To quote Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist and mathematician, “Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both windows are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.” There are disparities between science and religion, such as nature of factualness and neutrality against subjectivity. To elucidate, religion is defined as a sea of beliefs and practices often organized around supernatural and moral claims, and often codified as prayer, ritual and religious law. Contrary to widespread conviction, there are congruence between science and religion as well. Given that there are points of comparison, it is hence a misleading fact of life that science and religion will always come into conflict on one hand. On the other hand, just as there are dual surfaces to a coin, it is almost positive that science and religion will arise to conflict. Science and religion may perchance suffice as supplements to each other then.
A derivation of conflict between science and religion ensues from the contrasting traits of legitimacy. In science, validity is incessantly revised. It is such that the more one discerns of the universe, the more interpretations one constructs, thereby drawing nearer to actuality. In contrast, religious facts are consistent and absolute. Gospel truth is printed in the Holy Texts, which hails from the mouth of the Almighty Himself. Therefore, science is based on empirical study of the material world whereas religion hinges upon individual or cultural assumptions, and divine revelations. The case in point includes conflict over cosmology, geology, astronomy. A mass of devotee within the conservative wing of Christianity claim that the earth is less than 10 000 years of age. They deduced that the creation and universal flood stories in the Biblical book of Genesis as being literally accurate although 95% of scientists reject a literal analysis. These scientists consider the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion-year-old, that no global flood has befallen, as well as that humanity evolved. Given the discrepant nature of reality, it is a precondition that will result in conflict.
Science is more objective proportionate to religion which is more idiosyncratic. Maximum communicability is the hallmark of scientific truth. As a result, science consists in great part in the endeavour to convey by means of a bureaucratic apparatus or medium such as mathematics that is altogether vulnerable to the scrutiny of any mathematically educated person. On condition that an individual carries out a stringently classified experiment or manner of calculation which is non-comprehensible to anybody else, then it is questionable scientifically. However, religion is more intuitive, pertaining to one’s intimate soul of respective attitudes and emotions. It seeks to satisfy the desire for personal salvation. Therefore, the subject of impartiality will lead to conflict between science and religion.
In addition, both entities pose conflict over themes including human sexuality, medical issues. For example, conservative Christian communities teach that homosexual behaviour demeanour is perverted and can be corrected through prayer and counselling. Nonetheless, researchers into human sexuality by and large are convinced that homosexual orientation is normal for a modest percentage of the human race, is innate, is undesired, is influenced by one’s genes to some degree, and cannot be changed through worship and guidance. Take euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, for another instance. Some faith groups champion that only God bestow life and hence solely God should reclaim breath.
The opposing faction conjectures that when a terminally ill person is in intractable suffering and wishes to depart, physicians ought to be sanctioned to lend a hand in dying. Albert Einstein stated that, “For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to and conditioned by, each other… yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.” Thus, it is a fact of life that religion and science will always come into conflict over ethics.
Despite the numerous disparities between scientists and clerics, both are ambiguous contradiction of each other as there still remain similarities such as science and religion are ‘learned practices’ as well as both carry out significant purposes in Man’s life. No individual is born with an instinctive knowledge of the divine, likewise as no one is born with a hard-wired knowledge of science. They have their specific set of books from whence all information is inferred from, mentors acknowledged as scientists and pastors, philosophies of entity, directions and jargon. Albert Einstein also cited, “All regions, arts & sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed towards ennobling Man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” Therefore, it is fallacious to postulate science and religion will always come into conflict since there are grey fields of harmony.
Religion can exploit science as its tenet whereas science can facilitate religion with its findings. While religion can critique science for more clarifications, sources, or significance, science should mull over religion and human morals. Science and religion work together to form adequate explanations to figure out the genuine meaning of being thus prompt awareness of our insight of realism. Having the status of being complements, in a way, science and religion depend upon each other. They merely call for receptive minds to what both are assembling and explaining but without the other, their elucidation for gist remains superficial. Therefore it is not true that it is a fact of life that science and religion will always come into conflict. As Pope John Paul II highlights, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish… We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be.”