The Negative Aspects and Attitudes of Science versus Religion

God the Geometer

Throughout history - with the exception of the Middle Ages - science and religion have been at odds with each other. While religion tended to lean toward refinement of the spirit and was rather engulfed in spiritual matters at the expense of earthly matters (I am considering most Western religions), science instead chose to accumulate knowledge and to form its theories based on physical bodies. Science preferred and valued events rooted in material evidence, observable facts that could be reproduced and replicated through controlled experiments.

Religion became more and more rule-based and dogmatic and thrived mainly on authority and hierarchy. In its negative forms, it developed a specific stance of mind, the “holier-than-thou” attitude. A priest because of his study, knowledge, experience, contact with the Almighty presupposes special abilities and the right to not only teach, but to actually preach. He considers himself as authorized to show and reveal to the rest of humanity the supposedly wrong and sinful paths and traps that we get lost and ensnared in.

Science, on the other hand, grew more and more confident, and to a certain extent it became too engulfed and self-absorbed in its deterministic factual ways. Science, again in its darkest moments, has become arrogant with a “know-it-all” attitude; supposed superficial superstitions are dismissed as mere child's play and fancy, yet at the same time, science overlooks the fact that it has become trapped in its own myth and superstitious force. Science in its rigid form is happy to limit itself to only those events seen and measured, but remains unresponsive to anything that defies its paradigm; it rejects and brushes off the invisible as nonexistent.

The ideal would be, as in most cases, a moderate approach, the middle way. There is a fine, yet distinguishable line between teaching and preaching, and, at the same time, nobody enjoys a patronizing voice. Render to religion what belongs to religion, and science to science. Both have made valuable and insightful contributions to the human condition; both are essential for life, and none can really exist or survive in isolation from the other.