Relationship between religion and science

[Geoff-Allen]

I was browsing idly around and found this article -

Relationship between religion and science - Wikipedia

Yet to read it all - it is rather long

Enjoy!

 

[HonestJoe]

Science wants a relationship with religion because she thinks she can change him. Religion is mostly in to the naughty thrill of getting with science but could come around to something more serious and long-term in the end. They’re both still sleeping with philosophy on the side though.

 

[Augustus]

In a nutshell, the conflict hypothesis is naive and historically illiterate and, despite some aspects of conflict, religion played a significant role the development of the sciences in the Western world.

There is a close to 0% chance of any committed 'Rationalist' accepting this though despite it being pretty obvious with even a little open minded research.

The relationship in the modern world is more subjective and open to debate though.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In a nutshell, the conflict hypothesis is naive and historically illiterate and, despite some aspects of conflict, religion played a significant role the development of the sciences in the Western world.

Sure... just like alchemy and astrology.

 

[Augustus]

Sure... just like alchemy and astrology.

Don't forget the Galileo incident. That proves religion very very bad nasty anti-science.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

In a nutshell, the conflict hypothesis is naive and historically illiterate and, despite some aspects of conflict, religion played a significant role the development of the sciences in the Western world.

There is a close to 0% chance of any committed 'Rationalist' accepting this though despite it being pretty obvious with even a little open minded research.

Way to immediately try to turn a thread merely proposing a topic for discussion into a divisive take-down aimed at your own personal bugbears. You could at least have waited for a "rationalist" to respond before leaping on them.

Personally, as someone who considers himself a rationalist, I accept that science and religion actually do share a very strong relationship throughout history. I feel that this is largely down to the pervasiveness of religion through history being such that it was basically unquestionable throughout society that the world was created or maintained by Gods and/or some supernatural or inexplicable element. Therefore, it follows that the very study of the natural world and how it functions would be widely considered an exercise in examining "God's creation" or the mystical elements that they felt underpinned existence to some degree, and it would make sense why many of the earliest breakthroughs or discoveries considered to be the foundational achievements of science were made by religious figures and theological scholars; The examination of reality was necessarily considered a religious undertaking because they largely believed the natural components of existence to be a necessary result of supernatural forces.

 

[Augustus]

Way to immediately try to turn a thread merely proposing a topic for discussion into a divisive take-down aimed at your own personal bugbears. You could at least have waited for a "rationalist" to respond before leaping on them.

Personally, as someone who considers himself a rationalist, I accept that science and religion actually do share a very strong relationship throughout history. I feel that this is largely down to the pervasiveness of religion through history being such that it was basically unquestionable throughout society that the world was created or maintained by Gods and/or some supernatural or inexplicable element. Therefore, it follows that the very study of the natural world and how it functions would be widely considered an exercise in examining "God's creation" or the mystical elements that they felt underpinned existence to some degree, and it would make sense why many of the earliest breakthroughs or discoveries considered to be the foundational achievements of science were made by religious figures and theological scholars; The examination of reality was necessarily considered a religious undertaking because they largely believed the natural components of existence to be a necessary result of supernatural forces.

Was based on personal experience involving many people. But, I'll revise my views.

There is a close to 2% chance of any committed 'Rationalist' accepting this though despite it being pretty obvious with even a little open minded research.

 

[HonestJoe]

In a nutshell, the conflict hypothesis is naive and historically illiterate and, despite some aspects of conflict, religion played a significant role the development of the sciences in the Western world.

I also don’t like the image of science and religion being in conflict but for different reasons. I’d actually question whether religion specifically played a significant role. Lots of people and organisations which happened to be religious played significant roles but they were in environments where it was difficult if not impossible to be (or at least present yourself as) being religious. I see religion and scientific study as two different consequences of human intelligence and curiosity. If religion somehow never came about, I think we’d still have those underlying characteristics and would still have reached a similar position of knowledge and understanding today.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Don't forget the Galileo incident. That proves religion very very bad nasty anti-science.

