Religion
Related: About this forumScience has NO NEED TO reconcile with RELIGION !
The heliocentric nature of our solar system for the last 4.54 billion years had NO NEED to reconcile itself with the Roman Catholic church in 1599, AD!!!
Stem cell research and aborted fetal tissue research has NO NEED to "reconcile" itself with the pro-life Christians in the USA. Indeed, the research can go on in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Australia, where pro-life Christians are not begging for a seat at the scientific research table.
Anthropological and Geological research expeditions on all continents of this planet, (including Antarctica and all the others) have no need to sit down with people who falsely believe their god created the world and man and all the plants and animals in it some 6000+ years ago. The plants and bushes in Indonesia and Australia that are 28,000+ years old have no need to talk to the Christian Creationists.
One modern scientific thinker has to ask; why is there any need for "reconciliation" between believers in any faith-based reality and those who are open to any exploration, discovery,and confirmation through scientific practices? There is no such need for any "reconciliation", period!
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Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)As in other countries, Catholic schools in the United States teach evolution as part of their science curriculum. They teach the fact that evolution occurs and the modern evolutionary synthesis, which is the scientific theory that explains why evolution occurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution
It's evangelical schools that seem to feel that teaching science and evolution threatens their church, so they don't teach it and have come up with a whole slew of think tanks to convince the rest of the nation that evolution is false.
SamG
(535 posts)choose to abort their fetuses when it is impractical and unhealthy to carry a fetus to term? Do Catholic folks learn that all human options of choice are reasonable? Or that those fetuses can be helpful to scientific research?
Did the Catholic church teach that the sun revolved around the Earth for dozens of years after Galileo proved otherwise? I think so!
Science has no need to reconcile with the Catholic church.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)prior to the evangelicals creating these movements, the American Catholic Church kept to its own pretty much. I've been observing this for some time.
SamG
(535 posts)How long have YOU been around?
The Catholic church was actively anti-abortion BEFORE Roe v Wade!
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)What I AM saying, is that the true gasoline, the true organizers, the BIG BUCKS behind the FAKE pro-life (I say FAKE because it's not against the death penalty or killing abroad) movement which is with us today, WHICH IS CONSTANTLY ATTEMPTING TO LEGISLATE MY UTERUS, was designed, and is run by the evangelical churches.
The Catholic Church is pro-life in every regard, including against the death penalty, so at least they are legitimate in that, and not a bunch of asshole hypocrites. Evangelicals ARE NOT pro-life at all. They're just anti-female and want to legislate the uteri of every woman in the United States.
Warpy
(111,332 posts)at least pretend to be celibate and part of their celibacy means erasing female human beings between the waist and the knees. That means they don't read a word about sex, pregnancy, childbirth, or any of the very real risks women face with all of them.
Most Catholics are sensible people who realize those old farts don't know what they're talking about and ignore them.
Joseph8th
(228 posts)... they "ignore them" rather than confronting the problem. Then it becomes society's problem, and non-believers are forced to confront the issues, because believers are too cowardly or apathetic to do it. Then they complain about being victimized when called out for failing to stop their Church leaders from abusing the rest of us.
The onus is on the laity to change the Church from the inside, or face continued attacks from the outside. Apathy is no excuse for inaction.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)12 years of catholic school. Evolution was taugh in science class. God created evolution was said in religion class. Science according to the Bible was never taught. They separted the two.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)higher power. I don't have to deny science to have a sense of more powerful than I.
I wanted to add - there's no reason any religion has to be wedded to government.
SamG
(535 posts)in science.
Putting any god in the picture blurs the efforts of scientific inquiry, and is an attempt by religion to "reconcile" science with a specific religion.
There is no evidence that religion needs to put forward, they just want to stick their foot in the door of the science of the last 150 years..making religion somehow relevant in scientific research.
The statement "God created Evolution" is NOT science, and only begs science to accept groundless, baseless religious statements as somehow important.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Creationism according to the Bible; 7 days creation, etc., etc. Don't get me wrong. I parted company with the Catholic Church decades ago, but on this issue, they certainly are better than the Fundies, i.e., Tnn. and teaching Creastionism as SCIENCE. Back to the Scopes Era in the 21st Century?
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)And the Fundies don't even see Catholics as Christian. It's gonna be interesting when they're asked to vote for a Mormon in November.
longship
(40,416 posts)My position is to love the believers and malign their beliefs. If they want to believe in one god or a hundred gods, it is no matter to me.
