Can science and religion coexist? It's a frequent topic of discussion in all sorts of circles, especially in certain contentious internet based ones. Flame wars between fundamentalists and atheists are a dime a dozen on the internet. Our society does seem to be becoming increasingly secular. So can the two continue to coexist in the long term? Yes, absolutely. It's not going to be friction-free or simple, but it will happen- just as it has for at least half a millennium so far, depending on what you assign the start date of science as- I personally put the start date back considerably farther than that.

Before we delve into the modern debate, we need to travel back a bit to the origins of secular society. Surprisingly, science didn't have that much to do with the rise of secularity. Instead, we can trace it back to the Protestant Reformation- at least here in the West. During the tumultuous events surrounding the Reformation, a number of key changes began to occur.

First of all, Protestants began attacking the idea that any one career or position in society is closer to God. They began to assault the idea of the Great Chain of Being, that all-pervasive religious hierarchy that permeated medieval Europe. This was all done in order to bring all people closer to God, but as these ideas became more and more enmeshed in battle against the old Christian hierarchies (I don't say Catholic, since it's a gross oversimplification to claim Reform was only part of Protestantism and Catholicism was purely in opposition- the story was much more complicated than that), more and more room began to open up for people to escape both the old hierarchies.

A 1579 illustration of The Great Chain of Being. [Image source]

These new, post reform roles in European society were, in many ways, far more egalitarian than the old. (They would still be immensely stratified and rigid compared to today, of course.) Society began to become more civilized, with the power of the aristocrats and the wild festivals of the commoners being restrained more and more. This leveling of society granted somewhat more autonomy intellectually- all of a sudden, one's relationship to God was a personal one. Murder and violence became less acceptable, and ideas of the common good became more and more common. We can trace a pretty direct chain of descent from Protestant theology to many of the various humanist philosophies.

The most notable indicator that science wasn't what led to secularity (though it's certainly a powerful tool of secularity) is the immense role of religion in early science. Geology, for instance, arose almost entirely out of Christian theology in its early days- it is somewhat ironic that it's become such a battleground between theists and atheists. (Tellingly, however, there are absolutely tons of religious geologists, who are more than capable of being religious and empirically sound. One of my favorite and most respected professors was extremely religious, which didn't prevent her in the slightest from doing top-notch volcanological work.)

Another fantastic example is Galileo. There's a common narrative that Galileo's enemies were religious zealots in the Catholic Church, offended because he was defying what the Bible said. In reality, his fiercest opponents were other astronomers, who rejected the heliocentric idea for strictly scientific reasons. (Specifically, the lack of an observed stellar parallax.) The whole Galileo getting house arrest for the last years of his life bit? Well, his opponents basically sicced the Inquisition on him like an attack dog (science was extremely cutthroat back then). The Pope (a friend and fan of Galileo's) and the Jesuits, however, defended Galileo for years, shielding him from the Inquisition, only withdrawing their support when one of his books appeared to attack the Pope.

When did Christianity (and, to a usually lesser extent, other religions) become thought of as the enemies of science? Well, it would be incorrect to claim it had nothing to do with scientific discoveries that directly challenged non-metaphorical readings of religious texts- it certainly did. The repudiation of the Great Flood by geology was huge. Much of it, however, was a very deliberate choice. Various historians and writers began trying to depict science and religion as enemies, and it stuck. The idea that medieval people thought the Earth was flat, for instance, was invented wholesale as insults for the Protestants to aim at Catholics (and vice versa, to a much lesser extent) during the reformation. Certain 1800s historians then deliberately ran with those lies to spread the idea that all medieval people were idiots who thought the Earth was flat. It's a bizarre alliance of Protestants and rational humanists intent upon making the Middle Ages look bad. (Largely because medieval times were Catholic.) In reality, medieval people were well aware that the Earth was round, and even knew its circumference to an astonishing degree of accuracy. (In fact, they got that from the ancient Greeks.) So... a lot of the animosity was quite deliberately drummed up. Both sides get blame for that- there's not much like a good enemy to rally the troops.

Depictions of a flat earth under a literal dome of stars, like the Flammarion Engraving depicted here (unknown artist) are fairly common in Medieval Europe. They seem, however, to be merely a common and stylish artistic embellishment from the time period. [Image source]

One of the most visible parts of the public discussion of the relationship between science and religion is in the form of testing specific religious claims, usually from the Bible or another religious texts. With some, it's pretty easy to do- it doesn't take much math to show that Noah's Ark wouldn't have nearly enough room for all the animals. The Great Flood itself runs counter to all the available geological evidence. Likewise a lot of other such claims. The problem there, however, is pretty simple: these arguments are only useful against literal interpretations of religious texts. Anyone willing to accept religious works as metaphorical or as potentially having inaccuracies will be highly resistant to these sorts of arguments. This, however, has led to science being used in an attempt to take down other religious claims- namely, and problematically, untestable claims.

There has never been any viable proposed tests towards, for instance, how to detect a soul or a deity. More importantly, however, are moral questions- there really isn't a way to test assertions of morality using science's empirical methods. What exactly makes a claim testable? In a nutshell, it's what philosopher Karl Popper referred to as falsifiability- if a claim can't potentially be proven false, it isn't science. This doesn't mean that a claim must be proved false to be scientific, that would be absurd. It means, instead, that there must be a way laid out in the claim itself that an experiment could potentially prove the claim wrong. There is no real way to answer a question on the order of "what is the Good Life" via falsifiable, empirical means. While science is probably the single most powerful intellectual tool since language itself, it's not all-powerful. There are strong limitations on what it can do, and defying those limitations results in bad science.

I frequently find myself in the role of defending religious people from other atheists much angrier than myself, largely because I get irritated at the misappropriation and misuse of science by said angry atheist types. These misuses have ranged from attempts to rebut non-testable religious claims to, once, the claim that the Big Bang is just scientists trying to suck up to religion. (Seriously, they believed in the Steady State Universe due to this conviction. It was... astonishing, to say the least.) Much of this derives from this odd idea that all religious people are fundamentally identical to fundamentalist Christians. That being said, I'd be lying if I said I didn't quite enjoy picking apart testable claims of religious fundamentalists myself when they're presented as testable. Still, though, I consider attempting to use the scientific method to test untestable claims to be one of the cardinal sins against science, and find myself much more concerned with those who would misuse science than those who oppose it.

As one last personal note- while I am personally atheist, I'm also Jewish. Not just in the cultural or ethnic sense (though I am in both regards), but actually a practicing Jew. Sound weird? Thanks to its status as an orthopraxic, rather than orthodoxic, religion, as well as a few theological loopholes, it's perfectly allowable, if a bit on the weird side. It's also presented absolutely zero obstacles towards me pursuing a career in science.

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Bibliography:

• A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor
• Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle, by Stephen Jay Gould
• Selections From Popper, by Karl Popper
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei