Reconciling Science and Religion

Politics has Corrupted How we Look at Both Science and Religion; They Seek to Answer Different Questions and Don't Deserve This Either/Or Dichotomy

A few weeks ago, I came across this image on Threads.

There are two ways to take this photo.

• Science is driven by saying “I don’t know enough” and seeking to answer those questions. It then unnecessarily puts down religion as a philosophical foil as Religion reading one book and saying “I know everything [I need to know]” and Science as reading a dozen or more and saying “I don’t know enough [yet].” This is a pretty lazy and simplistic view of religion, and a very sysiphean way of looking at science.

• Or, you can look at the captions as being backwards. Religion is saying “I don’t know enough” and seeking an explanation. At the same time Science says “I know everything”— I mean, why not, its what science seeks to do and is how most people in the sciences tend to act toward others. This seems to me to be a more correct means to look at religion and science, as science seeks to explain and religion typically presents beliefs that we are not omniscient or omnipotent and will never really know everything.

So mistakenly I did what most do on Threads (or Twitter/X, or Bluesky or whatever) and commented, the captions should be reversed. Faster than you can say “TROLLS!” I was bombarded with one atheistic attack in defense of science and opposed to religion after another. Nevermind, it was the same strawman arguments people make about various Christian denominations that go back to the Scopes trial and “Inherit the Wind,”¹ the speed and manner they made their cases seemed to be completely ignorant of both science and religion, and mostly just emotional impassioned pleas of “I’m right and you’re stupid for arguing with me.” It really kind of irritated me. Bafflingly, I got several irrational responses like this²:

It then occured to me that too much of our current political environment is encapsulated by this very insane argument. You have liberal atheist zealots screaming “Science, Science Science!” and you have religious conservative zealots screaming “God! God! God!” Each side in this bananas debate supporting their side and then building up a strawman on the other side to routinely and systematically demolish. Both of them do nothing but talk past one another and the rest of us are caught in the middle thinking once again that both sides are completely nuts and irrational. Lean toward voting for a conservative and you’re labeled an “ignorant Bible Thumper” or “Jesus Freak”, support or vote for a Democrat and you’re a “Godless, atheist, socialist liberal.”

But the reason why this dichotomy exists makes sense; when science presents an answer to something, it is usually religion that drags its heels and is slow to adopt it. Often it’s because of it conflicting in the history or story of that religion. Die-hards and zealots are usually the ones arguing the most vocally. Even the Pope smacked down Galileo after he disproved the geocentric Copernicus model of the Solar System. Nonetheless, that kind of division is detrimental to our society and our politics; there’s more to be gained by looking at the positive attributes both sides bring to the world than there is pointing out the other side and only portraying the negatives.

So I thought it would be a good time to write up a piece about it. And it kept going. And going. And going. There’s a lot to say about these topics individually, much less combined into a single post. Therefore, I put it all out there and split it up into multiple newsletters. Then I didn’t like how I broke it down.³ So I tried to pare it down and distill it to it’s most basic; I still don’t love it but it’s the best I can do for now. I’ll revisit and add more to it later I am sure. I realize it’s a lot to digest, but for those who stick by it to read the whole thing, I hope you’ll appreciate where I am coming from and why I am where I am.

It all starts with a single, simple idea.

“Science and Religion are NOT mutually exclusive. You can appreciate them both, simultaneously, often in different ways.”

To far too many liberals, the idea of equating scientific knowledge with religion is akin to blasphemy—You can’t do that! To many conservatives, faith in religion is the only thing that matters and science can’t provide all the answers! To assume otherwise is heretical!

They’re both wrong. The two can be completely reconcilable. In fact, a Boston University researcher found that 84% of scientific studies show religion having a positive effect on personal well being, demonstrating both science and religion coexisting peaceably in the same sentence. They both seek to describe and make sense of our world in various different ways. They are two completely different disciplines; where problems arise are when people corrupt, misrepresent, or seek to stamp out what either science or religion says. To put short, politics gets in the way of both science and religion.

In fact, I’ve found myself much more at peace and less at odds with the world by incorporating both of these seemingly non-intersecting strands into my worldview. And in this, I am hoping to explain and describe that so that you may feel the same way, or at least entertain the notion that neither has all the answers, and they both provide quite a bit of them.

But first, let me tell you a few things about me, my beliefs and where I am coming from in this. Call it “PurpleAmerica, Where My thoughts on Science and Religion Come From.”

