In today’s harsh and cold world, there are many ways to approach reality. No matter where we come from, our race, age or culture, this search for a better understanding of our purpose on earth may lead us all to the same questions. Who are we, why are we here? To answer these questions, many avenues are presented. Two domains are in conflict in the way they answer such questions, these two domains are religion and science. This ongoing war between the two doesn’t seem to be over soon, so I decided to investigate and better analyze why the problem persists. I will attempt to sort out the information I’ve gathered , defend the position I’ve reached and explain why the two domains can and never will be able to peacefully co-exist. To prove and defend my position I will look at both arguments from different points of view, looking at their historical backgrounds, and psychological conceptualizations of each domain. I will also analyze both their sociological importance and presence in today’s world, at they end these arguments will show that religion and science will never be able to coexist.

            Today’s conflict between religion and science is nothing new. Foremost among their discussions are arguments over the origin of life, events described in the bible and other religious documents, theologians and scientists have always found a way to engage in endless conversations about what’s true and what’s not true. These disagreements may be partially due to the different circumstances under which they both emerged as popular beliefs system to the eyes of the common men. I will briefly discuss both angles by examining their evolution and progression through time.

            First science, a derived from the Latin word scientia, which means “to know”, is defined as the systematized knowledge in a field. It’s hard to exactly identify the starting point of this movement but effort to better understand one’s environment can be traced back to the times of Paleolithic people, fact witnessed  just by looking at their painting on walls. Paintings describing many scientific ideas, such as astronomical observations, chemical substances, disease symptoms, and even mathematical tables. These observations found their roots and foundations in provable, repeatable experiences. Scientific knowledge proceeded to rise as the belief by philosophers that every natural phenomena could be explained through logical thinking. First with theories like the one introduced by Greek philosopher Thales, that stated that the earth was a flat disk floating on the universal element, water. Later, philosophers like Pythagoras, and geographer Eratosthenes discredited that claim assuring us that the earth was of a spherical form. Others like Plato and Aristotle followed, promoting deductive reasoning, mathematical representation and qualitative description. After the destruction of Carthage and Corinth by the Romans 146 years BC, lost documents of scientific findings destroyed and burned lost their importance and influence. The science we know today is the direct result of men like Newton, Galileo, and many others that went beyond their duties to ensure that provable knowledge was a vital part of our lives.

            Religion’s origin find their roots in different ways, and is defined differently, as a participation to a spiritual movement that is believed to be a reality. When the first religions took place is not a recorded data, but the studying of religion can be traced back as far as the 6^th century BC, when Greek philosopher Xenophanes, through his travels and excursions came to the conclusion that different cultures and people view religion in a different way. Adopting different rituals, celebrations to communicate with their gods. What really ignited the study of world religions was the intensive trade and explorations. What motivated these various religions was the great complexity of the earth’s environmental structures; religious beliefs and explication were substituted for answers to questions unavailable at the time. This study of other religion led to the challenging of many Christian and non-Christian religions as early as the 16^th century, period followed by the period of enlightenment. During the enlightenment, thinkers like Voltaire objected themselves against religions that founded their heritage on divine rulers or scriptures, like prophets or sacred writings. During the Enlightenment, it was believed that we could have ideas based on popular beliefs recognized by the masses, ideas that would help us regard the world as a pool of unanswered questions, but religion rejected that viewpoint. This marqued the first related questioning of any religious system. A movement which took greater significance after 1859, the year of the publication of Charles Darwin’s «On the Origin of Species” describing the evolution that took place millions of years ago and the cause of the state of life in which we live today, not caused by divine intervention like believed before, but by pure, complex, and explainable natural events. What allowed these contradicting philosophies to co-exist for so long without clashing was the control of knowledge that had been exercised by religion for hundreds of years, only few possessed the required tools to think of contradicting theories, not only that, but with what tool would they prove it, how were they to know the age of the universe, or the positioning of the universe. With today’s technology, the control of knowledge and information has become something almost impossible, where any information is accessible to any individual who has a computer; everyone is in power of making his own little theories about anything one wants to find answers to.

            Second I will explain the two psychology behind the two domains, religion and science, when it comes to the vital task of explaining the origin of life on earth. Both view the topic from totally different angles, first let talk about the theologian way of viewing it. Theologian explain the complex process with a the theory of creation, a theory God at the center of it. Explaining divine intervention as the only answer to where we are now, many alternate theory have been introduced by theologian, but they all follow the same guidelines, all of which concluded that the entire universe was created within 6000 to 10 000 years. According to Christian theologian John Suers, the earth is currently going through it 6004^th year. The description of the creation by the hands of God to the Christians is as follows: In a period of six days, God created the entire universe, ended by the creation of one human being of each sex Adam and Eve, on the seventh day, probably exhausted, he decided to appreciate and stare at his masterpiece from up there in his suite. Interpretation of the matter describe in the Bible (Genesis 1: 1-2:4) Other theories like the Day-Age theory transform the interpretation and claim that those six twenty-four hour periods are nothing more than symbolical of vast periods of life that really took about 10 000 years. Facts that according to many that are ludicrous because the bible is not a scientific text.  Another theory, the Gap theory claims that the initial creation took place about 4000 BC, that theory being the one Christians adopted. These theories imply that God created the universe that we live in less than 10 000 years, if these allegations can be proven or not is another story but fact of the matter is that these theories went uncontested for a major part of history, what kind of findings could have justified the questioning of such theories. That’s what I’ll investigate by looking at the scientific method of explaining this question; scientists do it through a theory called Evolution.

