One of my obsessions is the border between science and religion. People tend to see this border as the one between "belief" and "reason" - but I find this border much less simple than one between hard-eyed logical realism and misty-eyed mysticism. The border is much more permeable, and not as easy to define as people think.

The most recent issue of National Geographic (March 2012) has an example of this border. Relics. The article is called "The Apostles" - . In that article, the author wrote about the difficulty of dating relics of saints. Recently, the church took a sample from the sarcophagus that is traditionally the resting place of St. Paul the Apostle at the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. The results were, per the National Geographic article: "The subsequent investigation, through a finger-size hole drilled in the sarcophagus, produced a bone fragment the size of a lentil, grains of red incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins, and threads of blue fabric. Independent laboratory analysis, the church claimed, revealed that they dated to the first or second century. Not conclusive, but better news for the faithful than if they had hailed from the fourth century. The first-century date would mean the bones could be those of St. Paul."

Here is the border between science and religion. Science could show (if the data is accurate) that the bones were ones that might be those of St. Paul. But the church is the one who pronounced the bones those of the saint.

I see this as the fundamental border between what science can prove and what it can't prove. It gives general information and probabilities, but it can not (and isn't intended to) reach the specificity of being able to pinpoint the person from whom an anonymous fragment of bone may have come. The age of the bone can be reasonably determined - the specifics of the person from whom the bone came is much more problematic. . . . It is the border between the general and the specific that separates the different sorts of knowledge.

In an analogy that I think most can understand: science tells us that humans dream, but can't tell me exactly what I will dream about tonight.

Unfortunately, this border is subtle and it is easy for us to confuse ourselves, and to claim too much for all types of knowledge. I hope I can have humility in both realms.