Are science and religion incompatible?

You need to read the thread to understand what the discussion has been. Evolution wasn't the topic.

Exactly what part of her style would that be?

Anyhow, Desmond and I have come to a fair solution. Read about it in this thread. Night all

Oops sorry but I thought I saw a bunch of evolution posts here. Must have been somewhere else.

Whatever the case I don't see science and religion as exclusive of each other. After all Albert Einstein was Jewish.

haha don't get me wrong my brother, I like you too, you are a good sport and are polite. "She" (just a theory that she is a she btw) seems to pop up with witty and or passionate posts frequently and I like that.

Heh, religion and science are indeed compatable. It's the religious who tend to be incompatable with the scientific. It also depends on the religion too. Buddists have absolutly no problem with it. The origin of the universe told of by the Hindi is disturbingly accurate considering what we know in science today. Einstien was Jewish and he believed in a divine power, he just didn't believe in the goobilty-gook of a young earth and a lot of the other superstitious non-sense. The conciet that christianity is the only important religion is one of it's biggest problems.

John Lennon said it best in "Imagine". The song isn't about all of us becoming atheist hippies, its about human beings growing up as a species and not needing the control of a religion to treat each other well, political borders and bigotry to keep it us vs them. How ironic he died at the hands of a madman.

and if you want to see a glimpse of a future where humanity has removed the shackles of religious-bigotry and thus can cooperate more, read some Robert A. Heinlein books.

There is a future where bigotry is not something a leader would ever be allowed to speak outloud because the people, as a whole, will not tollerate bigotry, unfortunately in this world, bigotry comes from the very top of the leadership pile on down. Bush, Pat Robertson, The pope (oooh I hate gays but it's ok that my priests get away with raping young boys) religion really is something that is holding the human race back from cooperation and potentially colonising space...

coco

Me too.

coco

Regardless of what people believe, the earth is much older than millions of years. If you want to get technical, some of it may even be composed of matter as old as time. This does not co-exist well with those that choose to not understand this based on a belief. When every denomination of Christianity alone can get together and agree on the specifics of their creator, then they can set forth to attempt to start that same process with Catholics and then work toward reconciling with Islam and heck, the rest of em. It's not that you have TWO competing ideologies (religion and science), you have billions of competing religious ideologies and non-competing science. Science doesn't care as long as you all agree, which has yet to happen.

Now why do they have to be unified in this fashion before science can recognize them? Very easy. If Science were to recognize a theistic source of creation, questions would arise as to the nature of the creator, the method of creation, and ways to validate such theories of same. Now if we go with Christianity, one form of the Creator could be the spirit form of a humble carpenter's son resurrected before the universe began. Now does he wave his hand, shake his fist, yell aloud, or what? And into what kind of medium? Does he breath as he did in life? And so on. The problem here lies that not everyone uses this creator or would even agree to this incarnation. Indeed, despite their savoir being Christ, they might disagree that their creator was the same. This opens the door to a whole spread of creators within a single religion. If we include all the others it gets increasingly and needlessly complex. Further, you could sit around all day adding to this pantheon of creators. This is how Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster came to be.

So essentially the whole 'one god' thing had the right idea and you can formulate theories based on that idea if you can define that god and pin down what all those aspects will be. If you then test and test and find it inconclusive, it's probably a good idea to redefine and try again. It's like finding out how to make a lightbulb. You'll find numerous ways to not reach your goal before you reach it. You want god, you figure you can find it, you need to test for it, fail, reset, redefine, try again, and rinse and repeat for as long as it takes if that's you're goal.

This was an excellent post.

~Ulrika~

Regardless of what you believe, the world's age is still under much debate. I realize that the scientific standard is a very old Earth, but that does not make it so. We can get into a debate about this, but that is not what this thread is for.

Let's use the age of the Earth as an example:

If a scientist believes that the world is millions of years old, they will assume so, which in turn will bias the rest of the results. Non-theist scientist (and some theist) believe the world to be very old. Some theistic scientist don't. Both are trying to prove that their supposition is correct. That does not invalidate either of them. A critique of each experiment (and the process to get there) is needed. That, and only that, should be the basis for disqualifying the results, not the original bias or preconceived notions.

