Compatibility of Science and Religion

[chad_tukes]

---

just a WARNING: this is not a hate thread. meaningful discussions and positive criticisms are welcome.

i am aware that there are many threads of this kind already exist in this board. however, the thread's main purpose is to talk about how the TWO can blend together when viewed from a different stand point.

"Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth's history. ... Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts."

[cromagnon]

im most people's point of view . the 2 relly oppose each other.

u actually need to change ur angle on viewing the 2.

i believe whats written on the bible is the scientific representation of our early concpet of the world . 2,000

yrs ago. they used their intuition to understand the universe . so as many pagans and mayans understanding during the previews time.

but since its considered primitive now . it is considered the NASA during their time.

"Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth's history. ... Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts."

I heard of it . they now accept evolution . I think it shows that the more science discovers things. the more we appreciate the works of a god/creator.

but a different kind of god , I call it energy = that orchestrates the universe and all/

[josephdc]

however, the thread's main purpose is to talk about how the TWO can blend together when viewed from a different stand point.

John Lennox, who is a professor of Mathematics at Oxford, once said that there's no conflict between Science and Faith. He says that there are many prominent scientists today who are also Christians. For example, Francis Collins, who is a geneticist and the former head of the US Human Genome Project, is also a Christian. Collins believes that one can be a believer in God and still do Science.

[vern]

Science and religion answer two very different questions in my life hence I don't see a conflict. I was once very anti-religion, very atheist ... today that part of me just seems like a very angry young child. I go to church, yet one would be very hard-pressed to find others in everyday life that is more science oriented than me. I find atheist/science freaks as bad as religious freaks.

The last sentence of Darwin's Origin of Species is as follows ...

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Yes, science and religion don't have to clash. Only the misinformed and ignorant insist that they have to. The biggest and brightest minds have almost exclusively lived with both ... at first troubled ... but eventually reconciled both. Think Darwin. Think Einstein. Think Oppenheimer. Think Newton. Think Galileo.

[grovestreet]

Here's a debate regarding this subject... A guy named Chomsky and two other scientists.

Hopefully this would give you a broader perspective on the two (science and religion)


CHOMSKY: What each of us has is direct experience. So does every other animal, they have some kind of experience. A bee sees the world differently than we do because it is a different organism. And other organisms just try to work their way around the world of their experience. Humans, as far as we know, are unique in the animal world in that they’re reflective creatures. That is, they try to make some sense out of their experience.


There are all kinds of ways of doing this: some are called myth, some are called magic, some are called religion. Science is a particular one — it’s a particular form of trying to gain some understanding of our experiences, organize them. It relies on evidence, coherent argument, principles that have some explanatory depth, if possible. And that mode of inquiry, which has been, particularly in the last couple hundred years, extremely successful, has its scope and its limits. What the limits are we don’t really know.

It has been claimed, for example, that the development of Newton’s Laws was in part responsible for the ending of the burning of witches, in that it demonstrated that natural effects could have understandable natural causes.
It is absolutely true that Newton’s theories, and all scientific theories since, are approximations that give an explanation of only some aspects of nature. But I think most physical scientists at least would argue that by doing so they capture the key operational aspects of the real world of phenomena.

CARROLL: Newton showed that we could construct formal scientific models that are both perfectly intelligible and in good agreement with what we know about the world -- I'm not sure what else it would mean to say that the world is intelligible to us. Of course, it is true that science remains silent on questions of meaning and morality and aesthetics, as it aims simply to describe the world as it is. The understanding that meaning and morality and aesthetics are constructed by human beings, rather than being located in the external world, is one of the most profound lessons of the Enlightenment, one we are still struggling to come to terms with.


