This tolerant and flexible approach to science has as its corollary an approach to the relations between science and religion that is built around peaceful coexistence. In this view, science and religion each have separate domains that do not really impact on one another. Science deals with the real physical world around us, and its consequences for living species, reaching even into areas such as psychology and sociology that attempt to understand human behavior. Religion is a personal matter, connected to questions such as an understanding of death and the purpose for our lives. Science may explain how snowflakes form, but it cannot explain the special feeling we have on a night in December when those first flakes start to fall.
Religion is needed to deal with the emotional and spiritual questions in our lives.
Gould describes himself as an agnostic toward religion, but he clearly is quite tolerant of religious claims as long as they stay within their proper domain. The magisteriurn of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. Let's just stop fighting and understand each other better. As long as science and religion each stays in its proper comer and avoids treading on the domain of the other, everything will be fine. I have two basic problems with Gould's proposal.