Science and religion

Abstract

The relationship between science and religion has a long history of tensions. When we confine ourselves to Western culture, the first tension arose when in Greece philosophical and scientific explanations began to compete with mythological ones. Usually the latter are called ‘irrational’, whereas the former are considered to be ‘rational’, but that distinction is incorrect. In its own way the mythological explanation is also rational. The real difference between the two kinds of explanation is that myth explained the phenomena by referring to divine activity, whereas science refers to internal and external natural causes. The latter causes, however, could not explain everything. As a result the realm of mythological explanations did not completely disappear, but it became more limited. Perhaps it did not entirely disappear because, at that time, the scientific explanations were de facto deficient, or was this an indication of more fundamental problems?