I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict. Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different realm of human purposes, meanings, and values - subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.
To cite the old cliches, science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven.
-Stephen Jay Gould, as excerpted from the Preamble to Rocks Of Ages; Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
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