RE: Do you think Science and Religion can co-exist in a society?
June 2, 2017 at 6:44 am
(This post was last modified: June 2, 2017 at 6:46 am by Fake Messiah.)
Well if science and religion can exist together why do Christians in US (and other places) perpetually want to abolish teaching evolution in school? (and in some Muslim countries they do it)
When it comes to modern scientists who publicly avow their faith like Francis Collins or Indian scientists who, before they launch spacecraft, visit Hindu temples to ask their deities for blessings does not show that science is compatible with religion. That says nothing about whether those views, or the methodologies they employ, are consistent or agreeable. This is rather a confusion of coexistence with compatibility.
And if religion and science are compatible in this way, so are marriage and adultery. After all, many married people are unrepentant adulterers. Astrology and science also become compatible, because many science friendly people still consult their horoscopes. Indeed, because some scientists believe that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, and that God created all species simultaneously, we might even say that science and creationism are compatible! We all know people who hold incompatible views, whether or not that causes them distress.
I think Robert Green Ingersoll said it best:
There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”
When it comes to modern scientists who publicly avow their faith like Francis Collins or Indian scientists who, before they launch spacecraft, visit Hindu temples to ask their deities for blessings does not show that science is compatible with religion. That says nothing about whether those views, or the methodologies they employ, are consistent or agreeable. This is rather a confusion of coexistence with compatibility.
And if religion and science are compatible in this way, so are marriage and adultery. After all, many married people are unrepentant adulterers. Astrology and science also become compatible, because many science friendly people still consult their horoscopes. Indeed, because some scientists believe that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, and that God created all species simultaneously, we might even say that science and creationism are compatible! We all know people who hold incompatible views, whether or not that causes them distress.
I think Robert Green Ingersoll said it best:
There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
