Skip to main content

Science and religion: friend or foe?

It seems to come as a shock to people when I say I believe in God.  'But Roshi you're a scientist! How can you believe in God?!' they decry, sometimes quite loudly.  
I understand their reasoning. The church and science have had a complex and rather unpleasant past together. This has mostly arisen from power hungry people being scared of new ideas undermining their authority.  Too frequently the reaction has been to demonise and ostracise rather than embrace new theories.
I personally believe in the fact that God made us in his/her own image. This doesn't mean (s)he actually physically molded us, I'll cover my theories on that in a later post, but (s)he chose humanity as the closest to him/her out of all the species evolution led to and granted us souls and the ability to reason and explore.
Like any parent I believe God wants us to grow up to understand the processes (s)he created.  We're not going to be told how they all work, that wouldn't be learning, we have to discover it for ourselves. That's where science comes in.  Unravelling the complex patterns that the universe works by, that personally I believe God put in place.
So fundamentally science and religion work together perfectly as we are trying to understand our Lord the creator. Science let's us do so physically, gaining knowledge of the processes in the universe and religion allows us to do so mentally, gaining knowledge of how to be good, just people.
It may all sound daft, but it makes a sort of sense to me. What do you guys think?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Board gaming ministry

What is one thing families across the country do on wet and miserable days whilst on holiday?  They break out board games… Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble….yawn…more like bored games!  The world of board gaming is going through something of a golden age at the moment.  There are hundreds of thousands of new, more exciting games out there with a wide variety of mechanics – from fun party games that can be played in 15 minutes, to epic legacy games which can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment to a group of friends.  It’s so popular that there are multiple websites and YouTube channels that are dedicated to them (check out Wil Wheaton's Tabletop , a YouTube series which has celebrities playing board games with Wil Wheaton from Star Trek that in 2014 broke records by crowdfunding $1,414,159 to continue making episodes!)  There are also board game cafes opening up around the country, where you pay for a table for 30 mins, an hour or 2 hours and they p...

Scp vocations weekend

This past weekend has been incredibly hectic but incredibly fun as well.   I attended a vocations weekend run by the Society for Catholic Priests in Manchester at St Chrysostoms church. I met some wonderful like minded people and it was lovely to have people in a similar position to myself to talk to and to help me know I'm not mad for considering this life path! The Friday night was a nice introduction with an ice breaking activity to get to know everyone followed by going into the chapel for evening vespers and then some tasty pizza for tea! Later on in the evening after having eaten enough to make me need to roll rather than walk we headed back into the chapel for our first two sessions. The initial session was by Canon Alma Servant who told us about her journey to priesthood. Initially she felt her calling before women were allowed to be ordained and she didn't want to be a deaconess as it wasn't the whole job. Her story showed that if you really do feel the ...

Saturday Sonnets - The Call by Charlotte Mew

Every saturday I hope to bring a poem or verse to you all that I have enjoyed or found has resonated with me.  Today's one is from the recent SCP conference I attended. The Call From our low seat beside the fire Where we have dozed and dreamed and watched the glow Or raked the ashes, stopping so We scarcely saw the sun or rain Above, or looked much higher Than this same quiet red or burned-out fire. Tonight we heard a call, A rattle on the window pane, A voice on the sharp air, And felt a breath stirring our hair, A flame within us: Something swift and tall Swept in and out and that was all. Was it a bright or a dark angel? Who can know? It left no mark upon the snow, But suddenly it snapped the chain Unbarred, flung wide the door Which will not shut again; And so we cannot sit here any more. We must arise and go: The world is cold without And dark and hedged about With mystery and enmity and doubt, But we must go Though yet we do not know Who called, or...