However, when their claims come into conflict with the evidence, no matter what the character of that evidence, then I will gladly jump into the fray with both feet.
Us atheists need a lot of friends. Many of mine are people of all persuasions, religious, racial, and whatever. The best we all can do is to be a bit sensitive to others.
Don't worry. I cross the line here, too.
Even on this same topic. Maybe I'm being a devil's advocate. Or, as Hitchens said, "I would prefer to advocate for the devil pro bono."
SamG
(535 posts)I talked about the factual science meeting up with those folks who insist upon a reconciliation, when no such, reconciliation makes a speck of sense.
Why would religious folks write and publish articles claiming a need for such reconciliation?
Of course, it's up to them to answer why there is any need at all.
Those folks ALREADY declare that the science is not in any way a basis for faith, not in any way something that the faithful need to deal with, because the faithful have "another way of knowing" about their faith, that has nothing at all to do with science. So why the need for a reconciliation? Who asks for that?
cbayer
(146,218 posts)who is also religious.
So he sees the need for it, as do many others.
If you don't, that's cool. You don't have to reconcile them.
SamG
(535 posts)You plead, with the help of some published scientist, for a reconciliation between facts and fantasy.
I don't see such a need, nor would you if you honestly had a career and a bi-lingual ability to make sense in both languages.
The most any religion, ANY religion on the planet can say, given the vast amount of scientific evidence before the world in 2012, the MOST any religion can say with any confidence is this:
"We simply do not know, and our faith offers us no further techniques to find knowledge"
THAT would be an HONEST statement by any religion. Unfortunately, some religions insist upon a seat at the table, without any discipline with which to discover anything new, and lots of prejudices against the one discipline that is dedicated to discovery, no matter where it leads, no matter which religion becomes offended by the next discovery.
Please just review the last 500 years of human history, or the last 2000-3000 years, and see where religion got in the way of human advancement, over and over again, obstructing today as much as it did in the days of Galileo, and then come back here, and assert that your latest link to some published author somehow offers a way for religion and science to reconcile. If you cannot see the ridiculous nature of such a plea, such an arrogant assertion, such a childish cry, perhaps science is not a field where you can exhibit any nature of objectivity in your research or teaching.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Wow, you sure don't know a lot about me, do you?
Oh, and sorry if I thought you were responding to the thread in which the title contains the same three key words as the title of this thread (and in which you were very actively engaged right before posting this one). My bad.
SamG
(535 posts)I don't accept "religion-speak" as a valid language, I accept it as I would accept a child's baby talk.
If your career in science has anything to do with exploring questions about your deeply held religious beliefs, would you volunteer to resign, or go ahead and do the research?
Okay, then tell me if you would participate in this kind of scientific researh
You have a deeply held religious belief that religion plays an important part in the lives of those who believe. A researcher wants to show that those who believe such things are like those who take sugar pills, (placebos) and report that they feel better. When confronted with the fact that those religious believers have a similar response as those who took a placebo in another experiment, many give up their religious beliefs as a result of the experiment. Would you agree to work on such a project? Or do your religious beliefs get in the way of actual scientific research?
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I only speak in child's baby talk, have deeply held religious beliefs, and have beliefs that interfere with actual scientific research.
You really do know me! Have we met before?
longship
(40,416 posts)My favorite is Dennett's. To play the faith card is a bullying move. Nobody would accept a similar argument in any other discipline. Religious people will never not play that card. But we should all be sensitive to the fact that, as Dawkins says, that we're symbolically telling them that they've wasted their life. It is a hard thing to take for many religious.
But when their beliefs collide with facts, I jump in with both feet.
The word can mean many things, but IMO the most usefull in this context would that it refers to state of mind of confidence and trust and belonging, simple as that.
And us such, it would be misuse of faith to use a simple state of mind as rational argument for truth value of any propositional statements. State of mind of confidence and trust does not presuppose or require any belief in any objects, spiritual or material, or presence of questions that require answers in the form of propositional statements.
Thus understood, faith is not a bullying move, but the demand that faithfull state of mind asks and answers the guestions of doubting, inquisitive etc. state of mind with similar or contradictory propositional statements can be bullying.
