The Evolution of Science and Its Relationship to Religion

As society continues to grow more secular and less religious, the general public is trying to find in science the benefits from religion that they rejected. Science does not provide a foundation for belief, faith, or any other spiritual or emotional need, because of its objective nature in determining truth. Our society needs to keep science in its realm of relevance and not try to apply scientific principles to religious ideas. My call is to resist the growing dogma of science as a quasi-religion.

I began noticing this ideology while I was serving as a missionary in Mexico City. Most people have strong Catholic roots, but I encountered a few atheists who proclaimed that religion was an invention of mankind and that science held the answers. Those people failed to notice that whereas religion claims to originate from God, science is definitely man-made (though God-inspired). It also struck me that typically the atheists were not always well-educated. These encounters inspired my connection to the famous line "I believe in science!" from Nacho Libre that I used in a previous post (February 24, 2015). Esqueleto lived on the street and had apparently had little knowledge of science yet claimed it as his belief system. Though comical in the movie, the same attitude can be seen in society among people who are generally unsatisfied with religion as a source of truth.

Though truth is found in science as well as religion, the context of the truth is important. Religious truth includes morals and personal identity. Scientific truth explains observable trends in nature. Religious truth is absolute whereas scientific truth is essentially "the best explanation we have until someone develops a more complete model". That is why I stated that we should take scientific theories and findings with a grain of salt (February 26, 2015). Science made a huge leap during the Renaissance and even more so during the Enlightenment. However, most of the ideas and theories of those days are now modified or obsolete because 19th and 20th century scientists developed better theories. The "truth" of the past is now false or incomplete. In fact, scientists have generally encouraged others to challenge and improve their ideas because they recognize that science evolves with our understanding of our observations.

Communicating this idea to others was and still is difficult because the idea itself is large and vague. Many small ideas including the roles of religion and science and how they have changed throughout history are important to consider. Events such as the Restoration of the Gospel also create some interesting points to consider. I tried to narrow the scope to a specific call to change, which was that we should not use ideas such as belief and faith when referring to science. Everybody that I talked to agreed that the general public is tending to treat science as a religion, but there were different opinions of what action to take.

The evolution of my topic showed me how communication of an idea influences changes in the idea. Writing blog posts forces the author to express himself concisely and logically which may determine the content as well tone and appeals. In informal conversations, the flow can be less concise and more dynamic because several people are tying in several ideas. Controlling the discussion can become an issue in this situation. I began with a focus on science and how society's view of it has changed and ended with how science and religion influence each other and if there exists an appropriate overlap between the two. My call is still to resist the treatment of science as a quasi-religion, but this includes other actions such as recognizing when and how to combine scientific theories and religious teachings that seem to overlap.

Update:
My biggest issue was choosing the right angle and keeping the topic narrow. I would like to have focused more in my presentation on how to treat science, but it's relationship to religion presented an interesting opportunity as well that I decided to focus a little more on. Jordyn stated that one can still believe in science which I still hesitate to agree with completely, but I do think that one can trust scientific theories and reason them to be correct as far as we currently understand.