The Dialectic of Separation and Connection Between Religion and Science in Western Thought: German Idealism as a Model

Abstract

This research attempts to explore the possibility of replacing religion with modern science. Modern science, especially in its empirical version, was clear in its competition with the scholastic religious beliefs prevalent during the Middle Ages in Europe. It basically violated it in terms of methodology. The contrast was clear between a rational, logical method that relies on trust in the sayings of the ancients, and an experimental method that does not trust anything but the senses and takes observation and scientific experience as the only source of truth in the natural world. The research concluded that the mentality that occurred one day in Europe, despite its unparalleled success, passed aside religious thought and did not fundamentally reform it, due to its inability to rationalize as previously mentioned. That is the explicit separation that took place between science and religion, where the daily and even momentary progress of science was met by a religious stagnation that remained passive. Realistically, religion was and still present. It cannot be denied even in the scientific work itself.