Some people pit science and religion against each other as if they were incompatible. For example, the first story of creation in the Bible says that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. The prevailing scientific explanation of what happened at the beginning of our universe, however, is the Big Bang Theory. This theory does not mean that there was a big explosion, but our universe came into existence as a “singularity” 12 to 15 billion years ago and continues to expand. Another example is that prior to the 16th century most people thought the earth was flat and that the sun orbited the earth, until Galileo demonstrated that the earth is not the center of the cosmos. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church regarded the explanations by Copernicus and Galileo as heretical contradicting the doctrines of Holy Scripture. It took 300 hundred years before the Church changed its mind.

Religion is not the only discipline with blinders. There are those who disregard religion altogether believing that everything that is must be verified by the empirical method which requires experimentation and observable proof. The scientific method, however, is too limited in its scope to grasp matters of the Spirit. In fact, the things that make life worth living, such as experiences of love, hope, trust, and enthusiasm of the Spirit, are not going to be entirely verified by such a restrictive method. And if one confines God to an objective being within the universe, that reality is not going to be found scientifically. Physicists are even struggling to find an objectively real irreducible particle let alone a reality that is not an object. Religious people do not postulate that God can be confined to cosmology.

Science and religion do not need to spar with each other. Science can continue to discover and explain verifiable facts about the universe, and religion can make use of philosophical and theological concepts to give our existence purpose and meaning. The Biblical myth of the creation does not need to be viewed as scientific or historical fact, but can be interpreted as a story attributing our origins ultimately to God. And religion does not have to create dogma out of scientific observations that later need to be rescinded.

In some ways science and religion have both verifiable invisible energy fields that pervade our universe. Scientists concentrate on electrons and protons in this research, while religious persons experience what they describe as Spirit impacting their lives.

Scientists and mystics often have similar experiences. When they each reduce everything down to nothingness, both have an intense appreciation of Mystery. What can’t be seen or described is. Within this nothingness the ultimate Source of life is experienced in a mystical fashion.