Let me first point out that religion and science have many similarities. Unless God pops down from Heaven to kindly prove his existence for us, religious beliefs cannot be proven to be true; they are taken on faith. Some scientists may find this laughable, but science has the identical characteristic, which is also its greatest strength. By and large, scientific theories can never be proven to be correct. Evidence can be gathered in support of it, but we can never know with 100 percent certainty if gravity actually works the way we think. Sure, general relativity describes it well, but as so many professors emphasize here, our scientific theories are models. We continuously refine those models as new information comes to light. Less commonly known is that religions do the same thing. The beliefs of a religion are re-examined and refined as time passes and new knowledge is attained. In fact, some religions, such as Catholicism, gather groups of its members periodically for that explicit purpose.

While both disciplines gather evidence, it might be argued by some that the evidence in science is a lot more solid than that in religion. After all, science has the ability to measure things quantitatively, but religion cannot measure how much of the “God Field” is manifest in a church. Even so, religions have also gathered evidence; it’s just a different kind, taking the form of texts, claims of miracles, and other personal evidence. Some find that evidence compelling enough to form a belief, others do not. Is that so different from science? Today, there an infinite number of universes, one for each possible state as Many-Worlds claims? It is not the evidence in science or religion that is in question — it’s what people make of it. It’s the interpretations that split them into Jews and Muslims, Interpretation and believers of the Many-Worlds hypothesis. Each interpretation of the religious evidence throughout history that has spurned the creation of so many different sets of beliefs is a unique faith. Similarly, each interpretation thing more, and nothing less, than a faith.

What of so-called “miracles”? Many religions use such events as evidence to support religious claims, yet walking on water is not supported by science. But science has not presented any evidence in direct conflict to the claim that an all-powerful being could not change the rules locally or utilize some force that we do not yet understand to perform the miracle. This is in important contrast to claims that are held onto despite being in direct conflict with science and capable of being proved impossible, such as the creation of the world a few thousand years ago. Miracles are an example of one of the elements of religion that science has nothing to say about, just like religion has nothing to say about general relativity.