Science and Religion

One of the things that makes those religion-science discussions so hard is that the two sides have a different meaning for a very important word that they both use, the word believe.

In religion believe frequently means knowing something with absolute certainty with or without evidence. The belief may be absolute. If one encounters a view that is contrary to that absolute belief it can be frightening because there is no procedure for reconsidering one’s beliefs.

In science one believes that for which there is significant evidence. Such belief is inherently tentative: the greater the evidence the stronger the belief. New evidence may throw the previous belief out the window or simply reduce its scope. The Copernican system completely replaced the Ptolemaic view of the solar system, but Einstein’s relativity left Newton’s mechanics intact for most considerations because it is only in the extreme that the differences become significant.

There is encouragement to be had in the fact that a lot people are attempting to reconcile these two ways of perceiving the world.