Is religion against science?

[Crypto2015]

Well, the Bible does state that it is the Word of God, instruction upon all mankind. I suspect that it would be most astute to also consider that the language used in Genesis is very descriptive - nothing in it implies a metaphor or allegory. Its furthermore a story that establishes the original sin and the fall of man, a notion which is further used to justify the need for salvation through Christ. We are all sinners after falling from God's grace, and we need Christ to get back to Him; were the Genesis merely allegorical, need for salvation would be severely diminished.

I think its meant to be taken as literal, and even if it isn't, all major traditions seem to take it literally - at least historically.

I don't see why it needs to be taken literally. A lot of people, including me, take it in a figurative sense and that does not affect their faith or their belief in the need for a Savior. Personally, I believe that Genesis intertwines spiritual and physical events to provide us with a simplified, albeit accurate, version of men's spiritual and physical origins.

 

[Crypto2015]

The scientific view of how the sun was formed definitely conflicts with the idea that the sun was created by God. Doesn't it?

No because Genesis is not meant to be a textbook. The message contained in the first pages of Genesis could be summarized as follows: God created the universe and the universe was perfect (without evil). The way in which God created the universe is secondary. The important point is that the universe was designed and has a purpose. Furthermore, the existence of the laws of nature is consistent with the existence of God. These laws are rational and even mathematical in nature. How could something rational and even mathematical (i.e. the law of gravity) have arisen from chaos? It seems nonsensical to me. Only a rational being could have endowed the universe with a set of rational laws.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

My religion isn't and it is a great patron of the sciences.

The Catholic Church is better than many religions when it comes to science, but it definitely has doctrines that are opposed to science. For instance:

The Catholic Church: all human beings arose from a single original male-female pair:

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x...nts/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html

Science: speciation happens in populations, not individuals or lone pairs:
http://www.sparknotes.com/biology/evolution/speciation/section2.rhtml

Science: the minimum population size is at least ~50 to prevent short-term extinction and ~500 - 5000 for long-term survival:

Genetic analyses typically involve the estimation of loss of genetic diversity and fitness and projection to extinction. Some studies indicate that inbreeding depression alone can lead to extinction, even among wild populations. Thus, when considering the viability of a given population, one should consider whether the population is large enough to avoid inbreeding depression, if there is sufficient genetic diversity for adaptive change to occur, and if the population is large enough to avoid accumulating new deleterious mutations. Following Frankham et al., estimates of the population numbers required to overcome these effects (known as the effective population, Ne) are 50 to avoid inbreeding depression, 500-5000 to retain evolutionary potential, and 12 to 1000 to avoid the accumulation of deleterious mutations.

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154633/

 

[Glaurung]

Oh, really? That is fairly interesting. How were the Christian scriptures viewed traditionally, then? I haven't heard of this kind of approach before.

Depends on which book you're reading. The Bible isn't a book, it's a collection of books. It contains history, poetry, psalms, moral stories, philosophy, prophesies, gospels and letters; there's no one approach to the Bible because it's not just one text. Traditionally, the Bible is read in light of the teaching tradition of the Church which we believe has been passed down by apostolic succession. The idea that you can properly read the Bible in isolation with word-for-word face value mindset is a fairly recent idea spawned by the Reformation. A lot of the current mess is a result of faulty fundamentalist assumptions about the Bible, not the Bible itself.

Heck, the early Christian communities didn't even have an official Bible. They had the teaching tradition.

 

[Crypto2015]

Depends on which book you're reading. The Bible isn't a book, it's a collection of books. It contains history, poetry, psalms, moral stories, philosophy, prophesies, gospels and letters; there's no one approach to the Bible because it's not just one text. Traditionally, the Bible is read in light of the teaching tradition of the Church which we believe has been passed down by apostolic succession. The idea that you can properly read the Bible in isolation with word-for-word face value mindset is a fairly recent idea spawned by the Reformation. A lot of the current mess is a result of faulty fundamentalist assumptions about the Bible, not the Bible itself.

Heck, the early Christian communities didn't even have an official Bible. They had the teaching tradition.

