A mess of oxymoronic and contradicting ideas that have infected the greatest minds in human history; this is a relationship like none other.
The rawest form of the yin and yang.
Curiosity is what differentiates humans from our mammalian counterparts. It is the curiosity of man that led to us pondering the night time stars, contemplating the motion of celestial bodies, deliberating our own anatomical structures, and the most quintessential of all: reflecting on the nature of life itself and our purpose of existence in this vast cosmic realm. These are not merely musing for the passage of time, but we desperately seek answers. And through the aeons and generations since the genesis of mankind, we have decided that there is a higher power that governs these matters.
I am humble enough to accept that I have not reached the intellectual caliber to comment on all religions - whether they may be pagan, Abrahamic, monotheistic, polytheistic - but I am compelled to say that the common denominator amongst all of them is the belief in a higher power. An entity that controls what is beyond our reach. But we are not such simplified creatures. We set out to discover the mechanisms of these miraculous events and thus was the birth of scientific thought. We expressed the planetary motions through the eloquent language of mathematics, deciphered the codes that govern the livelihood of organisms, and studied the most fundamental particles that dictate the element of a substance. But it is the differing nature of faith and method that forms a basis of the conflict between science and religion.
To those conflicted men of science who question the presence of a higher power, I must ask, do you not see the invisible connections throughout nature? The quantum entanglement of particles thousands of light-years apart, the simultaneous hatching of twin eggs on opposite ends of the globe, the unified movement of miles of jellyfish in the seas throbbing as if connected by one mind. If you accept these imperceptible relationships, then is it really so difficult to believe in the sacred connection between man and God? As a medical intern myself, when I see a patient enter the ER on the brink of life and death, I immediately set to resuscitating them because I am aware of pulmonary functions and mechanisms of the heart. Yet, even as I administer CPR, I mutter a prayer under my breath. Because even after decades of medical training it is the soul, my dear reader, that no doctor has any control over.
So as I stare into the starless night writing this lengthy analysis, I catch a glimpse of a celestial body. Perhaps Venus showing itself? And a thought crosses my mind: Gravity explains the motion of planets;
But it cannot explain who set the planets in motion.
Religion doesn't contradict science; it compliments it.
******************************************************************************