. In short, it is now apparent that we evolved, but God could still have shaped the way we were to evolve. Just as genes determine what a persons potential will be and that person's experience determines what they actually will eventually become, God may have determined what types of possible organisms would have eventually come into being by designing the system in a certain way and then letting the system run its course (Bishop William Paley's Watchmaker).

Although science is relied on by so many, it not free from problems. Thomas Kuhn's "normal science" usually consists solely of scientists laboring to fill in gaps of knowledge postulated by those great wizards who were able to dream up new paradigms. This does not seem particularly inventive or likely to discover truly novel things, except for those few geniuses who can create their own paradigm. But there are other problems associated with science that are obvious. Scientists are mere humans, subject to human fallibility. Instruments humans use are subject to double trouble. First, they are designed by fallible humans, then operated by them. It is nearly impossible ever to get a truly accurate reading from an instrument that has both of these inherent flaws. No amount of exactitude will fix the problem, because it is possible to keep getting smaller and smaller increments of error, on to infinity. Also, one must question the motives of the scientist. No person is capable of totally objective research. Each scientist may be trying to "prove" something, even though the scientific method calls for the fact that a rejection of the hypothesis is just as important and useful for the furthering of scientific knowledge.⁴ Even the basic act of deciding what to do an experiment on depends on the mental state of the humans involved. Their involvement is everywhere in the process. Imperfect beings using doubly imperfect tools and imperfect methods are bound to get skewed results.

Furthermore, how can we ever trust our senses? How do we really know what is real, when we can easily be fooled by simple things. Maybe sight and sound are just the tip of the iceberg, and if we had some sixth unimaginable sense, we would be able to really get to know what the universe was like.⁵ "Perhaps physical science has reached so far beyond the everyday level as to make our human ranges of experience only conventionally significant, and ultimately insignificant."⁶ In other words, maybe what we think is meaningful is really not. Furthermore, maybe space and time mean nothing to God, and we are therefore looking for Him in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. It seems that we can never know what those ways are or where those places are.

If we cannot trust our senses, neither can we trust our minds, which interpret the information given to us by our senses. "Mathematics is, above all, mental, it is the logical creation of the human mind, and the fact that mathematics repeatedly helps us to understand the structure of the physical world corroborates the belief that the world we inhabit is the creation of mind."⁷ Then again, if we cannot trust our minds to accurately see the universe for what it is, how can we trust it to believe in God? Maybe God is just as much a figment of our collective imagination as mathematics, passed on from one generation to another by custom.

Also, it is said that science cannot detect God or His actions because of the supremeness of His being. "[F]or the religious object, God, if it exists, is incomparably greater than any routine scientific object, such as rocks, fish, or atoms."⁸ It seems unlikely that we will ever "discover" God in a scientific sense. It all depends on His self-revelation, which may have, in fact, already occurred more than once in Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Also, the more important a concept is the harder it is to understand, and therefore because God is of supreme importance, we can never fully understand Him, the argument goes.