The Dalai Lama, as part of an interview, remarks about the ways that the conflict between the scientific and religious worldview simply isn’t an issue in Buddhism the way it’s perceived to be in Christianity:
“Years ago, he met an American woman who was married to a Tibetan. On Monday he explained that it came out in their conversation that he loved science and enjoyed dialoguing with scientists. She was horrified to hear this, he said. Further, she insisted that science was a ‘killer of religion’ and that he had better just stay away from it altogether. He was dismayed that one should think that the two most significant and comprehensive fields of human thought could not be reconciled. He may have felt dismayed at the time, but he smiled as he told the story.
The woman in the story held an opinion that seems to be widespread these days: Science is a killer of religion. Not only do those on the Christian Right believe this; so do the so-called ‘New Atheists,’ who have invested their entire worldview in this notion. Their difficulty with religion seems to be borne of the mistaken ideas that God is subject to scientific categories and that religion is a purely propositional exercise. But God is not contained by discursive language; God is the fundamental mystery of life, the universe, and everything. Religion is not about faith statements but is about clear vision. Whether one is a Christian or a Buddhist, religion is about seeing the world as it really is.
These thoughts passed through my mind as I sat watching the Dalai Lama talk and smile. It occurred to me how easy the science-religion reconciliation is for him, for his fellow Buddhists, and, in a sense, for myself. It is easy because of the way Buddhists view the world and not because they are able to do any particular mental gymnastics.
[…]Buddhists spend their lives coming to see the world clearly, and the reconciliation is accomplished in the forming of that vision. So by the time one learns to see properly, the problem of science and religion, which appears so substantial to many, simply evaporates.”
From here.
What do you think? Does the Buddhist world view, viewed here as more of a philosophy than a religion, avoid the conflict? Is there a way to understand Christianity as a philosophy in a similar manner that allows it to avoid the issue too?