Some of it, yeah.

FYI: while the Catholic Church has apologized for imprisoning Galileo, it still hasn't admitted any wrongdoing in its killing of Giordano Bruno.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Don't forget the Galileo incident. That proves religion very very bad nasty anti-science.

More to the point: the fact that there are Catholic-affiliated universities doesn't mean that the Catholic Church's insistence on monogenism as a point of faith isn't in conflict with scientific knowledge.

 

[Augustus]

I’d actually question whether religion specifically played a significant role. Lots of people and organisations which happened to be religious played significant roles but they were in environments where it was difficult if not impossible to be (or at least present yourself as) being religious. If religion somehow never came about, I think we’d still have those underlying characteristics and would still have reached a similar position of knowledge and understanding today.

It's certainly possible, there are many routes to a destination. I'm not of the opinion that it must necessarily have developed though as modern science did emerge in a specific time and a place (of course 'standing on the shoulders of giants' from other cultures). It could have emerged in a different manner though, there is no question about that.

The development of modern 'Western' science is intertwined with Christianity though (and other influences of course) based on the only history we have. Even using the terms 'religion' and 'science' is a bit anachronistic as the mix of 'religion', theology, philosophy and natural philosophy is very hard to disentangle as they influenced each other as part of a dynamic process over centuries.

A few random things of note imo (not arguments intended to persuade btw, as I don't have time to expand):

• Church contributions to expanding access to education and the development of the university system, including logic, maths, philosophy and natural philosophy as important subjects.
• Transmission and translation of philosophical and scientific texts
• The influences of Greek philosophy on Christian theology
• Creating a motivation to study abstract (non-productive) scientific principles and also prestige and thus financing for studying such things (this was not universal in other cultures, for example, China despite long periods of being far more advanced)
• Giving educated people (clerics & monks) access to scholarship, a stable living, and free time to study what they wanted to (this 'democratised' opportunity rather than limiting it primarily to the aristocracy/wealthy elites).
• Providing a (basic but important) framework for conceptualising the nature of the universe (again, not universal in human societies)

As far as 'just happened to be Christians', that's not the way many of them saw it if we can believe their own words. Many would not have had the opportunity to study without structures put in place by religious institutions.

Also, many of these influences, although important, are somewhat the results of social circumstances rather than necessarily being the purposeful, deliberate intentions of the religious establishment.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Relationship between religion and science - Wikipedia

Science is a method and program for understanding physical reality, a role formerly occupied by religious revelation such as the days of creation in Genesis, for example (I will focus on only one religion, Christianity, since I don't know the relationship between science and any other religion).

The Christian method for determining how the world works prior to the advent and rise of science was to trust ancient revelation on faith. We can pretty much assume that all Christians up until then were creationists inasmuch as there was no alternative hypothesis available.

Modern science was a reaction to that methodology. Science rejected faith as a means of understanding physical reality, and replaced it with rational skepticism and empiricism, an implicit repudiation of the Christian method.

This new way of knowing demonstrated that the church and its Bible were wrong. Galileo and his telescope, for example, proved that heavenly bodies were not the perfect orbs that the church had claimed when he saw the pockmarked surface of the moon, and that not everything revolved around the earth when he identified four moons orbiting Jupiter.

Pope Urban VIII made a great tactical error at that point, one which set the tone for the relationship between science and Christianity for centuries. Rather than commenting, "Look at how great our god is - more imaginative than we had suspected," he instead attempted to silence Galileo. Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting that ours was a solar system among other solar systems in space.

This created such a chill for scientists that Copernicus waited until near death to publish his work on heliocentrism, and centuries later, Darwin worried bout the church's response to his work.

