Are science and religion incompatible?

I was trying to think of an allegory or metaphor that would sum up the problem. Then I remembered this article.

Viewed as a whole, the article shows the same kind of scenario you were describing but does not involve religion in any way. It uses Capitalism instead.

Scientists find one thing.
Capitalist interests cut funding except to scientists who find what they want them to.
Scientists produce bad results.

If you applied your argument to this case, you would be arguing that science is capitalism. But it isn't. Capitalist interests caused science to be bad (and will give many people cancer because of it), but that doesn't mean they are the same. Different forces can play on each other without following the same rules. Earth and Moon both revolve independently but the gravity of one can pull the tide of the other. But they operate independently.

Oh, I didn't see your post. Haha. Agendas is where things will get nasty.

Yeah he got a lot of things wrong. However, the kind of logic he espoused (aristotelian in origin) was actually pretty good for that time, we'd have to wait for the time of Boole and Frege, before it was supplanted. Whether he applied this logic consistently is a matter for debate.

I do think he was the father of the science/religion dichotomy. His Summa Contra Gentiles was an attempt to convince Gentiles *through reason alone* that the Christian world-view was the correct world-view. And by trying to show that reason and religion were compatible, he started the inexorable trend toward separating scientific thought from religious thought.

There is a pretty symmetry here, but that is more the domain of poetry. Try as I may, I cant assign any meaning to "religion seeks to find the right questions".

I'd like to follow your thought processes, Chance. But this has me foxed. When is a question a "right question"? Aren't the big religious ones really obvious, needing no seeking at all?

Isn't it, on the contrary, the scientific method which continually expands by finding the best next question to ask ? Choosing from the infinite mass of unestablished hypotheses those with some chance of being established, and worth investigating next ?

Did you accidentally get the words the wrong way round , or am I missing something ?

I have known many many scientists who are also religious to varying degrees. From what I have seen, these people's religious beliefs had no impact on their abilities to do good scientific work.

By the same token I know many religious non-scientists who have no problem accepting science and the conclusions drawn from science.

From that I conclude that many people have no problem with incompatablity between science and religion.

Clearly some people do have a problem reconciling the two. Since I'm not one of them, I can't say why they have this problem.

What I do have a problem with are people who force their religion onto others, but this is independent of whether what they force is in conflict with scientific findings or not.

This certainly looks true at present. But I see no reason, personally, to accept it as a fundamental which will never be overcome. I am sure there are many examples of disciplines which in the past seemed incompatible, but which a new insight later conjoined. One was accepted as scientific first, the other joined later ? Don't expect examples, but I am confident the history of science is littered with them. Apparently crazy stuff eventually brought into the fold, albeit a little altered, but not always.

This one is bigger, more difficult. But not hopeless.

I can imagine it, can no-one else ?

Agreed on both counts!

Hey Ellie

I would probably disagree with this, unless people of faith (or lack thereof) can learn to tone down thier own need to be correct.

The real problem, as Seth and Chance pointed out, is agendas...

It depends on the way you look at it since words are connotative as well as denotative, it could go either way depending on how you frame it.

The way I was looking at it is that a scientist sees a reaction between X and Y. S/he knows the question, "what causes X and Y to produce that reaction?" Then the scientist tries framing the same question in different ways through different experiments in order to accomodate different possible answers. When they find one that consistently works, then they've found the what they were seeking.

For religion, the answer is already known. For example, "God designed X and Y to have that reaction." And then they try to figure out WHY God would makes something that way, usually by consulting texts that illustrate God's plans.

What muddies up my poetic framing (and what I wasn't thinking about when I said it because I didn't find it relevant to my conclusion) is the question, "Will a Y-Z interaction have my hypothesized reaction based on my observations of X-Y and X-Z interactions?"

That last part doesn't modify the fact that science draws from the observable to support the observable, while religion draws from the observable to support the schemes of God. If I added too many variables, then my intended audience might've gone chasing red herrings. But now you know what I was thinking.

Seth already imagined it for us. If a being with incredible, demonstrable power came and informed us that it created the universe, then there would be a mutually agreeable reason to join the two modes of thought. Until that happens, don't hold your breath.

Apparantly.

Science has proved through observation that they are, but Religion is still trying to determine why God would make it so.

Science is God's way of telling you to think.

~Liona~

I certainly can't argue with that, Chance.

Don't need Seth for that, or to wait at all for some of us. Ask Coco.

I think we established, very quickly and from simple observation, that the two can coexist happily and harmoniously in the world views of many individuals. So in that aspect, yes, compatible.

But if we take "compatible" to mean
"capable of being joined together into a common consistent structure with a logic preserving the logic and structure of each intact"
then it is a definite "not yet".

But, hardly surprisingly, it's not been proved a "never".

Compatible? I thought this was just a one night stand.

Well, so much for preconceptions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051104/ap_on_sc/vatican_science

A grain of salt- The Catholic Church now, more than ever, needs to be more accessible and modern. If the world was still ruled by theocracy, they would never make that kind of gesture. It's pretty obvious which way the real power is flowing. Organized religion is largely, if not exclusively, rooted in politics. When they don't modernize their views then young people move on to something else.

I see your point and I accept that when it comes to facts and methodology the two are not compatable. Nice way to clarify the point!

But I do have to ask you to clarify what questions religion seeks to find, if you can give me an example I would understand thanks!!

I think you can get a converter at Radio Shack for a couple of bucks.

No, I was asking why do humans make it so... Turns out I was aksing the wrong question!

Edit----

What wisdom you have

"It's a trick, get an axe."

That's not... quite... what I said.

I stipulated that if verifiable evidence of a sentient creator showed up in the structure of the universe itself - in such a way that could not be discounted - then this particular religious belief could be supported by scientific method. The example I used was a message from "God" embedded in a basic mathematical constant describing a cosmic dynamic - "I am God.... " embedded in the value of pi.

It's worth noting that science fiction writers including Arthur Clarke and Fred Pohl have already described such a "proof" of God. So did astronomer Carl Sagan at the end of his novel, Contact.

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Sorry for spinning it. I'm a bad boy.