Creation science is an effort to find evidence of God through revealing God’s creation. However, most scientists are not persuaded by Creation science because it does not conform to the process of testing a hypothesis and proving results. It is often asked, can science be supported by religion and can religion also be supported by science.
It has been proposed by Dr. Stephen Jay Gould that both realms are non overlapping masgisteria. He calls this NOMA. Noting they are not the same thing at all, but they both offer explanations, and sometimes, reasons for why there is a creation at all. Gould offers his work as an attempt to reconcile people with faith with those who believe in the hard evidence only. Biology and Geology, as just two examples offer facts, the rocks and bones themselves, and also theory. What is the most likely and demonstrable way this material was formed?
Religion, on the other hand involves ideas about morality and values. In recent years, however the two magisteria have been bumping up against one another. Some dedicated Scientists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have begun to present plenty of evidence that purports to show that much religion, is actually harmful in its “values.” What’s more, in promoting faith, people automatically agree to not pursue other paths of knowledge, such as evolutionary biology, which would help lift the human race out of darkness.
The values Religion teaches such as fear of hell, and in some extreme examples violation of rights to women, children, homosexuals and others provide factual evidence that there is overlap, and there is hazard. They argue that the history and even present day fanaticism of some religious people does no favors in the 21st century for those realms where science and technological advance is dependent upon people acting with factual intelligence.
Accepting the idea that, for instance, God will not intervene to prevent, (or cause) climate change, people could realize that they have real power to improve the diminishing viability of the air, soil, water and the increasing loss of species. Therefore, science and religion can not truly support one another, unless people bring themselves to believe that when God said: “Let US make man in OUR own image, God spoke of an inter-connected and vast universe in which not just humans, but all of the others of “US.” are included.
Another way to look at it is that to think of humanity as somehow, special, chosen, infused with soul or spirit, and everlasting life, is at best egocentric, and at worse destructive and dismissive of the rest of creation. When, and if, the evolution of the Cosmos and the human body, can be accepted as correct, then there is no reason to exclude the spark of divinity as possibly being widely spread throughout the cosmos. Other planets become just as worthy of salvation as do their biota, as all of “US” are recognized as kin, and en-souled.
There is one remaining problem, however, and that is the reality of the world today. Science is a process that is open to allowing in new truth, that is new evidence. Science provides data, then moves forward with agreed upon validity. Religion, so diverse and contradicting as it is, splinters not just monotheism, but even the subsets of constantly feuding sects.
That is, until religion provides just one truth, it cannot support science in any way.
