The Border Between Science and Religion

From the view of two Catholic school alumni studying Computer Science

By Aoife Kettle featuring Sinead McAleer (in navy italics!)

I went to Catholic school, the school mass, pray before every class and receive a bible on graduation kind of catholic school. My very first science class of first year, we were all told to stand up and recite an Our Father from behind our laboratory desk. It’s an interesting image. 30 girls, learning that we evolved from apes, praying to the man who gave Adam and Eve life in the garden of Eden. Studying the solar system in the same room we contemplated life, ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’ (My First Missal, 2006).

As a fellow Loreto alumni, I can similarly recall the juxtaposition between learning about sex education from a Nun who opened the lessons with an anecdote about the vow of celibacy that she had taken 45 years prior. It’s safe to say there was not much biology discussed in the ensuing lessons…

Science and religion are pitted against each other. Countless papers have been written on the war that exists between them. In school I was taught to keep them separate, don’t apply scientific reasoning to religion, and don’t giving meaning to science. There can’t be a Theory of Evolution and a Story of Eden in the same world. But where is the border? Should there be an intersection or a convergence? Where and how do science and religion meet?

Now as a computer science and business student who admittedly has not open her graduation bible until I dug it out today, it would be naive of me to think they exist independently. For my logical, scientific brain religion does not compute anymore, but can I say was not shaped in some way by 14 years of very catholic education?

On a school pilgrimage to Medjugorje, where Mary appeared to Herzegovinian children (we didn’t see her ONCE in the whole two weeks we were there…), our priest pulled my sister to the side. He had overheard her discussing her plans to go to university to study Physics. He told her emphatically that this was a bad idea, warning her that studying Physics would make her lose her faith… Now, 5 years later, she has a MSc in Nuclear Physics and has to say that our priest, for once, had been dead right.

The separation of science from other disciplines has been explored for centuries. In 1853, Comte stated that science alone was based on reasoning and observations. He strove to set science apart, an intelligent thought process that was different from the others. However, a hundred years later, we were thinking differently. Interdisciplinary thought brought science a little closer to the outside world. A Jacob’s ladder between science and ponderous thought. Piaget proposed his radical ‘transdisciplinary thought’ in 1970. It was knowledge beyond disciplines. It is in this space that science and religion converge (Dogan, 1997).

I believe that for as long as we have had information systems, we have had trans disciplines. Since we created systems that could do things we could not, we have been thinking about them with our religious mind, not just our intellectual brain.  

At an academic level, there is a stark border between science and religion. Information systems are developed to serve a purpose. The impact of their purpose is not the concern of the creator. They simply build what they can and let it out into the world. Religion follows its own path, one of teaching and reflection. It instils morals and develops ethical reasoning. As humans we project religion onto science.

The border between science and religion exists in institutions to allow growth. Science and religion converge in thoughts and minds to give meaning to purpose. Religion teaches us morals, ethics and faith in what’s right. Without this, science is lawless and uncontrollable. It gives the ‘should we do this?’ that compliments the ‘could we do this’.

In some way, that strange image of young girls praying at their laboratory desks, may be a perfect description of the border between science and religion. There are prayers for one and experiments for another. They converge in us, as people with conscious minds, beliefs, values and ethics that stabilise our innovation, curiosity and aspirations towards progress.

References

My First Missal (2006) Editor: Rev.Oliver Brennan, B.A.

Dogan, M., 1997. The new social sciences: Cracks in the disciplinary walls. International Social Science Journal, 49(153), pp.429-443.