Are science and religion in conflict with each other?

Answer Podcast

Are science and religion in conflict with each other? Answer there are areas where there could be conflicts which would need to be addressed but we need to begin by understanding that science and religion ask very different questions and that’s why they get different answers it’s just like if we ask someone how is the food that we are eating we could get a medical answer for that food question in terms of what are the calories of the food whether it is suited for a person with diabetes or a person who has other dietary restrictions so the medical answer to the question of how food is will be different from say the answer of how the food tastes now both are properties of the same food and taste is something which science can never describe no matter how it advances before we wanted to purchase a particular food if we could have a tastometer that could tell us how tasty that food is then who wouldn’t want to have such a device even when food manufacturing companies want to make some food and they want to do quality testing if they could have a tastometer they would love to use it but taste is an experience which is not mathematically quantifiable calories and chemicals are mathematically quantifiable so when we ask how is the food normally in a non-medical context or a non-health context we will be asking the question in the second sense how does the food taste, do you like it what would you like to have more so just as the say the cook’s answer to which food is good or a chef’s answer to which food is good and a dietician’s answer to the question which food is good may be significantly different because the questions themselves although they seem similar, they are very different similarly when we consider science and religion they are asking fundamentally different questions religion asks the question essentially what makes life meaningful what is the point of it all what can we do right now to infuse our life with meaning like science asks questions about how things work Newton asked the question on seeing the fruit falling what made the fruit fall so science seeks to look for material phenomena, natural phenomena and seek natural explanations for natural phenomena religion looks for existential issues and seeks answers to existential questions now just as with respect to food there may be some food which is both healthy and tasty and some food which is healthy but not tasty some food which is tasty but not healthy and some food which is neither tasty nor healthy so we could have with respect to food answers in these four categories similarly we could we look at the world around us and we look at life at large we could have some answers which are scientifically meaningful if at all we can use the word meaning within science but spiritually meaningless we could have questions which are spiritually meaningful but scientifically meaningless we could have answers which are scientifically meaningful and spiritually meaningful and we could have answers or ideas that are scientifically meaningless and spiritually meaningless so when we say something is scientifically meaningless it doesn’t necessarily mean it is meaningless the idea of taste is experiential reality we eat food primarily based on how it tastes but from the perspective of science taste is a non measurable parameter and so it is almost as if taste doesn’t exist within the world of science so question of how does the food taste it is it is in terms of our experience and if we consider our experience as coming from our spirituality because it is consciousness which is the refining characteristic of our spirituality and our consciousness is what experiences everything so it is a spiritually meaningful question but it is a scientifically meaningless question similarly the question of what is the meaning of life what is life meant for this is a spiritually very meaningful question but scientifically it is a meaningless question because science sees no purpose for life beyond the protection and perpetuation of life through the reproduction and that’s why that is a very different conception.