Science and God, My Early Years

I grew up LOVING science. Watched Mr. Wizard every day. Had a telescope and a chemistry set. Absolutely loved space, watched most every Space Shuttle launch and cried when the Challenger exploded. Fell in love with computers after watching WarGames, favorite TV show was a short-lived show on CBS called “Whiz Kids.” Other kids made fun of me as a nerd but I didn’t mind. I was smart for my age, understood things they didn’t. Logic and reason made sense to me, where more relative and relational, cultural and social standards, with their flexible and situational “rules” didn’t. I grew up with the idea that not just intelligence, but scientific intelligence, was the I, Ching— the goal for all humanity and progress. If there was a question, science would provide the answer. If it couldn’t, then something was clearly faulty with the logic.

At the same time, religion made little sense to me. You see my father came from a Catholic family, my mother Lutheran. She converted to get married at the ripe age of 19.⁴ I never really “got” the Catholic faith or the Bible stories or understood any of their relevance. The way everything was presented to me so literally just didn’t make any sense. To me, bread was bread, wine was wine and the idea it was Jesus’ body and blood we are forced to eat is something more akin to a horror show than a faith. I gagged on the wafer at my First Communion. At one CCD, the volunteer teacher read some lines from Dante’s Inferno about what happens to thieves, scarring all the kids into avoiding shoplifting for life.

When I was 8, my parents separated and eventually divorced. My mom went back to her Lutheran church and took us along. Needless to say, I found the differences confounding. Catholicism, with its strict formality and ceremony and if it wasn’t adhered to in just that way would damn you to Hell, whereas the Lutheran Church was more “Just be a good person,” and “all those stories are meant to be more figurative than literal.” To be sure, there were ceremonious aspects there too, but it was more casual and if you didn’t want to do it, you didn’t have to. The impact was that this dissuaded me from religion all the more; how could I be damned in one church and OK to do the exact same thing in another? What I wanted, with my rational young mind was consistency, and religion didn’t offer it. For practical purposes, I went through the motions, went to Sunday School and Summer Church Camp, got confirmed and did the appearances, but I grew up thinking I was an Atheist. God made no sense to me.

I stayed away from God and Religion for a very long time. Some aspects of Buddhism appealed to me in that it expanded my rational mind to think from different perspectives better, and I loved the mindbending riddles that spurred thought, but I was far from being a Buddhist. Too much of religion seems to me to this day to be trying to appeal more to others and virtue signaling than it does searching for personal spiritual enlightenment.

There’s also the structure of organized religion that bothers me to this day; simply put, too often religions and churches do things more for the good of their organization than they do for their congregants and community. However, that gets into the political discussions that I won’t answer (yet—maybe in another post).

Losing Some Faith in Science

In my 30s, my mentality changed; not about religion, but about science. You see, in my college, work, travels and experiences, I have engaged with many people in the scientific community. What had I learned? These people are NOT perfect. Whether people want to admit it or not, Science is endemic with all sorts of politics and hubris, cliques and snobbery, personalities and biases, that the prevaling thought on a scientific topic is more likely driven by someone pushing their personal resume than advancing scientific knowledge. Who gets published in scientific journals? Its more likely to be the academic pushing the position of their life’s work than it is a grad student who provides a revolutionary and correct thought. Don’t believe me? The anti-vax movement began with the publication of a scientific paper in The Lancet. Now, the paper has been disproven and the Lancet retracted the article, but look at how the paper got published in the first place and you see the issues I just pointed out. If you want a more recent example, here is a criticism of some published papers from Nature, one of the most respected publishers of scientific articles, regarding C02 emissions and global warming; I am not putting this article out there as definitive proof the articles were wrong and the criticisms correct, but it seems to me that the information here is worthy of inclusion and dissent within the same magazine.

In fact, going back in history and studying many of the famous scientists everyone hangs a hat on, you learn they are often wrong and obsessed with crazy shit. Newton was into Alchemy and once stuck a bodkin in his eye socket to see what would happen.⁵ Famous “discoveries” are not often lauded when they are made but in many cases years or decades afterward. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was such a collossal revolutionary idea, that nobody in the scientific community paid attention to it for over a decade and a World War later. Louis Pasteur claiming bacteria and viruses cause disease and that pasteurization works at preventing sickness was laughed at by his peer scientists, as it was well known at the time that spontaneous generation occured and that the living ether is how these things grew. Good scientific ideas are often derided by the establishment in the scientific community, who then work to shut out others as heretics and blasphemers.⁶

The way many a scientist tauts their work, and many of their followers support it, is eerily reminiscent of the manner in which a religious figure speaks, and the congregation nods and says “Amen.” As with every social construction, there are common hymns and homilies they all give praise to and demons that must be shouted down. Nonethless, there is also a measure of blind faith; there has to be, as no one person can possibly know or contain information on everything, absorbing every bit of intellectual knowledge from all time. Some of it, you are reliant on the messenger, and they may not be as reliable or have the best interests of “science” at heart as many believe and swear. In addition, quite often actually, the collective scientific community doesn’t speak with one sound voice, but rather the opinions of hundreds of which there is some agreement and some vocal disagreement, as determined by their personal opinions and priorities.

