From Science and Religion to the Theory of Everything

I remember that during my university years I read an article asking an interesting question: If the Theory of Everything would be possible, could it unite science and religion? Today, from the 21^st century’s perspective, it is easy to simply answer “Yes!” as we now have at least two powerful concepts that claim their universality:  the string theory presented by physical sciences and System Outlook concept based on system-information disciplines.
I am not a physicist qualified to discuss string theory and its ability to consolidate science and religion. My expertise is System Outlook framework that allows uniting scientific and religious world views within one platform, which due its universality can be called the system-information Theory of Everything.
We all are familiar with the widely held public opinion that science and religion have been engaged in a perpetual conflict. Due to endless debates between atheists and believers, statements about conflict between science and religion have become a rarely questioned cliché.    As to me, I share a view of many scientists who believe that science and religion actually have never been in a conflict but instead have complemented each other from the very beginning.
Looking back through history, we can see that science has always served practical needs. In order to grow crops, trade, or navigate, people needed mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, geography… It is obvious and agreed upon that gains in science, over time, caused technological progress. Thus, science can be given a full credit for it.
Meanwhile, religions have always dealt with social and psychological needs. Religion cradled modern judicial and legislative systems, which had grown out of morality and rules that defined hierarchy and relationships within any human society.
Religion played another important role in addition to dictating moral standards. It imbued people with a holistic perception and a meaning of life, so they can easier reconcile with hunger, death, suffering, hard labor and generally unfair reality.
As we can see, the functions of science and religion did not overlap.
However, we can still sense the subtle feeling of a conflict when science and religion are mentioned together. To easier understand where this confrontation might be hidden, first let’s see what science and religion have in common.
From the vantage point of System Outlook, which states that everything in our universe is either a system or a part of a system, science and religion are both informational systems that describe the laws that underlie physical, metaphysical or social realities.
What are the laws? Laws are the logical patterns that organize systems and their elements in order.
Logic and laws are invisible. We cannot see or touch gravity or the law of thermodynamics.  However, it is possible to discover objectively existing laws through scientific observations of tangible objects.
The problem appears when we approach the laws, which form intangible systems such as perception and inner reality. As those laws are related to metaphysical fields, we cannot describe them through physical formulas.
It is the reason, why metaphysical laws were delivered to humanity not through sciences, but through profound mystical insights of great prophets. Sacred scriptures significantly vary depending on a culture and a historical epoch. On the surface, they often seem contradictory and, naturally spark a lot of confusion and arguments: which religious ideas are true and which are not?
According to System Outlook, the conflict arises when people start approaching religious texts and parables with linear scientific thinking trying to “measure miracles” or apply physical or geographical knowledge to ancient spiritual stories. They forget that the goal of those stories was not to deliver scientific data but to teach our illiterate ancestors about initial principles that constitute system reality called life.
It’s logically incorrect to look at religious texts without historical context, but from the sheer vantage point of specific physical or natural sciences, as we cannot apply the logic of formulas to systems of human lives, relationships, thoughts, beliefs and feelings. At the level of ultimate unity, specific physical formulas are useless as they are not all-inclusive.
The good news is that besides hundreds of new disciplines, science recently developed a system-informational approach that uses exactly those ultimate principles, which are applicable to any systems regardless of their nature, be it thoughts, feelings, particles or galaxies.
It is interesting to look at the history from the system perspective. In this light, science and religion can be seen as evolutionary phases of understanding the laws of reality: from religious insights through scientific discoveries to the theory of everything – the unified system-information perception of the future.