More formally, in this view about faith there can and often does arise category mistake in these discussions of expecting that non-inquisitive and confident state of mind aka 'faith' should behave as inquisitive scientific or other rationally inquiring state of mind demands.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)that you have not tired of offering proof of predictable emotional response mechanisms. 
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)That you cant SEE quantum faith, you just have to have it.
Such a predictable emotional non-quantum response.
tama
(9,137 posts)as quantum faith, wouldn't attempts to define it have to be based on uncertainty principle, quantum logic, no-cloning theorem etc.?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)It sounds pretty authoritarian to just declare that something doesn't exist because you didn't think of it.
tama
(9,137 posts)that I declared that something doesn't exist? Logically deduced the denial from the word "if"?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)I suppose you're going to start repeating imperialist maxims to obfuscate from the fact that your allegiance to orthodox dogma has been uncovered.
tama
(9,137 posts)that the tentative answer to Scott starting with "If" meant that there was readiness to play and look at what "Quantum faith" could mean - if taken even half seriously. But if you insist, we can play also (some distortion of) PoMo and assume that your interpretations of implicate meanings wrapped in text, however illogical, are as valid as the Author's (declared dead by PoMo faith, rest in peace, sit tibit terra levis, etc. etc.).
Now, what propositional statements could Quantum Faith (QF), aplied to itself, consider valid? As first suggested, the measurement of truth values of propositional statements of QF would need be faithfull to Uncertainty Principle, to stay consistent. Second, the QF could by certain degree of uncertainty be the superposition of various observables, such as beliefs of and about the QF itself.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)Quantum refers to something being quantized. The epiphenomenon of quantum faith could be described in its relation to discrete amounts of faith. No reference to Heisenberg is needed.
(Even if quantum faith adhered to a sort of uncertainty principle, it wouldn't necessarily change the outcome of truth tables, especially since you haven't identified whose truth is used as a baseline for evaluation. Supposing that the uncertainty of quantum faith lies in its manner of expression, rather than its content, the validity of quantum faith is unchallenged by your imperialist imperative to control everything around you as some sort of intellectual dictator.)
It's all easily explained by the quantum mind phenomenon and is based on the proven concept that thoughts come in discrete packets or quanta.
Your closed mind is preventing you from approaching this reality in a manner consistent with enlightened, anti-authoritarian thought.
tama
(9,137 posts)And as quantum phenomena are time reversible, the measurement of quanta of obfuscation can refer equally to what decoheres before and after.
What kind of observable is a personal pronoun (in possession of a truth table) and does this relate to so called measurement problem and entangled systems, and if so, how?
Is the credo of QF that Holy Quanta are the decoherred thought-observables themselves, as the previous finite measurement resolution explicated, or the implicated quantum jumps between them? The notion of vacuum fluctuation as analogy would suggest that thoughts by themselves are just virtual pairs of random projectors which gain meaning (and potential of being assigned a quantal truth value) only by becoming entangled in epiphenomenal spatio-temporal narratives.
The moral command of QF 'Thou shalt have an Open Mind (because according to 2nd law of Thermodynamics in closed environments confusion increases) also requires that Holy Quanta are the quantum jumps between decoredherring thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. as the scalar fields leading to the Promised Land of cosmic fenotypal organs of GUTs and TOEs can fit between thoughts but not be contained by thought-observables.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)By attempting to impose your misunderstanding of quantum field theory on the wholly unrelated field of quantum faith, you're only making yourself appear foolish.
The only relation between the physics of quantized particles and quantum faith is a semantic one--the word "quantum."
Perhaps the fault is mine for not being clear enough, but the difference between the concept you are attempting to mock and the reality of quantum faith is vast.
Quantum faith is a quantized form of faith, not a specific faith or religion in itself. The main precepts of quantum faith are unrelated to quantum mechanics. The quantized aspect to quantum faith is of the faith itself--it occurs only in discrete amounts that can be described as thoughts, prayers, and actions which come only in amounts that can be represented by integers and combined using arithmetic. A single thought about the divine, for instance, would be 1 quanta of faith. Five thoughts, two prayers, and attending worship services is eight quanta at a minimum, depending on how many discrete actions materially affect the composite behavior.
As you can see, quantum faith is a way of describing actions, not of regulating them. It can also be said that all religions can be described in terms of quantum faith.