To demonstrate, in a recent article promoting the update to his book, “The Death of Expertise,” Tom Nichols shared this insight regarding the George Floyd protests amidst a raging pandemic, which demonstrates the issue more clearly:

Collective science is not a religion, but it’s often treated as one, or as the refutation of any organized religion. There are dogma and orthodoxies, certain refrains that are repeated, if not as scripture than at least as praises and hosannahs. There is also often a leader, who may be educated and intelligent, but also uses their position as a bully pulpit to those who question. One way they do this is equating disagreement with religious arguments or faith. “What, you don’t like what I’m saying? You must be a Bible thumper.” Of course, all the atheist congregants side with their pastor and shout down dissent like heretics, or in a more apt description, like the maladjusted medieval peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail shouting “She’s a witch!!!!” Far too often science is presented as a dichotomy against religion, in particular it’s presented as diametrically opposed to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions. This is a mistake. It’s a political argument disguised as a rational one.

Science’s Role

Science is in fact its own category. Science seeks to answer questions and explain the physical world. The scientific method describes how to take an idea, test out that idea, and then incorporate that idea, if proven, into regular logic. If the idea is disproven, it says you start over with a new idea. This is where the scientific method often fails in practice; too many scientists who’ve spent too much time, effort and money trying to prove something only to fail often do not reset their logic or idea, but instead double down, justifying or rationalizing a negative result. Going back to that anti-vaccination paper in the Lancet, it’s author, after having been categorically disproven, has instead doubled his efforts at pushing the anti-vax cause, one that has been quite lucrative for him.

This brings up another item they don’t talk about often in science; how money corrupts. One of the ways tobacco and cigarettes were so less restricted for so long is that the tobacco companies had their own scientific studies that either refuted or minimized what other scientists found. Many studies in fact are funded through grants intended to provide a certain outcome. You may say “This is not science, or at least not how it is supposed to work,” but I assure you it is how science works, and many a scientist takes the grant money because that’s what funds their jobs. Spending $1 billion on a NASA project to essentially take a flyby of Pluto, send back pictures and just keep cruising by doesn’t quite seem worth it, especially considering the problems we already have and more important things we can spend it on; make the argument it will better our understanding of the universe and provide high paying jobs to many smart engineers and it suddenly has more of a purpose.

So to summarize, science, at least those that proclaim to follow it religiously, isn’t infallible; it can be as biased and incorrect as anything, because we as humans are fallible, corruptable and social creatures who want acceptance. Like all things, politics pollutes the conclusions. As a result, science is often incorrect at a lot of things particularly early on, and takes a long time for acceptance.

And this is where I lost my absolute faith. Too many people have exchanged worshipping a God with worshipping “Science” for the answer to all their questions. Science is great for explaining and answering in detail things we know, and it does clearly refute history and events typically taught in various religions.⁷ But it does a horrible job of explaining the unknown and things we cannot know, the best ways we can interact with each other in groups or as people, and many of the philosophical and existential questions we all grapple with. Ask “What is the meaning of life” to a scientist and you’ll get an extrapolation on ‘life’ as if it came from Webster’s dictionary or a biology book. Religion provides a much more relatable and subjective answer and a better spirit that is softer and soothing as opposed to the true, cold, boring, objective answers science provides.

Religion’s Role

Religion seeks to answer the philosophical and existential questions of meaning and purpose in one’s life. Science is (at least it’s supposed to be) utterly objective. Religion is subjective, and relative, and aesthetic/culturally driven. It usually helps provide a moral or disciplinary core of beliefs that work to the benefit of the individuals or the group.

I never “came back to religion” or was “reborn” as some say. However, I did begin to look at it in a different way where I wasn’t so much at odds with it. When I started dating my wife, she wanted to take me to her church. Unreligious, I said “sure,” she was someone I wanted to keep seeing. Sure, the same wood panels everywhere as from my youth, the same scents of the cleaner used on them, the same general stained glass windows, same picture of Jesus rising arms outstretched, the same dull monotonous songs and artwork, in general the same aesthetic I remembered as a kid. No longer looking at church through the eyes of a young teen or skeptic though, I saw something else this time around:

• I saw an organization offering to help many poor or troubled people in the community, through various means, which were announced.

• I saw a showcase of talent, from the young violinist, to the choir, to the woman on the organ thundering out a beautiful melody. It was a local talent show of sorts, giving opportunities to express their personal arts.

• I heard the message of “be nice to each other” clearer, and mixed in with stories of current events and examples of people doing wonderful things for people in their community.

• I saw people there contributing, in what ways they could, to make the world a better place.

