Humans are not just like animals
When I said humans are just like animals I was of course referring to what happens at death. I agree with almost everything in your post, we are far more 'clever' than any animal, none of whom could put their kind in a spaceship, send them to the moon and walk upon it. Christians and Islam are not satisfied that that is all there is to it. They add myths and fairy tales due to their inability to accept what life really is.
There is no conflict or contradiction between religion and science.
In general, we find those who reject science and worship religion, and those who reject religion and worship material science. Neither of them understood the true meaning of religion or the true meaning of science. The field of science is the matter, and its goal is a physical interpretation of the manifestations of the universe, the discovery of its laws and their formulation with mathematical equations, which is what has produced various inventions for mankind.
However, science, does not answer to questions that lie outside the field of matter, such as those related to the purpose of our existence. Science explains the mechanism of the body’s work and it tells us that the body after death will decompose into elements, but it will not tell us if that is the end of the soul’s journey, or if we have another presence and another life.
Science also does not provide a recipe for the relationship of the individual to society, in other words, science does not provide us with a moral philosophy. There are many questions that science cannot answer, simply because they do not fall within its field of work, and are outside the limits of its ability, and this does not diminish the value of science. On the other hand, religion does not give us mathematical equations that explain the manifestations of the material universe, or research that deals with the specifics of material knowledge and its exact facts. These researches do not fall within the domain of religion.
Rather, religion provides answers to fundamental questions related to the purpose of man’s existence, questions that have preoccupied man since inhabiting caves to this day, and he has always been concerned about them. Religion deals with the spiritual, moral and social aspects of man.
Science will not advise us to honour parents, help the poor, or remove injustice from the weak, as this does not fall within the scope of his interests. Science will tell us that the fission of the atom produces enormous energy, but it will be neutral if we use nuclear energy to sustains the earth, or in the production of a nuclear bomb that destroys the earth, then the function of science ends at the limits of theories and equations and it would not release a moral judgment. This falls within the field of religion and philosophy, which deal with the free will of man.
In the West, there was a violent conflict between science and religion, because the Christian clergy chose to stand in the face of science and suppress it, because it conflicted with their literal interpretation of sacred texts, so the Church set up the Inquisition and burned the scholars and their books, and the scholars could not win the battle until after they were liberated from the authority of the Church. In Islamic civilization, the matter was completely different, because there is no conflict between the Qur’an and the science. There are 1,300 Qur’anic verses that talk about the manifestations of the material universe, and in some verses there are even references to strange cosmic secrets that science discovered recently after unremitting efforts.
The Qur’an made for scholars a rank that distinguishes them from others, said: “Say: Are those who know alike and those who do not know?” He urged the Prophet of Islam to seek knowledge, and he said, according to what was narrated from him: “Seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim man and woman.” And he said in another hadith: “Whoever follows a path in search of knowledge, God will make easy for him a path to Paradise.” He also urged us to take knowledge from other nations. The Prophet of Islam raised the status of the scholar, saying: “The superiority of the scholar over the worshiper is like my superiority over the lowest of you.” And he said in what was narrated about him: “Scholars are the inheritors of the prophets.” He concluded with his prophethood the era of revelation to inaugurate the era of science that inherited the traces of prophecy.
Therefore, it was not strange in Islamic civilization to find scholars who were famous for their understanding of religion and their knowledge of other sciences such as chemistry, mathematics or astronomy. As examples Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, one of the first great jurists in the history of Islam, was a well-versed scholar in chemistry and wrote a book in which he collected the experience of that era, and conveyed the secrets of this science to his creative student Jaber bin Hayyan, who is considered the true founder of modern chemistry with the recognition of Western scholars.
Europe built its scientific edifice on the legacy of Islamic civilization in its golden ages. Copernicus - for example - based his astronomical theory that revolutionized Europe on the tables and astronomical calculations developed by Muslim astronomers several centuries before him, such as Al-Battani, Al-Zarqali and Ibn Al-Shater. Newton benefited greatly from the writings of Ibn al-Haytham, a Muslim physicist, especially in the field of light and optics. Avicenna's book "The Canon of Medicine" was the medical reference approved in the universities of Europe for centuries, and Al-Zahrawi carried out complex surgeries centuries before the surgeons of Europe. Muslim scholars created new sciences such as pharmacology and algebra, whose bases were derived by Al-Khwarizmi from the Qur’anic verses that talk about inheritance and how it is distributed.