All the word salad in the world can't help you if you insist on making imperialist bullying moves to conceal your hatred for open-mindedness. I'm trying to discuss the epiphenomenon of quantum faith and would appreciate it if you would keep your snide authoritarianism out of it. A wholistic view to the relation between religion, mind, body, and spirit can't be pigeonholed into the existing reductionist philosophies that you dogmatically adhere to.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)By which argument is the possibility excluded, that the faith contained in 1 prayer could be equal to square-root of 2 times the amount of faith contained in 1 thought about the divine?
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Fortunately, since "quantum" refers only to the physical laws of elementary particles, there isn't any such thing.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)But it doesn't. It means complete trust in something.... usually sans evidence.
You seem to think the meaning changes with whatever it is you have put your trust in. But it doesn't.
That's the dictionary definition, trust in externalized object, and no point to argue about that. But does the dictionary definition describe well enough what all persons of faith mean when they use the word?
longship
(40,416 posts)But some made up, ad hoc definition is even a more bullying move. I do not have to take any person seriously who would make such an obvious play.
Frankly, rhetorical arguments aren't much use. Just use the normal definitions and we'll be just fine.
tama
(9,137 posts)But IF you do and wish to have dialogue with others and try see things also from their point of view, it is advicable to take the meanings that are being communicated more seriously than normal definitions and in general the well known limitations of linguistic expression.
longship
(40,416 posts)I just have to believe it because I believe it.
Also, I have faith that I was born in 35,000 BCE and have lived many lives since then. In one, I was Napoleon.
Faith by itself is insufficient. There has to be a basis beyond faith otherwise anything ridiculous could be true. Without underpinnings of facts, faith has no value (arbitrary redefinitions of the word not withstanding).
that is then your faith, that "there has to be a basis beyond faith" and "without underpinnings of facts, faith has no value".
Faith card.
longship
(40,416 posts)Please take no offense. But your argument doesn't seem to based on anything rational. It's almost a postmodernist argument, which I consider another bullying move. It kind of shuts down the discussion.
Bye.
Bravura!
Silent3
(15,259 posts)...it would help if the dispute calms down enough so everyone can agree on who gets the kids on which weekends.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)
starroute
(12,977 posts)The many religions of the world get to offer up their competing speculations about everything that can't -- like what happens after we die or why the universe exists.
What more reconciliation do you need?
Thats my opinion
(2,001 posts)"Now that you have deconstructed God, now deconstruct love."
starroute
(12,977 posts)"God" is a human invention that can be traced through a historical sequence of myths and philosophical speculations.
Love is a mystery that may well be the glue that holds the universe together -- and even to say that much barely scratches the surface of what love is.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Only after you have deconstructed fear & guilt.
Joseph8th
(228 posts)... love is an emotional state, whereas god is an abstract concept. In the case of love, it's a subjective experience, but one that is common enough to warrant the status of 'objectively real'. God OTOH is... well... notably absent, and clearly devoid of any objective reality.
If we're going to equate God = Love as a binding cosmic force that can't be measured, then yeah, we've got a problem. Why not just use the less loaded term "love"? Even then, it's patently false that love binds the cosmos. Have you looked through a telescope lately? The cosmos is singularly unloving.
Thats my opinion
(2,001 posts)SamG
(535 posts)contributed more to the human race, and to all plants and animals still alive today?
Or would you care to reserve your comments on that question?
SamG
(535 posts)contributed more, and which took away or destroyed more over the last 413 years.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Most likely because he has nearly all of us on ignore. He seems to like his echo chamber.
Thats my opinion
(2,001 posts)All the Universities, schools, labs, libraries, hospitals were products of the church in the West.
Religion made scientific advances possible.
I'm not sure how you factor that into your equasion.
But your question did not sound like someone looking for information, but like you already had assumed the air-tight answer--That's what I call a "gotcha" question.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)The church was the only place that controlled knowledge for a long time in Western civilization. If you wanted to be literate and study anything, being part of the church was the only way you could do it. There simply were no other options, thanks in part to... that same church! Go figure!
So your claim that "Religion made scientific advances possible" comes with a rather significant asterisk.
rrneck
(17,671 posts)Science has facilitated a fair bit of industrialized murder and environmental destruction in its own right.
SamG
(535 posts)could employ that science for their own purposes?
The London Blitz employed the latest technology of a 40 year old science and technology of aerodynamics, and aircraft construction, flight and bomb-making.
The A and H bomb attacks on Japan, less than 6 years later, employed more modern sophisticated aircraft and weaponry.
