Why science and religion are not compatible

[Patrick1000]

I appreciate your point, but......

Not "wrong". When spacecraft are sent to rendezvous with comets, travelling hundreds of millions of miles along curved trajectories from one moving object to another and then scoring a bull's eye, Newtonian gravity formulae are perfectly adequate to achieve this impressive feat. Einsteinian theory is not required.

However, Newton's theories are not the whole story. They are not perfectly accurate. But they are part of Einstein's model. Reduce velocities towards zero and Einstein reduces to Newton.

Are you saying that natural selection is not the entirety of the processes that resulted in you and me? Then I agree. Other processes were also involved. Are you saying that it did not take place, or wasn't enormously important? Then you're wrong. We know that natural selection occurs, in that we have overwhelming evidence for it. It accounts for evolution. We don't know that Gods exist, let alone what their intentions and purposes are. So we can't postulate creation. People who believe in that have to say, well God tells me so; and whatever that is, it's not science.

Thanks for your response. My point is not that Newton was wrong in a literal/absolute sense, what I wanted to emphasize is that our views of the world, whether they be about gravity , or the common ancestry of living systems, are views which are dynamic, not fixed. They change over time.

Only in mathematics, and perhaps one area of "modern" philosophy is there any absolute/fixed certainty, and even then, one makes assumptions. The pythagorean theorem is true, but only so in Euclidian space. Fermat's Last Theorem has been proven true, but even then, one makes assumptions.

Of course natural selection occurs. We witness selection processes all of the time. What I am saying is that natural selection as conventionally presented by modern day biologists doesn't have the creative power to turn a single celled bug into you over 3.5 billion years. Something else went on, and I imagine it may well be beyond the ken of our understanding to figure it out.

Natural selection accounts for bacteria becoming resistant to various antibiotics whether they are over used by physicians or challenged by experimentalists in petri dishes with said chemicals. It accounts for the variation in features among the different "races" of humans now walking the earth. It accounts for the presence of the sickle cell gene in African Americans. And so forth. However, it does not account for your becoming as incredibly smart as you are having started from a one celled bug 3.5 billion years ago. Natural selection doesn't address that at all. There is no evidence whatsoever, zero empiric evidence, for that. Such claims are speculative, and when one pauses to think about it, nonsensical. Natural selection most decidedly cannot be invoked as explanatory with regard to something so marvelously exotic and potent as that dynamic which gave rise to the divergence of so many different living systems from common ancestors. Something of a different catagory altogether did that, made you so smart and beautiful in the way that you are.

 

[FireGarden]

Of course natural selection occurs, we witness selection processes all of the time. What I am saying is that natural selection as conventionally presented by modern day biologists doesn't have the creative power to turn a single celled bug into you over 3.5 billion years. Something else went on, and I imagine it may well be beyond the ken of our understanding to figure it out.

Of course natural selection needs variety to work upon, but that's provided by imperfect copying. I don't see why there should be a limit upon the complexity which results.

If by your comments you mean there is nothing within the theory of evolution which requires that Humanity should be the result of the process, then that is correct. If the 'experiment' were to be run again, then after 3.5 billion years complex life may well have arisen -- but it would be unlikey to be Human life.

That life on Earth evolved into Humans is part of the natural history of life on Earth -- it is explained by evolution, rather than predicted.

If by your comments you mean that evolution cannot explain how complex life comes about from less complex life, then you should probably take the matter to the science forum.


ETA: You mean the latter:

Natural selection accounts for bacteria becoming resistant to various antibiotics whether they are over used by physicians or challenged by experimentalists in petri dishes with said chemicals. It accounts for the variation in features among the different "races" of humans now walking the earth. It accounts for the presence of the sickle cell gene in African Americans. And so forth. However, it does not account for your becoming as incredibly smart as you are having started from a one celled bug 3.5 billion years ago. Natural selection doesn't address that at all. There is no evidence whatsoever, zero empiric evidence, for that. Natural selection most decidedly cannot be invoked as explanatory with regard to something so marvelously exotic and potent as that dynamic which gave rise to the divergence of so many different living systems from common ancestors. Something of a different catagory altogether did that, made you so smart and beautiful in the way that you are.

 

[Patrick1000]

I was not posting about evolution per se

Of course natural selection needs variety to work upon, but that's provided by imperfect copying. I don't see why there should be a limit upon the complexity which results.

If by your comments you mean there is nothing within the theory of evolution which requires that Humanity should be the result of the process, then that is correct. If the 'experiment' were to be run again, then after 3.5 billion years complex life may well have arisen -- but it would be unlikey to be Human life.

That life on Earth evolved into Humans is part of the natural history of life on Earth -- it is explained by evolution, rather than predicted.

