Billy and Charles play together at recess. They get on the topic of how ice cubes are made. Neither of them know. So they decide to try to figure it out.
Charles decides to do some experiments at home: He observes that it's only when he puts liquid water in the kitchen freezer for a while that ice is created. Answer: Ice is made by a freezer.
Billy on the other hand decides to ask his dad who happens to know the guy who runs the power plant. He tells Billy that the ice comes from water in the freezer, which gets its power from a power plant hundreds of miles away where massive turbines spin in circles and conduct electricity that's carried on a wire to their house to power the freezer, the oven, and many other useful things.
The next day, Charles and Billy compare findings at recess:
Charles: "I found out that ice comes from freezers! Isn't that neat?"
Billy: "Well what about the turbines?"
Charles: "Turbines?"
Billy: "Yeah -- the thing that powers the ice creation."
Charles: "I didn't see any turbines. But I tested it. It comes from freezers. Trust me."
Billy: "Well my dad told me all about the turbines. You have to have them to make ice in your house."
Charles: "I don't have any turbines. Look -- I did the experiment myself, and I can repeat the findings over and over. The deal is, ice comes from freezers. Quit it with the turbines nonsense."
Billy: "Turbines nonsense? Well... it just so happens that turbines are the most important part! Without them, the ice doesn't happen bro. "
Charles: "Okay fine ... let me come over and see them and see what they do."
Billy: "You can't. They're hundreds of miles away."
Charles: "Wait a minute ... you mean to tell me that the ice in my house is made by something hundreds of miles away? Ha ha. Really? That's a good one. Okay okay, what do they look like?"
Billy: "Well I don't know. I haven't seen them."
Charles: "Haven't seen them? Really? Okay, seriously, Billy -- you honestly believe this? You're joking right? Tell me you're joking... I mean, I have PROOF. I can show you. Freezers make ice!"
Billy: "Listen Charles, quit it with your little freezer fixation. We're talking big important super powerful stuff here! These turbines make more than just ice! They make cakes and cookies and potato casserole and even popsicles!"
Charles: "Okay, wait, turbines make hot cookies and cold popsicles? You expect me to believe this? It's freezers. C'mon dude, I've seen it. End of story. Freezers."
Billy: "Turbines! Drop the freezer obsession. I have it on very good authority -- my dad. He knows the guy who is in charge of the turbines. It's turbines!!"
Charles: "Who cares about what your dad or his friend said? I have proof. And you can't show me anything to back up your little fairytale story. It's freezers!!"
Billy: "Turbines!!"
Charles: "Freezers!!"
So they get a following on each side to campaign ever more loudly for their cause, each one absolutely convinced that they are right, and at the same time, subscribing to the presumed imperative that since there is someone arguing against what they know to be fact, the other must therefore be wrong.
Ice in a house is in fact, made by freezers. It is also made by turbines. Billy and Charles are both right. And they're both wrong about the other.
We've created for ourselves an argument that doesn't make any logical sense on either side of the battle. Yet so many people on both sides are caught up in this argument not realizing that the grounds for the fight just don't exist. Faith and science are not mutually exclusive. They are in fact, two different and complimentary approaches of discovering truth. If a person were able to comprehend all of science, and a person were to comprehend all of religion, they would find that the total knowledge of the two disciplines encompass the exact same scope of material.
Science and scientific theory is not in the business of coming to definitive conclusions about reality based on a lack of evidence any more than an ant colony is able to disprove the existence of Pluto due to its lack of observed evidence of the celestial body by ant colony members. Science tries to explain the natural universe based on repeated testing, observation, experimentation, and the use of the scientific method using the tools it has available. It reveals what it finds as truth, rather than pre-supposing that anything outside of study findings must be untrue. Science doesn't subscribe to non sequitur logic to establish truth, such as a freezer being the only component required to make ice cubes at home, or that a being such as God cannot exist anywhere in our universe based on our observations of an infinitesimally small percentage of it, using only our current set of scientific observation tools.
On the other hand, those citing religion as their argument against rigorous scientific findings are also illogical and are unwittingly arguing against true religion. Religion teaches me that all truth is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ, whatever the source. Truth is not limited to what comes out of scriptural cannon of the day, and especially not limited to a person's interpretation of that scriptural cannon. Truth is truth, regardless of the source. As Elder Henry B. Eyring says, "Is there any conflict between science and religion? There is no conflict in the mind of God, but often there is conflict in the minds of men."
