Most people don't know how science and religion complement each other. You see, the two aspects of human knowledge have been around since our earliest recorded history. It was also quoted by Swami Vivekananda "all the knowledge we humans as a species ever acquired came from within ourselves, our minds."
Science is about understanding natural phenomena by constructing models that help us to make sense of our experiences, while religion is a system of shared beliefs and practices that create meaning in life and express one's views about morality. Both the processes strive to remove the unknown and present a picture of everything that we know about an event.
Both of them are remarkably similar in their quest for true knowledge. In fact whatever we know about our surroundings comes from what has been proven by both over the centuries.
Science and religion try to remove unknowns, and both contribute to making our life meaningful. Here, we will examine some commonalities between the two.
1. Science and religion are both important ways of seeing the world around us
Science reflects on what we know while religion offers a way for us to understand what we don't and it gives us meaning in life. Both of them offer ways for people to better understand life. So, if you're looking for something that can help you better understand how to live a good life, science and religion are very helpful since they offer different viewpoints on how we should live our lives.
From the very beginning, humanity has been fascinated by the universe. Scientists have never stopped exploring nature, and they believe that there is a lot left to discover. Likewise, religion is heavily associated with spirituality, and it caters to people who seek meaning in life. In this framework, both science and religion are essential because they each offer different points of view on how we should live our lives.
One common ground between both aspects of human knowledge is that they have expanded human capability in ways that we never imagined so far.
Take the example of medicine. Every day scientists are coming up with new ways of treating diseases, and there's no end in sight. Similarly, there's a lot we don't know about the world around us and hence there's also a lot we could be doing in the field of religion as well as science.
2. Science and religion can both be about caring for other human beings
If we look from the perspective of science or religion, it would be very clear to see that they are often deeply concerned about human well-being.
In the last few years, some researchers have shown that people who believe in science and religion have healthy relationships to life while those who don't have poor health outcomes compared to those who do not believe in either.
3. Science and religion are both crucial for educating us
Another field where scientific knowledge has had a remarkable impact is education. From teaching us about how to grow food, the process of learning and teaching has also shed light on how people should live. Even so, a large portion of students leaves school without having gained any useful skills to help them in the future.
Similarly, religious education offers some children a way of understanding the world and its place in it. Through this process, they can learn more about living a good life and what is important in life, or how they should live their lives.
Since science has an exponential rate of growth, it's faster than religion which is a relatively slow process but it has been doing so for centuries or even millennia. They both offer different insights into life and they help us to better understand the world around us.
Final thoughts
So, the two disciplines complement each other in many ways since they are both about different things and the two areas of knowledge support each other in essential ways.
Now you’d know what we can make out of all this is that the two disciplines complement each other. Religion and Science are interdependent and can't survive without each other. One cannot do the job without the other as they both contribute to enlarging knowledge on a given subject.
So, if religion and science are interdependent, the inevitable result would be that science and religion are also interdependent. The two realms of knowledge couldn't survive without each other. This is a natural outcome because the two tracks of knowledge complement each other in opposite ways.
For example, religion is about spirituality and how to live a good life. Science on the other hand is about discovering what can't be seen through direct experience and understanding the world around us. So, if you combine them then you have more than just one of them which would mean that there would be more knowledge and insight to share.
Science has a lot to offer to some religious communities and vice versa and both science and religion can help us better understand how to live together
