Letter to the Editor: Faith v. Religion

This is a letter that I wrote to the editor of the Utah Statesmen in response to an column written by their political opinions writer. The article basically stated that religion is on a crash course with reality. That science proves religion is wrong and to prove this he points out the fact that the LDS church changed the introduction to the Book of Mormon to read that the Lamanites are some of the ancestors of modern Native Americans. Before it said that they were the principle ancestors. I have plenty of arguments for that, but I thought rather than starting an argument in the paper over the church that I would attack the idea that religion and science battle each other as polar opposites. Anyways here is the letter, I would love to hear comments whether they agree with my thesis or not. And leave any comments about the whole Lamanites thing as well.

So in a no holds-bar fight, you know a steel cage death match where two people enter and only one leaves, who would win, religion or science? Personally I would have to say religion, it seems to have had most of the muscle and political clout in world history, but unfortunately we will never know for sure because there is no mystical duel between religion and science as many people believe there is today. The truth is that this argument is promulgated by the two extremes; the antagonizing scientist, and the religious fanatic. The former supports science as the sole source of truth, and the latter supports their own misconstrued ideas of God as absolute reality. The truth is that science and religion have worked together to further our knowledge of the universe and to broaden our understanding of God and the way He works. Take the ideas of the Big Bang and the Creation as told in the Bible. Before science postulated the general age of the Earth many thought that it took God literally seven days to create the Earth. Now we know that when the Bible says seven days it is using figurative speech and that it would be better to say seven separate periods of time. Science and Faith aren’t in a showdown. For those who are religious, science is one more way to better understand the Bible, and to further cultivate knowledge of the way in which God operates. If you, as a religious person, decide to neglect science because it scares you, you are blinding yourself to an important tool in your pursuit of spiritual wisdom.

Thus to say that faith and science are at odds with each other in a legendary clash of might is quite imprudent. The objective individual will find that the argument isn’t black and white as portrayed by the extremists but rather reality is a colorful combination of both sides. For once you can have your cake and eat it too.