Unfortunately, whether in the name of science or religion, people have made claims throughout distant and recent history, and asserted them to be truth, and have later been proven wrong. Science can be flawed. Man's interpretation of religion can be flawed. So unless we become omniscient beings with a view of the entire spectrum of truth, there will be apparent conflicts between the two disciplines. Before Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, science and religion believed that the sun revolved around the Earth. Then scientific inquiry and observation led these men to a more correct Heliocentric idea -- that Earth revolves around the sun (or more correctly, the solar system's center of gravity). With this new theory, first, scientific thought was disrupted. Then religious thought was disrupted. Serious conflict emerged. Fast forward, and now both science and religion are fine with the idea. It was true all along -- but we had a misunderstanding of it.
In summary:
(1) The revelations of God do not preclude the validity of science.
(2) The truth discovered by science does not preclude the validity of religion.
As a student of science and religion, I have no problem with dinosaurs, evolution, life after death, or eternal progression. I'm also okay with knowing that my understanding of science or religion may be flawed and I will likely learn more in the future.
Keep the truth that you know to be truth. Understand that our understanding of science may be flawed, or that your interpretation of religion may be incorrect. That's not to say that true religion is incorrect, but that your interpretation of it might be. A deeper study of both science and religion is beneficial for a more correct understanding of truth. If you find yourself on one side or the other of an argument on the creation of ice cubes, may I suggest that perhaps we instead should be learning from each other and shouldn't be having this argument in the first place.
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"We have always been taught that the gospel of Jesus Christ embraces all truth, wherever that truth is found. This should also include truth found in science."
Douglas Rushkoff on Freakonomics, "This idea must die" - 2015.03.04 -- 19:30:
"The scientific idea that I believe is ready for retirement is the atheism prerequisite -- the idea that the only way science can work is if we assume that we live in a godless, meaningless universe."
"I'm not saying that people can't be atheist. Honestly, I don't know if there's a God or not. I don't know if there's meaning or not. But what I'm saying is that athiesm can't be a prerequisite for the scientific model, because if you are forcing yourself to strip meaning from reality in order to cope with it, in order to explore it and observe it, then you're tying your hands behind your back and you're missing a huge potential portion of the picture."
"Every discovery in science and art, that is really true and useful to mankind, has been given by direct revelation from God. … We should take advantage of all these great discoveries … and give to our children the benefit of every branch of useful knowledge, to prepare them to step forward and efficiently do their part in the great work”
"I have often met this question: ‘Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?’ The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth. The same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion."
"A declaration of our faith reads: 'If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.' This embraces the truth of science, the truth of philosophy, the truth of history, the truth of art. I emphasize the word truth. It is a principle set forth in our scripture that “the glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.”
Albert Einstein:
"I want to know God's thoughts -- the rest are mere details"
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
"Of course, science and religion are not in perfect harmony. There is some disagreement over evolution, for example. Genesis, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Abraham tell us that God created the world, that he had a purpose in doing it, and that man is very important in that purpose. But these scriptures are not a handbook on how God created the worlds. They just say that he did it. Someday he will let us know how he did it. Science is theorizing on the how, but there need be no conflict when we remember what the Lord has told us and what he hasn’t.
[…]
“When I was a child, my family would put together a huge jigsaw puzzle each Christmas, one that would take a week to finish, with thousands of small, look-alike pieces. Each piece fit in only one place, and we could complete the picture only by placing each piece correctly. When the Lord allows the scientists to discover all their parts, and he sees fit to reveal his part, the ‘picture’ of what scientists have learned and the “picture” of what God has done will be the same.”
[…]
“When I was a child, my family would put together a huge jigsaw puzzle each Christmas, one that would take a week to finish, with thousands of small, look-alike pieces. Each piece fit in only one place, and we could complete the picture only by placing each piece correctly. When the Lord allows the scientists to discover all their parts, and he sees fit to reveal his part, the ‘picture’ of what scientists have learned and the “picture” of what God has done will be the same.”
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