Science and Religion are complementary!

James: Your question brings me to the history of the University of Padova.

The UNIPD was created for that reason. The dissenting religious model of the University of Bologna, had to establish a new university to continue investigating and publicizing their findings to society.

Fortunately, today these problems are overcome.

I appreciate your answers. This question heckled me when I got in a university research center in my country and I see that asked students to pray before starting the course in the afternoon

My long term observation is that science and religion are threaded across each other. They can stimulate or contradict each other, sometimes acting as a corrective to each other's temporary excesses. They are like relay race runners, passing the baton back and forth to each other. One of the forerunners of Unitarianism, Michael Servetus, was at Padua for a time (a little before 1550), and taught about medicine and blood circulation. As Unitarianism developed and took root during the period 1550 to 1600 in Poland, Lithuania, and Transylvania (now part of Romania), it developed the social/intellectual underpinnings of authentic and open scientific discussion -- that the religious community must hear and consider all points of view and criticisms from its members on various religious/theological issues, even including the belief of atheism and its reasoning, without rejecting people with unpopular views from the community -- this in order to be strong in its understandings. Forms of Unitarianism took root in 1620 among the Pilgrims (who had adopted the ideas of the 1600 Treatise on Tolerance while in Leiden, Holland), in 1810/1820 among one-third of New England Puritans, who rejected being told they could not read the biblical higher criticism research coming from Germany, and in 1794 when Unitarian minister and scientist Joseph Priestley came from England to the U.S. to escape mobs in England who destroyed his laboratory. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were helpful to him in moving and getting settled. Jefferson used the concept of listening to dissent and opposing views in constructing the constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly, in effect adapting the earlier experience of religious and scientific free discussion (expressed in the European 1600 Treatise on Tolerance, a continent-wide collaboration of liberal religious thinkers from Holland, Sweden, Poland, and Czechoslovakia) to the civic and political realm. In the period 1830-1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian minister, developed the concept of the Oversoul, in which, in essence, God is in Man and Man is in God. He drew upon Buddhist and other Eastern religions' insights. Over time, as Emerson's religious ideas began to be adopted by Unitarians in America, Unitarianism became much less of a Christian-centered religion, and more of a cosmopolitan religion on its own. This deepened after Darwin's entry. Unitarians were the strongest religious force speaking out for Darwin's theories in the latter half of the 1800s. Finally, Unitarian Buckminster Fuller brought ideas of personal, social, and scientific integrity into the 20th Century with his belief that all things are connected -- taking the wholistic view. And Unitarian Tim Berners-Lee continued this approach by designing a World Wide Web that anyone could connect to, in the early 1990s. One lesson from all this is that how things are done in science and religion is as important as what their contents are. Those may be different in the majority of cases, but it is how they are done that really matters, and ultimately connects them. There are shared values in both directions that make for a chance to achieve science's promise.

From another RG thread:

Religion Vs. Spirituality:

Spirituality is the science and practice of approaching and becoming One with the Spirit. We are currently descended souls embodied with a material body. Normally, at the most basic animal level, we assume we are the physical body and get carried away by our physical and mental personality, in pursuit of material pleasures. Its our duty and inevitable path to ascend and return to our Source. To the uninitiated, religions initially remind us that everything is not matter and material pleasures and that there are higher things to be considered. Spirituality then takes over the 'graduated' student and imparts the higher learning and discipline needed for the advanced student/disciple to ascend to the Spirit.(Disciple=Discipline).

Religions, as a rule, are one sided.

1. This is because they describe God and the means of attaining Him/Her/It from where they are, from their geographical location. From their perch, their view makes an angle with the Truth and this refracted truth is known as that religion. If the ray were straight and not refracted according to local customs and beliefs, their interpretation would be universal. But this is never so. ALL religions fail to be universal or catholic, because they interpret God according to their location in the world. So ALL religions fall short of the Truth/God in this regard. The Vedas declare that the glass bowl of Truth broke and many shards of Glass emerged, each claiming itself to be THE Truth, while being only PART of the Truth. So the Vedas go on to say that "What you ACCEPT to be the Truth and what you REJECT as the Truth, put TOGETHER, IS the Truth." So ALL religions are fragments of the same Truth claiming to be THE Truth. Therefore the Seers say " The Truth is One, the Wise call it by many names" or "There are many paths to the same Truth". So all religions are DESCRIPTIONS of the one Truth , but NOT the Truth.

