Why does it have to be science OR religion?

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (Albert Einstein)

In the news I continue to hear an ongoing debate between science and religion.  There seem to be two entrenched sides of the conversation.  On the one hand you have you have religious folks who view the world through the lens of the Bible.  Anything that doesn’t fit that framework, including science, is viewed with suspicion.  The Big Bang, evolution and global warming are seen as part of a vast conspiracy by scientists to undermine the faith.  On the other hand you have scientific folks who see the world through the lens of empirical data.   Anything that can’t be rigorously tested, including religion, is viewed with suspicion.  Creationism is considered part of a vast conspiracy by people of faith to undermine scientists’ work.

Why do we have to choose between two extremes: science OR religion.  Can’t they coexist?  Since when did scientific discoveries have to undermine the faith? 

Not that many years ago that people didn’t understand our world very well.  They planted seeds and had little understanding of why they grew.  Rains seemed to come randomly.  Some people got sick and recovered while others got sick and died.  In this world of ignorance, God ‘filled in the gaps.’  When you couldn’t explain something, people assumed God did it.  God caused the seed to grow.  God caused the rains.  God healed.  It seemed pretty straightforward.

Then science got rolling and people had explanations for these natural phenomena.  From the beginning, the church was skeptical.  In 1633 the pope sent Galileo Galilei to prison.  His crime?  He proclaimed that the earth revolved around the sun (and not vice versa).  People of faith read their Scriptures and knew this had to be wrong.  The Bible talks of a flat earth! 

We live in an era when science progresses rapidly.  Living in the shadow of Mayo Clinic I see this firsthand.  We know more about our physical universe than we’ve ever known before and research continues daily.  Are we getting to a point where we no longer have any room for God?  I don’t think so!

The Bible is the story of God at work among God’s people.  It contains the record of people’s experiences with the God who worked in their midst.  Scripture exists to bring us to faith in Jesus Christ: not to prove science.  The people that God used to write the books that we have in our Bibles didn’t know a thing about atoms or DNA.  They assumed that the world was flat.  They ‘knew’ that the sun revolved around the earth.  They understood the world in simple ways…but they knew that God had a hand in it.

While the writers of the Bible may not have known much about their physical world, they did understand God.  God created the heavens and the earth.  We don’t need to get anxious over whether God did it in seven 24 hour days or over millions of years. 

Science has not ‘pushed God out’ of life.  Scientists work to understand the complex world that God has created.  I thank God for the wisdom that God gives to God’s people.   

"Science is an effort to understand the creation.
Biblical religion involves our relation to the Creator.
Since we can learn about the Creator from his creation, religion can learn from science."
(Paul H. Carr)