Religion Vs. Science
This is a long time debate, but why? Every time a scientific discovery clashes with a religious belief, religion fights it and slows the progress of understanding. It causes scientists to waste time defending and promoting the facts that could be better spent learning more about our universe.
Science seeks to understand our universe. Nothing more. Science is not against God or religion. There is no scientific group bent on destroying religion, there are no science churches and no science Gods. Science does not try to disprove God. Science is completely separate from religion. Science is just for understanding our universe… I state that twice because of how important the point is. So if science is not against religion, why is there a clash between science and religion? Because religion is against science. It always has been. Yes, there are religious scientists that do and have contributed a lot to our universal understanding, but that does not mean that religion is not fighting science. Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin are two of the biggest examples of religion trying to destroy understanding.
Religion seeks to promote itself, teach its gospel and gain followers. Things that are very far from science. So why do religious people attack science? For the same reasons it exists: to promote itself, teach its doctrines and gain followers. Why would someone start believing in the Bible if it is not accurate? It is very hard to convince someone to believe in the word of God if the word of a perfect being is fallible. For this reason religion fights to preserve itself. Is religion important? For most religious people, religion serves as a guideline to life that they strive to meet. Most people want to be good people because that is what keeps society from turning to chaos. For these people, religion provides a shortcut to supporting society by giving them rules and guidelines without them having to learn why those rules and guidelines are important.
Do we need religion for that? No, we don’t. Society can and has developed a set of rules and guidelines that will protect itself from individuals. The moral ideas can be explained simply by “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” No threat of a dad waiting around in the afterlife to paddle you for eternity… just the idea that you should understand what hurts you so you should not hurt someone else. The only problem with this moral is that it is very childlike and does not seek to understand how to treat other people entirely. This kind of moral is the stage of morals everyone learns after selfishness. People should strive to understand a higher moral philosophy, but it is a good start.
July 23rd, 200910:51 pm at
Great post! I’ll subscribe right now wth my feedreader software!
July 30th, 200912:51 pm at
I think that reality is one and have not multiplicity so it should be consist both physical and metaphysical. In this way I agree that both science and religion are the same and true.
Hatcher (2009) says that:”there is much we do not yet understand about reality relative to all there is to know. Therefore, it would seem clear that we should not have complete or absolute faith in any individual scientist, philosopher, or cleric. Instead, we are required to think for ourselves. We must base our beliefs on standards of reason.”
July 30th, 200912:53 pm at
Chubby Nickel, it was interesting post, thanks
August 17th, 20099:00 am at
what is the goal of this world? How this world is creation? And how created it? and some other questions like this: could I prefer other people to myself ? if some one is not like me and his skin is white could I prefer it to others that have black skin? Could science answer these? In my opinion, no, science could not answer these questions. Then now the question is? Which one is more important in our life? science or religion? Or as you said religion and science are in the fight to each other? as I think religion is not in fight with science and not only they are not against but also religion is beside the science.
All the moral principles comes from religion as you said” do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” this is a religion teach.
In my opinion both religion and science must help humanity in his life so I think every one are doing its principle, religion show the goals of life and science help the people to receive to this goals and learning more about their universe but we must remember some thing about the religion and science these both are in evolution process and we must pick the last verjon of each and then seek if is it useful for our life or not? I think every time a scientific discovery clashes with a religious belief, there is problem which must be solved maybe we didn’t understand really what religion teach is saying about the topic
August 17th, 200911:06 pm at
Science answers all those questions with much more specificity than religion can, religion has only faith based answers yet Science can say our goal in this world is to live and to perpetuate our species, the creation of the world was brought about by the “big bang”. The physical attributes that one prefers are not based on what skin color you have but it could be the skin color of the other, it could also be either sex or both. Religion itself is not in competition with science but religious persons are. If one takes time to watch nature they will see that the goal for everything is just to live as long as possible and perpetuate the species, by all accounts there is no concrete evidence for God but there are evidences for science and the sciences are debated until the best answer is found, and when it is the community of scientists either finds a better explanation or accepts the current explanation religion is based on dogma and is yet resistant to change and often fails in the area of logic.
August 23rd, 20097:53 am at
The idea of writing about the conflicts between science and religion sounds very interesting! Whenever I talk about this topic with my friends, they call me “the preacher”! You wrote “Every time a scientific discovery clashes with a religious belief, religion fights it and it slows the progress of understanding.” I think there’s no specific religious belief conflicting with the science, but, there are some religious leaders who are against science. I think between the so-called science and the so-called religion there have been fierce conflicts all down the ages, but looking back on these conflicts in the light of fuller truth we can trace them every time to ignorance, prejudice, vanity, greed, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, obstinacy or something of the kind, and, I think the spirit of both is one.
