Science and Religion – Compatible?

Science and religion sometimes have one thing in common: blindness! There are people who have blind faith in their religion. Like fundamentalist Christians who believe in creationism, saying that the earth was made in just seven days. A standpoint held in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

At the same time, materialistic science assumes that nothing supernatural can ever be shown to exist. This is a world view that prevents considering all kinds of less tangible phenomena, those that involve subjectivity and cannot be seen with any kind of precision, prediction or control.

So science and religion are at odds? Alternatively, could they at least potentially be compatible? Both science and religion seek what they believe to be the truth. Here we look at some phenomena to see if the objective truth of science provides a sufficient explanation.

Healing & Science & Religion
The December 1983 British Medical Journal reported a study of “unexplained spontaneous healing.” He found amazing examples of unexpected improvements or cures in patients suffering from illnesses. Dr. Rex Gardner conducted the research. He was then a consultant gynaecologist from Sunderland. The study was carried out by him following a series of contemporary cases of spontaneous remission. Either he exchanged letters with the doctor in question or he examined the patient himself.

It seems that the body heals itself. When a virus invades you, the invader is repelled, and after illness, recovery begins. Scientific medicine and other therapies can help in this healing process.

This way of thinking aligns with a religious perspective of ‘God’s healing energy’.

Personal choice and science and religion
You make a personal choice about which radio station to listen to or which person to share your life with. The science of psychology does not allow free will in this decision. Instead, he believes that decision-making comes from inherited motives, eg housing, food or affiliation, etc., moderated by his social learning experience.

Science assumes that everything is determined by some measurable entity: such as what is seen or heard, the chemical state of the brain, or genetic makeup. There is no place in this approach for the notion of free will, an idea that comes from religion.

Consciousness & science & religion
Consciousness clearly needs brain function. When you get hit in the head, you can get a concussion. This negatively affects the external consciousness for a time. After a severe stroke that damages part of the brain, you may not be able to speak fluently or understand writing.

With advances in brain scanning equipment, scientists can now peer into human consciousness. They see what the brain does when the person is aware of remembering, imagining, feeling, thinking, and even making decisions. Intense or mystical experiences have been found to run in parallel with coordinated activity in certain areas of the brain and the absence of activity in other parts.

So does neuroscience fully account for the conscious mind? Does it fully explain how something physical, like brain tissues with their electrical impulses, have a rich subjective consciousness?

A religious writer, Emanuel Swedenborg, wrote that being human gives us access to rational thoughts coming from a different degree of reality than the material plane. For him this higher dimension gives us the quality of subjective experience, with its property of continuity together with a sense of self that is conscious.

Human origins and science and religion
Science declares that it will trace all species of life on earth through their pedigrees to the simplest forms in which life first appeared. Human beings appeared later than less complex life forms.

Modern evolutionary theory says that all of this happened through natural variability and chance genetic mutations. The characteristics of the offspring of the successful parents will differ somewhat from the characteristics of the previous generation. For a long time, due to the survival of the fittest, this results in the gradual evolution of plant and animal species.

A worrying point about the scientific account of our origins is the way the notion of randomness keeps appearing: random selection of genes in offspring, randomness of genetic mutations, and random changes in the environment that lead to survival. So life, according to science, is basically an accident.

Perhaps this is not surprising. All science tends to avoid any explanation of purpose. However, from a religious angle, Divine Providence foresees and flows invisibly in the general things of order in the universe, including the development of the human race. Not only in general, but also in the smallest details. If so, then nothing happens by chance.

Psi & Science & Religion
The findings of parapsychological research are strange. Those few scientists working in this field say that they have clearly demonstrated the reality of mind-to-mind connections (telepathy). They also say that it is possible to perceive distant objects or events (clairvoyance). Surprisingly, it has been shown to perceive future events (precognition) and even mind-matter interactions (psychokinesis).

For example, numerous studies demonstrate a consistent, albeit small, effect of mental influence on dice toss. in his book tangled minds, Academic parapsychologist Dean Radin talks about skeptical detractors within mainstream science. They claim that these results are due to chance, sloppy work, selective reporting, or fraud. But he says these suggestions can’t really explain the results.

There are numerous reports of witnesses testifying to abnormal noises, sudden jerky movements, breaking of household items, or other unexplained movements of objects. All this by means other than physical force.

Two British parapsychologists compiled a monumental collection of 500 ‘poltergeist’ cases. One of the authors was Alan Gauld, who taught psychology at the University of Nottingham. There are even movies of such phenomena.

conclusion
If scientists believe that only randomness or physical substance is needed to explain reality, then science and religion cannot be compatible. However, when they recognize that they cannot fully explain some important phenomena, perhaps the religious perspective also has something to offer. If so, then science and religion might be more compatible than is often assumed.

The founder of the Bahá’í religion said that religion without science is superstition and science without religion is materialism.