Periodically (weekly I believe) there’s a chat on Twitter about science fiction called appropriately enough, SciFiChat. The whole think is conducted by making sure that everyone involved includes the hashtag #scifichat in their tweets. This ensures that everyone can see what’s being said even if you don’t follow everyone involved. You can see most, if not all of it, here. This past week it was on religion in science fiction and being a big fan of both I definitely made some time to take part.

During the discussion the question was asked, “Is science diametrically opposed to religion?” Both Zach Ricks and I agreed that that wasn’t the case. He said, “Some people believe that science destroys faith, I don’t agree with that stance at all.” To which I replied, in agreement, the “the two are examining different things.” Writer, philosopher, and all around cool guy J. Daniel Sawyer tagged me on Skype and asked me if I’d like to flesh out and debate that point on our respective blogs. Always ready to cross swords, I agreed. We put it up to age before beauty and since we’re both pretty grizzly looking (in the bear sense) age won out so I get to fire the first volley.

Thanks to Sid I’ve learned that defining my terms is pretty important in these sorts of situations. The definition of science to which I refer is “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method” aka natural science. That is defined as “any of the sciences (as physics, chemistry, or biology) that deal with matter, energy, and their interrelations and transformations or with objectively measurable phenomena”. Science deals with the natural world. It tells us things like how and at what temperature water freezes. It tells us how species adapt to their surroundings and pass that on to their young. It describes the processes of the universe, at least so far as we are currently able to measure and observe them.

Religion on the other hand serves a very different purpose. Again, referring to Webster, religion is “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices”. The purpose of such a system is to put us in touch with whatever we believe to be true about something that exists outside of the natural realm, at least that’s how I see it. There exist things that do not belong to the natural world. God, angels, and demons, belong to this class of things. There may well be other things that are supernatural, but that’s a different topic. The point is that these things are not objectively measurable.

So, when I say that science and religion are not diametrically opposed, by that I mean one can be both scientific and religious when it comes to your world view. Science is used to look at and interact with our physical world and religion is used to look at and interact with the spiritual and supernatural world. In that sense science and religion seem to me to be dramatically different in terms of their purpose. The opposition, the downright animosity, that often exists between representatives of the “two worlds” is one that I frankly don’t get. Too often it looks like people who each believe that their particular way of looking at everything in creation can eventually answer the prevailing questions without any help from the other. That hardly seems necessary or productive.

Dan says that “science and religion can not meaningfully be said to be examining different things.” I’m not sure if we’re using different definitions for the terms or if our respective world views are different. Whatever the case I look forward to what he has to say.

His response.