My wife and I have been making an effort to introduce our kids to some of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that I grew up with (my parents were religious about taking me to local community theater productions when I was a kid). We just watched the 1956 film version of the The King and I, and it is fantastic — funny, touching, great characters, beautiful music, beautiful in every way. Unexpectedly to me, since it’s been decades since I last saw it, science and faith is a theme.
The overbearing but ultimately noble King of Siam (Yul Brynner) hectors the imported English schoolteacher, Anna (Deborah Kerr), about the Bible. He hired her in the first place to bring Siam into the modern “scientific” world. “Scientific” is, in fact, his second favorite English word, after “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
After studying Genesis, he confronts her over the the age of the earth. He calls her in the middle of the night so he can dictate a letter to President Lincoln. But first, a brief Scriptural discussion.

King: I think your Moses shall have been a fool.
Anna: Moses?
King: Moses, Moses, Moses. I think he shall have been a fool. Here it stands written by him that the world was created in six days. Now you know and I know that it took many ages to create world. I think he shall have been a fool to have written so. What is your opinion?
Anna: Is that why Your Majesty sent for me at this hour of the night?
King: That is not reason, but first I wish to discuss Moses. Now, how am I ever to learn truth if different English books state different things?
Anna: The Bible was not written by men of science, but by men of faith. It was their explanation of the miracle of creation which is the same miracle whether it took six days or many centuries.
King: I still think your Moses shall have been a fool.
Anna: As you wish, Your Majesty.

OK, no one ever said Rodgers and Hammerstein were theologians much less scientists. But later, after the King’s character has had a chance to deepen a bit, he has the opportunity to expound before a group of visiting British officials who, he knows, will be drafting a report to Queen Victoria on whether he is a “barbarian” or not. The King’s pride is very much pricked by the suggestion. He seeks to impress the visitors with his sophistication:

Anna: His Majesty made a rather interesting point about Moses. When he was reading the Bible.
King: Oh, yes. Now Moses is very fine illustration of little-known fact that men of faith and men of science, by contradicting each other, always manage to arrive at same conclusion.

At this, my wife elbowed me and stage-whispered, “Write that down!”
Isn’t it true, though? I liked what Ann Gauger wrote yesterday about the Homo naledi fossils and letting “the evidence speak for itself,” as intelligent design theorists seek to do, rather than trying to impose preconceived notions on it (“On H. naledi, Separating Fact from Interpretation“). As for the latter approach, no one is more justly criticized for it than folks who know that science must reach conclusions that exclude design in the cosmos, even as they consign all others to the depths reserved for “science deniers.”
For those who care about science and about faith, the seeming contradictions are fascinating but also fruitful. Often, I think you have to allow them just to be, rather than seeking immediately to reconcile them. Allowed to speak for themselves, they have a way of converging.