Do we have to choose?
Which is better – Science or Religion?
Science and religion are different – and they help us to answer different types of questions.
Science helps us to understand how the natural world works. it asks questions like, “Where do the colours in a bubble come from?”
To investigate scientific questions, scientists can often do experiments and make notes about what happens. Religion considers questions like “Does God exist?” Science can’t answer these kinds of questions.
Asking Questions
In every day life we ask lots of different types of questions and we use different ways to try to answer them. If I want to know if you like ice cream, I can ask you! If I want to know how the fire of London started, I could look for an answer in diaries and reports that were written at the time. If I want to know what shape of parachute falls most slowly, I could make parachutes with different shapes and time them as they fall.
Can we have both?
In a way, Science and Religion are a bit like … Science and history. They can both help us and there is no need to choose between them.
So when it comes to “Which is better – Science or Religion?” it depends – which is better for what?
Which of these questions is a good one for science?
Why doesn’t the water soak into this leaf?
Why did Henry VIII marry six times?
Take a look at the video below about science questions
Can you sort the questions?
Over the years, people have developed different forms of enquiry to explore different kinds of questions. So we use scientific enquiry to address scientific questions, historical enquiry to address historical questions and musical enquiry to address musical questions. The challenge is to decide which form or forms of enquiry to use for a particular question.
Science investigates questions about the physical world. Religion asks questions like whether the physical world is here because of God. As God is not a physical being, science cannot tell us whether God exists or not.