There's room for science and religion

A number of readers have written about whether to believe in the Bible or in evolution, and have perhaps generated more heat than light. It's too bad, because the problem is important. But no one so far has posed it correctly. So let me add my grain of salt: The crucial question is, "Is the existence of mankind endowed with divine purpose?"

This is not a scientific question, but a religious one. Science cannot answer it, one way or another. Many individual scientists believe they have an answer, but they do not debate the question in scientific journals nor test it in the laboratory.

In that sense, science is indeed secular: explanations that appeal to an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God do not count as scientific. But scientists are not only scientists; they have religious opinions, too, and they may be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist.

What science says about the world is that many of the phenomena that have been observed in it can be explained scientifically, without direct recourse to God. This holds for gravity, electricity, chemistry, quantum physics, molecular biology, genetics and evolution. In particular, they feel there is evidence that humankind may just have happened to evolve, as a result of circumstances rather than by design.

Scientists recognize that they don't have a satisfactory explanation for everything (for example, how life arose) and that the explanations they have are not necessarily the best, but they are willing to bet that if they continue to try, they will be able to explain more things without appealing to the deity or to supernatural forces.

But that wouldn't mean they have proved there is no God or that he had no plan. And many of them will go to church (or temple or mosque), and believe God has infused their life with meaning.

Per Flaaten

Warrenville