Are science and religion incompatible?

Sorry, but you asked for it

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From here.

Other sites include other scientist. If you would like, I could bring more to the list...

Again, the rest of your post is going to an actual argument on a specific part of science that I do not want to go into on this thread...

which Steve Austin is this? the Wrester or the Bionic man?

As far as I understand, the consensus is that Newton invented the calculus before Liebniz. But the notation that we actually use now is derived from Liebniz's work.

I am not positive, but isn't he the one who created bionics in the first place, that is where 'Steve Austin' got his 'black-op' name (and subsequently, 'Austin' Powers)...

Here are his succinct credentials.

You people dont even read each other's posts or stop to think about what you're saying in your rush to attack each other.
Not every christian is a creationist, not every creationist is a young earth creationist.
It is rather possible for someone to be a creationist in the sense that they believe God was the original cause behind the Big Bang instead of a random fluctuation of the vacuum.
One can argue that the universe is structured to afford a decent level of complexity, intelligent life included, because God created the laws of physics and chemistry with such perfect balance so that Man would arise to his own image some eons later.
God's existence is something that cannot be proven or disproven. In this, it is incompatible with logic and science. A literal interpretation of the Bible would be incompatible with science. It does not prevent some other interpretations from arising which can reconcile both.

What the Egg said.

coco

I don't understand your meaning for "co-exist", Kurgan, so I cannot decode your question. The two can coexist harmoniously together in an individual mind. But as far as being joined into a common integrated theory or model of reality, with testable predictive value, we are far far from it.

As someone else has pointed out, religion would have to be tidied up lots before it could think of joining in in this sense. It would either have to be unified, or the "right" one or ones would have to be identified and the others dumped. Then it would need to be codified into precise unambiguous language, and knitted together with logic. Even if a new sort of logic, it would have to subsume ordinary logic as a special case, so that science could join too. Then we have testability and falsifiability. If these were to be somehow redefined, again the normal meanings would have to be accomodated. And finally, you can't have a forced marriage. The scientific community, and the religious community(s) would each have to agree that the other's contribution met their own stringent criteria for acceptance.

Nothing short of all this could establish compatibility in this "strong " sense.

No-one but a genius and a god could attempt it, don't you think ? For practical purposes, right now, its a dead duck.

The rest of your post seems to address the two questions
"can religious people do science" and
"if a genuine scientific discovery results from a totally crackpot hypothesis initially investigated for crazy reasons, is it valid ?"

The answers are, "Yes, of course" to both.

The second one is not only possible, but commonplace in the history of science.

They can co-exist as long as you realize that the scientific level of religion, is zero... That's what makes it a religion, rather than science.

In regligion, you are told what to do. You don't need to really think that hard about the concepts (if you truly believe the religion to be true). When God tells you something, you can pretty much be sure that it's right.

Science is the process by which we build knowledge. It's how we figure out things that no one ever told us.


The answers that science gives will continually get better, as we build more and more knowledge. Those answers will most likely nevre be perfect. However, since they continually improve, after a certain period of time, they could be quite good and useful.

The answers that religion gives are static. God tells you how things work. These answers will never change, or improve... so, if they're wrong, you're kind of screwed. There's really no way to improve them. God can't say, "Oh ya.. Guess that was kind of stupid. My bad!" However, if they are actually right, they have the capacity to be COMPLETELY right. since it's supposedly knowledge from an all knowing super-being, there's no need to incrementally improve them. Those answers already come as perfect knowledge.


So there you can see the allure of both types of thought. Science gives us the possibility that we will continually get better. Religion, instead, offers us the promise of perfection... but that promise may be false.

I still don't undestand why a minority of chirstians seem to think that science is bad. Certainly some uses of science are bad when they wreck the enviornment or are used to kill people etc, but scientific work in general? Sometimes it seems quaint and mostly harmless, I love to visit Amish country, for example. But these groups who insist on witholding all medical treatment from their children because its "against their religion" is just crazy.

I've still not heard a good reason. Or maybe that's it, there is no reason?

Well, again, I have failed to communicate

When I say co-exist, I am talking about the reasoning behind the hypothesis. I am talking about an atheist, a non-theist, or a theist agreeing to disagree and letting the empirical evidence speak for itself. Even then, you will have different interpretations of the evidence, but more building blocks for each to try to prove their position...

Edit----
More confusion.... Sorry guys, it is all clear in my mind (I think anyway)

Science being established science who feel that theists have nothing to contribute. Religion being theists who want to use scientific methods to prove their view scientifically...

