Are science and religion incompatible?

Yay!

I'm 39 and was a Brit schoolkid who took RE (religious education class), they discussed many religions and it was interesting...somehow I doubt the US schools would ever dare to discuss any heathern/infidels religion as a choice....oh, I think I read, no it was Jello Biafra who said that Christian publishers actually print a lot of the secular textbooks, no freaking way they will ever allow any choices of creation other than begrudgingly mentioning evolution...

errr i was editing this and it became a quote, should go to bed now peace!! *hugs all my human brothers and sisters, we, all of us, are God*

Actually, falsifying data is part of the scientific process.

"Falsifiability is an important concept in the philosophy of science that amounts to the apparently paradoxical idea that a proposition or theory cannot be scientific if it does not admit the possibility of being shown false.

Falsifiable does not mean false. For a proposition to be falsifiable, it must be at least in principle possible to make an observation that would show the proposition to be false, even if that observation had not been made. For example, the proposition "All crows are black" would be falsified by observing one white crow." --- Wikipedia.org

ok, I will buy that (and you could have said that earlier because most of us, I would bet , wouldn't realise that "false' actually has several meanings. But why make a blanket statement like all crows are black when you could just say "based on what we've seen we would say that all crows are black, but we have not, nor will we ever see, all crows, so therefore it isn't logical for us to say all crows are black as it is just our opinion based on facts...

I think I would still like an example of something, like crows, so we can see how scientists falsify data to make a definitive statement of fact like "All crows are black", instead of the scientists just calling "all crows are black" a theory. Why are some things a theory and others just falsified and touted as facts????

CoKo.

If it's an opinion based on facts, and the opinion is all crows are black, then you would be saying all crows are factually black. If, in fact, crows are black, then they are all black. To be factually correct you could say "All crows that have been reported by eye witnesses where reflecting no light, so we assume they are black. There is no way to verify if all crows are black because we haven't seen all crows.

I liked the first part though, before you got to the word "fact"

lets find an answer here as we are playing with words that may have different meaning to us.

what is a "fact" to you? or is there no such thing as a fact because our brains only interpret information and do not see things as they truely are?

A statement of an event or condition where the statement can be proven and shown to be correct (or disproven and thus shown to be incorrect) on the basis of some evidence, generally by other facts. A statement which is not capable of being proven or disproven, that is, is arbitrary, is an opinion. If a fact is shown to be incorrect it is called a "false fact" or, if the statement was intentional and known to be false when made, a lie. A fact shown to be correct is called a "true fact" or truth. A fact which was believed to be true may later shown to be false (disproven), and a fact which was believed to be disproven may later shown to be true.
Generally a fact is an event that has happened, or a statement that is generally regarded as true — whether one accepts it as real (true) or not. There are issues concerning whether all statements claimed to be true need be claims of fact. Statements about the truth of a theory or a scientific law, for example, are often regarded as not being claims of fact. Sometimes, of course, there are differences of opinion over what is factual, and there are some methods for attempting to minimize those differences.
agreed-upon reality
In philosophy, a fact is either a true proposition or something (a state of affairs, for example) that "makes" a proposition true. (See truthmaker)
In science, a fact is data supported by a scientific experiment. A fact is an honest observation. A scientific fact is an honest observation seen by many scientists. A scientific fact is a scientific observation that is so accepted that it becomes difficult to consider other interpretations of the data. A fact may tentatively support or refute a model of how the universe works. Facts do not prove a model is correct. One observation of any phenomenon does not prove anything.
Psychological aspects of factual claims: We tend to see facts which support our position and ignore facts which contradict our opinion. However, events that do not fit our framework also tend to stand out and draw our attention.
In law, a fact is a statement which is found to be true by a tryer of fact, sometimes a jury, but often the court (the judge or judges) after hearing evidence.
In computer science a fact is a single data value generated or used by a business process.
Abbreviation for the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act).
The ICAO airport code for Cape Town International Airport

no offence but I think you don't really know what your saying, as scientists, as a whole, do not just blurt out their opinions as if they were facts, that's why they call them theories. Is gravity a fact or a theory? a theory even when we can prove it to ourselves everyday...

(FROM HERE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity)

Gravity is the force of attraction between massive particles. Weight is determined by the mass of an object and its location in a gravitational field. While a great deal is known about the properties of gravity, the ultimate cause of the gravitational force remains an open question. General relativity is the most successful theory of gravitation to date. It postulates that mass and energy curve space-time, resulting in the phenomenon known as gravity.

since we are all familiar with gravity, and it is considered ONLY a theory, I ask you, my friend, to cite one example of where scientists don't call something a theory but instead a fact (all crows are black is a statement of fact btw) even when they don't know for sure.

Kevn, you have to stop cutting and pasting quotes, especially without reference. It makes folks suspect that you don't have confidence in your ability to carry on a debate without copying external references and pretending they're yours.

~Ulrika~

I must apologize for coming so late to this thread but what does evolution have to do with religion. Excuse me but I have read the posts and have seen no clarifiaction.

Evolution is a scientific theory(which means it is a generally proven fact) and religion is a matter of faith with no proof whatsoever.

I don't see the conflict here. A person can have their religion and still except the facts with no conflict at all.

I do it it every day.

that's good, thank you, but by those words we can call gravity a fact as we can prove it with other facts, YET the scientists, not being 100% sure, still call it a theory. So cite an example like all crows are black where the scientists are done with theorising and just call it a fact.

Yes, science uses the term often. The problem is it confuses kids. To say something is fact because we observed it several times might be logical, but as scientist, they must understand for something to be scientific, they must admit it may be falsified. That's an issue of language barriers. Kids understand the term "fact" as absolutely true, or a "truth that can't be denied or questioned.

This is actually incorrect, Susie. Evolution is an observed fact (the change in an organism over time) and Natural Selection is the theory that attempts to explain it.

~Ulrika~

hehe! whomever you are ~Ulrika~, I like your style!

When I was a child I had no problem with these concepts. Perhaps it was just you?

~Ulrika~

Well whatever you want to call it it actually happens.

Yep, you came late. Scroll back, and trough several threads, sorry, too tired to rehash it

I clearly was posting from wikipedia as I just did. If you think I can type that fast I'm impressed.

Did you answer my last question about the alt? If so I missed it

Religion and science are incompatible in the science classroom, as one is an unprovable belief system and the other is a methodology. The tools that science teaches can actually be used to deconstruct the arguments used to support religion.

~Ulrika~

Yes I did Kevn. It's in the other thread.

~Ulrika~

Thanks Kevin but I did read the previous posts and didn't see anything new since they had the Monkey Trial. Have there been some new discoveries that I don't know about?

do you understand why scientists call something a theory instead of a fact? because you are waffling now because you cannot think of a single example of where science has called something fact when there is a chance it may not be instead of a theory.

I gave you the starting point of gravity, since 1687 when Newton published his theory, scientists have know of this and yet it is STILL only a theory, even though we feel it in our very bones, now please tell me an example of something that scientists do not call a theory but call a fact like "all crows are black" instead of "Based on what we know and guess it is probable that all crows are black".