Science versus religion

Nowadays, science is used for everything. We often consider this as an improvement of our life. On the other hand, there is the secularization. Does religion still have a place in modern society? Or will it lose the battle against science completely?

We're lucky to have science: it allows us to help many people. An example is a child with ADHD. We can already diagnose this disorder, and have discovered a lot of therapies that learn us how to deal with it. And if that doesn't help, or if you really don't want to put effort into it, you can still give the child a pill. This way, he'll behave normally soon enough. 

But what does the child itself experience? In some way, he is being rejected for who he is. We can try to fix this with a pill, but science can't answer the questions this person will ask himself: "Is there a place for me in this society?' and "Why can't I just be myself?"

Science has given us some nice changes. It improved our daily life in a lot of ways. It has explained things we couldn't grasp for a long time. Take the evolution theory, for example, or the big bang theory. These discoveries had a big influence on religion.

Religion has been around for ages. Even primitive men probably had some form of religion, that stemmed from fear for inexplicable phenomenons. People saw the hand of God in everything that couldn't be explained. This way of thinking survived for ages, but over time, science gained more and more importance. Science started with some small discoveries, but they soon became bigger.

Galilei already suggested the idea of the earth orbiting the sun. This resulted in a conflict with the church. At the time, it had enough power to repress such ideas. But in the past century, the power of the church has diminished severely.

All kinds of scientific discoveries allow us to explain the world around us. We even know that love is all about processes in the brain. There's no room for God anymore. The more science develops, the bigger the role it plays in our society, and the less room there is left for religion, for faith. Can we conclude from that that science will push away religion completely?

No, religion has some characteristics that science doesn't have. Science can offer general factual knowledge, but it can't say anything about individual, more spiritual matters. Science can't answer questions like 'What's the purpose of my life?', 'What's good and what's bad?', and 'How can I become happy?'. These are questions only religion can answer.

Another disadvantage is that science can't do anything with questions related to experiences. Things like God experiences or death experiences aren't for scientists. These things aren't testable or provable. Empiric data isn't enough for modern science.

What's more, our values find their origins in religion. The way we should behave in certain situations or towards other people is determined by the principles of religion. Science doesn't concern itself with these values. Only with our mind we can reason out these rules of conducts, but the origin lies in religion. 

At any rate, modern society can't exist without science. It has improved our life in many ways, but that doesn't mean we should abandon religion completely. Science and religion are two aspects that constitute our society.

Sources: www.todio.nl