My understanding

I do not think that science and religion are necessarily opposing or contrary ideologies, mainly because science is not a belief system, but they nonetheless collided in my mind as I grew up.

I was born and baptized an Irish-Catholic and believed firmly in God and Heaven. At the same time I had a lot of books on various scientific topics, of which the books on astronomy and cosmology were the most interesting. Looking back, I had two separate understandings of the universe, one biblical and the other scientific.

I believed in the big bang and evolution, but God was the progenitor to all these things. As I became a teenager I began to question the literal bible stories, losing faith in the supernatural aspects of religion. I had trouble believing these stories as I learned more about science and saw and recreated real experiments. I didn’t have faith in religion, and I liked the stories that physics told over the bible stories.

Eventually God didn’t make sense to me. There were too many questions about God’s eternity and powers. Could ‘he’ (Catholic God as ‘he’) make a rock he couldn’t lift? Is he good? Why make life in the first place? “We cannot understand his vastness,” was a common response when I asked people. The universe seemed better with no god and a lot more questions.

My faith in God has shifted to my faith in our ability to accept that we don’t know all the answers, but that we can slowly find them. Science is not a belief system, but it influenced my belief system, and I now believe in the ability of humans to find an ever more complete understanding of the universe.