On the second paragraph you find religion guilty for the struggle between science and the religion as you proceed to the meaning of science (that I think this conclusion is not right). Religion’s position about the science could be finding from the thoughts of prophets; Alí, the son-in-law of Muḥammad, said: “That which is in conformity with science is also in conformity with religion.” ABDU’L-BAHÁ said: “Whatever the intelligence of man cannot understand, religion ought not to accept. Religion and science walk hand in hand, and any religion contrary to science is not the truth.” —‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ, Wisdom of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Abbás Effendi, was the eldest son of Bahá’u’lláh) http://www.uhj.net/bahaiprinciples/science.html
You mentioned Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin as the biggest examples of the struggle of religion with the science, but, I think they and their thoughts were banned by the church and not by the Bible, on the other hand; don’t you think that the victims of scientists (like the victims of nuclear bombs) are so much more than the victims of religious leaders? At the second paragraph you wrote: “religion seeks to promote itself, teach its gospel and gain followers.” I think it’s not fair to consider promoting the religion as the main goal of religion, but, the religion’s aim is to bring the creator (God) and the creature (men) closer together and to regulate human’s life by setting up some rules for his life.
In the final paragraph you said that there’s no need to religion because the society has a set of rules and guidelines to continue its way. I think none of the rules set by human can save humanity from itself, as we see that many problems occurring in the world today are due to the deficiency of these rules. I remember that once I read a sentence from Immanuel Kant about this deficiency that he’d said “I think there would be a day that God himself would come and lead the world”
Personally I am a follower of the Bahai religion. One of the fundamental teachings of Bahá’u’lláh (Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí Nuri, Bahai religion’s prophet http://info.bahai.org/bahaullah.html) is that true science and true religion must always be in harmony. Truth is one, and whenever conflict appears it is due, not to truth, but to error. I think the only way to remove these conflicts is to carry out this teach and to put aside every kind of prejudices.
August 24th, 20091:21 am at
In this blog post there are many thoughts about religion and science and they are compared together in some different aspects. There is a specific relation between religion and science. As is mentioned in this blog post, they are completely separate from each other, but in my opinion although they are separate they should be relevant.
It is clear that the main point of your thoughts is clashing of the religion and the science. You say “religion is against science”, I think you should not generalize this subject. I mean may be in some cases it is true but not in all conditions. It is not fair to impute some problems to all of religions because there is not just one religion, there are different religions. Every religion has their own goals and rules, although the main goal of all religions is the same but since religions are for different people in various times, there are some differences in them.
Below there is a link to a Baha’i site. In this page you can read some of the Baha’i beliefs:
http://www.bci.org/nnby/principals/Hamony_of_science_and_religion.htm
In this website you will notice that one of the beliefs of Baha’is is that the religion should be in harmony with science. So, in this way, it is clear that not only this faith is not against science, but also it is its supplement!
You say “Religion seeks to promote itself” I think this sentence means that the aim of religion is promoting. In my point of view it is not correct. All of the religions have spiritual targets. For sure promoting is one of the results of their great goal. In this way it is not correct to say that “religion seeks to promote itself”; Religion seeks to improve spiritual abilities and try to make people familiar with the aim of their creation. Although this is the main goal of all of the religion, there are some religions that lose their major goal, in these religions the leaders aim is just promoting and gaining more power and other benefits.
Here we should notice one important point and it is about religions. I think every one who wants to discuss this subject should study a lot about it to distinguish the truth. There is a very important subject and it is the way we search for truth. Hatcher (2008) says: “The difference between an independent and rigorous search for truth cannot be pursued when one’s thoughts and actions are shackled by the constraints of dogmatic or ideological presumptions.”
Every religion has a period, when its period finished, God send another prophet who brings a new religion for mankind. This new faith has some new rules and directions which could lead people in its best way in the new moment. People should believe that prophet and obey him, if they accept him and obey the new rules, they will improve in their different aspects of their life, but if they don’t accept it and follow their primitive beliefs they will face many problems. In this condition, they will find religion against science and they think that it is not efficient for leading people or they think that they could develop a set of rules and guidelines that will protect their society from individuals! If people put down prejudice and search the newest guidelines from God and obey them, they will find that these guiding principles are much more effective and have a great power and the human thoughts are not comparable with them.
September 10th, 200911:39 pm at
In each case of religion clashing with science, science is just defending the science while religion is attacking the science. So my generalization is perfectly fair in that science is never attacking religion, while religion attacks science.
We can individualize if we want, but the result is very similar. Religious people come together to attack scientific discoveries. If scientists attack religion it is on their own and is not the result of protecting a belief system. The difference is that religious people attack in groups while scientists act on their own. So I still feel that my word choice is fair because science does not attack anything while many religions teach that those who believe differently need to be silenced.
Bringing up that many scientists are religious does not provide a sufficient reason to think that religion is not against science when there are clear attacks on science because of the religious teachings.
The only way religion can be in harmony with science is if the religious people refrain from using the scientific process to discern the truth of the religion. Religion is believing in things without evidence, while science is not believing in anything without evidence.
I find the end of your comment very insulting. I do not wish to be lead by any one. My mind does not allow me to be lead. That does not mean that I will not follow any one, it only means that I will always question them. Which goes against any kind of leadership. So I guess I will never “follow” any one, but I will go with them if I agree with them. A leader is a leader because they are making choices for their followers, since I need no one to make choices for me, I need no leader.
Now this next concept I am going to explain is a little difficult to understand if you are a very emotional person. Society does not need to protect individuals from other individuals. Society needs to protect individual freedom. The only rules, guidelines and punishments that are necessary are those that prevent a person from taking freedom from another. So people do not need to be protected, but their freedom does need protecting. I know it is difficult to separate the emotional connection to a person from the concept of personal freedom, but this is what society needs to do to, otherwise humanity will never grow up into an adult civilization.