Today, most of the church has acquiesced to the scientists, and most theologians are calling Genesis allegory rather than incorrect. The remnant of creationists are still waging war on science. We see that every day we visit these threads. I already have this morning and a few times yesterday. "No evidence," "mere supposition," "information programmed into DNA," "macroevolution is impossible," "you can't prove your theories," "OK, make a cat evolve into a dog," etc.. We're all familiar with it.

So that is the relationship of Christianity to science today. The church has mostly given up the fight and even embraced the science contradicting its scriptures, with a shrinking remnant of creationists still resisting science even to the point of home schooling their children to prevent them from hearing about evolution.

And the fraction of Westerners self-identifying as Christians is shrinking as atheism is growing in some part due to science:

• "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" - Richard Dawkins

 

[HonestJoe]

The development of modern 'Western' science is intertwined with Christianity though (and other influences of course) based on the only history we have. Even using the terms 'religion' and 'science' is a bit anachronistic as the mix of 'religion', theology, philosophy and natural philosophy is very hard to disentangle as they influenced each other as part of a dynamic process over centuries.

That’s basically my point. It isn’t religion in itself which had the influence, it was much wider and more diverse social structures that supported scientific (and other) developments. People would have been inclined in those directions with or without specifically religious influences.

Christianity dominated the whole of the western world in through the periods were talking about so everything could be said to be influenced by it, good, bad and indifferent. Churches contributed to the kinds of things you list because they’d taken pretty much all of the resources; they were the only organisations which could afford to do so. Only when the dictatorial power of the churches on money and power was relaxed did anyone else have the ability to support such causes and in all the years which have followed, many have. Others have taken on some of the negative aspects for that matter. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Science is a method and program for understanding physical reality, a role formerly occupied by religious revelation such as the days of creation in Genesis, for example (I will focus on only one religion, Christianity, since I don't know the relationship between science and any other religion).

The Christian method for determining how the world works prior to the advent and rise of science was to trust ancient revelation on faith. We can pretty much assume that all Christians up until then were creationists inasmuch as there was no alternative hypothesis available.

Modern science was a reaction to that methodology. Science rejected faith as a means of understanding physical reality, and replaced it with rational skepticism and empiricism, an implicit repudiation of the Christian method.

This new way of knowing demonstrated that the church and its Bible were wrong. Galileo and his telescope, for example, proved that heavenly bodies were not the perfect orbs that the church had claimed when he saw the pockmarked surface of the moon, and that not everything revolved around the earth when he identified four moons orbiting Jupiter.

Pope Urban VIII made a great tactical error at that point, one which set the tone for the relationship between science and Christianity for centuries. Rather than commenting, "Look at how great our god is - more imaginative than we had suspected," he instead attempted to silence Galileo. Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting that ours was a solar system among other solar systems in space.

This created such a chill for scientists that Copernicus waited until near death to publish his work on heliocentrism, and centuries later, Darwin worried bout the church's response to his work.

Today, most of the church has acquiesced to the scientists, and most theologians are calling Genesis allegory rather than incorrect. The remnant of creationists are still waging war on science. We see that every day we visit these threads. I already have this morning and a few times yesterday. "No evidence," "mere supposition," "information programmed into DNA," "macroevolution is impossible," "you can't prove your theories," "OK, make a cat evolve into a dog," etc.. We're all familiar with it.

So that is the relationship of Christianity to science today. The church has mostly given up the fight and even embraced the science contradicting its scriptures, with a shrinking remnant of creationists still resisting science even to the point of home schooling their children to prevent them from hearing about evolution.

And the fraction of Westerners self-identifying as Christians is shrinking as atheism is growing in some part due to science:

• "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" - Richard Dawkins

'Nature is the executor of God's laws' Galileo

 

[Augustus]

The Christian method for determining how the world works prior to the advent and rise of science was to trust ancient revelation on faith... Modern science was a reaction to that methodology.

Only if you ignore what numerous instrumental figures in the centuries long evolution of modern science actually said in their own words regarding their own worldview and their own philosophies and their own motivations in their own writings.