ON RELIGION
CHOMSKY: When we talk about religion, we mean a particular form of religion, the form that ended up dominating Western society. But if you take a look at other societies in the world, their religious beliefs are very different.
People have a right to believe whatever they like, including irrational beliefs. In fact, we all have irrational beliefs, in a certain sense. We have to. If I walk out the door, I have an irrational belief that the floor is there. Can I prove it? You know if I’m paying attention to it I see that it’s there, but I can’t prove it. In fact, if you’re a scientist, you don’t prove anything. The sciences don’t have proofs, what they have is surmises. There’s a lot of nonsense these days about evolution being just a theory. Everything’s just a theory, including classical physics! If you want proofs you go to arithmetic; in arithmetic you can prove things. But you stipulate the axioms. But in the sciences you’re trying to discover things, and the notion of proof doesn’t exist.

KRAUSS: Science certainly cannot prove anything to be true, in the sense that mathematics might appear to do. However, what science does extremely well, indeed it is the heart of science, is to prove things to be false. Namely, any proposed explanation that disagrees with the result of experiment is false. Period. It is by eliminating the false theories that we make progress. Falsification is the key.
CARROLL: Science indeed doesn't operate in terms of "proofs," but rather in terms of theories that have been tested beyond reasonable suspicion. The crucial part of the process is approaching the world with an open mind; no matter how elegant or compelling an idea may seem, it can't be accepted if it doesn't agree with the data.

ON ATHEISM
CHOMSKY: You could be an intellectually respectable atheist in the 17th century, or in the fifth century. In fact, I don’t even know what an atheist is. When people ask me if I’m an atheist, I have to ask them what they mean. What is it that I’m supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can’t tell you whether I’m an atheist, and the question doesn’t arise.

I don’t see anything logical in being agnostic about the Greek gods. There’s no agnosticism about ectoplasm [in the non-biological sense]. I don’t see how one can be an agnostic when one doesn’t know what it is that one is supposed to believe in, or reject. There are plenty of things that are unknown, but are assumed reasonably to exist, even in the most basic sciences. Maybe 90 percent of the
mass-energy in the universe is called “dark,” because nobody knows what it is.

KRAUSS: Many fundamentalists see scientists are rabid atheists, but in fact, as Steve Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, says, most of them haven’t thought enough about God to responsibly address the issue of belief. God simply doesn’t come up in scientific considerations, so questions of belief or non-belief essentially never arise.

Evolution, as a scientific theory, says nothing about the existence or non-existence of God. It doesn’t yet address the origin of life either, but instead deals with the mechanics of how the present diversity of species on earth evolved.

At some point I expect we will understand how the first life forms originated via natural physical mechanisms, but even when we do this, it will not confirm or refute the existence of God. This is the key mistake that fundamentalists who insist that evolution must be wrong make. They assume that because science doesn’t explicitly incorporate God, it must somehow be immoral. But in fact science simply doesn’t deal with issues of purpose or design to the universe. It deals with how the universe works.

And I believe that the ethos of science -- full disclosure, honesty, anti-authoritarianism -- would, if more generally applied, help produce a more ethical world. Now, this does not mean that there is no tension between religion and science. As Steve Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, again put it, “Science does not make it impossible to believe in God, but it does make it possible to not believe in God.”

Without science, everything is miraculous. Science alone allows for the rational possibility that there is no divine intelligence. But it does not require it, and that is the important point. Arguing that evolution must be incorrect because it appears to conflict with one’s a priori ideas about design in nature is not just bad science, it is bad theology.

KRAUSS: Science and religion are incommensurate, and religion is largely about practice rather than explanation. But religion is different than theology, and as the Catholic Church has learned over the years, any sensible theology must be in accord with the results of science.

[kebotDiNaMute]

Here's a debate regarding this subject... A guy named Chomsky and two other scientists.

Hopefully this would give you a broader perspective on the two (science and religion)


CHOMSKY: What each of us has is direct experience. So does every other animal, they have some kind of experience. A bee sees the world differently than we do because it is a different organism. And other organisms just try to work their way around the world of their experience. Humans, as far as we know, are unique in the animal world in that they’re reflective creatures. That is, they try to make some sense out of their experience.


