The Complementarity of Science and Religion

I am continually astonished when I read a story like this from today's Washington Post:

Inside the flagship lab of the National Center of Atmospheric Research, a dozen home-schooled children and their parents walk past the offices of scientists grappling with topics from global warming and microphysics to solar storms and the electrical fields of lightning.

They are trailing Rusty Carter, a guide with Biblically Correct Tours. At a large, colorful panel along a wall, Carter reads aloud from a passage describing the disappearance of dinosaurs from the earth about 65 million years ago. He and some of the older students exchange knowing smiles at the timeline, which contradicts their interpretation the Bible suggesting a 6,000-year-old planet.

"Did man and dinosaurs live together?" Carter asks. A timid yes comes from the students.

"How do we know that to be true?" Carter says. There's a long pause.

"What day did God create dinosaurs on?" he continues.

"Six," says a chorus of voices.

"What day did God create man on?"

"Six."

"Did man and dinosaurs live together?"

"Yes," the students say.

Mission accomplished for Carter, who has been leading such tours since 1988. He and the other guides counter secular interpretations of history, nature and the origin of life with their own literal reading of the Bible. And they do so right at the point where they feel they feel science indoctrinates young people _ museums.

I wonder what the consequences will be of raising children in this kind of a bubble, where their "truth" is so divorced from the truth of the rest of the world. I wonder how many of their parents went to public schools - I would imagine most of them - and what happened that they lost faith in those schools. I wonder about the future of our country, when a significant minority of its citizens believe that science is the enemy of religion.

My own view is that science and religion complement each other and need each other. Both spring from the same deep human aspirations to understand the truth about our existence on earth and to improve the quality of our lives. Science helps us know how we came to be here, who we are in the biological and psychological sense, and what we can do technologically to improve our lives. Religion raises the important questions of why we are here, what is the meaning of our existence, and what we can do spiritually to improve the quality of our lives.

Both science and religion can be dangerous - because humans can be dangerous. Science can give us the means to destroy ourselves; religion can give us the will to destroy ourselves.

I love science, as a lay observer of it all. I love learning about evolution, quantum physics, entimology, horticulture, and everything else I can soak in. The world is endlessly fascinating and there is nothing in my religious faith that feels threatened about the findings of science. At the same time, I know that there are spiritual questions that science cannot answer -- although, it is true that the findings of science continually challenge us to rethink our spiritual place in the world. But I can't imagine raising my children to be afraid of that. How can you ask the right spiritual questions and find the right answers if you don't know the scientific truth about our world?