• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Science and Religion: Allies Not Enemies

Paranoid Android

Active Member
I think that science and religion are allies and not enemies. The confusion stems from what they do, and from the fact they look at issues from a different perspective.

Science is based on observation, experience and experiments. It can tell how things, the way they work. It Is good for independently verifying facts, extrapolating from an experience.

Religion is good at moral questions and setting up a system of thought that is consistent.

They are not the enemies of each other. Each plays a part in society, and one should not be seen better then the other. They play, in fact, a complimentary role to each other, in a way one hand washes the other.

Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ? Why do some religions suggest and propose absurd thins, stop progress and act in a manner that is the opposite that human beings want to live ? What can we, personally do, to erase the so called " War", and help religion and science see they compliment each other, and should not be turned into enemies ?
 

Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ? Why do some religions suggest and propose absurd thins, stop progress and act in a manner that is the opposite that human beings want to live ? What can we, personally do, to erase the so called " War", and help religion and science see they compliment each other, and should not be turned into enemies ?
Sometimes you just have to wait for the older generations to die, and until then you just have to be polite. On the other hand, sometimes you can't wait that long. Sometimes you have to wait for several generations to die. Sometimes you have to make the older folks think that they came up with the idea, and then thank them for their help. That's called kissing butt.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
I think that science and religion are allies and not enemies. The confusion stems from what they do, and from the fact they look at issues from a different perspective.

Science is based on observation, experience and experiments. It can tell how things, the way they work. It Is good for independently verifying facts, extrapolating from an experience.

Religion is good at moral questions and setting up a system of thought that is consistent.

They are not the enemies of each other. Each plays a part in society, and one should not be seen better then the other. They play, in fact, a complimentary role to each other, in a way one hand washes the other.

Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ? Why do some religions suggest and propose absurd thins, stop progress and act in a manner that is the opposite that human beings want to live ? What can we, personally do, to erase the so called " War", and help religion and science see they compliment each other, and should not be turned into enemies ?

Been saying this for many years.
Nice to hear it from someone else.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
On the contrary, religion is terrible at morals. It replaces compassion and moral reasoning with sterile and servile rule following.

Point taken.....
Perhaps the op should refer to belief in God.....and surrender the dogmatic religious approach.
I believe in God...because of science.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
The story of "science vs. religion" is precisely that - it is a story that some people choose to tell themselves. It does not, and has never, represented the full truth of the situation. It is a narrative that became popularized, and in spite of being erroneous, is told again and again, so people believe the story. Apparently, it is a story that some people want to hear and to believe. It begs the question: why do some people want to believe that story? Why do they tell themselves that narrative? What values does that demonstrate and reinforce for them?
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
I think that science and religion are allies and not enemies.
Of course not. Just like philosophy and cooking are not enemies. However, as we've seen here time and again, some people regard one as an enemy and treat it as such.

creationvsevolution.jpg

Creationism is a religious belief.
Evolution is a finding of science.

Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ?
Unlike scientists, who almost never give a fig what the religious believe and do, the religious regard some of the findings of science as a threat to their beliefs, and therefor sometimes do consider it an adversary. (Note the form of contention in the image above. It isn't evolution vs. creation, but creation vs. evolution.)
 

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Science and Religion are not automatically enemies, but it depends heavily on whether the philosophy of science excludes the possibility of supernatural explanations through 'scientific materialism'. Then they are enemies. otherwise, there is always room for a 'god of the gaps'.
 

Mohammad Nur Syamsu

Well-Known Member
I think that science and religion are allies and not enemies. The confusion stems from what they do, and from the fact they look at issues from a different perspective.

Science is based on observation, experience and experiments. It can tell how things, the way they work. It Is good for independently verifying facts, extrapolating from an experience.

Religion is good at moral questions and setting up a system of thought that is consistent.

They are not the enemies of each other. Each plays a part in society, and one should not be seen better then the other. They play, in fact, a complimentary role to each other, in a way one hand washes the other.

Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ? Why do some religions suggest and propose absurd thins, stop progress and act in a manner that is the opposite that human beings want to live ? What can we, personally do, to erase the so called " War", and help religion and science see they compliment each other, and should not be turned into enemies ?

It is all because of evolution theory and interrelated ideological doctrines such as materialism, atheism, physicalism, racism, nazism, communism. etc. What evolution theory does is bring questions about what is good and evil into science, so as to make it a scientific fact who is good and evil. That cancels out religion.

