Can religion and science coexist?

[StephenXIII]

no. science can disprove the excistance of a god. and religious people don't want to hear anything about how their magical invisible man in the sky isnt real. so they will never co-excist. some will accept some science, like gravity, because its convenient to them. but there will always be others that wont accept anything that the bible doesnt tell them. Like gravity, some will prefer to believe its "god" holding us all down on the ground, like my cousins.

[AnHonestGuy]

Ofcourse they can. Only fundamental evolutionists and atheists bitch about it.

I have to agree with this guy. If you take a good look at the religious view of how the world was created, it goes along quite nicely with the scientific view. I believe wholeheartedly in both. So YES, they can coexist. The trouble is with fundamentalists who don't like anyway but their own. Human intolerance, really.

[kings8686]

I have to agree with this guy. If you take a good look at the religious view of how the world was created, it goes along quite nicely with the scientific view.

and how exactly were these individuals thousands of years ago able to precisely determine the origins of the world? was it just a wild guess?

[Cyborgasm]

There are far too many religions and proposed deities to be able to accurately make that statement. Even if you're referring to just Christianity, you have to realize that you are simply picking one out of a thousand different religious creation stories and comparing it to the scientific view.

[AnHonestGuy]

There are far too many religions and proposed deities to be able to accurately make that statement. Even if you're referring to just Christianity, you have to realize that you are simply picking one out of a thousand different religious creation stories and comparing it to the scientific view.

Hmmm....Not really. A lot of religions are so similar in basic principles it's crazy. I honestly don't see how they have to be different. In the case of multiple deities, I think it's still the same god, just seen from a different perspective with different 'personalities', if you will. It's not a far stretch to say that different cultures with little interaction could see the same entity in different ways. They have simply interpreted it differently. And while the religious books depict different stories, or parables, they never seem to intersect with other parts of the world, meaning that each one is only part of the bigger picture. In reality, every religion holds the same basic principles: love, compassion and goodwill for those around you.

This is my belief anyway.

[Relayer2112]

Firstly, sorry for this being a mess, I wrote this at like 5am so everything's a bit of a mess - but I hope at least some of it might be useful. Also, my references are a mess. Sue me :-p

Check out some of the research done on cognitive dissonance, as I believe this would be most appropriate - however I am not a psychologist and not an authority on the subject - another theory may have superceded this one. Also, this is basically one (short!) paragraph trying to sum it up as best I can - entire books can (and have) been written on the subject - so I suggest you might check out a couple of the sources I reference as they explain it in much more detail than my sleep-deprived mind ever can.

For this, I'm making the assumption that the belief in a deity is a contradictory belief to a scientific view.

Aronson (1969) outlines the general theory that a person holding two simultaneous, contradictory beliefs will experience discomfort. Festinger (1957) gave the following as an example 'If a person believes that cigarette smoking causes cancer, and simultaneously knows that he himself smokes cigarettes, he experiences dissonance'. It would make sense to apply the same to belief in a deity and in current scientific knowledge.
Cooper & Fazio (1984) instead proposed that dissonance was caused by aversive consequences rather than inconsistent beliefs. This was later disproved (Harmon-Jones, Brehm et.al, 1996), however the issue is still under study (Risen & Chen, 2010)

Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that while it would be possible to hold belief in a deity and simultaneously have strong scientific belief, the person would experience cognitive dissonance.

References:

Aronson, E. 1969.The Theory of Cognitive Disorder: A Current Perspective. In L.Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York: Academic Press

Cooper, J., & Fazio, R.H. 1984. A new look at dissonance theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. New York: Academic Press.

Chen, M.K., & Risen J.L. 2010. How choice affects and reflects preferences: Revisiting the free-choice paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(4), 573-594.

Festinger, L.1957. A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.

Harmon-Jones, E., Brehm, J.W., Greenberg, J., Simon, L., & Nelson, D.E. (1996). Evidence that the production of aversive consequences is not necessary to create cognitive dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 5–16.

[nardyist]

many religions are philosophic , searching about whom made the universe , proving that he do exist and talked about things , we discovered it now days.

ex :
The claim is that scientific facts exist in the Qur'an in many different subjects, including creation, astronomy, human reproduction, oceanology, , zoology, the water cycle, and many more.

but also there were many religions that talked about unbelievable things.

ex ; ( i was doing a research about the thought of god in each culture , i read about the Hinduism , in this religion , man will live seven lives) that can't prove in science.

[babeh_bri]

I believe that religion fills the missing links in science.

[w1n5t0n]

no

[hovla]

only ignorant people think those two cannot coexist together

[Dioz]

Of course they can. The Queen co-exists with Philip. So why not

[losthowever]

Yes if you don't take the whole bible literally. Many parts of it are not 100% true due to the fact that some of its contents were first passed on orally for hundreds of years before being written down. Some of it may be symbolic.
Though there has to be some God to control the world it cannot be all science.
Now a days the bible is being studied a different way than it was before so science and religion can coexist.

[shinymew]

Never.