The idea that all theist must agree with one another for science to take them 'for real' is simply not correct. You take each scientist individually. If an Islamic scientist tries to prove that the world is only a week old because of a theistic belief, and can prove such by scientific standards, the scientific community should take a close look at it. It matters not what their bias was to start of with. It only matters that they strived to prove their point scientifically and ethically. So the rest of your post is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

This is a very interesting statement, and way off topic, but I gotta ask...

Why do you think that Judas should be 'sanitized from the Christian bible'? How did he 'denigrate Christianity'?

Sorry, I meant to respond here...

I understand that we shouldn't run from intelligent discussion, nor was I trying to down play the importance of these hot buttons. I was trying to keep this thread on topic before Jeska had to come to the conclusion of it. I am sure that if I were to respond to a single one of those that were brought up, the thread closed in a few short hours...

Can you name a single theistic, young earth geophysisist? Someone who is considered a credible scientific peer? In actuality there aren't all that many theistic, young earth supporting scientists at all. Sure, there are a few who hold advanced degrees but it is rarely in the field of geology or physics. That's where a lot of the problem lies, you look into the backgrounds of a lot of so called "scientists" you find dentists, engineers, sociaologists and a spattering of degrees from doubious institutions.

The question of a young or old earth is irrelevant at any rate. It does't matter in the least because no where in the old or new testiment does it say how old the earth is. It is infered by calculation of generations and timings of known events mentioned. By some calculations the age of the earth is younger than the oldest pyramids in Egypt. It completely disreguards the fact China has a history that goes back 10.000 years. To the Jews (you know, the people who wrote genisis 1 and 2) generally view it as metaphor and don't have a problem at all with science. In fact, some Jewish scholars calculated in the middle ages that the universe was 15.8 billion years old. Kinda cool, huh? Among ultra orthidox Jews there are quite a few who leave the question open.

Then there is that whole star light deal, you know, there are stars greater than 7000 lightyears away shining in the night sky. Since it is relativily easy to determine a stars distance its impossible to refute interstellar distances with a straight face. That is, of course, unless you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster type fudging of scientific data.

Classical definition of knowledge:

With regard to Judas:

No, no, no I don't think that - my point was the exact opposite. Judas did some things that, well, gently put, went against Jesus. In the Satanic Verses, there were characters that went against Islam.

The point being: if we proscribe literature that contains statements against Jesus or Islam, a lot of literature more mainstream than the Satanic Verses will be banned.



Ah, well, what could happen?

1) You would make an intolerant statement (highly unlikely, I think);
2) you would write something that when not read carefully, might seem intolerant;
3) you might offend those with intolerant beliefs, and *they* would report you. (no doubt such a plea would be oddly comical and Monty-Pythonesque)

No point in 'dumbing down' the conversation since sooner or later, on any topic no matter how puerile, somebody might say something inappropriate anyway. I cite the General section as my proof of this.

Unless you make a new thread with a provocative title, odds are that the incitable have long since abandoned our banter for something more titillating. Let's test this, shall we?

"Panspermia."

*giggle*

The data that leads to scientists to know the earth is over a billion years old is based on some fundamental principles of physics. Such as weak and strong forces in nuclear physics, the mathematical constant of lightspeed (yes, they know it's not as acurrate as it once seemed), and the fundamental effect of gravitation (rather than and perhaps in addition to which theory you choose to explain it). All of these things not only give a very strong case for an earth over a billion years old, but they the principles upon which we base everything else. To discredit such evidence you would have to propose alternative theories to explain each of these forces in such a way that you might be able to preserve our current understanding of reality while at the same time manipulating the physics of stellar formation. Science does allow you to attempt this, but simply because it does would not mean 'it is under debate'. It becomes under debate when a new theory gains enough credence that it might serve to displace what we already know. As Relativity did.



