My Nona Lit Candles. I Read Books. We Both Looked for Meaning.

I remember when my children were in kindergarten and the topic of the origin of the world came up. A group of parents asked for the idea of evolution, that humans share a common ancestor with other primates, to be removed, and for it to be replaced with the teaching that we were created by God. I remember my children coming home confused because I had spent a great deal of time throughout their childhood talking about nature and science. Some of their very first toys were a children's microscope, a telescope, a terrarium, and similar tools for exploration.

Although I come from a traditional Catholic family, my relationship with religion changed during my youth after reading the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. As a young person, I found it difficult to reconcile the images of wars, punishments, and violence with the idea of God as love. I know that the Old Testament is not only about violence; it also contains laws, poetry, love songs, prophecies, and many stories about mercy, justice, and faith. To me, God is love, while the book itself was written by human beings. Priests, muftis, and preachers are, in my view, simply people doing their jobs. Made of flesh and blood, driven by their own hopes and desires, yet also marked by their traumas and pain. Beneath every robe is a human being who, just like the rest of us, carries their own burdens and can simply have a bad day.

We had a wonderful priest, and as young people we used to meet with him every Thursday evening to talk about life and various topics. I was always questioning things, yet he never tried to silence me or condemn me because my views often fell outside the framework of the Catholic Church. My grandmother, on the other hand, regularly lit candles in church for me because of all my questions and doubts, many of which she could not answer. She was a simple woman for whom going to church was as essential as air is to life itself, faith was everything to her. It was during that period that I began to separate religion from faith. Religion, for me, is an organized system of beliefs and practices, whereas faith is something deeply personal, one does not necessarily imply the other.

That sense of safety, warmth, and presence that I felt in church during my childhood gradually stopped being tied to just one place. I realized that I carry that feeling within myself. It is just as present when I stand on a mountain peak, in the middle of a busy city, or in the quiet of my own home. The doors of the church are not the only entrance to spirituality; that space exists within us. That is why faith, for me, is an intimate thing, a personal space that offers hope and support when the outside world becomes too complex.

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, said something that became my personal guiding principle: “Knowledge is power.” Not because I learned it somewhere, but because I live it. Knowledge is the only thing nobody can take away from you. You don't need a suitcase for it. And the more you acquire, the more clearly you see that it has no end, and that the possibilities are limitless.

The story of the birth of science is far too long to fit into a few sentences, but I will try. Homo sapiens has existed for roughly 250,000 years. Modern science, as we know it today, is only about four centuries old. For so long we walked this earth, looked at the same stars, feared the same darkness, and only recently began to ask, in a systematic way, why. People in the past observed natural phenomena just as we do today, but their attitude toward those phenomena was fundamentally different. They did not understand them, attributed them to gods and supernatural forces, and developed a deep sense of awe toward them.

Many of those ancient beliefs have been preserved in myths. Myths are one of the important foundations from which many religious traditions developed through attempts to explain the world and human experience, alongside the social and cultural needs of communities. A pivotal moment in human history came with the idea that natural phenomena could be understood, that the world is knowable to the human mind. This idea is often attributed to Thales of Miletus, one of the first great philosophers of Western civilization. The realization that knowledge could be systematically gathered marked a fundamental turning point. Modern science did not emerge all at once; it grew out of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, gradually separating itself from them as a distinct method of understanding reality.

Studying nature does not have to undermine faith; it can also complement it. Science and religion answer different questions: science primarily asks how something works, while religion asks why - seeking meaning, purpose, and the spiritual dimension of life. In science, claims must be testable and repeatable, whereas religion is based on belief, sacred texts, and experiences of faith. These are two different kinds of knowledge. Conflict usually arises only when both sides attempt to answer the same question using the same criteria for truth.

Today, we often carry multiple layers within ourselves at the same time: we understand some things scientifically, experience others through faith, interpret some psychologically, and feel others intuitively. And that same pluralism we live with at home, we carry with us into the workplace. Years of work have taught me the same lesson I learned at home. People do not need to think the same way in order to create something meaningful together. The best teams I have led were not made up of people who agreed on everything, but of people who respected each other enough to keep talking even when they disagreed - creating a culture in which people can grow. Rational in analysis. Human in practice. That is not a contradiction. It is balance.

My children are the best proof of that openness: my son is an atheist, my daughters are believers, and I believe in an energy that moves and connects us, without the need for religious frameworks. Under the same roof, everyone is free to question everything and to change their minds in light of new insights that life brings. Our differences do not divide us; they enrich us.

Because at the end of the day, we do not have to share the same beliefs to share the same table. We do not have to understand someone else's truth completely, but we can respect the person who carries it. And without that respect, we cannot build a family, a community, or a workplace.

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