Slashdot Mirror
Science and Religion Can and Do Mix, Mostly
coondoggie writes "A recent Rice University study found that in one of the more vitriolic social (and increasingly political) battlegrounds, science v. religion, there is more common ground that most folks believe. In fact, according to the study, only 15% of scientists at major U.S. research universities see religion and science as always in conflict."
Discarding scientific knowledge because of a book written originally for a nomadic group of shepherds is ridiculous.
Discarding the moral teachings that have been handed down over thousands of years is equally ridiculous.
The more interesting statistic is the percentage of "religious" people who think that there is conflict.
After having read the article, I am not convinced that the questions asked showed that there was common ground at all. It may well be that scientists recognise that religion and science are orthogonal and therefore do not conflict.
ALWAYS in conflict? ALWAYS? To anyone who has ever been part of the educational system, and has gotten used to taking multiple choice tests, the word "ALWAYS" when applied to something like science/religion is a big red flag.
Finding that 15% agree with an "always" statement in that context is rather an amazing find.
Ask the question in terms of "overwhelming frequency" or some other next-to-absolutist statement, and you'll get more honest answers. But this report on the study, at least, only presented the "ALWAYS(15)/SOMETIMES(70)/NEVER(15)" range, which doesn't seem useful at all.
With the statement presented, and the specific granularity of statements allowed, this seems more like quote-mining to minimize the perception of conflict than an honest study.
Ryan Fenton
Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGICA, 1265 AD: “Among the philosophical sciences one is speculative the other practical [natural philosophy], nevertheless sacred doctrine [Roman Catholicism] includes both; as God, by one and the same science, knows both Himself and His works.”
This basically states that if you are understanding science properly, you are understanding God's works properly. And conversely, if you understand God's works, you will let science progress to understand God's works, as God and science are one in the same.
That compromise in thinking eventually led to the Renaissance.
The keyword is "always". When you use an absolute, it will change peoples' answers. If you were to ask the same question in the form of "are science and religion sometimes/usually at conflict?", you will see a much different result. That being said, there is really nothing to be seen here.
AccountKiller
Actually, there's much less of a perception that evolution and religion are in conflict in most of the Muslim world than in the US. There are even a number of Muslims who interpret certain verses of the Qur'an as describing evolution. Turkey's really the only country with a history of evolution denial, and they picked it up from the US. Similarly, there are starting to be anti-evolution movements in other Muslim countries, but it's an idea that's been spreading with the influence of American culture.
Of course science and religion can mix and they should!
Let me quote Abdulbaha, son of the founder of the Bahai religion, a growing religious and social movement with more than six million followers:
If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance, and the child of ignorance is superstition. Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and science. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it are impossible, and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.
Quite a strong statement for being from a major religious leader a hundred years ago. Also:
This gift [intelligence and reasoning] giveth man the power to discern the truth in all things, leadeth him to that which is right, and helpeth him to discover the secrets of creation
Finally:
Religion and science are the two wings upon which man's intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism.
The only reason that science and religion doesn't seem to mix is that too many religious leaders stick to their dogmas and traditions even in face of human and scientific progress. Religions role in this world is to develop and foster spirituality, morality and selflessness so we can create a fair and just society and it can only do so if it keeps evolving and improving with new knowledge and understandings. Christianity developed and changed a lot in the first few hundred years after Jesus with doctrines and writings being added and removed at a high pace. Why are so many churches of today so hellbent on sticking exactly to the way things earlier were? It's simply not healthy.
Ps. I'm not officially a Bahai, but I consider myself a "friend of the faith".
The example that I always like to use is the Big Bang, which was first formulated by Monsignor Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest. At the time that it was proposed, it received significant disdain from the astronomical community, since most astronomers at that time believed that the Universe was eternal and static (the so-called "steady state") -- they felt that a beginning of space and time at some point in the finite past crossed over into the realm of religion and philosophy. On the other hand, the religious community (by and large) welcomed the Big Bang with open arms, since it was in accordance with the creation accounts of their particular belief systems.
But in the 80 years or so since the advent of the Big Bang theory, a funny (and depending on your point of view, sad) thing has happened: The two camps have almost completely switched sides. As the evidence came in, most astronomers and cosmologists came to accept the Big Bang. They saw the confirmation of Hubble's observations regarding the redshift of distant galaxies, the discovery of the CMBR, the evidence that the distribution of baryonic matter in the Universe is consistent with what is predicted by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, etc.
Unfortunately, for those segments of the religious community that have been hijacked by the rise of fundamentalism / fanaticism in the last 50 years or so, the Big Bang was no longer "good enough". The idea that the Universe came about in a dramatic cataclysm ("in the beginning...") became unacceptable since the timescale called for billions of years, rather than the six thousand or so that are dictated by a rigid literalist interpretation of the appropriate holy writ. It's not good enough that the prevailing scientific theory on the origin of the Universe calls for a beginning -- it's not fundamentalist enough.
