Do science and religion conflict?

1955 said:
I find it interesting that religion keeps updating its dogma to reflect scientific discoveries – just saying...
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I think they’d do better to de-emphasize dogma altogether and constantly emphasize that they are not talking about obvious facts that one can easily verify. The truth they so crudely render dogmatically is something you can scarcely handle without damaging it. Like William Blake wrote:

'He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.’
 

MarkD said:
I find the answers vary between denominations and even between the members of the same church. It also seems to depend on the audience and the setting.
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And that, can I presume, (since you used the word 'church'), is based on Christianity - other religions can be exceedingly more stringent.
 

Had to laugh because i came out almost dead center on their compass, just slightly toward pluralism, likely because if the statement involved too many variables to be clear i marked the neutral center response. Some questions i would have answered differently had they said 'scientific method' instead of 'science' as if it is some monolithic entity.

As others have said religion/spirituality and science are not irreconcilably incompatible. Early on in development of scientific methods of inquiry much of the work was done by people of faith. Muslim scholars, Jesuit Priests and Monks.

As i find myself repeating, the problems with all disciplines, organizations, religions, governments stem from the human factor, from our flaws.

i am always amused when science minded people talk about any kind of spirituality as being based on superstitious thinking. They ignore that superstitions were humanity's first steps in developing scientific method if understanding our world. Primitive people observed events and drew conclusions, often erroneous ones largely due to confusing correlation with causation. Modern scientists still sometimes do this.
 
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Nemo2 said:
And that, can I presume, (since you used the word 'church'), is based on Christianity - other religions can be exceedingly more stringent.
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A book I read in the last couple years on the recommendation of a good online Christian friend seems to indicate that within each religious tradition there will be a range of expression.


Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
https://a.co/d/e7eNjlh
 
started the questions... too many for me this morning. religion and science will never agree. science is all about physical proof. religion is NOTHING about physical proof... all about faith. the 2 are never gonna blend unless/until God himself steps up with "here's the deal..."
 
MarkD said:
Exactly! Nonetheless after walking away without finishing it twice I finally found a way to justify an answer to each question. My placement on their graph is here:

View attachment 254659
And they describe my profile this way .. which is largely accurate:

If you find yourself here, you probably don’t think a lot about this, or indeed, care very much about this whole debate. As far as you are concerned, religion is a cultural thing and there are different ways of finding out about reality, not just science. Frankly, you can’t see what the fuss is all about. Why can’t people just live and let live? People here often have a tepid temperature on the science and religion thermometer, because they are not overly fussed about the whole debate.
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Not far from my result: i was just over the last line before dead center between Pluralism and Scientism and actually on center line between Substantive and Functionalism.
 
MarkD said:
A book I read in the last couple years on the recommendation of a good online Christian friend seems to indicate that within each religious tradition there will be a range of expression.


Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
https://a.co/d/e7eNjlh
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I've found, having spent time in Islamic countries, that (at least the appearance of) total compliance is mandatory in many/most.
 
feywon said:
As i find myself repeating, the problems with all disciplines, organizations, religions, governments stem from the human factor, from our flaws.
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I often find too many people who share my skepticism are too eager to dismiss everything based on a few carefully chosen, low lying cherries. And I agree that pointing out that some a**hole is of a particular religious stripe mistake what is merely human for what is characteristic of or even caused by their worldview. If only we weren’t so eager to pat ourselves on the back for having figured out everything. Of course dogmatically inclined fundamentalist Christians can be just as bad.
 
Religion can have therapeutic value. It can comfort you during difficult times and provide you with confidence. It can provide meaning in life. Belief in a higher power can relieve existential anxiety. Religion can also provide a sense of community and connectedness with others of the same faith.

You can accomplish the same things through meditation, relaxation exercises, positive thinking, and placebos but probably not to the same extent you can with religion.

That said, belief in the supernatural can be dangerous, which is why so many people do bad things in the name of religion. Like the saying goes: Science flies man to the moon. Religion flies planes into buildings.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
With science, anyone in East Nowhere can perform experiments to prove conclusions. With religion, someone in East Nowhere cannot know of a religion, unless schooled in that religion. The point is, with science, knowledge is provable as fact. With religion, previous knowledge is taken as fact. With religion, there can be some "magical/spiritual" aspects, which defy the laws of science. With science, there is no defying the laws of science.
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There are actually few laws, in recent decades most practicing scientists have come to at least partially understand how arrogant scientists have been in their estimation of understanding of the universe and even just life here on Earth. They now mostly talk in terms of theories which are always being challenged by new observations/discoveries.

