An Analysis of Religious Belief, Non-Belief, and Scientific Belief

This thesis covers a broad range of subjects – from broad science to evolutionary biology to religious epistemology to creation stories. My research aimed to try and find some way that religious thinking and scientific thinking could indeed be united and form a coherent and cohesive worldview. The two are often pitted against each other, and finding unifying factors between the two was certainly a challenge.             The goal of this unified view is not in any way intended to be prescriptive. Rather, I hope solely to discover some unified view of science and religion. By no means should this thesis be treated as a statement of belief or a guide. An important note about the opening two chapters of this thesis, I discuss both theism and atheism in-depth. I want to acknowledge the diversity of both of these different schools of thought. They, by no means should be understood as monolithic. For the purposes of this thesis, however, I worked with the broadest possible interpretation of both of these concepts which can come across as monolithic but is by no means intended that way. The notions of religion and atheism discussed in this thesis are intentionally broad.