When Will Science and Religion Go to Marriage Counseling?

For thousands of years the great intellectual disciplines (religion, philosophy and science) have been fighting which one is “right”. Some don’t call it fighting. They call it the historical development of ideas, or the Great Conversation. But looking across the historical landscape, I’m not so sure. It looks suspiciously like competition.

So which one is right?

Maybe before jumping to the defense of one view or another, we pause for a moment. It’s abundantly clear each discipline is accurate about a particular domain of knowledge or experience, so why are we even asking the question about which one is right about everything? Couldn’t we synthesize these views somehow?

To help us figure this out, let’s describe the situation better, more completely, perhaps even charitably.

For thousands of years, different disciplines have been competing to produce a world view that describes the human condition and its place in the cosmos in an authoritative way, a way that relegates the others to a submissive position or failing that, discards them altogether.

Ultimately, this is a competition of values. Whose values should come first?

Science values cause and effect, represented by mathematical precision, measurement and logic, the evolving tools of scientific insight.

Philosophy values duty and obligation, represented by morality and ethics, the guide stones of relationship.

Religion values experience in the spiritual domain, represented by the personal recognition of divine fellowship, the faith-grasp of the wonder of Deity which leads to the loving service of humanity.

Are these values incompatible? Or even further, do these values exclude each other, even to the point of being mutually exclusive? Up to this point, human history seems mottled with examples of just this being so.

When the practitioners of one discipline find practitioners of another have minimized or excluded something (which of course they will, given their different orientations) they usually come up with a new view, one that completely excludes the other (oh so faulty and unreliable)…

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