Are Science and Religion Opposed?
Thesis
The thesis of my argument in this paper will be that, contrary to popular belief, religion, and religion of a certain kind, is the necessary foundation for science. I will sketch this out historically, showing how many of the major scientific breakthroughs were from people who had a religious understanding of the world and of the grand scheme of things. I will also demonstrate why this is true philosophically. I will also interact with the opposing position of mine and offer some critique.
Introduction
In a report by the Pew Research Center published on February 26, 2025, 68% of religiously unaffiliated people in America say that religion and science are mostly in conflict (J. Coleman, 2025). This gives us an insightful view into the disposition of a large number of people on this issue of religion and science. To even dive more specifically into the views of specific kinds of religiously unaffiliated people, 83% of atheists believe religion and science are in conflict, 69% of agnostics believe likewise, and 64% of nones (those claiming to have an unidentifiable worldview) also believe the same about religion and science (J. Coleman, 2025). What is interesting about this research is that it found that if a person is more religious, they are more likely to see science as being compatible with religion. Another study done by The Pew Research Center in 2009 found that in the scientific community, belief in God is half as likely as it is in the general public. Namely, 95% of the general public believes in some form of deity, while only 51% of actual scientists hold to the belief in some form of higher power, of deity (Liu, 2009). The fact of the lower likelihood of those in the scientific community, to some, may indicate the incompatibility of religion and science.
Arguments for Why Religion Is Opposed to Science
Over the years of reading and talking with people of non-religious viewpoints, I have come across several popular reasons as to why they think that religion and science are incompatible. One of the reasons is that much of religion involves matters that are intangible. “Show me god”, “Where is god?”, “How can we test in a lab the existence and activities of spirits?”. Questions like these are on the minds of many with this position. On the other hand, they see science as a concrete way of learning about the world. Science is empirical; it deals with matters that can be visually examined, tested in a laboratory, or verified through tangible and reliable methods, while objects of religion, in their essence, cannot be.
Another common reason why many believe religion and science are incompatible is the contradictions of what is allegedly found when studying the physical world, compared to the claims of religious books. For example, on the issue of the age of the universe, many would see that the Biblical account of the age of the universe would go back to a timeframe of around 4 to 8 thousand B.C. NASA is currently claiming that through their new instruments and technological advances, they perceive the age of the universe is around 13.7 billion years old, give or take 200 million years (NASA, 2006). The argument is that these two differing claims, one from religion, one from science, show that they are certainly opposed to one another.
A final reason that is popular for the opposition of science and religion is as follows. Religion causes people to be overly enamored with the supernatural and disengages them from empirical scientific study. Religion makes people focus more on the God who made the physical world than the physical world itself, and learning how it works. Along this line of thinking, many view the enlightenment as break breakaway from the superstitious past of religion, forward into an age of true scientific discovery.
A Historical Sketch
Long before scientific discoveries about the earth freely floating in space, the Bible claimed “He (God) hangs the earth on nothing,” according to Job 26:7. Long before we learned through scientific discoveries we learned of the roundness of the earth, the Bible claimed “It is He (God) who sits above the circle of the earth” in Isaiah 40:22. Concerning the first law of thermodynamics the Bible thousands of years beforehand spoke of the how all of existing material and energy can never be created nor destroyed but remains constant in Genesis 2:1. Ecclesiastes 1:7 speaks of the hydraulic cycle mentioning how the waters in the seas run to and out of the rivers and seas but return again in a cyclical manner. Ecclesiastes 11:3 states further that when the clouds are full of rain, they empty out again onto the earth. Long before modern hygiene methods were advocated for based on empirical science; the Bible taught laws of hygiene in the book of Leviticus, in chapter 15. Quarantine laws were also taught in the book of Leviticus in chapter 13. This was long before scientists discovered the negative effects of spreading diseases such as the black plague, during the fourteenth century. Not to belabor the point, the religious book of the Jews and Christians makes many claims and presents many teachings that have been later confirmed with scientific discoveries, showing the compatibility.
When it comes to historical figures who either founded or made significant advances in the sciences, there is no lack of people of religion. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is noted to be a leading figure in the field of natural philosophy and in the domain of scientific methodology during the transitional era from the Renaissance to the early modern era (Klein, 2003). Francis Bacon was an orthodox Christian who at times quoted from the Old and New Testaments in his works. Francis Bacon founded the inductive method of scientific reasoning.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) defined elements, compounds, and mixtures. He is known for the famous Boyle’s law. James Maxwell (1831-1879) was famous for his study of kinetic theory, which involved temperature and the speed of particles. Maxwell was an evangelical protestant. Issac Newton (1643-1727) invented calculus and developed his laws of motion. He also discovered the science of gravity and invented a telescope to view the various colors of the sun. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) presented his theory that the Earth rotated around the sun rather than the contrary, which revolutionized scientific consensus. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) formulated the laws of planetary motion. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a key astronomer and instrumental in his discoveries of mathematics and in his telescopic observations of the solar system.