I don't understand this either Zuzu.

I'm not one who thinks science is bad. Bad science is bad. Falisifying theories is good, hold up theories as absolute truth is bad science.

In "The Simpsons", Judge Sneider issued a restraining order barring Science and Religeon from coming within x meters of each other... That'd make them now pretty incompatible

Hmm, probably in the episode where Lisa and the school do an archeological dig and Lisa finds an angel fossil.

Certiainly if A makes a claim and B to Z are able to reproduce it, then it has merit and needs to be looked at further. This is perfectly fine and I have stated as such. Their theistic leanings are largely irrelevant to that process.

What comes into play is when a theist reinteprets existing scientifically reproducible experiements and adds a god factor to elements the theory does not address. For instance the Big Bang does not address the causation of the Big Bang, rather the method whereby the universe was formed. Scientist A can formulate a theory expanding on the Big Bang with Allah as the causation. Scientists B through Z are perfectly within their right to demand definition of Allah as a requirement for experimental validation of that theory as the parameters have changed. Now Scientist A could provide such a definition, but he must suffer the additional constraint of having to meet whatever theist requirements or resistance from various organizations that currently use Allah and various definitions thereof will demand of him. Now looking past that, should everyone agree on definition, and if most of them reproduce experiments with positive results and prove that definition as fact, what next?

Do you truly want science to quantify God?

For accuracy, there are 3 geophysicists in this list. There were a good deal of physicists, and some astronomers who might be able to speak to that topic, but I can't be sure that's their particular field.

On that note, is it possible to go offtopic in an offtopic thread as long as we're having meaningful discussion of some sort? Regardless of what the original offtopic might have been?

On that note, pantsu?

Your missing my point again... Man, I need to learn to express myself better.

It is not the fact that A is Islamic that the experiment works. It is the fact that A is Islamic that he even went the direction he went, since B-Z think he is crazy for even looking here.

Don't get me wrong, I saw your point and accepted it. As long as a scientist is doing good science, it is not the scientific community's job to argue philosophy. This allows science to contain religious zealots who fear lakes of fire ponder the intricate formulations behind relativistic curved space.

Now as to 'thinking someone is crazy for looking somewhere'... huh? Science will eventually look everywhere. It may have been true in the past that some things went completely uncontested, but that's just not so today. If there's a gap in science, it's fillable and not particularly odd for a scientist to be attempting to fill it.

The choice of filler, as I've mentioned, needs to be high quality.

Then you shouldnt suupport the creationist "science". The problem isn't some vast conspiracy of athiests excluding christians from science. The problem is that creationist science is usually bad science. However, those who are in support of it have such faith that they let themselves get away with bad science and when the larger scientific communtiy calls them on it they cry 'repression'. One of the criteria that those not able to understand the technical details use as a standard are publication in peer reviewed journals. To get their ideas into peer review journals they have to resort to publication in journals that are not reviewed by peers in the entire scientific field, but only by "peers" in that they are all part of the creationist faith.

If you want to insist on a conspiracy theory then you can not be reasoned with.

One day, Scriptie McNoob begins his Second Life on the first day of version 2.0.00.

He begins to play with a script he downloaded from cycorp.com and a .5m plywood cube he found with full mod rights, bearing the name Jeffrey Gomez.

Unexpectedly, a lag-storm ensues, and FPS drops to 0 for an instant. In that instant, the cube becomes self-aware.


Cube: Where am I?

Scriptie: You are in a virtual world.

Cube: Seems tangible enough to me. Who are you?

Scriptie: I'm your creator.

Cube: You are!? Prove it.

LOL That is great!

Aww, poor Scriptie McNoob was fooled into thinkinghe had created a self aware intellegence. Maybe thats what happened to god?

I am not sure if this is how you meant it, but it made me laugh for several minutes. So, are you asking if we truly are self aware?

Self-aware plywood cubes, $L 50!


Green tinted: Says "Prove it" after any statement in chat range.

Blue tinted: Says random Ayn Rand quotes upon hearing the term 'socialist'.

Red tinted: Curses its own meager existence as an unaware scripted cube.

Pink tinted: Administers a brief Turing Test to you and your friends.

Plain white: Follows you relentlessly, preaching about the Great Tesseract.

I was referring to the story. In the story the cube is stated to become self aware. The mistake was that Scriptie thought that he was the cause of it.

Ooh, I'd buy them all. And If they displeased me I would rez them into a pit of fire.