Alex Knapp recalls how many great scientists never saw a conflict between the two areas of inquiry:
The great Muslim scientist Ibn Rushd was also an Imam. Isaac Newton wrote more about the Bible than he wrote about physics. Both the Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools of Hindu philosophy had a great deal of reverence for inference and a proto-scientific method. … For them, understanding the universe was a means of understanding God.
He quotes David Brin’s novel Earth:
[O]ur original purpose clearly was to glorify God by going forth, comprehending, and naming the Creator’s works. Therefore, aren’t zoologists crawling through the jungle, struggling to name endangered species before they go extinct, doing holy labor?
(Image by German artist Felix von der Weppen of a work in progress.)
The Dish 