You know what I didn’t see? Any conflict with science or common sense. To be sure, I’m sure there are some people, congregations and religions out there that do promote that, but I didn’t see it that day. Most everyone in that room was a smart person.⁸ They understood the differences between faith and science; they were there for a spiritual reason to encourage the soul, not a dry lecture of the physics of the universe.

And that is when it became clear the major differences between science and religion. It’s that they AREN’T at odds with one another, but rather seek to solve different aims. Science makes appeals to the head, religion the heart.

• Science can describe to you why people like certain songs, keys or melodies. That would be a dull and boring recitation but it can do it. However, it can’t replicate the joy one has hearing Beethoven’s Ninth echoing around as the elderly woman on the church organ with a huge smile on her face while casting down audible thunder like Zeus throwing thunderbolts.

• In fact, most of our historically classical arts are inspired by religions, on the Olympians, the Norse Gods, Christianity. Religion serves more as an inspiration; science is more about an explanation.

• Science can tell us we need to distribute x number of food to feed the starving and provide a sound effective way to manage it, but it doesn’t motivate the volunteers to step up to work in the distribution centers or deliver it.

• Science can solve one huge mystery, revealing hundreds if not thousands more, but it can’t give someone peace that its going to be OK whether they know it or not, and that despite our insatiable appetite as a species for knowledge and control over the universe, at some point you have to just feel assured everything will be fine by nature just taking its course. In the movie, “Oppenheimer” he explains there is a non-zero chance that when they detonate the atomic bomb the whole world may explode. That’s a scientific answer. The religious one is in hoping and feeling assured that it wouldn’t. ⁹

I do not want to dispel you from the notion that science isn’t important—it is. Exceptionally so. And yes, there are still many religious people who are utterly skeptical and contrarian to everything science offers, their detriment.¹⁰ I am still a big fan and advocate for science, but also carry a greater sense of skepticism too. I no longer accept every silly fact that someone is saying “Science now says…” because quite often it doesn’t.¹¹ I also don’t generally accept things just because some esteemed scientist said so (No, Mayim Bialik, Neuriva is a sham, and sorry Neil Degrasse Tyson, Pluto will ALWAYS be a planet). But this ongoing stupid war between Science and Religion has to stop. The world is a much greater thing including both of them into your worldview and appreciating them both in their own ways.

PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

Tom Nichols’ “The Death of Expertise” is a fantastic book about how we look at, well experts. He has recently updated it. Here is an excerpt from it that I highly recommend. And if you want to order the book, you can follow the link here.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Albert Einstein himself called the idea behind quantum mechanics absurd. You see, one of the things that allowed the study of QM to move forward is the idea that instead of direct measurement, it accepted a level of statistical probability into it—something frowned upon by the established scientific practice at the time. Einstein’s rejection was “Nonsense! God doesn’t play dice with the universe!”

Famous physicist Niels Bohr retorted, “Albert, quit telling God what to do.” Bohr is having been credited as being one of the few to directly prove Einstein wrong.

Quantum theory is now standard and part of the general physics pedagogy.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word(s) on the Subject

A few of them to digest…

The inclusion of this last one is a direct refutation of the “God and Thermodynamics cannot coexist” nitwit.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. A fine play and Spencer Tracy in the movie was phenomenal.

2. I get that a lot of atheists out there don’t believe in God, and in their view a world where something physical as thermodynamics cannot exist with something metaphysical or supernatural as a God. But let me just state, that yes, if a God does indeed exist, I’m pretty sure he can create thermodynamics.

3. I now get why it’s taken George R.R. Martin forever to finish The Winds of Winter.

4. For the Millenial and Gen Z crowd, it was common to get married and have a family right out of high school for generations earlier than Gen X. Gen X grew up in the many divorces that resulted and said “That won’t be me.” The fact you guys are free to go to school, put off families and live with your parents until whenever is a product of that Gen X mindset, so thank a Gen Xer for your social life.

5. He was also a somewhat religious person.

6. Yes, I am using the same language to describe science as many do religion. It is purely intentional.

7. To be sure, where science conflicts with things the church holds up, like a geocentric universe, science should be adhered to more than faith.

8. It is often thought that to be a part of a cult you must be dumb. In fact, most cult members are actually educated people. See one of my previous posts about cults about that.

9. Whenever Oppenheimer says something in the movie that science can’t answer he always responds “What do you expect from theory alone?”

10. A major example of this is how so many evangelicals were resistant to vaccines, which they likened to the “mark of the beast.”

This utter lack of common sense is what most anti-religious people point to when they want to denigrate faith. On matters where science clearly demonstrates a positive direction, you shouldn’t feel bad to put your faith in science.

11. Media can be as horrible at mischaracterizing scientific discovery as they can politics.