Many of them are now more careful in their wordings of new conclusions about things. Often an old theory was not so much wrong as incomplete, describing a part of the reality. Unfortunately many of those who have somewhat substituted 'science' for religion haven't caught on to that.
 
I measured as mostly compatible (light orange). I have no problem with science, but with respect to origins of life, much of what is called “science” is actually “conjecture based on science”. I did a 20 page paper on origins of life and concluded, without a doubt, that life on this earth could not manifest itself by chance. And I am in good company as even Francis Crick, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for discovery of DNA also concluded this, although he suggested it was deposited here from other worlds, but that just moves the argument to the other world. Science would require that we could duplicate that creation of life by chance - we can not even do this with all the powerful tools of technology at our disposal.

With respect to Creatio ex nihilo (Creation from Nothing), that becomes a faith issue since this act can not be reproduced scientifically. As such, a scientist may apply science to the natural world and faith to the supernatural. The book, “In Six Days” documents 50 scientists with degrees and advanced degrees from mostly secular colleges and universities that believe in Six Day Creation.

https://www.amazon.com/Six-Days-Scientists-Believe-Creation/dp/0890513414
 
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All one needs to do is look at the world in its current state to know that either God does not exist or that he is a mean-spirited a-hole. Or that he is incompetent. There is simply too much suffering in the world to believe that its creation was in any way "planned," or if it was, the planner left much to be desired.

There is much that we don't understand, and if you want to attribute things like the creation of the universe or the beginning of life to a god, that's your prerogative. Of course, the definition of what constitutes a god is open to interpretation and conjecture. You can call it what you want. What it comes down to is, we simply don't know a lot of things. We do know now a lot of what was unknown 2,000 or 2,500 years ago when the Old and New Testaments were written. In another 2,000 or 2,500 years, scientists may be able to explain more thoroughly and with more certainty how life and the universe began. I'm pretty sure they're not going to discover that it all happened in six days at the hand of a guy with a long, flowing beard who lives in the clouds.
 
SeniorBen said:
All one needs to do is look at the world in its current state to know that either God does not exist or that he is a mean-spirited a-hole. Or that he is incompetent. There is simply too much suffering in the world to believe that its creation was in any way "planned," or if it was, the planner left much to be desired.
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I'm an agnostic, I have no 'faith' or 'belief' in a God or Gods.....there are a number of them (apparently) and they're all, at least somewhat, different.......Hindus believe that parents, teachers, and food are next to God. Parents give us birth, nurture us, teach us values. Teachers give us the knowledge to survive in this world. Food is the thing by which we all live. Therefore, these three things have the utmost importance and reverence in Hinduism. (https://www.hinduismfacts.org/basic-beliefs-of-hinduism/).

AFAIK, 'God' is thought of in some areas as 'The Heavenly Father', (not the Heavenly Mother or the Heavenly Welfare Worker), and if 'he' exists then in all likelihood 'his' aim is for humanity to be self sufficient rather than living in his basement for free, eating his food without contributing to its production, and generally being deadbeats.

Perhaps God's mantra is "Get off your butts and get to work, don't expect me to do everything".
 
Where science and religion conflict is when those religious demand a reality with actions without forces, a facet of omnipotence equivalent to illogical magic. Possible if everything is an immense programmed AI reality that is for different reasons nonsense. In practice this is taken by philosophers to the level that God without limitations can do anything, knows everything, can be everywhere. All of which are also nonsense paradoxes. Bible support for that interpretation is quite vague. However has obvious enormous value to religious leaders and preachers over their flock if believers accept that.

Personally as someone that is certain that Bible inerrancy is nonsense, instead lean towards a God with physical limitations that I also refer to as a race of Ultimate Intelligent Entities, UIEs, that given current science are likely ancient non-organic entities. The fact our current computer science of we infant science Earth monkeys expects a singularity level artificial intelligence to arise in near decades points towards that has already happened elsewhere over eternity and the universe has been different ever since. Also points to why the physics of our matter energy universe is so fine tuned. Note for this person, that in no way means external life as promised by Jesus is not possible as I lean towards what we are as complex oscillating electromagnetic fields within the organic containers of our nervous system impedances. If such is possible within an organic system it would also be very very much be possible for an ancient race of intelligent entities within equivalent impedance non-organic structures.
 
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