Science and religion

Anyone who knows me and regularly visits my website knows that reconciling religion and science is one of my pet peeves. I just read the book 'Science & religion' by Patrick Loobuyck and I am grateful. Grateful for this beautiful overview and the way he clearly brought together many visions and viewpoints. If I ever write a book about how I experience these things, I will often be able to refer to the explanations in his book.

As a professor, he remains wonderfully neutral, although here and there I find a sentence that reveals he is an atheist (not that he keeps it a secret, it's in the introduction). Atheists looking for a book that agrees with them will be disappointed. Believers with the same goal equally so. However, whoever is looking for arguments for their choice of faith in God or science (or both) will find what they are looking for in this book. That is immediately the main reason to read this.

Fortunately, the many notes are at the back of the book. There are academically many of them. They would have disrupted readability in between. The many references to anyone who was ever active in this field must be taken into account. It quickly becomes clear that Loobuyck is an expert and has done a lot of research.

Don't seek to be right

Since it is not the aim of the book to prioritize the right of one group over another, I do not have to say whether I agree or not. Only the afterword contains some conclusions but no value judgments. As I said, I consider it a plus to write a book on a very polemical subject without falling into polemics myself.

It gives me even more strength to support my statement: you choose what you believe. Even what many great scientists and philosophers have written on this subject and are therefore mentioned in this book, are often acceptable arguments and propositions, but never definitive proof. Provided that you, regardless of whether you are on the secular or religious side, open yourself up to the beliefs of your interlocutor.

Because if Loobuyck has actually demonstrated one thing with this book, it is that faith in science and faith in God share the same characteristics and are largely a reflection of who you want to be. Without rehashing the book, there are sufficient arguments to be found that put both the atheist who calls a believer an idiot and the creationist who spits out the Darwinist in their place.

Together

For those who read the book: I am largely somewhere in the togetherness-typology, with characteristics here and there from the nothing in common. I love science and religion. I mainly use science as a tool for my 'how' questions and religion for my 'why' questions, but the line is not always clear and I often dare to switch back and forth. Science has made me religious and continues to strengthen me in that. When I read Thomas Hertog's 'Origin of time' I read, I think 'and why do you think natural laws are still changeable?'. By the way, an argument that apparently has not yet been raised in the many discussions Loobuyck cites about the choice between deism and theism.

For someone like me who devoutly believes in God as much as in science, this book is a treat. For those who still want to get involved in discussions about who the idiots are, one tip: read this book first.