Science versus Religion: two of the same?

For years the debate of sciences versus religion has been central to many social reforms, scientific research and political divide. But what if the two were born of the same human instinct, or even further, had a causal relationship.

One of the main differences believed to exempt humans from other primates is pursuit of knowledge. This is something that goes beyond casual curiosity; it is the need to explain and justify events and theories.  This trait has been largely attributed to the complex relationships between anterior pituitary, the caudate nucleus and precuneus grey matter in the brain (among others), some of which are known to be responsible for memory, arousal and learning. As these areas of the brain developed with the evolution of man, so did the desire for knowledge and understanding.

With the limited knowledge of the Neanderthals, whereby community settlements were in their early stages, their conclusion for the changes of seasons, weather and death was that they were all controlled by a higher being or higher beings like themselves. This created the first belief in a deity, or deities.

With their new found knowledge, rituals and prayers were quickly developed as a solution to problems that the ‘gods’ were thought to control. These included various sacrifices, material offerings and the construction of temples in their honour.  The belief of omnipotent deities resulted in the formation of religions; worshipping the divine for promise of reward such as rainfall, or the promise of an afterlife.

All the while, the philosophical and imaginative cognitions of early humans exercised the various regions of the brain, furthering its development, which would be either inherited or equally trained in their offspring. Simultaneously, advancing civilisations meant that more factual elements of the universe previously unknown to humanity were being discovered. These vary between the ages, ranging from planetary, anatomical, agricultural, pharmacological and geological discoveries.

Science had taken off as an independent discipline, with people being more preoccupied with the pursuit of empirical evidence, rather than denoting phenomena to a higher power that could not be proven. For millennia, scientific research and religious doctrines lived in harmonious conjunction. Although many scientific discoveries had debunked popular religious beliefs, generally, people still practised a religion. It wasn't until the sixteenth century where there was a rise in atheism and open questioning of religion in Western cultures, although it was made illegal in many states. The most notable change of mass division between the ‘scientific’ atheist community and the religious was after the publication of Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’.

Although there are many conflicts between religious, scientific and religious-scientific communities, it would appear that science and religion, two doctrines exclusive to humans, appear to stem from the same brain area, and the same human desire to understand and act upon knowledge. Furthermore, there is time scale evidence to show that religion perhaps nurtured humans’ scientific abilities, changing the way mankind perceives the relationship between science and religion forever.