Sorry, I don't understand.

[AlsoAnima]

Religion and Science are not mutually exlusive. They are not opposites, they do not pull away from eachother of cancel eachother out.

I don't understand why people would think otherwise.

Please explain it to me.

 

[CarlinKnew]

Religion and Science are not mutually exlusive. They are not opposites, they do not pull away from eachother of cancel eachother out.

I don't understand why people would think otherwise.

Please explain it to me.

From a scientific perspective, religious doctrines make claims about the universe that are unsupported by evidence, which puts these claims in direct conflict with the scientific method.

 

[AlsoAnima]

From a scientific perspective, religious doctrines make claims about the universe that are unsupported by evidence, which puts these claims in direct conflict with the scientific method.

Except it doesn't. The scientific method is not a dogma that says only it can hold truth, it is a method used to find truth in the universe.

 

[TheKnight]

Religion and science do not conflict. The only conflict arises when you get scientists who say "Science is true and religion makes claims that I cannot reconcile with science and that makes religion false." or when you get religious people who say "Religion is true and science makes claims which I cannot reconcile with my religion and that makes science false.

The middle path, where one realizes that science doesn't know everything and where religion isn't necessarily 100% rigid then one has a beautiful mix of two wonderful tools for the betterment of mankind. Some say bad things about science, some say bad things about religion. This is only because history remembers those who make ripples and extremists most often make ripples. Rarely are those middle-path people remembered and hence the misconception of both science and religion on both sides.

 

[Sunstone]

Science often contradicts specific religious claims, such as the notion the earth is only a few thousand years old.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Religion and Science are not mutually exlusive. They are not opposites, they do not pull away from eachother of cancel eachother out.

It depends entirely on what you mean by religion.

I don't understand why people would think otherwise.

Of course you do.

 

[AlsoAnima]

It depends entirely on what you mean by religion.
Of course you do.

:areyoucra

 

[Willamena]

/me gets out popcorn.

 

[Valjean]

"Non overlapping Magisteria" to quote SJ Gould.
There is an undeniable history of science coming into conflict with specific religious doctrines, however. There is a great deal of hemming and hawing, a few heretics are burned, but eventually religion reconciles itself to the reality and finds some other heresy to object to.

 

[slave2six]

I was raised in a very fundamentalist Christian home that believed that the Bible and everything in it was inspired by God. We were also taught that Creationism was the "truth" because God told Moses directly that this was how the universe was formed.

So, for me, the conflict is simply that the physical universe does not support the literal interpretation of the Creation story or even allegorically. It simply does not jive.

I think that you have to admit that a literal interpretation was held to be true by the Early Church Fathers. Otherwise, how does one explain the Church's reaction to scientific discovery? If the Church did not take it literally that the Earth was the center of the universe then there would be no reason for them to put Galileo under house arrest or to burn Bruno at the stake for asserting that there are likely to be other planets in the universe that support biological life.

Nowadays fewer and fewer people hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible. But even a hundred years ago evolution was considered heretical by most Christians.

 

[AlsoAnima]

Hmm... perhaps it has to do with how we are raised. And what be believe religion is.

 

[Nepenthe]

From a scientific perspective, religious doctrines make claims about the universe that are unsupported by evidence, which puts these claims in direct conflict with the scientific method.

Except it doesn't. The scientific method is not a dogma that says only it can hold truth, it is a method used to find truth in the universe.

I'm unsure what you mean here: what doesn't? Religious claims impinging on the physical world do not conflict? The scientific method is most definitely not dogmatic; scientific inquiry is the antithesis of dogma. Science is falsifiable, open to evidentary claims, and is amendable to new theories- religion tends to monopolize dogma.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Science and religion need not be mutually exclusive. Both models can be molded into an individual's sense of reality.

Same goes for religions as well. Why can't Christianity and Wicca work well together?

 

[Jose Fly]

Read the following recently at PZ Myers' blog, Pharyngula:

Christian Faith is at Odds with Science

...But in a debate about the compatibility of science and religion, we have to put the argument in an appropriate context and define a specific shared purpose for both science and religion — it's the only legitimate ground for discussion. In this case, what we're trying to do is address big questions (remember, the Templeton Foundation says they're all about those "big questions") about the nature of the universe, about our history, about how we function, and then we encounter a conflict: religion keeps giving us different answers. Very different answers. They can't all be right, and since no two religions give the same answers, but since science can generally converge on similar and consistent answers, I know which one is right. And that makes religion simply wrong.

We have to look at what they do to see why. In order to probe the nature of the universe around us, science is a process, a body of tools, that has a long history of success in giving us robust, consistent answers. We use observation, experiment, critical analysis, and repeated reevaluation and confirmation of events in the natural world. It works. We use frequent internal cross-checking of results to get an answer, and we never entirely trust our answers, so we keep pushing harder at them. We also evaluate our success by whether the end results work: it's how we end up with lasers and microwave ovens, and antibiotics and cancer therapies.