If by your comments you mean that evolution cannot explain how complex life comes about from less complex life, then you should probably take the matter to the science forum.


ETA: You mean the latter:

I was not posting about evolution per se. My latter posts were just clarifications given the "questions" asked of me(and questions implied).

My original point was that Natural Selection as conventionally presented by modern day biologists is not compatible with, is inconsistent with, Christianity, Judaism, Islam.

 

[Craig B]

I was not posting about evolution per se. My latter posts were just clarifications given the "questions" asked of me(and questions implied).

My original point was that Natural Selection as conventionally presented by modern day biologists is not compatible with, is inconsistent with, Christianity, Judaism, Islam.

No, not at all. You are saying that it did not operate in ("does not address", your very words) the process which separates the wise beautiful you from a mere one celled bug. Please be consistent. You mean God created us, and natural selection, which is capable only of inflicting sickle cell on black people and similar small scale things had nothing to do with the formation of species So it is not a question of presentation by biologists. However they presented it, you would reject it.

By the way, not only is natural selection incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, Islam. They are also mutually incompatible, which is why their adherents have spent most of the last couple of millennia murdering and torturing one another.

 

[Resume]

Natural selection most decidedly cannot be invoked as explanatory with regard to something so marvelously exotic and potent as that dynamic which gave rise to the divergence of so many different living systems from common ancestors. Something of a different catagory altogether did that, made you so smart and beautiful in the way that you are.

Bare assertion.

 

[Paulhoff]

The religious love to quote science all the time to prove that evolution isn’t true and the big bang couldn’t happen.

Paul

 

[Patrick1000]

I am an atheist. I do not believe in God

No, not at all. You are saying that it did not operate in ("does not address", your very words) the process which separates the wise beautiful you from a mere one celled bug. Please be consistent. You mean God created us, and natural selection, which is capable only of inflicting sickle cell on black people and similar small scale things had nothing to do with the formation of species So it is not a question of presentation by biologists. However they presented it, you would reject it.

By the way, not only is natural selection incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, Islam. They are also mutually incompatible, which is why their adherents have spent most of the last couple of millennia murdering and torturing one another.

My point is Natural Selection as conventionally presented in terms of a series of many many many random mutations, does not explain "the origin of species", does not explain the divergence of species from common ancestors which I believe there is fairly good evidence for. The most significant evidence for common ancestry in my mind being the shared genetic code, from sunflowers to whales.

I have no objection to people dragging God into this if they want. I am an atheist and don't believe that I was made by an intelligent creator, but I do not get stressed out when people make such unsubstantiated claims.

It does bother me though when creationists make the point that when evolution is taught in schools as unintentional, and purposeless and therefore a theory with an atheist agenda, they, the atheists are not treated fairly. They have a valid point, absolutely correct there they are. If evolution, natural selection is to be taught in schools as a process that occurs without direction, without purpose, without goal, then this needs to be acknowledged as the atheist rhetoric that it is, and creationists as a consequence have every right to ask that their views be similarly presented to students. Natural Selection is a secular presentation of atheism and needs to be acknowledged as such.

As an atheist myself, but one not buying into the notion of natural selection(environmental pressure responded to adaptively by living systems through the mechanism of random mutation, whether that be a single random mutation occurring in an instant, or many many many chance mutations occurring over millions or billions of years) as explanatory with regard to the issue of common ancestry, and as providing an explanation for the origin of species mystery, I keep my mind open to other possibilities given my recognition of natural selection's inadequacies.

That said, my sense is that this may be one area where we, when all is said and done, never turn up much despite great efforts. Natural selection is obviously inadequate to explain why we are the way we are, how we came to be, but there is nothing better out their to point to and say, "Look! that is what accounts for all of this". So this is what I mean by the issues of species origins and common ancestry being beyond our ken, the ken of human understanding. It may be. I am not sure, but it may be simply beyond our reach, our abilities, to understand. Sure as shoot is way more complicated than rocket science, by a light year.

My main point in the thread again is that Natural Selection and Christianity , Judaism, Islam, are incompatible, inconsistent with one another. Natural Selection says, no purpose, mindless, directionless. Christianity says God made me with careful studied attention.

I know, the religious fighting is very dumb. Guess the fighting must at root really be about something else, like land, water, oil and other stuff. The religion is just a "cover".

 

[citizenzen]

There is zero evidence of this hypothesis and, in addition, if it were true, a god that doesn't interact with the Universe, then humans would have no way of having awareness of said god. It's a paradox that suggests the Deist god is no more than an apology for god beliefs. At a minimum there is zero evidence for such a god. So why bother with this irrelevant hypothesis? Simply to accomodate theists?