[MoralAtheist]

During my study of argumentative writing at college i did a research project on 'can religion and science coexist?' in the sense that an individual can be religious and have a strong belief in scientific principles.
One time a team of christians who were all scientists.( harvard graduates with their PhDs) came to inform that god did make everything, evolution does not exist and the earth is less than 10 000 years old.
I had a lot of questions for them but i want to get some feedback on the topic.

It depends on the belief, religion, and specific interpretations of the religion. Some may coexist better with science, but generally speaking; they will not. For example, a Christian who believes that the Earth is literally a few thousand years old will have a stack of actual, physical, scientific evidence against him. The less specific one's religion (or belief) is, the less room for fallacy and the more it will coexist with science.

- Just my 2 cents.

[khaligula]

They're non-overlapping magisteria. Science is fundamentally concerned with the physical (that which we can perceive with the senses, in a way or another) and religion should be/is concerned with the things beyond it (the existence of God and other faith-based matters). As long as religion (which is fundamentally based on assumptions) doesn't contest the conclusions of science, they can co-exist perfectly.

[TheDisintegrators]

They're non-overlapping magisteria. Science is fundamentally concerned with the physical (that which we can perceive with the senses, in a way or another) and religion should be/is concerned with the things beyond it (the existence of God and other faith-based matters). As long as religion (which is fundamentally based on assumptions) doesn't contest the conclusions of science, they can co-exist perfectly.

The separation of church and science didn't always exist. The problem is religion around Galileo's time, roughly might have been closer to the Protestant Reformation, decided to start suppressing things that contradicted what the church was putting forth as fact to people. The church wanted to be infallible and people not to understand how things work. Science's fundamentally concerned with understand. There isn't anything to stop them from doing experiments on things that may not be in our physical realm because arguably dimensional space may not be actually in our physical realm.

[khaligula]

The separation of church and science didn't always exist. The problem is religion around Galileo's time, roughly might have been closer to the Protestant Reformation, decided to start suppressing things that contradicted what the church was putting forth as fact to people. The church wanted to be infallible and people not to understand how things work. Science's fundamentally concerned with understand. There isn't anything to stop them from doing experiments on things that may not be in our physical realm because arguably dimensional space may not be actually in our physical realm.

Physical means we can perceive it with the senses. If we can't perceive it with the senses, we can't observe it. Things we can't observe are not scientific because they cannot be proven. Derp. Learn your shit. Science isn't concerned with "understand" (sic), it's concerned with models. Science is concerned with noting how X influences Y and predicting/controlling that phenomena. If things aren't observable or testable, they can't concern science.

[TheDisintegrators]

Physical means we can perceive it with the senses. If we can't perceive it with the senses, we can't observe it. Things we can't observe are not scientific because they cannot be proven. Derp. Learn your shit. Science isn't concerned with "understand" (sic), it's concerned with models. Science is concerned with noting how X influences Y and predicting/controlling that phenomena. If things aren't observable or testable, they can't concern science.

We can't truly observe gravity. Not even astro-physics can fully explain gravity. Newton didn't fully explain it. Einstein was likely the closest to explaining it. Dark matter isn't really observable does that mean it doesn't exist? Also you've apparently never heard of string theory which wasn't really testable either. Although, if the Higgs-Boson particle that was recently confirmed is really the Higgs (it might not be) string theory might be able to be experimented on.

Science is more about understanding everything than it is about how phonomena are controlled.

[AEDAN]

Science and religion do co-exist. We live in a world where both religion and science exist independently of each other so the answer is very evident.

If you are asking... "Can we mix science and religion together" or rather "can science be used to legitimise religion" then the answer is resoundingly negative. Science is not concerned with religion. You may as well ask whether or not English could be taught in French class. It's not a good mix. The concepts of religion are philosophical.

It should be noted, however, that science does not undermine a belief in God. Indeed, science is not concerned with any ideology be it atheism, agnosticism or deism. As an individual you might feel an urge to pertain to one of the ideologies based on your observations of the world but science is not a philosophical guide. Science is a measuring tool. That you pertain to atheism and use science as the means to your position is quite strange.

I have made a video concerning this SCIENCE vs RELIGION argument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UgaUROTN20&feature=plcp

This is a very insightful video which I hope will answer all your questions or raise more... which I will be happy to answer.

[khaligula]

We can't truly observe gravity. Not even astro-physics can fully explain gravity. Newton didn't fully explain it. Einstein was likely the closest to explaining it. Dark matter isn't really observable does that mean it doesn't exist? Also you've apparently never heard of string theory which wasn't really testable either. Although, if the Higgs-Boson particle that was recently confirmed is really the Higgs (it might not be) string theory might be able to be experimented on.

Science is more about understanding everything than it is about how phonomena are controlled.

We do observe gravity. It's called things falling to the floor. :/
Come on, bro. Didn't you get taught the scientific method in 8th grade? Observation is the first step. Explanation aren't what's important in science, it's the model. There's no reason to explain gravity, just to quantify the strength with which the ground attracts objects.

If any of the "theoretical" sciences you're talking about aren't testable or observable, they aren't sciences. Simple. I'm sorry to break it down to you. Science is about creating models/predictions that turn out correct when empirically observed. If you cannot OBSERVE that this thing is in fact REAL then it cannot be called science.