Science and Religion do Co-exist
Many people hold what’s known as the conflict view, the idea that science and religion are forever at odds. But science and religion do co-exist. Many people believe in both science and religion. No matter what views we hold, there’s no denying we all occupy the earth, side by side, sharing the human condition.
Both religion and science strive to make sense of the world. Some phenomena, considered “miracles” by the religious, and “unexplained” by science, are contentious areas of debate. Those with a strong religious faith are comfortable assigning supernatural values, while people who have a strong scientific faith assume that things that cannot be explained by science today, can and will be explained by science in the future. Both religion and science are a type of faith, and both share a similar goal, to make sense of the world by employing some paradigm of knowledge.
These are worldviews, separate belief systems, but people who reject certain claims by science, or religious viewpoints, probably have more in common than they ever disagree with. After all, we all share the human condition. We live, love, eat, and share the earth. We co-exist, both as members of society and free thinkers. We experience qualia while alive and all meet the same biological ends.
Trite? Oversimplified? Maybe, but have you noticed how the assumption of conflict follows most any religious/scientific debate, especially in the media? Both sides are presented as vilifying the other. Assumptions are made, or suggested, that there are no points of agreement. In the fervor to spotlight how religion and science cannot co-exist, people sometimes forget that they do, in fact, co-exist. There are commonalities, and from them a mutual respect can begin to flourish, if only we accept some basic truths.
Science and religion have separate goals, but both center on making sense of the world we live in. It might be explained by considering two tourists trying to navigate New York City. One has a map of surface streets, the other a subway map. At certain points, both maps overlap perfectly, sharing common landmarks and connections. Even a basic overview reveals both tourists are navigating the same city. The remaining parts of the maps look very different. It’s futile to argue over which map is right, but this is exactly what people do.
In my previous article, Atheism is not Scientific, I express some basic points we should all agree on. Science can’t make claims about God; at least not while donning the garb of scientists, because such claims fall outside the realm of science. By the same token, staunch believers in religion cannot genuinely object to firmly proven scientific discoveries. Findings by science, real science, are generally believable. Science has made many mistakes in the past, huge blunders really, but so has religion. Certain phenomena have been ascribed to the supernatural, and later discovered to be completely natural. Both science and religion blunder, and both should be yielding to each other, at least to the extent that neither should try to direct the other on points that fall outside their own navigational maps—coexisting, and never declaring the other is wrong without proof.
It seems to me that science is largely responsible for the conflicts we witness between the two camps. I make this assertion because, by its own constructs, claims that fall outside the scientific method are out of bounds for those who claim scientific authority. If science simply stayed scientific, conflict would be fairly one-sided. Many scientists already adopt this position, holding that science ought to claim a position of authority, the high ground (so to speak), by sticking to science, revealing its findings, and leaving the religious to reconcile what it all means to them. After all, when science argues with religious claims, it tends to legitimize religion by demonstrating religion’s worthiness of scientific engagement.
When science loses its self-assigned “high ground,” it can often be traced back to the illegitimate leap from the practice of science to scientific faith, the religion of science. This “faith” makes huge assumptions that are not at all scientific. In part, it assumes that everything can and will eventually be understood through the paradigm of science; and that as science discovers new reasons for natural events, it proves that those who 
held other ideas in the past are following false paradigms of knowledge. At the same time, it overlooks any self-judgement about its own credibility in the face of many past blunders, and fails to question if its own methods are best suited for certain kinds of knowledge acquisition.
That’s not science, and if science has taught us anything, it’s that as more discoveries are made, more questions are raised. There’s no reason to believe that “everything will eventually be explained by science.” This kind of faith implies that science is the only legitimate way to make sense of the world, and that eventually there will be no scientific progress. If the past is any indicator of the future, that kind of faith is misguided.
Similarly, when religious thinkers insist all science is misguided because science, like all truth seeking paradigms, is prone to mistakes, they have crossed beyond all bounds of reasonableness, and are failing to recognize the faults in their own paradigm. What religious person denies the benefits of science? Lest we forget, science was originally spearheaded by the church, and seems to thrive, accomplishing more when practiced within its own constructs, and without religious direction.
Those constructs are where science belongs. Religious constructs are where religion belongs. To the extent that both maps overlap, co-existing as separate ways to make sense of the world, we ought to celebrate the accomplishment of co-existing, recognize that we have more in common than we have between us, and refrain from making claims that are squarely outside of our own paradigms—especially claims that insist our respective faiths delegitimize the paradigm of the other. There really is no need to hold a conflict view, especially when we all hold a mutual desire to make sense of the world.