RELIGION AND SCIENCE
- A RECONCILIATION ?
(19th June, 1913 to 1st April, 2003.)
"And behold I have found that which is greater than Wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping stone.
When ever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors, look well thereupon,
and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing."
from THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gilbran
It is a generally held view that Religion and Science are incompatible.
It is felt that the concepts of religion and the knowledge that Science is presenting are on head-on collision courses.
I hold the view that if this is accepted then we have failed to appreciate the true purpose of the respective disciplines.
Science is relatively easy to define.
It proceeds by observation, theorising, reasoning and testing to establish what is true and real within the physical limitations.
My Concise Oxford Dictionary puts it so:
"A branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles involving the systematised observation of, and experiment with, phenomena, especially concerned with the material functions of the physical universe".
When this process is complete the outcome can usually be regarded as real and true.
Religion is different, it reveals its truths in silent, meditative ways. or truths come to you suddenly, as a revelation, and you accept them, intuitively, as an expression of the 'Truth'.
It is concerned with the ‘Mystery' in Life.
Copyright © Jim Wright 1998
These pages were updated 25th April,2003