2. But then, what is THE Truth? There cannot be many centers to a circle, only one exists, even if all claim to be the center. So there cannot be many Truths.

There is only ONE sun, and there is no American sun, or an Arabian sun. Or a Buddhist God or an Islamic God. In reality, there are no religions. Christ did not create Christianity. Many years after his death, his followers did. Same with all religions of the world. No so-called religion founder created any religion. They instructed their friends and followers to lead life in a particular manner, follow his teachings, to reach God/Truth. "I have found the Truth, and you can too".But after their passing, they were deified, huge statues and institutions created in their name, wars fought and religions were established. The universal teachings of love and forgiveness were discarded and the founder's personality concentrated upon, because practicing is difficult than preaching. They analyzed to see the differences with followers of other religions instead of seeing what is common.

3. But when all religions are studied inclusively and intuitively by the wise, trying to find commonalities instead of analyzing the differences, similar patterns begin to emerge, the differences, simply owing their origin to differences in location(space) and time, all revolving around a central Truth and ways of attaining the supreme goal, fall away to reveal the center.

4. The common basic theme of all religions is a description of the Creator(Spirit), the Creation(Matter) and the path to be followed by one to return to the Creator. They go on to give descriptions of the anatomy of the human body(Tree, Serpent, Garden..) to show that it is akin to the anatomy of the Universe and then declare that the path of return to God is superimposing the anatomy of the human on the anatomy of the universe to finally become One. This is achieved by stilling the mind from the influence of the external world perceived by the senses and then go deep within Oneself. Thus shutting out the external world, the internal world is explored to find the Soul within Oneself, the Center,and become One. The separative individual identity of "I" ness disappears to become "One"ness. This practice is known as meditation in Yoga. Jesus practiced it, so did John the Baptist, Krishna, Buddha, all yogis... But they realized that there is no "One Size Fits All". So different ways were prescribed to suit the worker, the priest, the man of the world....the paths of Service, Work, Love, Knowledge, Devotion, Singing/Chanting....among many to suit the many temperaments of men. "Different Strokes for Different Folks".This is the place of Religions of the world. All religions, even if they are distorted from the Central Truth, are only basic preparatory schools for later higher learning according to their own space and time. They prescribe to men what to do, and what not to do, basic hygiene, in body and mind... The novice students here are still evolving and their world appears to be the Center, thus giving rise to their One-sided picture(angle) of God. But for those who have evolved higher in Consciousness, and risen above space and time, and realized that all paths lead to the same Truth, the higher methods of meditation are prescribed, usually by a advanced Master who has previously advanced on the same path. In meditation,where space and time disappear, the individual soul is released from its individual and personality shackles and merges with the Universal Soul. Thus religions are a necessary evil on the path to truth. This 'evil' is necessary, just like the eggshell protects the chick until it hatches, and is then discarded, having served its purpose of protection in the beginning.

Simply put, religions are 'Patented' basic 'theoretical' studies whereas Spirituality is 'Open Source' 'practical' advanced studies conducted by oneself to attain Oneself. Since Spirituality is Open Source and has no major identifying signs(since "All is One"), it co-exists benignly within all major religions in different geographical and cultural locations, its practitioners silently going with the flow, wherever they are.

Distinguishing Factors: People practicing and identifying themselves with religions 'analyze' the differences with other religions since they identify themselves with their body, faith, leaders, food, practices... People identifying themselves with the Spirit see the common features in all religions and realize that everything is One.

Hope this helps.

Religion Vs.Science:

In the Judaeo-christian faiths, largely due to excesses by the clergy claiming religion as truth and demanding obeisance, science emerged as an alternative, demanding and providing empirical proofs for natural phenomena. These excesses can be attributed to the 'institutionalisation' and 'commodification' of religion or rather the "patenting" nature of Judaeo-Christian religions in comparision to eastern faiths which are "open-source" and a personal quest for truth without institutional interference.

There is no difference between science and religion in the eastern faiths.

Hope this helps.

Great observation@Herb!