Is science without religion lame, and religion without science blind?

The literature on defining science and religion is immense and not amenable to concise review, however here is an overview.

Is science without religion lame, and religion without science blind? Einstein’s famous statement finds many supporters: here, at last, the conflict between science and religion is laid to rest, and both are upheld for their different yet complementary roles.

Others, however, may be less enthusiastic with Einstein’s proposition that religion is necessary to give legs to science, or science to give eyes to religion.

For them, the issue is indeed one of
science versus religion,
reason versus faith,
realism versus idealism,
matter versus spirit.

Still others may wish Einstein had made the stronger statement that science and religion are parallel quests revealing similar truths. To this group of people, declaring science and religion to be separate but equal is to miss their metaphysical common ground. Reminiscent of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” then, some may find Einstein’s position to be just right, while others may find it to be too hot or too cold

There are two underlying models for many positions on science and religion: a one-domain, or monistic,(Monism attributes oneness or singleness) model, and a two-domain, or dualistic, model.

Let us call the one-domain models conflict and convergent monism, respectively, and the two-domain model conciliatory dualism



Here, as the caricature goes, theistic and naturalistic accounts are inevitably at odds over how living things—especially humans—came to be.