Why is science considered as a force against religion?

Many people (especially orthodox religious or so-called conservatives) think that science is the "force against religion." They offer very strong arguments to support this hypothesis. One can ask what is science after all? Is it something that we humans invented or something that existed all the time we just discovered it and named it recently as science? Basically, science consists of the stuff that people have found out about things around us. People use this knowledge to figure out unknown things and also to create or design things that can make our lives more comfortable. In very simple terms science is just people finding out what the stuff is and how things around us work. This logic can be applied anywhere not just for traditional science subjects like chemistry, physics, biology, and maths. Any rational or logical analysis and reasoning is science. This is how I define it, for me science doesn't just mean to study a few subjects. 

The reason why some people think that science is bad for religion is because science has allowed people to figure out things on their own that people didn't know back when many of these religious or holy books were written. A very simple example of this is where rainbows come from? The Bible answered that it was from god; he created rainbows after the great flood to show that he wouldn't create another worldwide extermination. For people back then, it answered why there were rainbows, it was a very simple explanation and went very well with the story in the book. It satisfied their curiosity, but eventually, people who were not content with that answer looked into it and found that a rainbow is just the light reflecting from the water in clouds (this is the simplest way to describe it). We now know that rainbows have been like this since the beginning of the earth, and that's just how light works, it's the property of light we just didn't know about it back then. I am giving this particular example just to show that people took the explanation from the Bible as the truth because rainbows seemed so magical and they wanted some answer. But back then they didn't know, there was no way to understand this phenomenon because they didn't have the knowledge or techniques to study the behavior of light. Hence it was impossible to understand how rainbows were formed. When they heard stories of God and one of the stories said that the rainbows were from god, an all-powerful being, creator of the universe, it was easy for them to accept that he created everything including the rainbow. If it were me hearing this for the first time, I would have believed it, because something so beautiful and grand as a rainbow must come from something beyond this world. Back then many mystical things, for example, sunrise and sunset, solar eclipses, floods, earthquakes, and various epidemics, required some sort of explanation, and the concept of 'God' and its ultimate powers gave a very believable explanation for all these mysteries. The Bible is just one of the texts that gives such explanations there are many books from many religions that offer similar explanations and stories.   

People then believed that this person named 'God' must be real and he must be the power behind causing the things that people don't have control over or can't explain. The human mind is very curious, and these simple answers satisfied the curiosity of a lot of people but not all of them were happy with these answers. Some of these people started to look into these things. A few thousand years later, and after many experiments, they discovered that rainbows are a lot simpler than we thought, one can even create their own rainbow on any bright day or under lights with a simple water hose or fountain. So, people figured out where rainbows come from and this is what science is, a simple rational, and logical way of figuring out things. It is not a rule book or something to live by. It's not a lifestyle. It is just a way of thinking. People also figured out that the earth is not stationary but it moves around Sun and that's why we experience sunrise and sunset. Eventually, many other natural wonders were also demystified. But the problem was these discoveries contradicted the things mentioned in some scriptures which attained the status of holy scriptures revealing the absolute truth. This is how this conflict started, science vs religion.

Science doesn't claim to deliver absolute truth. Everything in science is tentative and open for debate. According to science, there is no way to prove anything absolutely, one can question everything no matter whose theory it is and how old it is. The beauty of science is if you want to disprove anything in science, you would be using science to do it and the whole scientific community will welcome any new discoveries or theories. But the current form of any religion doesn't allow this. Some questioning and probing are allowed, but religion demands faith and total surrender beyond a certain point. Many people are okay with this and feel happy about it. Nothing wrong with it as long as it works for them and helps these people with their personal problems and they coexist peacefully with others. But when they create division in society, stereotype people based on their beliefs, and preach hatred, there is a problem. It surely is a matter of concern when people start killing each other because of differences in their religious beliefs. Anyone who questions any religious belief is branded as an atheist and is subjected to a lot of criticism and hate. I already shared some of my views regarding this topic in my post about science and religion where I discussed how both these things can complement each other but unfortunately, it is not possible because of the rigid attitude of people from both fields. Science doesn't run away from any question, but sadly same can not be said about religion and that is why people think science is a force against religion. However, in reality, science is not a force against anything, it's a very simple thing that helps us to figure out the stuff. Religion would have benefited immensely from science if it had embraced many discoveries that cleared many doubts and explained many natural phenomena (the same thing that religion tried to do in the beginning). Rather than accepting these facts, it took a stand of rejecting them and insisting that whatever is written in their holy books is the absolute truth and this created a rift that is widening day by day.

I mentioned in my previous post also that I don't think science and religion are a force against each other, both can be complementary to each other if people want. However, if I have to choose only one I will definitely choose science because it's more logical, rational, and not dictatorial.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing) 

Reference:
1. http://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/10q3qq/so_many_things_online_convincing_me_that_my/
2. http://selfrealization-vinay.blogspot.com/2012/03/science-and-religion.html