Science Is Not My Religion
By: Sarah Olson Michel
Tags: Religion, Politics, Personal Growth, Science, God

The Truth About Science and Religion

When I first stumbled into science, I truly thought I had escaped the patriarchy and dogma of religion. It was the naïve overconfidence of an eighteen-year-old excited to have found her passion.

Over time, through my own reading as well as history of science coursework and participating in dialogue online, I realized how flawed the scientific world is with the same exact problems that plague organized religion: prejudiced dogmas that support the superiority of white, cishet men.

It infuriated me. I had left one space filled with self-absorbed men who think they are endowed with divine knowledge for another.

Whether they are claiming to be the moral or intellectual authority, the goal is the same — to control the narrative through power. Both collect loyal disciples, followers who will affirm their power.

At first, I bought in to science just like I had bought into religion as a kid. I thought it was infallible. I thought I needed to convert everyone around me to it.

But I had attuned myself so closely to the issues with my childhood religion that I couldn’t ignore their presence in science, too. And just as I had with Christianity, I began speaking out about those issues.

It turned out other people had been saying something about them for a long time — women who had fought for the right to practice science, people of color who struggled for a place at the table, queer folks who wanted to be their true selves at their jobs.

People were aware of the problems because they are so much bigger than science and religion. They are flaws and prejudices inherently built into a broken system that privileges whiteness, maleness, and heteronormativity.

Recognizing this makes reform that much more terrifying. If you upset the status quo in one field or community, you’re threatening the whole system.

And those who benefit most from the system are going to fight back.

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

Is there still hope?

I didn’t leave religion to find a new god in the laboratory. I left it to find what I perceived as a better method for seeking out objective truths. Science isn’t built on faith — it’s built on evidence, peer review, constructive criticism, and reproduceable results. To accept its results without applying these crucial methods would be depending on faith rather than evidence. People are not infallible.

Science is not my religion. But in many ways, it can remind me of it. This is why I work hard to help it change and improve.

For the first time in my life, I’ve found a community of people like me — nonbinary folks who love science; bisexuals in microbiology; people who also left an anti-science community to study their passion. It’s a place where, for the most part, I can be my unapologetic self.

But it’s only like that now because of the hard work so many folks have put into making science a more inclusive, accepting place. And there is still more work to be done.

That’s why I don’t begrudge the Christian community. There are many people within it, including dear friends, who are actively working to make their faith a space that is safe and welcoming for those who were formerly rejected.

Science has just as much work to do. And those within the scientific community need to understand that although we may be practicing a method for which the goal is objectivity, we are only human. Our results are often colored by biases and our own intentions.

Recognizing that fact is the first step toward reconciling with it. We should all be in a never-ending pursuit of the unvarnished truth. The only way to achieve that is through collective criticism of ourselves and our work — checking each other for mistakes and hidden agendas, anything that would interfere with reaching the most objective conclusion possible.

And in order to do that, we need everyone to be a part of the collective community. By excluding anyone based on race or sexual orientation or gender or ability, we risk objectivity.

We risk truth.