Olivia Strittmatter - Interaction of Religion and Science

 Blog Post 11 - Outside Readings 4

Week 11

This blog post is about an article that I found while doing background research for my chapter in Ecology of Eden (chapter 21). I stumbled on this website when I was trying to find a way to put my thoughts into words. My thoughts about how science and religion are two sides of the same coin, and how they can both be true at the same time. The article doesn’t have an official title, nor does it name an author, but it’s from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine. It’s a decently long article, so I’m not going to go too much in depth in the summary, but the website will be linked below in case anyone actually wants to read the whole article.

The article starts off with a section called The Intersection of Science and Religion. This section is a brief introduction to the topics in the article. It starts by talking about how modern science has improved and expanded human lives in so many different ways, such as modern medicine, space travel, cars, planes, and even given us new ways of thinking. It then moves on to talk about how evolutionary biology is a relatively new scientific field, and how there are a lot of people that are skeptical about the process of evolution, especially when certain religious texts and organizations have significantly different beliefs. They ask the question: is it possible to accept evolution and still adhere to religious beliefs? (The short answer is yes, most major world religions have accepted that evolution is the cause of global biological diversity.)

The second section is titled Is Evolution A Theory or a Fact? The short answer to this question is both. Evolution is both a theory and a fact based on the different definitions and connotations of the world. Theory is often used to describe a speculation, while a scientific theory is a comprehensive explanation of an aspect of nature that has enormous amounts of evidence, but cannot be proven as 100% fact with current scientific methods. The article gave some examples of scientific theories that people accept without issue, such as gravity, germs causing sickness, living things are made of cells, Earth revolves around the sun, etc. Fact is often used to describe things that are true, 100%, no argument possible, while in science a fact is often an observation, measurement, or other evidence. So the theory of evolution is made up of facts, due to the study of it’s mechanisms, but the theory itself is a scientific theory.

The next section is titled Compatibility of Science and Religion. The first thing this section says is “science is not the only way of knowing and understanding” which I really liked. Science is an empirical way of understanding the world with testable explanations and measurable evidence, but it’s not the only way of understanding and knowing the world, every religion unlocks new ways to understand existence and the surrounding world. (Just because it isn’t testable and provable, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.) The article then goes on to talk about how biological diversity came to existence is a central focus of both religion and evolution. As I mentioned earlier, most major religions have accepted evolution, and claim that it does not conflict with their religious texts or beliefs. Science and religion are compatible with each other because they are based on different aspects of the human experience, and therefore they can’t be compared with each other, and yet they work together to create a well rounded explanation of the human experience. 

The article then has a bunch of excerpts from both religious leaders and scientists about how they see no conflict between religion and science. I’m not going to write about any of them because this blog is already pretty long, but they were very insightful and I recommend checking them out!

The next section is Creationist Perspectives, which honestly I wasn’t too excited about as a biologist. They talked about how Creationism is not inherently tied to a belief in God nor is it a purely Christian idea, people from other religions want to reject scientific findings and use their religious myths/explanations instead. Broadly, Creationism is the rejection of scientific explanations in favor of creation by a supernatural being or beings. The article discusses some of the different groups of Creationists within the US, but follows it with “no scientific evidence supports these viewpoints” which I thought was amusing (and they’re not wrong). Following this there are different Creationist beliefs that are discussed which are then debunked with scientific facts and theories.

The next section is titled Intelligent Design, this section is about Intelligent Design Creationism, which says that an intelligent being created the universe and that it’s unlikely (or even impossible) for the diversity and complexity of the universe to have occurred via random process. Again, the article states that there is no scientific evidence to support this. This idea talks about how some processes in life are so complex that they had to be created all at once. They give an example of a mousetrap, all components must be available and working properly in order for the mouse trap to be effective, or to function at all; therefore they think that life is like that, but scientific evidence backs up the opposite. It’s survival of the “fit-enough” (as biologists say), not survival of the fittest; meaning that the one who is able to survive will, even if they are not the best specimen of the species. This is a very long section, and it just describes different Intelligent Design Creationist ideas and debunks them with scientific evidence and reasoning.

The very last section is titled Evolution and Creationism in Schools. This part talks about how Creationists are pushing for Creationism to be taught in school alongside (or even instead of) evolutionary theory. On that topic my overall opinion is that public schools should stick to teaching facts and theories rather than debunked ideas. You cannot teach religious myths as fact, and while there is truth in all myths, it is not the type of truth that needs to be taught in science classes. If people want their kids learning Creationism they should be in private schools, or homeschooled. While I do think that science and religion go hand-in-hand, I don’t think that religion should be used to describe physical or biological aspects of the universe, but rather for the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of existence.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/science-and-religion