The solution could be as simple as to teach a generic form of creationism in school, to teach that freedom is real and relevant in the universe. That things can turn out several different ways, that things in the universe are chosen. What this would do is to validate subjectivity, expression of emotion, forming an opinion, because subjectivity works based on choosing. And with subjectivity having it's recognized proper domain, just as objectivity has it's separate proper domain, then there are no significant "head vs heart" battles, battles between science and religion.
 

Bunyip

pro scapegoat
I can't remember names, but I do know that the Vatican has some fantastic scientists, astronomers, cosmologists and so on. Catholic scientists have made an almost immeasurable contribution to science. It would be like taking Africa out of the Blues. As of course the Islamic world gave us such things as geometry. Religion and the human path to knowledge are not seperable. At least not historically. ;)
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
I think that science and religion are allies and not enemies. The confusion stems from what they do, and from the fact they look at issues from a different perspective.

Science is based on observation, experience and experiments. It can tell how things, the way they work. It Is good for independently verifying facts, extrapolating from an experience.

Religion is good at moral questions and setting up a system of thought that is consistent.

They are not the enemies of each other. Each plays a part in society, and one should not be seen better then the other. They play, in fact, a complimentary role to each other, in a way one hand washes the other.

Why has religion and science been placed in an adversarial role ? Why do some religions suggest and propose absurd thins, stop progress and act in a manner that is the opposite that human beings want to live ? What can we, personally do, to erase the so called " War", and help religion and science see they compliment each other, and should not be turned into enemies ?

Well, I disagree. I do not believe for a second that the two things are compatible. Maybe they were at some point in the past, but they are not anymore, since we started inquiring ourselves, our origins, and how our brains work. Hip religious people like to be modern and up-to-date, but I suspect that by doing that, they just become intellectually incoherent. For instance, saying that morality, love, compassion and our so-called spiritual faculties are not part of the natural world and therefore not the domain of science, is already an anti scientific statement.

In my experience, when a religious person is really pressed, she never really accepts things like evolution by natural selection or the current trends in neurobiology.
And that includes the Pope, of course, She cannot accept that the main teleological target of their gods is the product of accidents involving tectonics, asteroids, opportunistic errors on genomes, cosmic rays, ozone, an enormous waste of intermediate species, etc. which do not only make god unnecessary, but would point directly to an incompetent and/or cruel god. She will not accept that invertebrates and fish belong to the family album and there is no really a moment in time when we could call us ourself humans. She could never possibly accept that our consciousness is sufficiently supported by electrical and chemical phenomena and that things like souls are completely redundant. etc.

She could never possibly accept that her own religious belief can have natural origins, too, without self defeating it.

There is always some tweaking from God. There are always some little irreducible spiritual things that are necessary to understand our cognitive processes and things like love and compassion. There is always an invasion into science with things that have the same scientific value of Hocus Pocus and a behind-the-scene refusal to accept its fully naturalistic conclusions.

In other words: theists are forced to be creationists, by definition. Maybe not creationists like their 6000-years-old-Universe cousins, but creationists nevertheless. And as such, in full contradiction with the scientific paradigm.

Ciao

- viole
 
Last edited:

Mohammad Nur Syamsu

Well-Known Member
There are always some little spiritual things that are necessary to understand our cognitive processes and things like love and compassion.

There can of course never be any peace with such a view. Love is a matter of opinion, not fact, and any who advertises the view that it is fact is an enemy of Islam, democracy and just civilization in general. The freedom of opinion in democratic law becomes meaningless when love is regarded as fact. The freedom of opinion then becomes to be replaced with a law demanding that people's statements are forced by evidence, or else the government will come after them.

And all these people who have a problem with the spiritual, they also have a problem with acknowledging the fact that freedom is real. So teach as fact that freedom is real = getting rid of these people = solving the problem between science and religion.
 

Mohammad Nur Syamsu

Well-Known Member
The gaps for God are continually shrinking, and that's down to the work of those evil scientists discovering stuff.... :p

The meaning of the gaps shrinking is to say that all gaps of what might be free are filled with hypothesis about some cause forcing an effect. When human behaviour is described solely in terms of pscyhological mechanism, genetic mechanism, and whatever mechanism, there is indeed no room left for the human spirit to choose anything.
 

Looncall

Well-Known Member
On the contrary, religion is terrible at morals. It replaces compassion and moral reasoning with sterile and servile rule following.
The muslim view that a woman who has been raped is unfit for marriage is an example. She has done nothing to merit being cast aside, but the idiot rules of the religion decree that it must be so. Of course, that also stems from the muslim view of women as livestock, itself uncompassionate and immoral.
 
Top