 

[Theweirdtophat]

Don't forget the Galileo incident. That proves religion very very bad nasty anti-science.

Explain Leonardo, Isaac Newton, George Washington Carver, among many others who were into science but also religious or practiced or at least had an interest in magic, mysticism and other spiritual practices

 

[Augustus]

Explain Leonardo, Isaac Newton, George Washington Carver, among many others who were into science but also religious or practiced or at least had an interest in magic, mysticism and other spiritual practices

That comment was satirical.

Numerous monks (Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Williams of Occam, etc.), clergy (Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bradwardine, Reverend Thomas Bayes, Bishop George Berkley, etc.) theologians and devout believers (Robert Boyle, Descartes, Newton, etc.) were integral in the development of modern science.

 

[Augustus]

Christianity dominated the whole of the western world in through the periods were talking about so everything could be said to be influenced by it, good, bad and indifferent.

This is true. But culture is a significant influence on society, and modern science emerged out of a particular culture. It wasn't purely by chance.

People would have been inclined in those directions with or without specifically religious influences.

They weren't in many other societies, at least not to anywhere near the same degree (the pre-modern world was a very different place). And regardless of their inclinations, most wouldn't have had the opportunity.

Churches contributed to the kinds of things you list because they’d taken pretty much all of the resources; they were the only organisations which could afford to do so. Only when the dictatorial power of the churches on money and power was relaxed did anyone else have the ability to support such causes and in all the years which have followed, many have.

'Something else would have done the same' is not really persuasive for me. What would it have been and why would it have funded so many unproductive people for so long (scince in other societies was often only as useful as it was productive)? So many important people in the history of science (including those from lower class backgrounds) had their educations funded by the church.

It's possible of course, but certainly not probable given all available evidence from human history. What else would have created such a structure and for what reason?

 

[HonestJoe]

This is true. But culture is a significant influence on society, and modern science emerged out of a particular culture. It wasn't purely by chance.

I’d say there was a significant element of chance. Like so many things, it would have only taken a couple of minor differences in events to lead to vastly different outcomes years later. Maybe a different culture could have led to an even better state of science today, say if certain areas of study hadn’t been resisted by churches or the input of women had been accepted and recognised earlier?

They weren't in many other societies, at least not to anywhere near the same degree (the pre-modern world was a very different place). And regardless of their inclinations, most wouldn't have had the opportunity.

I think you’re belittling non-European societies. All of the major civilisations of the world will have had technological and what we’d now call scientific advancements of their times or they wouldn’t have become major civilisations. We can’t know how much knowledge was lost when those civilisations either died out or were crushed by later ones (including our own).

It's possible of course, but certainly not probable given all available evidence from human history. What else would have created such a structure and for what reason?

Why would there need to be different reasons for different people (or the same people with different beliefs) to develop their nations and societies? And while it’s certainly true that a vast amount of our educational infrastructure was started by religious people and church money, there are also examples of churches or the religious blocking progress or focusing resources on the spiritual or their personal enrichment rather than any wider social good.

It’s almost as if it all boils down to the hot mess that is human nature, regardless of whether individuals are religious or not.

 

[1AOA1]

Science is a method and program for understanding physical reality, a role formerly occupied by religious revelation such as the days of creation in Genesis, for example (I will focus on only one religion, Christianity, since I don't know the relationship between science and any other religion).

The Christian method for determining how the world works prior to the advent and rise of science was to trust ancient revelation on faith. We can pretty much assume that all Christians up until then were creationists inasmuch as there was no alternative hypothesis available.

Modern science was a reaction to that methodology. Science rejected faith as a means of understanding physical reality, and replaced it with rational skepticism and empiricism, an implicit repudiation of the Christian method.

Before there is a "reality" against which all things are tested in the process you call "science," a reality has to be chosen and accepted through no tests since there is nothing against which one can test. Through such choice, there is dubbed the physical reality of materialism.