There are all kinds of ways of doing this: some are called myth, some are called magic, some are called religion. Science is a particular one — it’s a particular form of trying to gain some understanding of our experiences, organize them. It relies on evidence, coherent argument, principles that have some explanatory depth, if possible. And that mode of inquiry, which has been, particularly in the last couple hundred years, extremely successful, has its scope and its limits. What the limits are we don’t really know.

It has been claimed, for example, that the development of Newton’s Laws was in part responsible for the ending of the burning of witches, in that it demonstrated that natural effects could have understandable natural causes.
It is absolutely true that Newton’s theories, and all scientific theories since, are approximations that give an explanation of only some aspects of nature. But I think most physical scientists at least would argue that by doing so they capture the key operational aspects of the real world of phenomena.

CARROLL: Newton showed that we could construct formal scientific models that are both perfectly intelligible and in good agreement with what we know about the world -- I'm not sure what else it would mean to say that the world is intelligible to us. Of course, it is true that science remains silent on questions of meaning and morality and aesthetics, as it aims simply to describe the world as it is. The understanding that meaning and morality and aesthetics are constructed by human beings, rather than being located in the external world, is one of the most profound lessons of the Enlightenment, one we are still struggling to come to terms with.


ON RELIGION
CHOMSKY: When we talk about religion, we mean a particular form of religion, the form that ended up dominating Western society. But if you take a look at other societies in the world, their religious beliefs are very different.
People have a right to believe whatever they like, including irrational beliefs. In fact, we all have irrational beliefs, in a certain sense. We have to. If I walk out the door, I have an irrational belief that the floor is there. Can I prove it? You know if I’m paying attention to it I see that it’s there, but I can’t prove it. In fact, if you’re a scientist, you don’t prove anything. The sciences don’t have proofs, what they have is surmises. There’s a lot of nonsense these days about evolution being just a theory. Everything’s just a theory, including classical physics! If you want proofs you go to arithmetic; in arithmetic you can prove things. But you stipulate the axioms. But in the sciences you’re trying to discover things, and the notion of proof doesn’t exist.

KRAUSS: Science certainly cannot prove anything to be true, in the sense that mathematics might appear to do. However, what science does extremely well, indeed it is the heart of science, is to prove things to be false. Namely, any proposed explanation that disagrees with the result of experiment is false. Period. It is by eliminating the false theories that we make progress. Falsification is the key.
CARROLL: Science indeed doesn't operate in terms of "proofs," but rather in terms of theories that have been tested beyond reasonable suspicion. The crucial part of the process is approaching the world with an open mind; no matter how elegant or compelling an idea may seem, it can't be accepted if it doesn't agree with the data.

ON ATHEISM
CHOMSKY: You could be an intellectually respectable atheist in the 17th century, or in the fifth century. In fact, I don’t even know what an atheist is. When people ask me if I’m an atheist, I have to ask them what they mean. What is it that I’m supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can’t tell you whether I’m an atheist, and the question doesn’t arise.

I don’t see anything logical in being agnostic about the Greek gods. There’s no agnosticism about ectoplasm [in the non-biological sense]. I don’t see how one can be an agnostic when one doesn’t know what it is that one is supposed to believe in, or reject. There are plenty of things that are unknown, but are assumed reasonably to exist, even in the most basic sciences. Maybe 90 percent of the
mass-energy in the universe is called “dark,” because nobody knows what it is.

KRAUSS: Many fundamentalists see scientists are rabid atheists, but in fact, as Steve Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, says, most of them haven’t thought enough about God to responsibly address the issue of belief. God simply doesn’t come up in scientific considerations, so questions of belief or non-belief essentially never arise.

Evolution, as a scientific theory, says nothing about the existence or non-existence of God. It doesn’t yet address the origin of life either, but instead deals with the mechanics of how the present diversity of species on earth evolved.

At some point I expect we will understand how the first life forms originated via natural physical mechanisms, but even when we do this, it will not confirm or refute the existence of God. This is the key mistake that fundamentalists who insist that evolution must be wrong make. They assume that because science doesn’t explicitly incorporate God, it must somehow be immoral. But in fact science simply doesn’t deal with issues of purpose or design to the universe. It deals with how the universe works.

