These two concepts are often seen as two conflicting forces. In our world we tend to see one as being right and the other to be wrong. Religious people tend to keep that part of their lives to themselves out of fear of being shunned or labelled as someone who is ignorant of the truths of the world. Well, as a religious person myself, I've come to speak for the people of my community.
I'm going to make two points in this piece.
1. Religion does NOT deny science.
I often hear from the scientifically minded, that if you are religious, then you're basically a lunatic. A delusional fool living in a world of lies. I find that to be quite presumptuous for people who believe in facts, but I'm not here to exchange insults. Those of us who are sound in religious beliefs (like myself) know that religion and science go hand in hand. Do we deny evolution? No. We just contend that it happened for reasons other than what scientists would rather us believe. Do we think that money falls out the sky if you like and share something on Facebook? No. Because in our books, faith with no action is foolishness. We know that we must help ourselves as best we can and that God (or whatever deity you believe in) will take care of what we cannot handle ourselves. So stop labeling us as idiots. We're not as dumb as you assume us to be.
2. You CANNOT disprove my beliefs.
The other argument I hear is that science can disprove religion. No it can't. There is no way for science to prove or disprove something that is outside the laws of the physical universe because that's all we can comprehend. We don't have any concept of the supernatural so you as a scientist cannot tell me that science can prove my beliefs to be false. It may be the case that I also cannot prove it to be true, but that is the basis of all beliefs. People believe in "scientific" assertions all of the time. If the weatherman says it will rain tomorrow, we automatically assume it will happen because the weatherman said so and it's scientific so it must be true. Then tomorrow comes and it doesn't rain. Why? Because science can't prove everything. Science can't tell me if the world will explode tomorrow because tomorrow isn't here yet. It can't tell me if the world will explode in the next 5 minutes as I'm writing this. So for you to sit here and tell me that I'm delusional because I can't prove something to be true makes you a hypocrite because your "infallible" science has the same flaw. I may not be able to prove that God is real, but since you can't prove it to be false, I have just as much a right to believe in it than not to.
All this to say, stop making negative assumptions about religious people. We're not crazed like ISIS or other religious extremists. We're normal human beings that have a different viewpoint of the world we live in. Last time I checked, that was a human FACT.
