Science and Religion: Why one will necessarily fail if it attempts to use the other as justification.

Religion and science must necessarily be seen as two separate entities, for science seeks to understand the technical aspects of the world and religion seeks to understand meaning, it is only when one errs by attempting to be justified by the other that, for me, it loses credibility.

Religion will continue to surpass science in giving woman and man meaning of life, and science will continue to surpass religion in cold calculability. It is fallacious for one to attempt to justify religion or science using the other’s presuppositions. (Science’s presuppositions are that the scientific process is a valid and reliable way of understanding the world. Religion’s presuppositions are that life has meaning and there is a way in which one can attain that meaning best) this isn’t to say however that the two paths cannot sometimes unintentionally collide, as happens often with quantum physics and astronomy, but rather that the very process of science or religion loses its core meaning when it attempts to justify itself using the other’s presuppositions.

For instance, when religion attempts to legitimize itself using relics, documents of antiquity proving the existence of fundamental prophets, or proving creation through scientific processes, it fundamentally errs. Religion in the broadest sense of the term seeks to understand meaning of life and this world, and to increase brotherhood, any scientific calculation at best fails to increase any of these things, (unless by accident). It is merely an attempt to justify itself in an increasing age of rationalization (an attempt to understand the facts of the world while leaving behind the meaning), but this goes against its very virtues. For cold calculability and meaning have fundamental tension between them. So inevitably as religion attempts to justify itself using scientific rationalization it will not only debase itself and its causes, but will fail for the religious meaning of life cannot stand up to cold facts, just as cold facts cannot stand up to meaning. They are two fundamentally different spheres with fundamentally different presuppositions.

And so when religion seems to inevitably fail at rationalizing itself in the scientific world it is not necessarily a failure of the religion itself, but rather a failure of that religion in science. It is when one uses science as an attempt to justify quotes and passages of the bible that one fundamentally errs. This goes for homophobia, creation theory, or any other passage which is taken for fact as though the bible was a legislative document rather than a story of meaning. It has to be known that religion will necessarily fail in the scientific realm, just as science will necessarily fail in the religious realm. One has to either forgo meaning or cold calculability as they move along the science/religion continuum unless one succeeds at seeing the two as fundamentally differing spheres. And so religion should revert back to meaning, understanding that science has nothing to offer them (unless accidentally) in this, and science should stick with calculating, for life meaning in the religious sense is at odds with this calculability. With this understanding one can see that religion and science don’t necessarily have to be in conflict, so long as they dwell in different niches in society and don’t attempt to compete using the other’s resources. 

(Can you tell I've been reading Weber lately? lol)