Science and Religion: Conflict or Consonance?

The hope that science, and especially physics, might provide us with a complete and unified description of the universe has thus far been disappointed. In particular, there is to date no reconciliation of Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum physics. And yet, the physical sciences themselves have largely been immune to real crises for nearly a century. Doubts never seem to linger for long, quickly dispelled as they are by empirical results or new research programs. But the philosophical problems posed by physical science — and especially by quantum physics — for our fundamental understanding of the universe have been harder to let go.