The brief list above of the examples, both from religious texts and from religious figures in history, should suffice to show how religion and science are compatible with each other.
Is All Religion Compatible with Science?
Often, when people of the Christian persuasion of religion engage with those who believe that religion and science are opposed, mention is made that it is not Christianity in particular that is compatible with science, since the Greeks of long ago, before the Christian era, were already making scientific discoveries. What should we think about this? It is true that early Greeks made scientific discoveries about the physical universe. For example, Thales in the sixth century B.C.E. is said to have predicted a solar eclipse. Pythagoras was instrumental in his theory of numbers and mathematics. Aristotle and Archimedes were instrumental in their studies of biology and astronomy (Williams, 2019).
While some would dispute that these early Greeks were religious, I would argue that if religion is defined with a bit more liberality than is typical, we could see that these men were religious in that they had metaphysical commitments about the world that were organized, systematic, and transcended the immanent and mere empirical. If we define religion as a particular system of beliefs about the world, these men were religious. Some of them were monists, which means that they believe all of reality is one. Others were atomists, who believed that reality is not unified but is composed of individuated substances. The later Greeks held to a pantheon of gods, who were believed to be myths by some, but less mythical to others (as is obvious from the actual temples they made for these gods).
The question is this: “Was the religious persuasion of these early Greeks compatible with science?” To that, I would argue no. If we take the religion of Thales, which was a kind of monism, we find that even Thales’ own disciple, Anaximander, criticized this view as it relates to science and showed that, if all is one, then opposites cannot be discovered in the world. Anaximander argued that if it were the case, as Thales said, that all is water, one cannot scientifically make sense of the dry things in the world (Williams, 2019). Thales’ monism was incompatible with science. The atomists, on the other hand, had a real problem with unifying individual things they would study in the world into categories and classes. Scientists were being tossed constantly from one extreme of ultimate monism on the one hand to ultimate atomism on the other. None could adequately bring the two together to account for the entirety of scientific learning.
If we move later to the Greeks, such as Aristotle, who held to the pantheon, we also find incompatibilities with science. As many have noted, polytheism logically implies a chaotic world. What is meant here is that, if nature is run by multiple gods who are at many times competing with one another, one in charge of the seas, another in charge of chemicals, and another in charge of life forms, there is instability in the observable world. Successful scientific discovery requires a stable world. The pantheism of the Greeks did not give them a stable worldview to work from. Though they made scientific discoveries, this was in spite of their polytheism, not because of it.
Animistic religions are also incompatible with science. If one believes that nature is embodied with spirits that could be angered, then it does not encourage scientific experimentation with nature. Lastly, to critique the common assumption that atheism is most compatible with science. May I suggest this is furthest from the case? Atheism is usually materialistic and implies the problem of solipsism to human thinking, which destroys the rational ability to engage in the real external world. The world works on a principle of chance, subject to constant change at a fundamental level. There is also no absolute ethical basis in atheistic approaches to science that obligate honest reporting of empirical discoveries. This is a problem.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I posit that religion and science are compatible. But it is not religion in general, but a religion based on the Jewish and Christian scriptures that is uniquely compatible with science. As was recognized by historical figures, the biblical religion provides a necessary and adequate foundation upon which science can be done in a way that makes sense. Biblical religion gives a foundation for the reliability of human sense perception since the scriptures reveal that God made man equipped with reliable faculties to learn about the external world. It gives a foundation for the stability of nature since God is all-powerful and promises to uphold the world in a stable way, enabling us to observe its laws and regularities. It also gives us an absolute ethical basis obligating scientists to honestly report their findings. This is my stated position for why we should reconsider the current opinion that religion and science are opposed and see rather that religion and science are compatible and that biblical religion in particular is necessary for science.
Author: Troy Goldsmith, founder of Aletheia Ministries. (B.S. University of the Cumberlands, Graduate student at Liberty Theological Seminary.)
Reference:
Jcoleman. (2025, February 26). 23. Religion and views of science. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religion-and-views-of-science/
Klein, J. (2003, December 29). Francis Bacon (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford.edu. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/
Liu, J. (2009, November 5). Scientists and Belief. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
NASA. (2006, May). Imagine the Universe! Ten Year Anniversary. Imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/featured_science/tenyear/age.html
Williams, L. P. (2019). History of science - Greek science. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/history-of-science/Greek-science