You seem to have this backwards. An experiment has to be repeatable by the scientific community at large before it is considered a success. One cannot consider a theory by experiment a success by a few trials in your own lab without that same experiment able to be analyzed, and repeated by others in the community. The problem with starting bias is that each experimenter will influence the results whether they intend to or not. Such influence can extend to the point where a theist might say, "step 1: analyzed theory, found to be heretical and the originator is destined for Hell. Discarded". Now THIS is bad science. However it is also bad science to introduce a belief into a theory. Even if it's NOT theistic. Example: "I believe oranges are purple on the inside. Experiment: cut open oranges. Background: Probability shows it's entirely possible for an orange to be purple inside. Results: After much testing, an orange was found with an interior that was purple". Now, I would have to hand this off to another scientist who would go through and repeat the process using the same theory (based on a belief) and attempt to repeat the experiment. Tester1: "This nut thinks oranges have purple insides". Experiment: 5000 of 5000 oranges peeled, all interior are orange. Results statistically significant. So you can see where Tester1 gives up merely at statistical significance where it's likely I used dye or let my oranges rot to achieve my results. Bias is very, very important. That is why we do experiments and why I say that you will HAVE to have all religions unified before you can expect to have any theories based on religious belief(or any other belief) pass a peer review.

My single best example is Newton. All his peer reviewers were very likely theists of some sort and he was probably vague enough to be acceptable to those of alternate denominations at the time. What you have to deal with here is the peer reviewers today might be theist, incompatible theists, or atheist (lacking in theism) so that you can't simply cater to a generic anymore. You need extremely specific, well defined terms that everyone agrees on if you want to get anything past science. Other than that, we have no problem with god(s).

Newton was highly arrogant, and there is almost but *not quite* proof that he stole ideas with regard to calculus from Leibniz.

By most accounts of the day, a lunatic-fringe nut when it came to religion. On his deathbed he refused the usual rites, but thanked god for his death as a virgin.

He's actually a pretty good example of someone with whacko-class surety in his own highly unusual beliefs, yet managed to do good science in spite of that.

As I suggested before, most people in the world have no problem reconciling their religion and the findings of science. Of the major religions only fundamentalist christains and funamentalist islamists seem to have a problem with this (are there others? I'm basing this on what I have seen)

There are many speculations on why this may be. Some think that perhaps their faith is too weak and therefore they need to reinforce it by supressing anything that might cause them to doubt their faith. Others think that their faith is so strong that is generates hatred of anyone who does not agree with them. There is the possibilty that it is based on jealousy in some way: those rich/happy people embrace western science, while use poor/unhappy people are good and we should be the rich happy ones, so science is to blame. Anyone else have an explanation? I can't figure it out myself.

I am pretty sure these are the reasons I used him as my best example. Only because of his peer reviewers was his science considered good. Today, on it's own merits, it's obviously not as good as quite a few alternatives that don't rely on vague and undefined concepts that were acceptable then.

Leibniz's notation was superior.

~Ulrika~

This should help explain what science is to anyone who doesn't know

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/science/

Again, I really don't want to get into a debate about a specific subsection of science in this thread (not to say I would not in another...). I'm sorry that I perpetuated it with my statement of '...world's age is still under much debate.' though, I should have let this go.

I want to find out if science and religion can co-exist on a scientific level, based on a scientist's personal bias (which I think we have established such at least in my own mind). The only reason I included it was to try to give a situation that would explain my stance.

I agree with most of what you say. I think we are talking about the same thing in opposite circles. When I said ' the scientific community should take a close look at it', I meant a scenario like the following:

A = Islamic Scientist
B = Christian Scientist
C = Atheist Scientist
D .. Z = Many more Scientists with different theological beliefs

If A comes to a conclusion, and B verifies it, as well as C through Z, it matters not what led them to try to reach this conclusion.

B through Z may certainly disagree with A for even trying the experiment, but if it can be reproduced, they should not be able to claim that A is wrong because of his original bias, or that it does not fit with established and / or popular science.

Well, I will take your word on it not having read SV yet. I think I will attempt to read it in the near future.

As far as Judas, while he did do the ultimate sin to Christian ways of thinking, it was all prophesied before hand, and I doubt that any Christian would take kindly to removing it.

Agreed However, can we start a thread for each one, so they get shut down sequentially instead of all of them grounding to a halt all at once?

Blasphemer! How dare you talk of alien origin, that is just plain ludicrous! You will surly burn in hell for such heresy!

Oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?