The Bible itself teaches that we don't need a human teacher in order to get to know God:

"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." James 1:5.

I agree with you on the fact that there isn't a single approach to understanding the Bible, since, as you said, it contains poetry, history, songs, proverbs, etc.

 

[Logikal]

The scientific view of how the sun was formed definitely conflicts with the idea that the sun was created by God. Doesn't it?

Yes it does conflict with the story God put forth. The thing many posters here have missed is that God wants people to accept HIM for who he is and what he states "ought" to be first. As humans we have to struggle to meet that place where we accept God and what he says. Our sin nature wants us to rely on OUR SENSES. It is like you telling you child to come down the slide and you will catch him but he says "Dad move out the way; I want the standing guy over there to catch me from the slide --not you."
You cannot worship TWO masters. You will love one and hate the other or you will prefer one more than the other.
Science is about relying on your abilities to sense verify something. Faith is trusting without sense verification and is OBJECTIVE. The claim will either be true or false before and after you are aware of it.

 

[Logikal]

The Bible is said to have some historical errors in it literally. But why should that matter if the error has nothing to do with the overall message expressed in the Book as a whole. Do some of you people really think in is rational to easily dismiss something that has any error in it even if it does not relate to the overall result or message?

Does one rotten apple destroy the whole bunch? Really? Please someone explain why you think so. How do you say you KNOW all the apples are rotten based on one? This is fallacious reasoning by the way but common when people put emotion first.

 

[Crypto2015]

The Bible is said to have some historical errors in it literally. But why should that matter if the error has nothing to do with the overall message expressed in the Book as a whole. Do some of you people really think in is rational to easily dismiss something that has any error in it even if it does not relate to the overall result or message?

Does one rotten apple destroy the whole bunch? Really? Please someone explain why you think so. How do you say you KNOW all the apples are rotten based on one? This is fallacious reasoning by the way but common when people put emotion first.

Not so long ago historians thought that King David was a fictional character. Now we know that he did exist. Not having evidence of something does not prove that that something does not exist.

 

[Logikal]

Not so long ago historians thought that King David was a fictional character. Now we know that he did exist. Not having evidence of something does not prove that that something does not exist.

Not having evidence does not prove something does not exist: Correct! I was not implying that by the way. There are historians that state some of the Kings described in the bible were not the actual King on the throne at the time. This would be a historical error. I recall at least one of the Philistine kings was out of order historically. Again I see no relevance to such an error to discard the message of the Bible. Such an error is irrelevant.

 

[Crypto2015]

Not having evidence does not prove something does not exist: Correct! I was not implying that by the way. There are historians that state some of the Kings described in the bible were not the actual King on the throne at the time. This would be a historical error. I recall at least one of the Philistine kings was out of order historically. Again I see no relevance to such an error to discard the message of the Bible. Such an error is irrelevant.

I don't think that there are errors in the Bible. Maybe these people were known by more than one name or maybe the historians are wrong.

 

[Desert Snake]

I don't think that there are errors in the Bible. Maybe these people were known by more than one name or maybe the historians are wrong.

I agree. I never noticed any ''errors''. It seems to be when people read the wrong context into things, then it appears to have errors or contradictions.

 

[Logikal]

I don't think that there are errors in the Bible. Maybe these people were known by more than one name or maybe the historians are wrong.

You misunderstand: if the Bible says Darius was the Philistine King in a certain time and multiple historic sources shows that Xerses was the King at that same time the bible is likely wrong. Again , I do not see this small infraction taking away anything from the Bible. Even if a word is spelled wrong it would not be relevant to the message. Haters will look for any excuse not to believe. Sort of like a racist cop fishing for a reason to pull a black male driver over. When you look hard enough for fault you will find it; or if fish long enough something will bite. This is evil intent and not accidental. Fishing for ANYTHING just to complain about it is intellectually dishonest . The error has to be relevant to the topic for a rational person to throw away the Bible; often in Islam they do this tactic because of some silly error that has nothing to do with the message they believe it is okay to throw out everything in the Bible. They will waste a ton of apples if they find one rotten apple among the ton of apples.