Both of those events, and thousands of other bombings and gassings and other events in those years had little to do with science, and much to do with the imperfections within the human mind, prejudices, and what humans have done to each other with the technology available to them for the last 4-10 thousand years of recorded history.
So, did human curiosity, discovery, innovation, and engineering have that much to do with how the rewards of science were used in a destructive way to hundreds of millions of human beings? Or did the frailty of the human mind, in its inability to think in a compassionate, logical manner have more to do with the destruction of so many, and most dramatically devastatingly in the last 100 years?
And where, exactly, did any "religion" step in to save those victims?
rrneck
(17,671 posts)Without science, the technology of destruction would not exist. Should large swaths of technological advancement have been discarded before they became destructive? By the same token it could be well argued the Abrhamic religions have long since outlived their benefit to the human race.
It's never just one or the other. The evil That people do is caused by evil people. Nothing more.
Joseph8th
(228 posts)... that's not fair to scientists who were naive. Einstein and Oppenheimer spring to mind -- their work on nukes all but destroyed both men. Pure science is as valueless as nuclear fission -- it's great when it's happening far away in the center of the Sun. In Hiroshima? Not so much.
Our technology has evolved faster than our ethical systems -- namely the laws of humans and our gods. So the fault still lies at the feet of kings and priests, not nerds (even Fausts) for using metallurgy to make swords instead of sickles.
Neither Einstein nor Oppenheimer denied their personal responsibility, very much the opposite. Shifting all the blame and responsibility to "ethical systems" and "kings and priests" sounds very much like rationalization for and denial of responsibility of "pure science as valueless as nuclear fission" (sic).
rrneck
(17,671 posts)So scientists were just doing their thing and those evil kings and priests cozened them into making the tools of destruction.
Pure science is as removed from, or as close to, as pure faith. Religion and technology go hand in hand, one tool for each.
Response to SamG (Reply #26)
Thats my opinion This message was self-deleted by its author.
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)you refer to technology, military etc. technology has contributed more extinctions of forms of life including human cultures and loss of carrying capacity of biosphere than religions, if we don't count belief and practice of technocratic control over nature as a religion.
Science and technology have contributed more to the growth of growth-economy civilizations, but they do not represent the whole of human race nor rest of life.
Religions have contributed in pacifying formerly militaristic and imperialistic cultures (e.g. Mongols and Buddhism).
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Thankfully, religion is a LOT more restrained by secularism than it was in 1599. You can't string people up or burn them at the stake anymore. So that is a very good thing indeed.
tama
(9,137 posts)the which hunt hystery quite a bit, it's not something that happened during "theocratic" Middle Age but during the transition from Middle Age to "Enlightened" New Age. The judicial processes against use of black magic where normally initiated by laymen, ordinary people, at least here in Finland, and the higher judicial levels of clergymen and judges rejected most of the cases.
The mass hysteria could target anyone, but the targets were in fact mainly practice of whichcraft and shamanistic experiences. Modern materialistic psychotherapy with medical sedation and social stigma of shamanistic experiences is in many ways continuation of the "Burning Times", not an antithesis to.
LAGC
(5,330 posts)I know, English is a stubborn language. 
And let's not forget Wherecraft and Whencraft! 
OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)When the moon is full I turn into Legos.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Oh yes it is! The most spectacular events may have happened at the middle ages/enlightenment boundary, but they've been burning witches since ancient times.
and as you say also, the mass hysteria of "Burning Times" happened during the transition period.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)that oversees/makes up rules about either funding or the permitting process that may be required for the research.
The same is actually true of any group in society that has leverage with a political process that impacts the labors of scientists.
For example, my research on the influence of climate warming on parasitic disease in seabirds was constrained by limits on international treaties for migratory birds. I had to reconcile my methods within the limits of what regulations created by political process permitted.
tama
(9,137 posts)people need to reconcile with each other, and even more importantly and as your field of study suggests, with the whole of environment.
"Science" and "Religion" are abstract nouns with little agreement over any exact definitions.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)science, or scientists, out of social interests. And I don't imply anything bad by that.
We are nothing if we are not a gregarious species, Our behaviors influence the groups to which we belong.
The wellness of our groups is a very broad concern and science is but a part, albeit a significant part.
humblebum
(5,881 posts)Wise words. Science does not even have the capacity to assess anything concerning matters considered to be supernatural, metaphysical, or intuitive, by its own defined method, and yet some try.
