Throughout history society has always attempted to place these two institutions at odds with each other, refusing to recognize that they are so intertwined and reliant upon each other that neither could exist in their current form without the other. Why is it that the population of this planet generally cannot, or will not, see beyond their own narrow perception of existence? There are those that are open minded and faithful enough to believe that there is an omnipotent being that has always existed and is The Creator of everything, yet closed minded enough to reject the possibility that science is just another way of explaining existence. At the opposite end of the spectrum there are others who are open minded enough to believe that science can and will explain every aspect of existence while completely rejecting the possibility that a higher power may have anything to do with it.
This ages old argument is just one more example of how society generally tends to view things in only two ways: black and white; right and wrong; good and bad. The universe is not so distinctly divided. Yes, there are obviously distinct polar opposites in every aspect of existence: light and dark; male and female; faith and fact. But there are also exceptions — shades of gray. Sunrise and sunset, the times of twilight when light and dark intermingle; asexual creatures, neither male nor female yet still able to reproduce, and those who use faith in science to drive their search for facts just as vigorously as the devoutly religious who use facts to reinforce their faith.
What is the difference between faith and fact anyway? One explanation would be to say that faith is the belief in something that cannot be proven, while fact is something that has been proven to be undeniable. Again there are aspects of existence that cannot be defined with such contrasting simplicity. Centuries ago people used the facts that they had available to them to reinforce their faith that the earth was the center of the universe, and that information was taught by both theologians and scientists alike. Over time, facts were changed through faith in new lines of thinking, and faith was changed by the revelation of new facts.
It is possible that there is an omnipotent God, but it is also possible that all He created were the conditions that cause science to work. Maybe Creation was the potential for matter to attract matter (the scientific law of gravity) then He sat back and watched His experiment as matter gathered and compacted into something so dense and full of energy with only a single course of action…an enormous explosion that would eventually evolve into the universe we know today.
The faithfully devout will point out that the Bible does not say that. But they ignore the fact that the Bible was ultimately written and rewritten numerous times by the hand of man. Man who by his own admission cannot possibly understand the true nature and power of God. Therefore the hand of man that physically wrote the words of the Bible was forced to employ mortal methodology to describe and explain God and His actions. Was man created in God’s image, or was God explained in mans image?
The next point that the faithful make is that the Bible may have been written by the hand of man, but it is the Word of God. That is a possibility, however the only facts we have to reinforce that faith are contained within the same tome that was physically created by the hand of man, therefore the subject requires either faith in the facts contained within the Bible, or faith in the fact that God did not speak the exact words that are written in the Bible. Either way we are still forced to marry the two schools of thought to form our own belief.
Conversely, the scientifically faithful say that this is just the inevitable result of the conditions present at a specific point in time and the facts gathered from their observations of how matter interacts with matter. They would then use those facts to completely refuse the possibility that a higher power created those conditions and defined the interactions they would eventually observe.
If it is possible that God has always existed, then it has to be possible that matter has always existed as well. If God did not create matter then it has always existed, and if matter has always existed then it has to be possible that God has always existed as well. Therefore, science and religion have to co-exist and are either both correct, or both incorrect.