Science and Religion are not necessarily contradictory!

I have always felt that Science and Religion compliment each other.  But it has always seemed that I live in a very small world of people who do so.

When I tell people that I can accept the idea of Evolution and the concept of Creation at the same time, I was always at risk of offending almost everyone around me.  The Scientists would look at Creation and say, "Balk, we don't need a God to explain how the universe came into existence.  God is only a part of those weak minds and poor souls who need something to believe in, because they can't accept reality."  And Churchites would look at Evolution, and say, "But, Genesis says that it was done in a week.  And Genesis says that God created us.  We are not evolved from Monkeys!"

I would try to keep my believes about both to myself, until I knew what type of person I was talking to.  It seemed to me that Genesis is a spiritual account of the Creation.  It tells the record of the people.  It was not meant to be an instruction manual on how to create or even a scientific pamphlet explaining what was done.  Rather it was meant to inspire God's Children to believe on His word and to worship Him and only Him.

The theory of Evolution does not rule out the hand of God, or rule out some intelligent designer ordering everything the way He wanted it to be.  Rather it is a theory that tries to explain natural facts about our world.

Now, the Theory of Evolution is a theory, and like all other scientific facts it can not be accepted as law until proven.  There are many scientific theories, like String Theory,  and others that are internally consistent, but haven't been proven.  That is the way science works.  Scientists find something in their world that they can't explain and try to explain it.  If the explanation seems to hold up against other findings, then it is a theory.  Other scientists will continue to examine the world around them, and occasionally a previous theory is replaced by a more modern theory.  And sometimes theories actually get proven and become Laws, like Newton's Laws of Motion.  But even these Laws of Motion were in time found not to explain everything, and we had to account for Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  Science changes over time, and gradually as a community we come closer and closer to explaining our world.

Now, as a Theory, Evolution makes lots of sense.  It explains what we have observed perfectly and no contradictions have thus far come into light.  Therefore, I have accepted it, and try to understand it.

I see God when I am doing mathematics and everything becomes beautiful.  I see God when I am observing the heavens (Astronomy is a weird science.  It is the only science that doesn't really have the ability for experimentation, because the distances involved are so big.  Rather it is a science of observation).  I see God when a ball drops to the ground and it's motion is perfectly described by Physics.  I see God when Chemicals react precisely with other Chemicals.  I have seen God during a tensile test, when I stretching steel to see when it would break.  The perfect descriptions of our world, that we call Science are also the building blocks of my testimony.

Now it seems that I am not alone in my quest to understand both Science and God at the same time, without contradicting myself.  Here is an interesting article about others and how they view the world in which they live.

Proof of God in a Photon

I think it is interesting that Galileo was the first to really separate Religion and Science.  He was trying to protect Science from an over-powerful church.  Now, the times have changed.  It seems that most churchs are now trying to protect Religion from an over-powerful scientific community.

Why is it that Science and God can't both explain our universe?  They aren't two separate ideas fighting for the right to exist.  Rather they are two different sides of the same coin.

Once I saw that, I see God in my science classes and science in my religious studies.  They are both good!