Of course there is zero evidence, I just made it up (although there may be existing belief systems that it resembles). Don't try to make sense of it. That's not the point. On the other hand, if you try to make sense of the many Gods and religions that have sprung up over time you'll end up with the same conclusion.

Yet those beliefs existed, and influenced people and culture. And along with those beliefs people still advanced science and technology. History is rife with idiotic and irrational religions. Yet despite that fact, man never stopped inventing, never stopped investigating, never stopped conducting science.

Turn that last paragraph around ... Yet science existed, and influenced people and culture. And along with science people still invented new gods and beliefs. History is rife with invention and technological advancement. Yet despite that fact, man never stopped imagining gods, never stopped inventing religions, never stopped their quest for the spiritual.

That sounds like coexistence to me. That sounds like compatibility.

 

[Patrick1000]

I agree with you Skeptic Ginger, but old habits die hard.

Why should I care now given the current evidence is people fabricate god myths and there is no evidence to the contrary?

I agree with you Skeptic Ginger, but old habits die hard. Once upon memorable times right here in the USA, American Indians employed myths of various sorts including creation myths to explain the world, this world. In those times, they needed those myths, and it is easy to see why and how they were "effective" and not harmful, as "untrue" as those same myths might be construed today.

Despite the "untruth", I envy them, the native Americans, that life, that way of being, at least what I know of it for some of the groups. I think the Indians that lived near my home in California were happy most of the time, better off than us in most fundamental ways, and their "religion" was useful in the sense of providing a means of achieving peace with the problem of existence.

Now the stuff, religious stuff, is way way way counter productive, but I imagine the thought of being cut loose and adrift without God is just too freaky for the community as a whole to countenance. Must be a fear driven dynamic more than anything.

 

[citizenzen]

Your own dictionary reference gives a third definition: consistent; congruous (often followed by with): His claims are not compatible with the facts.

And if that is the definition, then I'll agree. Religion is not "compatible".

I'm sure glad we were able to work that out.

Somebody should alert religion.

 

[Patrick1000]

It is crazy but.....

And if that is the definition, then I'll agree. Religion is not "compatible".

I'm sure glad we were able to work that out.

Somebody should alert religion.

It is crazy but....., sometimes I think of being in Saint Peter's in Rome and remember standing before the Pieta, bedazzled. Michaelangelo was really on to something there, and that something is rooted deep. Our sense of suffering in life, compassion its solution.

The Tibetans say wisdom without compassion is cold, compassion without wisdom is sentimental. We need both. The scientists never come up with good stuff like that, seldom do anyway.

So the draw is understandable on many levels, at least for me. But for the most part citizenzen, I am so with you. The religious stuff for the most part is almost too silly to be believed in even the remotest of senses. That is, when viewed from our present perspective.

 

[Hokulele]

Before people get too worked up about Patrick's claims, they should read his Moon hoax claims over in Conspiracy Theories. Apparently Patrick is a medical doctor who doesn't understand evolutionary theory...

:boggle:

 

[Visual Purple]

If evolution, natural selection is to be taught in schools as a process that occurs without direction, without purpose, without goal, then this needs to be acknowledged as the atheist rhetoric that it is, and creationists as a consequence have every right to ask that their views be similarly presented to students. Natural Selection is a secular presentation of atheism and needs to be acknowledged as such.

Science doesn't do "purpose" in the sense of ultimate purpose, "to what end," or teleology. It has nothing to say about it. If anything is being said about purpose in that sense, one way or another, does at least imply an agenda. People sometimes fall into this language when explaining that science does not recognize "higher" and "lower" organisms, that there is not a built in "upward" in natural selection. Teachers should avoid such language, or at least be careful to explain.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have spent many years studying science, religion(theology/mysticism) philosophy and find no incompatibility in the essence of what they say about what they are addressing.

This particular debate appears to have emerged out of the science versus religion battle which has emerged in the US over recent years. In which the various arguments and entrenched positions encountered on this forum are the manifestation.

Having said this I should also point out that within and between differing religions there has been a similar friction historically. Due to territorial and political disputes. This has often drowned out the essential messages around which the religions were formed in the first place.

THe intelligent thinker should have no cause to conclude a fundamental incompatibility.

So when the scientific evidence leads one to the conclusion gods beliefs originated as fiction and nothing more, how does the scientist theist reconcile that problem? "It's OK, my god beliefs are fiction, they serve a purpose anyway?"

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wouldn't say this is entirely true, as there are certain things accepted as axiomatic in science that are founded on assumptions (or "leaps of faith", if you prefer ). For example, we have to assume that the universe is consistent in order to be able to apply the scientific method at all.

Although personally I believe this is a pretty safe assumption, the fact that the universe appears to be consistent from our point of view does not mean it always has been or always will be.