            Evolution is a theory that explains the creation of life on earth through a series of natural causations that took place during an extremely long period of time, a process that started billions of years ago with was is commonly called the Big-Bang theory. A theory that clearly explains the evolutionary stages that took place and that resulted in the birth of life on earth. Philosophers like Darwin promoted this train of thoughts explaining our creation without the interference of God in the picture. That’s when it was made clear that religious understanding of creation was totally different of the scientific interpretation of the same matter. When followers look for God’s presence, all they can are hints, or intuitions, not consistent facts, another aspect of the question used as a motivator to find an explanation to the still unanswered question. The problem was that religion relies on a system of faith and beliefs; the problem of this is that all that is said cannot be proven. Faith is all about believing without seeing, and that was definitely not enough for Darwin and others. His theory suggested that nature had taken its logical course in different parts of the then united world in what would be the start of a very, very slow process of evolution to become the world we know today. Darwin had an edge over Creationism, provable points; he’s arguments were made on the basis of logic and verifiable allegations, something religion didn’t have. How can you explain all the fossils and pieces of cultures dating from millions of years before us, did they all appear at once 6000 years ago, nonsense. Also the fact that the universe is in fact expanding serves as a possible proof that the theory of the Big Bang is a purely logical explanation. This idea suggests and accepts the concept of human and earthly progress through the times. There’s a lot of ways to look at these differences between the two concepts, the more obvious one is to conclude that religion and science have too many differences to try to reconcile both parties. As science advanced, religion stayed in a state of stagnation, because its roots are find in ancient texts and beliefs, which cannot be revised today at the risk of loosing credibility. Laws imprinted in stone don’t evolve, knowledge does. Some theologian suggest a different idea, that we should specify the fields of studies examined by both domains, fields that would belong to both disciplones, and have both stay in their respective field. In 1996 the Pope John Paul I I  acknowledge that the theory of evolution was more than a suggestive hypothesis, but he defended his beliefs by saying that the human spiritual soul was created by God. What also separates the two philosophies is that science is a field to discover, meaning that science does not take human flaws and opinions in consideration, it strictly relies on provable points, and can easily be defended showing the way by which one came to his conclusions, with our without human assistance, science will remain, and will resist time, meaning that before humans were present, science was there, and after we’ll pass, science will remain. What is true to one culture in science, is also true to another culture far away. Religion does not satisfy the same characteristics, it’s not a field to be discovered, like science, it’s a field to be invented. It wasn’t there before humans, and it won’t be there after humans, its in constant need of human intervention, was is true to one culture with respect to religion is definitely not true to another culture. Also it’s not something that can resist the test of time. On the psychological aspects of both points of view these two are not compatible. Ludwig Feuerbach, a philosopher summarized it best when he said that this whole fixation is motivated and fueled by the population because the whole concept of God is nothing more than the projection of humanity. Another question that should be answered is whether or not to teach such philosophies in school, a recent study showed that more than 38% of Americans still firmly believe in the Adam and Eve story.

            Lets look at the topic from another angle, how does these two different perceptions of what is and what’s not affect our lives in the 21^st Century. From the time they were introduced and developed these two domains have taken totally different patterns. Lets first talk about science, which since its separation from religion has gone forward without ever looking back. Pionners like Newton and is Calculus or Galileo using is telescope, even Darwin with his theory of evolution are all responsible for the way today’s scientists approach problems. Science is in constant evolution using yesterday’s solution to solve tomorrow’s  problems. There has been a boom in the last three hundred years with respect to science, many sub fields have been introduced, and many more will be. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel prize recipient in physics giving a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science last year said that one of the greatest achievement of science was if not to make it impossible for brilliant people to believe in religion, then at least it opened the door for them not to be religious. Marjorie Garber said that religion and all the concept surrounding it are nothing but a dream that encodes “wishes and fears, projection and identification”. Another philosopher, Richard Dawkins said that followers of religious groups were like the character played by Jim Carrey in the movie The Truman Show, where they are living inside an illusion and are not aware of the real world. In brief once the cycle of science starts it can’t be stopped.            

 Religion on the other hand has lived a different reality; time has not be so gentle to religious beliefs. With science constantly reloading their bank of arguments with new theories, and new angles from which to look at things, and the inability of religion to do the same, it seems like it’s a war that's not worth participating, but some theologian are still confident. The fact is that the bible was written not by God, but by human beings, who are not perfect, so it should be expected that there might be some flaws in their philosophies, which are in desperate need of adjustments to apply to today's reality. If they don’t, these religions will soon become obsolete. One of the worry of many thinker, is what will happen to the intelligent followers?, how many of them really believe in hell? What if the church publicly abandoned this concept, would they still go to church? Another worry is that many followers have showed their discontentment with yesterday’s religions, their inflexibility and old message is out of tune. That’s why the phenomenon of sects dealing with aliens and extra terrestrial life are common occurrence, because that’s what intriguing people now, that’s today’s reality. In the years to come, religions all over the world will have to seriously discuss what they plan to do about their futures, because they’re at risk of losing everything.