Science v Religion

Many people do not consider Christianity as a serious option because they think that science has somehow made Christian faith impossible.

We live in a society in which science and scientists are treated with enormous respect and this is undoubtedly due to the amazing success of the scientific method. We all benefit from the advances in scientific knowledge and technical expertise. This leads some people to the conclusion that science can explain everything and that the only way of arriving at truth is by means of science. However, the following points need to be carefully considered.

1. Statements like "Only what
    can be proved by science is
    true" are self-defeating. The statement "Only what can be proved by science is true" cannot be proved by science! It is a statement of faith, not of science.

2. Modern science arose in a society
    where it was taken for granted that
    the universe was created by God and could for this reason be assumed to be orderly and rational and therefore worth exporing. Many of the early scientists were Christian believers who regarded themselves as "thinking God's thoughts after him" (Kepler). They believed that God had revealed himself in both his Word (the Bible) and his works (creation) and that it was our privilege and responsibility reverently to explore both.

3. It is perfectly possible to
    maintain this devout and believing
    approach to science today. It is simply wrong to state that science has made Christian belief impossible. Many modern scientists are believing Christians. They include men like Francis Collins, the Director of the Human Genome Project, or John Polkinghorne who resigned from his post as a professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge to become a clergyman. In a recent survey, it was found that the proportion of believing Christians among professional scientists was virtually identical to the proportion of believing Christians in the general population. Most of the best-sellers on the popular science shelves in our bookshops do not reflect this.

4. While science has obviously been
    extremely successful it has also
    created immense and terrifying problems. We now have weapons capable of destroying mankind, and environmental problems capable of destroying the planet. We are faced by huge ethical problems in the light of the possibility of such things as human cloning. The solutions to these problems are not scientific but moral and spiritual. The scenario of a society in which science can do just whatever it likes without any moral or spiritual constraints is bleak indeed.

5. Science tends to answer the
    "How?" questions while religion
     asks the "Why?" questions. In answer to the question "Why is the kettle boiling?" it would be possible to give a complete scientific explanation as to the physics and chemistry involved in combustion, liquids, gases etc. This explanation would not, however, be complete. The other reason why the kettle is boiling is that I've decided to make a cup of tea! It may well be possible to arrive at a complete explanation as to how the universe works. But this would not be a complete explanation. It would not really answer the question as to why the universe is here and what its purpose is. Scientific explanations are not the only ones. It would be possible to analyze a book in terms of a complete chemical analysis of the paper and the ink and to arrive at the conclusion that your copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a mixture of chemicals.
From one point of view your conclusion would be completely right ...
From another point of view it would be completely wrong.