How does Mary Shelley use her characters in 'Frankenstein' to frame the struggle between religion and science in her society?

Shelley uses Frankenstein’s character as a tool to explore social pressures on natural philosophers, however she resists a portrayal that definitively adheres to a secular or religious position. Frankenstein’s “hurricane”(p.33) of emotions is representative of this fluidity in contemporary beliefs. From these balanced portrayals, Shelley gains the ability to build upon the debates and explore their limitations from a neutral position.
Shelley’s ability to frame variant societal tensions through her choice of language demonstrates her awareness of contemporary scientific and religious schools of thought. Shelley refocuses the debate through her choice of language. The passage begins with the creature’s description of the “original era of [its] being” (p.70), redefining the terminology of the debate to involve the nature of “being” rather than living. The portrayal of the creature’s first experiences and its gradual transition into a conscious and autonomous individual enables her investigation into the nature of “being” to occur. Shelley’s linguistic revision suggests a disparity between the contemporary definitions of the principle of life as "dependent on the motility and animation", and what she truly believed constituted "life". This subtle refocussing of the contemporary fixation on animation allows for a more philosophical consideration of life to be explored.
Shelley contrasts scenes of Frankenstein’s preoccupation on the material components of the body with a first-person narration of the creature’s conscious mind, showing the definitions of life that contemporary science had previously used to be unsatisfactory. Throughout this scene, Shelley is undermining the claims made by Frankenstein in the title quote regarding the discovery of the “cause of generation and life” through the animation of “lifeless matter.” Shelley’s portrayal of the creature’s gradual cognitive development reframes the “principle of life” in terms of consciousness, exploring the empirical nature of experience and suggesting that the ability to process sensory stimuli is a necessary component of being.