Religion, on the other hand, uses a different body of techniques to explain the nature of the universe. It uses tradition and dogma and authority and revelation, and a detailed legalistic analysis of source texts, to dictate what the nature of reality should be. It's always wrong, from an empirical perspective, although I do have to credit theologians with some of the most amazingly intricate logical exercises as they try to justify their conclusions. The end result of all of this kind of clever wankery, though, is that some people say the world is 6000 years old, that it was inundated with a global flood 4000 years ago, and other people say something completely different, and there is no way within the body of theology to resolve which answers are right. They have to step outside their narrow domain to get an independent confirmation — that is, they rely on science to give them the answers to the Big Questions in which they purport to have expertise.

So what theistic scientists have to do is abandon the operational techniques of religion and use science to address those questions. The "theistic" part of their moniker is nothing but useless baggage which, if they take it at all seriously, would interfere with their understanding of the world. That is what I mean by an incompatibility between the two...

Accommodationists are a problem not because accommodation is bad, but because they are pushing for the wrong kind of accommodation. Science doesn't need to conform, religion does. Religion demands a special kind of privilege in these discussions because if we actually get down to assessing views fairly and objectively, on the basis of what works, it fails. I say, let it....

The more I read things like this, the tougher time I have finding a debatable point in them.

Exactly how are religion and science "compatable"? They are very, very different in almost every aspect. I found Dr. Myers' point about "there's no means within theology to determine what is or isn't accurate, particularly compelling.

From what I can tell, religion is personal and entirely subjective. I believe X, you believe Y, and someone else believes Z....and there's no way--theologically--to determine who's right, even when the three beliefs totally contradict each other. Science is the exact opposite; it is objective and independently verifiable.

I'm starting to wonder if folks who say "Science and religion are compatable" aren't mostly religious folks who inherently recognize that science has replaced religion as the primary arbiter of reality in our socieity, and thus are really trying to garner respect for their beliefs via claiming scientific compatability.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

I'm starting to wonder if folks who say "Science and religion are compatable" aren't mostly religious folks who inherently recognize that science has replaced religion as the primary arbiter of reality in our socieity, and thus are really trying to garner respect for their beliefs via claiming scientific compatability.

The compatibility arises in the individual who is able to hold the same ideas side by side and find important meaning in both. It is subjective, and it is in the subject that it really counts.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Science and religion are compatible, as long as people realize that science is used to answer questions which are answerable, and religion is used to provide answers for questions which are unanswerable.

 

[Jose Fly]

The compatibility arises in the individual who is able to hold the same ideas side by side and find important meaning in both

People hold all sorts of inherently incompatable ideas in their heads, all the time. In another thread, a Muslim is telling us he just luvs science while at the same time arguing against evolutionary biology.

Just because person X is able to believe something, that doesn't mean X is valid. Thinking it is takes us close to post-modernism.

 

[AlsoAnima]

It seems the problem is merely philosophical.

 

[Arkwort]

If it wasn't for science we'd probably believe.......[fill in the rest yourself].

Arkwort

 

[Copernicus]

Religion and Science are not mutually exlusive. They are not opposites, they do not pull away from eachother of cancel eachother out.

In general, people seem to treat science as a type of religion, so I don't think that many people perceive a concrete difference. The problem, as I see it, is more one of competition with other religions. Science, as we all know, produces tangible miracles, and one can be trained as a scientist to master the "magical" techniques that produce scientific miracles. Hence, it should be no surprise that publishers often blend science fiction and fantasy into the same category.

The problem arises when scientific claims come into conflict with traditional religious claims. So the idea that life might have arisen by natural abiogenesis competes with the religious claim that life originated by supernatural means--the intervention of a god, for example. The methodological bias of science is naturalism, whereas the bias of religion is supernaturalism. Competing methodological biases give rise to the perception of a conflict.

Scientists can be dogmatic, and their cherished theories may be held as received dogma for long periods of time. As with religion, there is resistance to change. For example, the scientific bias in Darwin's time favored creationism, and Darwin dithered for many years before publishing his theory as a consequence. His work in hindsight is seen as overcoming a major religious dogma about the origin of species, but it generated a huge amount of skepticism from the scientific community. It is only now that we see his scientific theory as coming into direct competition with traditional religion. Back in his time, he also had to fight scientists.

Now there is a very important difference between religion and science. Religion has no methodological basis for evolving its doctrine. So religious movements tend to schism and splinter into new groups. Science has a consistent methodology for achieving consensus over time. So competing theoretical "doctrines" tend to coalesce. In the long run, there are no separate competing denominations of scientists as there are of Christians. Science is able to make progress by achieving consensus, whereas religion can only evolve by splintering and breaking into competing religions.