God's will seems able to answer every single question, except it actually answers nothing. Replacing an unknown answer with a magical answer is not a solution.


From the last five episodes, I discussed how religion formed and shaped our culture. However, you may or may not realise one thing: I tend to explain a lot of religion aspects scientifically, in a sense that I try not to include a higher power in my explanation; I prefer to use history and our evolutionary behaviour to explain why religion teaches us certain thing rather than the others.

There are actually two big reasons why I do it this way. First, explaining these aspects without including the "God" itself make this writing more broadly acceptable. This is more of an anthropology article, not a theology. The bigger reason, which is the second one, is my own personal opinion. I truly hate when religion tries to explain a phenomenon, either natural or phenomenon happening in society, especially when a phenomenon is scientifically proven to be true, or at least it is not what in the holy books written.

The fact that religion is always static irritates me the most. If you remember what Mikhael said in the last episode (Season 2, Episode 5: A Conversation About Theology), he said that religion needs to be dynamic, and I fully agree to that. He underlined that religion has to be dynamic in order to develop in the existing society, especially when it comes to teaching a new generation about absolute truth, something that could not be proven in the holy books.

Taking Science to The Court

If you were asked, "what is the biggest enemy of religion?" The only common answer is science. However, is there a reason why they could not walk together? Spoiler alert: yes.

Everything starts at the beginning of our evolution. We, as humans, always want to understand everything. We started to ask why certain things happen, and we make deduction out of it. Some people took the route of logical thinking, trying to explain every single thing with logic, which means they try to get rid of the existence of a higher power.

Some went to the religious route. Believing that there is a higher power that controls everything, including us and what is happening around us, seems to solve the problem. Why an earthquake happen? God's will. Why we revolve around the sun? God's will. Why do people die? God thinks that his journey in this world is over. God's will seems able to answer every single question, except it actually answers nothing.

Replacing an unknown answer with a magical answer is not a solution. Using gravity to explain why we revolve around the sun is an answer. Using evolution to answer our origin of life is an answer. "Yeah, but where does gravity come from? It's God's creation." YES, it could be. However, is it enough to stop there and not asking further questions?

This kind of answer makes people get satisfied too soon. It basically limits our capability to ask more questions and unravel more beauty in our universe. What could be more dangerous, however, is the capability of religion to make people blind. God's will seems to be a satisfying answer to the fact that we don't even need to ask questions anymore. Blind.

The Opposite Ends of The Spectrum

Of course, what I said in the previous section is the extreme cases. In reality, most people are in the middle of the spectrum. Some could be closer to the religious end, some could be to the atheist end. (Which I will explain more about this spectrum in the next post.) 

However, if we go back to the question: "Could religion and science walk together?", I would still say the answer is no. Why? The answer is actually pretty simple: "because we are always forced to choose."

There are indeed some people who are highly religious and also scientifically literate, but this is just the smallest group of us. Let's say there is someone who is constantly going to church, he is nice to everyone, he gives a lot of his income for charity, and let's just say he is a scientist to be extreme. He believed that the big bang is the beginning of the universe, he believed that evolution is real, and so on. Then someone asked him, "so what is written in the bible about the creation is not true, then?"

He would definitely say "no, not literally." We know that there is no man created literally from ashes and his partner made from his rib. This event has never happened. Would people still say that he is religious? No. He is still a nice person, but not a religious one. If there are theologist reading to this, yes I know that this point of view may sound wrong, but this is how society judges us.

You may be religious and believing in science both at the same time, until the point that society forced you to choose. Deep inside your heart, you may still love your religion, whatever that may be, you may love the value and teaching inside your religion, but there will be the time that everyone asks you about this kind of question and you are forced to choose. Furthermore, once you learned science, there is no way you would choose the other one.

I Never Wanted Them To Conflict

Sometimes I may sound too harsh to religion, to its brainwashing and doctrines, but I never wanted both of them to be incompatible. As someone raised in a loving religious family and society, there is nothing more I could expect. I love a lot of things I learned from religion, and I still believe in a lot of the values.

I know a lot of people face this dilemma, especially who are in the middle of the spectrum. One most famous person who also faces this is Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States. After his death, a "modified" bible is found inside his room. In "The Jefferson Bible", as a lot of people say, there is no telling about Jesus' miracles or resurrection. He simply cut his bible, which is highly offensive at that time (even now I know some people would still say that is offensive), to remove everything about Jesus that concern his higher power. He simply viewed Jesus as a remarkable human being with beautiful teachings, but not more than that. Jefferson is always known to be a scientist and also a faithful catholic, except he is actually not, as we have seen. Deep inside his heart, he believed in the teachings, but to keep his popularity at that time, he has to be seen as a faithful catholic, praying, etc, even if he did not believe fully in the doctrines.

So, if they are not naturally conflicting, what causes them to? Ourselves. We make them conflicting with each other. Our judging behaviour creates this boundary that is impossible to break. Religious may say that they are believing in the same God, but they exclude people who have different opinions and trying to learn more.

If you are also facing this dilemma, what could you do?

I know a lot of people who are facing this question every single day, and if there is something I could say to you, it is "You decide yourself if you believe in a certain religion or not. No one has the right to judge your religiosity." You need to remember that science never fights religion, only some extreme people in think so. 

Science is not made to fight religion by any means. Science will not change with the existence or disappearance of religions. Science will always develop, whatever happen to humanity. In the other hand, belief should be totally personal, from the deciding part until the judging part. You decide if you want to be religious and scientifically literate, there is nobody forbid you to be so.

Religion and science have existed together and will stay that way for a foreseeable future. It is fully on us how we want to act on them. We could keep them conflicting, or we could just let one be a personal thing, and the other one to be the absolute truth, and I know you know which one is which.

Maybe what Mikhael has said is true. Being scientifically literate will not get rid of religion, but it will change how we practise our religion: to be more open, more accepting to each other, and use them to create a better society on earth.