Scientific assumptions are based on current evidence and subject to change. God beliefs are based on dogma and not subject to change based on new findings.

 

[Patrick1000]

But they don't avoid this Visual Purple

Science doesn't do "purpose" in the sense of ultimate purpose, "to what end," or teleology. It has nothing to say about it. If anything is being said about purpose in that sense, one way or another, does at least imply an agenda. People sometimes fall into this language when explaining that science does not recognize "higher" and "lower" organisms, that there is not a built in "upward" in natural selection. Teachers should avoid such language, or at least be careful to explain.

HAve you ever heard mainstream bhiologists say God may have worked through the process of NAtural Selection to create us. I have heard it a few times, but not mainstreamers. For the most part, the emphasis when presenting the nature of mutation in the process of natural selection is on its futrue of being chance based, unintentional, mindless, purposeless.

This opens the doors for the creationists. why should they not ask for equal time?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

.... To most religious people, religion tells them how the world works, and those answers tend to be very important to them. ....

And religious beliefs from all over the globe consistently conflict with what we find about how the world works using the scientific process. No religion got it right which is all the more evidence god beliefs were made up by humans and there was no divine knowledge imparted by a supernatural entity involved.

 

[Hokulele]

Scientific assumptions are based on current evidence and subject to change. God beliefs are based on dogma and not subject to change based on new findings.

If the universe is not consistent, the scientific method falls to pieces, so if we have to change that assumption, science would be subject to elimination, not just change. As I said, I believe it is a safe assumption, but in order for science to even be a valid methodology, it must make that "leap of faith".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

People were convinced Newton was right about gravity, why not? And lo and behold, now they say he was wrong. But how can Albert Einstein's General Relativity be correct? It is not consistent/compatible with Quantum Mechanics.

Just because there is strong evidence that living things seem to have common ancestry, does not mean that we understand how that came about. It doesn't follow we understand its process. I see no reason to buy into the idea that millions of undirected/chance mutations leading to environmental adaptations occurring over the course of billions of years are responsible for the probable common ancestry of all living things. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for that. There is plenty of conjecture about this being evolution's mechanism, but there is nothing empirical supporting that proposition.

To say bacteria become resistant to penicillin when so exposed proves to me bacteria may become resistant to penicillin and that natural selection works therein, in that particular case, in this very very limited sense. A bacteria that wasn't resistant to penicillin becomes resistant. Just because there is empiric evidence for natural selection occurring in this extremely limited sense doesn't mean a theorist is entitled to make this big leap and a much broader claim, that the same process that accounts for penicillin resistance in bacteria proves such a process could create people from unicellular organisms over the course of 3.5 billion years. Hence my analogy with the hot air balloon floating, but not being able to go to the moon.

Becoming resistant to penicillin, and becoming a person are two different things, as is floating in the earth's atmosphere and leaving that atmosphere and going to the moon. There is absolutely no empiric evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the presumed common ancestry of all living things owes to the process of natural selection at the molecular level as conventionally presented today.

Science and its Modern Theory of Evolution" are very much incompatible, inconsistent with religion, like General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are inconsistent/incompatible. They cannot both be true.

The Modern Theory of Evolution suggests that living things change over time through the process of natural selection wherein the environment pressures organisms/living systems and those systems overcome or match that pressure, survive, by virtue of adapting/changing through a process which is wholly without intention. It is a purposeless process, mindless, undirected, without spirit.

Religious worldviews, occidental ones anyway, claim that you and I were made with a purpose, with an intention in mind. One of those intentions was/is that we understand ourselves to be in a relationship with the self aware creative intelligence that made us, God. So if it is the case that I ultimately developed/derived from primitive life forms of which there is fossil evidence for such dating back 3.5 billion years, and if it is also the case that I hold a religious world view, that is, it is also the case I believe myself to have been created with intention, then the process whereby these ancient life forms changed over the course of 3.5 billion years to become me is not the process of natural selection. For that process is an undirected, random chance mutation based process , and given my world view, that I am not the product of anything random, but am instead the product of a process very very very intentional, I as a religious person must look to other explanations, explanations other than natural selection to explain my being who I am, what I am.

This is off topic. Your conclusions are based on less knowledge than the rest of us are operating on. It's not my job to try to educate you. It appears it would take a few years. Suffice it to say I recommend you get a good book on advances in genetic science if you want to know how one goes from a single celled organism to a human being.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If the universe is not consistent, the scientific method falls to pieces, so if we have to change that assumption, science would be subject to elimination, not just change. As I said, I believe it is a safe assumption, but in order for science to even be a valid methodology, it must make that "leap of faith".

The scientific method does not "fall to pieces", it trudges forward to accomodate the new information. I'm not sure why you find an inconsistent Universe impossible to investigate.