To say that God created such and such or to say that such and such came from nothing is purely hypothetical. These concepts have absolutely no bearing on how science is or should be conducted.
SamG
(535 posts)Science needs to reconcile with people who are religious and who have more than enough power politically to stifle scientific research. Yet the only "reconciliation" needed there is for those folks with backward religious beliefs to get an education in just what science is, and just what religion cannot ever hope to be, namely a method and discipline for discovery and exploration, explanation and rational prediction about the universe we all live in.
Unfortunately, many religious people here in the USA are attempting to sidestep a science education for children and replace part of that education with more mythology about the creation of the world, about the age of the planet, etc.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Ideally, there are protections in society against the tyranny of the majority, AND subversion or frustration by power (monied) or ideological minorities.
It's true that we live something less than the ideal.
tama
(9,137 posts)and there is much else in the world, religions and science besides the conflict between creationism and evolutionism.
In the broadest definition of religion including spiritual practices and experiences, Buddhist, shamanistic etc. practices are methods and disciplines for discovery and exploration, and also explanation and rational prediction. But the questions and motivations often differ crucially from those of science and especially from positivistic science that excludes introspective and intuitive methodologices and disciplines and concentrates only on extrospective methodologies.
A prototypical or common religious or spiritual question could be: can I change so that I live in better harmony with my environment and in more peacefull state of mind? In the broadest definition science is not denied from asking from similar questions and offering testable methodologies and explanations in support for these kinds of ethical questions, and it is allready well known that e.g. practice of meditation correlates with neuroplastic changes on the physical level as well as changes of psychological behaviour mechanisms. There is no need to see science and religion in the broadest sense, or introspective and extrospective methodologies, as enemies, and in larger context there are very good reasons to see extrospection and introspection as complementary two sides of the same philosophical coin.
Joseph8th
(228 posts)Do we expect surgeons to waste their time debating faith healers?
Or physicists to debate geocentrists?
Or chemists to debate alchemists?
Or astronomers to debate astrologers?
Anyone to debate a flat-earther?
So why would we expect climate scientists to debate the weatherman? Or biologists to debate a creationist -- the Christian equivalent of a Hopi shaman who believes with equal certainty that humanity climbed out of a hole in the ground?
"We" wouldn't. But "They", apparently, would.
Joseph8th
(228 posts)I like extreme cases because they clarify boundaries. More moderately...
I took Biology 101 at UNM in Taos, NM -- as old-school Catholic and solidly Democratic as they come -- and before starting the section on evolution, Prof. Gilroy (lovechild of Santa and Darwin) brought in a Jesuit Priest-turned-evolutionary biologist (Martin was his name) to help some of my classmates reconcile their faith with science. An entire period dedicated to lancing that boil before it burst in the middle of a lecture. He gave nonbelievers an out... I could've stayed home, but I was curious. I kept my mouth shut and listened.
Most of the class had reservations about evolution. I kid you not. MOST. But nobody had an agenda, that I could tell. Nobody was determined to 'not believe' (which isn't necessary, as Martin pointed out). I admit I had a hard time taking it seriously, but a few of my classmates worried about their parents finding out they were studying evolution, and that made it more real. One woman said she was open-minded, and there to learn, but she could never ever discuss it at home. I felt for her, and the more quiet ones who might've been in similar situations.
So I think the OP title is correct. Science has no need to reconcile with religion; but individual believers may need to reconcile their faith with science, and if scientists want to win the minds of believers (hearts or souls not even in the equation) then it's worth spending a couple hours to assuage some worries and misconceptions, beforehand.
Which, of course, is where the interests of science and those of the atheist movement (of which I consider myself a proud member) diverge. The domain of science doesn't intersect that of religion, and should not intersect that of politics, either. In the interest of all, there must forever remain a wall of separation between them each.
tama
(9,137 posts)Joseph8th
(228 posts)...heroin addicts. Psychotropics do tend to break down some walls, but we mustn't confuse hallucinations with reality.
Thats my opinion
(2,001 posts)But there are other notions of religion which ought to be in partnership with the best in science. Global warming is a scientific proposition. The care of the planet is a profound religious imperative.
OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)I mean, it's nice if some religious folk do care about the planet but planet care doesn't need any religion.
Care for the planet should be a profound human imperative since we are the ones that gotta live here and hopefully our offspring will have a place to live.
