Question: Do you believe in both science AND religion, or both?

I think for this we would have to be careful in conflating belief and religion. Religion is far more all embracing than simple belief, it is a complex set of rules, actions and restrictions that may or may not include belief in God or gods. Belief in God or gods does not require religion: belief in religion need not require belief in God. There are secular ideologies that have all the hallmarks of religion without the presence of God. They to have their saints, their holy sites, their holy texts, their martyrs, heretics and apostates; and their Inquisitions.

The atom of society is the family, those unified by shared experience and genetic heritage within living memory. It’s small, weak and limited, easily fractured and standing alone lacks resistance to external shocks. The clan, those sharing descent from a common ancestor outside living memory or grouped by common necessity, is stronger and more resistant but requires some greater force to bind it together – stories, myths and a means of defining who is part of the clan and who is not; who you can depend on in a crisis and who you can’t: the base building blocks of religion. The problem gets only greater as you bind clans into tribes, tribes into nations and nations into ever greater units. The force, the gravity needed to bind them together grows only greater and greater. Religion is one solution to that problem. It is a tremendously successful means of binding large numbers of smaller societal entities together that would otherwise have no unifying force; of reducing internal stresses and wastes, in obtaining and sharing the resources needed by that society, and making the whole more resilient to external shocks, promoting the survival of that society and helping it thrive. Both divine and secular religions began, diversified, spread and continue to exist because they have offered some effective evolutionary advantage to the societies they exist within.

Unfortunately, this is also where religion and science can come into conflict where science and belief need not. Religion is a complex package in defining who is in and who is out; who deserves support and who should be shunned; who are the faithful, who are “Us”; and who are the infidels and the heretics, the enemy and the Other. Each comes with a set of actions that must be performed or avoided, what is halal and what is haram; and beliefs that must be held; crimes in thought and deed. If the acts and actions of science conflict with these, then the practice of science can fall foul of the practice of religion, and marks you as an outsider. Whilst all religions share certain similarities, they differ in what is “In” and what is “Out”. There are many species of religion and sub-species within religions, all differently adapted with regard to science and all capable of further adaptation to better resist or better benefit from its evolutionary pressures. Science and religion are not universally antagonistic though science and some species or sub-species of religion may be at particular points in time.

That is assuming, of course, you don’t just consider science another, different, species of religion, whether invasive or descendent, a new adaptation to enquiry and the ordering and maintaining of society. It sometimes seems to share some of the features, if not in theory, then in practice – saints and holy texts; martyrs, heretics and excommunication, though not yet burning (the viva voce exam may just feel like a date with the Inquisition, followed by a long painful recantation of your sins). Clannishness has been part of the human condition so long it’s a hard habit to shrug off. Science is more capable in some aspects, less so in others; good at the How, less at the What For, giving explanation but not meaning; sometimes complementary, sometimes antagonistic to the existing species of religion. It has carved out a particular niche, out-competing them in some areas of thought, enquiry and societal ordering but unable to compete effectively with them in others.

I hope, eventually, an equilibrium will be reached as part of a broader and enriched, more peaceful and resilient societal ecosystem. One more capable of handling whatever challenges confront us in future.