The idea that science and religion are incompatible is poisonous and civilization-threatening. Getting back to the example, the idea that religious folks, of all people, should be opposed to the Big Bang theory is completely baffling. If I live to be a thousand years old, I'll never understand it. There's no shortage of beauty in modern science or ancient teachings; the conflicts (such as they are) are largely manufactured. And as you mention, the rising fundamentalist movement is a major player in this enterprise.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
>>It is the RELIGIOUS people who have a problem with science. Because it contradicts their religion.
As I said in another post, the two groups that feel science and religion are in conflict are fundies (which you'll see all over the place on sites like The Blaze) and logical positivists (found on sites like Slashdot). Most educated people do not.
>>Their statements of fact contradict yours.
It's not my problem if they're wrong. =)
Well, I've made it something of a personal mission to correct the fundies' misapprehensions about science, and positivists misapprehensions about religion, but that's just a hobby.
Exactly. They're "wrong" because YOU already "know" what is "right".
And if they don't agree with you ...
And yet around 50% of the US population thinks that "intelligent design" should be taught in schools along with evolution.
It's not the "fundies" who are the problem.
It's anyone who believes that his personal religion is "right" and that others are "wrong".
"How better to better understand the Creator than through the creation?" - Albert Einstein
The game.
it's idiots vs science.
The scientific world rejects idiots. Religion and politics (is there a difference ?) actually need to embrace/recruit them.
Guess who's more numerous.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Actually, I went to catholic school. Jesuits, to be more precise. Out science lab teacher was a priest (quite an old one, 70+ years old). He used to say:
"It is not the duty of religion to say HOW things happen, but WHO is behind it. Science, on the other hand, will tell you HOW, but now WHO is behind it. I see no conflict whatsoever between the Big Bang and my faith. Between evolution and my faith. When I see Darwin's evolution, I see God's hand behind it."
Its not surprising one catholic priest would accept the Big Bang theory given that the theory was proposed by another catholic priest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaitre
Interestingly some leading scientists of the day dismissed the theory because it came from a priest, it "smelled of creationism".
It's really no surprise that *actual* scientists have a more open mind than the self-proclaimed intellectual elite of slashdot.
Can't really cite it as this is from personal experience. I'm Christian but I grew up in west Beirut(mostly among Sunni Muslims but I also have Druze and Chiite friends). One of my most anti-American/Israeli friends is a Chiite originally from a small town in the south whose family is involved politically with Hizbollah. In debates I couldn't even bring up *any* kind of not 100% fundamentalist idea without her saying that I was advocating we completely surrender to Israel. Yes, the indoctrination was that bad. And yet, she embraced Western values like women's rights or capitalism or various cultural things with no problem at all.
People are hypocrites, we know that by now.
No, the conflict between science and religion is a false conflict created by atheists as a way to denigrate religion and make it seem as if atheism is supported by science. For example, the idea that the Christian Church taught that the earth was flat and that Christopher Columbus had to fight against that religious bias in order to get funding for his trip was a creation of Irving Washington (an atheist) in the 1800s. The fact of the matter was that those who opposed Christopher Columbus did so because, according to thier calculations of the size of the globe, he would run out of food before he reached the Far East. Columbus had done his own calculations and concluded that the Earth was 1/3 smaller than it actually is. If the Americas did not exist, Columbus' opponents would have been correct. The premise upon which Columbus based his proposed his voyage was wrong. During the same time period (as Irving Washington), many atheistic archeologists believed that the Bible was wrong when it discussed the Assyrians (as a matter of fact, it was believed that the Bible had entirely fabricated the existence of the Assyrians) because they had not found any archelogical evidence of the Assyrians. It turns out that the Biblical record of the Assyrians is fairly accurate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why would morality that's handed down from an immortal being change so drastically over time? This seems more like evidence that the whole thing is a bunch of made-up stories by a primitive middle-eastern culture than anything else. If god is omnipotent and infallible, then his definition of what's moral should be immutable. Yet, as you say, it used to be that daughters were property and offering them up for an angry crowd to rape was okay, but now it isn't.
So the only reason that women are people and not property now is technology? Wow, I bet you're a real hit with the ladies....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
> No, the conflict between science and religion is a false conflict created by atheists as a way to denigrate religion
Clearly you've never read any of the newsletters from the American Family Association.
If not bothered by theocrats, I don't think you would ever hear form atheists.
You are mainly whining about SKEPTICS that rightfully won't accept things without evidence. This is the same reason that Troy was originally thought a myth and why it took about 80 years for plate tectonics to be widely accepted. You have to make a compelling case when it comes to a scientific argument. You can't just depend on blind faith and appeals to authority.
A very small vocal minority of fundie protestants object to the the philosophy of science in general.
They seek to alter the majority rather than tolerate what they view as heresy and don't have sufficient moral courage to separate themselves from the rest of the society that they find so disturbing.
The AFA and similar groups love to play victim and false martyr. The "moral majority" is actually a very noisy minority.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.