Science Vs. Religion

            
             I don't believe that science and religion have to agree. Too often people distort one, the other or both in an effort to make them agree. This bugs me. I see a lot of folks doing it with different religions (they call themselves, "perennialists"). They claim that all the religions are really saying the same thing. You get some folks who skim over the central text of a faith and then claim to be aquatinted with that faith (maybe consulting with lay people from that faith, but never spending the years in whatever academic and/or spiritual training has been institutionalized by that particular faith for the purpose of training its leaders). They run across a symbol that looks vaguely familiar to them and assume that the symbol's meaning is static and consequently universal (a common mistake, but a mistake nevertheless). The result is usually a person who has shoe horned a bunch of arbitrarily selected notions from numerous religions into a muddled distortion offensive to anyone really committed to any of the original faiths (Houston Smith, the fellow who wrote the best seller on world religions does this. Visit your local mosque and ask the person in charge what they think of the chapter on Islam in Smith's book - you'll find that he ain't real popular). So when people try this with science and religion I find that they do a pretty good job of distorting both. Section 2. One big problem I have encountered is the failure to distinguish between "how" and "why." Sure, science can explain "how" stuff works. But it doesn't explain "why" things do what they do. Science doesn't read meaning into stuff. It explains the mechanics involved. And there ain't nothing wrong with that! Science, like art and literature, is another way to look at stuff.