Contemporary Issues in Science and Religion

Very often I understand Science and Religion in a conflicting manner or in an opposition to each other. In other words, there is no other way or possibility to make sense of the two in terms of their relation to each other. They totally come from different fields that are unbridgeable.  This notion is quite understandable because of my environment or my early education who viewed science as a threat to religion. During my college days, this notion did not change significantly even though, I studied Philosophy of science. I was taught that there is no such discipline that so-called value-free. The term value-free then I understood as a critic for science which was considered had a ‘special’ methodology that other disciplines could not fit in and did not bound to any ethical principles or cultural values.

Studying the articles about Contemporary Issues in Science and religion these days, somehow make me wonder that there are actually ways of relating science and religion in a proper manner. After read some of the provided articles, I am enlightened somehow but still many unuttered questions. One fundamental question is why there is something rather than nothing? This question for me is significant in the dispute about two fundamental problems of relating science and religion namely Intelligent Design: Did God design the universe or it runs randomly without a purpose? Another problem is the Anthropic Principle: known as Fine-Tuning of the universe theory. The latter deals with the reality of the universe or constant universe, that there are many coincidences rather than just pure chance.

From some articles that I have read showed me that neither Scientists nor theologians can answer totally these fundamental questions. The discussion moves toward the effort to find ways how science and religion could possibly relate and give a bit an answer to these difficult questions. The need to discuss the two all starts with the claim of both groups that are represented the two mainstreams; Scientific Materialism from science and Biblical Literalism from the religion side.  They represent the extreme view of answering those fundamentals questions above. Their view neither give any possibility to clarify their way to understand God and the universe nor to the dialogue of any possible way of relating to each other. Both side sticks on each other stand about the trueness of their claims.

Ian Barbor discusses very well ways of relating science and religion.  He has four approaches to start a conflict between science and religion. Other approaches are independence, dialogue, and integration. These approaches have their limitations certainly which acknowledge by the author. For example, the independence approach. Both science and religion have methods, questions, and interpretations. But they can not fully independent in the sense that those methods, questions, and interpretations are human constructs and have purposes. Here the factor of a human being involves in the process is taking into consideration. And certainly, the two use theoretical assumptions in selecting, reporting and interpreting the taken data.

The principle of science is uncertainty, the principle of random variation which worked well in Darwin’s Natural Selection theory. It means that it can not free from human interpretation. In other words, the subject is also involved in a scientific investigation. Therefore the tendency of some scientists to reduce everything to physics and chemistry is put into question. Even the Big Bang theory itself does not follow the law of physic and it continues expanding. Evolution shows us about the dynamic of life in this universe and we do not know where it goes or what is going to happen next?