REVIEW OF COMPATIBILITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Published on July 6 2015 by Ibekwe Ephraim

Those who believe that the creation and government of the world are the

work of a Being Whom it is their duty to love with all their hearts, Who

loves them with a love beyond all other love, to Whom they look for

guidance now and unending happiness hereafter, have a double motive for

studying the forms and operations of Nature; because over and above

whatever they may gain of the purest and highest pleasure in the study,

and whatever men may gain of material comfort in a thousand forms from

the results of the study, they cannot but have always present to their

minds the thought, that all these things are revelations of His

character, and to know them is in a very real measure to know Him. The

believer in God, if he have the faculty and the opportunity, cannot find

a more proper employment of time and labour and thought than the study

of the ways in which God works and the things which God has made. Among

religious men we ought to expect to find the most patient, the most

truth-seeking, the most courageous of men of science.

We know that it is not always so; and that on the contrary Science and

Religion seem very often to be the most determined foes to each other

that can be found. The scientific man often asserts that he cannot find

God in Science; and the religious man often asserts that he cannot find

Science in God. Each often believes himself to be in possession, if not

of the whole truth, at any rate of all the truth that it is most

important to possess. Science seems to despise religion; and religion to

fear and condemn Science. Religion, which certainly ought to put truth

at the highest, is charged with refusing to acknowledge truth that has

been proved. And Science, which certainly ought to insist on

demonstrating every assertion which it makes, is charged with giving the

rein to the imagination and treating the merest speculations as

well-established facts.