And I believe that the ethos of science -- full disclosure, honesty, anti-authoritarianism -- would, if more generally applied, help produce a more ethical world. Now, this does not mean that there is no tension between religion and science. As Steve Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, again put it, “Science does not make it impossible to believe in God, but it does make it possible to not believe in God.”

Without science, everything is miraculous. Science alone allows for the rational possibility that there is no divine intelligence. But it does not require it, and that is the important point. Arguing that evolution must be incorrect because it appears to conflict with one’s a priori ideas about design in nature is not just bad science, it is bad theology.

KRAUSS: Science and religion are incommensurate, and religion is largely about practice rather than explanation. But religion is different than theology, and as the Catholic Church has learned over the years, any sensible theology must be in accord with the results of science.

huh? taasa ani brad, pero you are comparing apple and banana...

Science is about materialism.

Religion is about God and Morality.

Limitation:
Science cannot explain EVERYTHING.
Religion does not EXPLAIN SCIENCE.

if science crosses supernatural it becomes a hypocrisy. There is no material evidence of supernatural that science have/had explained. Supernatural is the Last SUBJECT that science will deal with.

if Religion Crosses science, if proven RIGHT then it strengthens the religion and its foundation, If proven wrong, it becomes a fairy tale.


Science cannot explain love, but pointed out the thalamus as responsible... CHEMICAL REACTION as they said.

Religion materialize love through acts of kindness, gentleness, faith, hope, compassion, worship, care and more.... takes us years to understand this act through feelings.

Question Whats the conflict of SCIENCE and RELIGION?

I think nothing. You have to believe science, but you don't have to believe LIES. I think this is the main difference.

[chad_tukes]

the so-called "new age atheists" are the ones who attack the premise of SCIENCE and RELIGION being compatible. however, the science community question the conflict and confrontation because the differences between the two results in a never ending battle.

there are stunning evidences of "EVOLUTION" and i won't even get to that. the point is that science based evidences tend to shake the religious faith but we have to keep in mind that there are also SCIENTISTS who are believers---spiritually and politically---who don't see the need to fight over the issue.

[kebotDiNaMute]

the so-called "new age atheists" are the ones who attack the premise of SCIENCE and RELIGION being compatible. however, the science community question the conflict and confrontation because the differences between the two results in a never ending battle.

there are stunning evidences of "EVOLUTION" and i won't even get to that. the point is that science based evidences tend to shake the religious faith but we have to keep in mind that there are also SCIENTISTS who are believers---spiritually and politically---who don't see the need to fight over the issue.

there are stunning evidences of "EVOLUTION"
--- botbot ni. if it is true and accepted.. then there is 1.3M at stake who ever who can prove evolution, i mean big time evolution...
natural selection happens but never evolution as you think it might be....
small dog big dog, small cat big cat... these are natural selection... dog produce cat = big time evo... so far nothing happened... 3,000 generation of flies has been studied for over 50years... nothing happens...

Big Bang = happens everytime... but its not what you think it is...

[chad_tukes]

there are stunning evidences of "EVOLUTION"
--- botbot ni. if it is true and accepted.. then there is 1.3M at stake who ever who can prove evolution, i mean big time evolution...
natural selection happens but never evolution as you think it might be....
small dog big dog, small cat big cat... these are natural selection... dog produce cat = big time evo... so far nothing happened... 3,000 generation of flies has been studied for over 50years... nothing happens...

Big Bang = happens everytime... but its not what you think it is...

you are off the topic. please kindly read the first post.

[grovestreet]

"This is the key mistake that fundamentalists who insist that evolution must be wrong make. They assume that because science doesn’t explicitly incorporate God, it must somehow be immoral. But in fact science simply doesn’t deal with issues of purpose or design to the universe. It deals with how the universe works."

taken from my post above.