• Science is beliefs about things which can be seen or otherwise perceived with the senses ("empirical").

• Religion is beliefs about things which can’t be seen, our attempt to understand aspects of reality beyond the limits of our senses and reason.

• Science starts with (is based in) the outer world, the world of matter

• Religion starts with (is based in) the inner world, the world of the spirit

• Relationship between religion and philosophy (transparency):

• While philosophy is rational, religion is non-rational (not irrational).

• While philosophy is based on logic, religion relies on intuition (faith).

• In addition, religion is communal and social in nature while philosophy is, for the most part, the work of individual thinkers.

• Religion guides our everyday lives in practical ways often through rules and regulations. Philosophy often remains merely theoretical. Philosophy becomes religion in the moment it is lived.

• Philosophy may comprise beliefs about reality (metaphysics) but religion lives according to the ramifications of those beliefs.

Scientist Freeman Dyson, winner of the year 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, considers:

…science and religion to be two windows through which we look out at the world. Neither window by itself gives a complete view. The windows are different but the world outside is the same. Religion and science can live harmoniously together in the human soul as long as each respects the other’s autonomy, so long as neither claims infallibility. Conflicts occur when organized science or organized religion claims a monopoly on truth…

Science is very good at telling us what we need to know about the physical world and universe. But science does not and cannot tell us anything about ethics, morals and values. That is where religion and philosophy come in:

• Science can help us avoid or end an unwanted pregnancy but it takes philosophy and religion to tell us if we should or not

• Science can maintain life through artificial life support but it is philosophy and religion that tell us if we should or not

• Science can clone animals and maybe, one day, humans but it is philosophy and religion that tell us if we should or not

"Can we?" belongs to the physical world of science.

"May we?" belongs to the world of ethics as found in philosophy and religion.

No matter how much science can explain about the world we live in, there will still be room for religion to do what it does best: not explain the "how" of things but, rather, the "why" and to weigh values.

Science and religion are the "checks and balances" of each other: too much science without moral guidance from religion may be a dangerous thing in the long run; too much religion uninformed by science is superstition.