 

[morphesium]

I haven't seen a religion that agrees with science.

 

[Desert Snake]

I haven't seen a religion that agrees with science.

Science can't answer the tough questions.

 

[Awkward Fingers]

Science can't answer the tough questions.

Do you mean science can't make up an answer, then constantly assert it both without, and often contrary to, evidence?
If that's what you meant, I would have to agree.

 

[morphesium]

Science can't answer the tough questions.

Before I start answering, let me make an analogy for the better understanding of the post.
When one stores some liquid in a container, not only one has to be sure of certain properties of the liquid, but also certain properties of the container in which the liquid is stored. Other wise there is a chance that things could go wrong.

For example, we do not store copper sulpahte solution in an iron or aluminum vessel.
Hydrofluoric acid is not stored in glass containers and liquid under high pressure are stored in tanks that can withstand the pressure and so on.

So, in the case of answering "tough questions", one should also know about the nature of our mind and the brain (the container) which keeps these thoughts, otherwise things can go wrong.

It is only now we have started to understand (with the help of science) what is freewill, what is subconscious, what makes habits, our behaviors, etc. Without knowing about these, how can one answer the "tough questions". Without knowing science, how can you answer what a star is? Well that is easy for the religion - just say "don't you see I made the stars never to peep on the day - and if you ask for more; I will give you more in hell".

“Be brave. Be free from philosophies, prophets and holy lies. Go deep into your feelings and explore the mystery of your body, mind and soul.
You will find the truth.”― Amit Ray

"There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion". —Havelock Ellis​

science and technology is advancing at a rapid phase and it is revolutionizing our concept of freewill, soul etc that it is only now we have started to understand what they actually are.

Machine robot demonstrates self-awareness solving logic puzzle. This "self-awareness" is s precursor to the concept of soul.
Computer program simulates evolution robotic population.
For artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky computers have soul.

All such papers are revolutionizing the understanding of the soul concept. I am quite optimistic that future computers and robots will be artificially intelligent and will have self-awareness and will have sensations. Only with science, one can answer "though questions", otherwise the answer will be insane.

 

[chevron1]

Please quote from the scripture of any revealed religion where it is mentioned that it is against science. Or Please quote from science where it mentions that it is against any revealed religion.

I haven't seen a religion that agrees with science.

historically, taoism has joined with science to understand Tao, especially metaphysical taoism, which tries to explain the real world and how it works. wherever there is a conflict of interpretation between the religion and science, metaphysical taoism modifies its interpretation of scripture to accommodate the observed data.

It has been said that Taoism stands out among the world religions in that it never opposed science. In addition, concepts like yin and yang and other tenets of Taoism have been considered by some not to be at variance with many scientific findings, notably physics.

Little, Taoism And The Arts Of China, p. 47.

 

[columbus]

I agree. I never noticed any ''errors''. It seems to be when people read the wrong context into things, then it appears to have errors or contradictions.

How is this different from "As long as people interpret the Bible the way I do they will not find 'errors'?"

That's one of the biggest problems with revealed religion. Everyone can interpret ancient teachings and scripture any way they want. There is no divine authority to correct them. And people will just dismiss humans telling them things that they don't want to hear, because those humans are not God.

ISIS is the current biggest problem, but it is hardly unique.
Tom

 

[chevron1]

How is this different from "As long as people interpret the Bible the way I do they will not find 'errors'?"
...
ISIS is the current biggest problem, but it is hardly unique.

if people interpret the bible any way they want, is that the best way to interpret the bible?

is there a better way to NOT interpret the bible?

 

[Glaurung]

The Bible itself teaches that we don't need a human teacher in order to get to know God:

No it doesn't.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." James 1:5.

Yet, despite all the prayers of even the most sincere Protestants, they are fragmented in large part over what the Bible "obviously" says. You may not like the truth, but the Bible is only a part of the Christian framework of revelation; sacred tradition is also a part of it and actually precedes the canon. Sola scriptura is a late innovation. You can wilfully deny this, but it is the truth whether you like it or not.