Why science and religion are not compatible

[westprog]

Heh. It's not my rule. I was pointing out that westprog was coming across to me as hypocritical for the very reason you cited: namely, he was saying Dinwar shouldn't make comments on aspects of religion due to his being atheist.

Yes, if I'd said that it would be hypocritical. I hope that I've explained.

 

[tsig]

I believe this has been proven false time and time again.

Where doctrine and reality clash, only a minority cling to doctrine while over time the majority embrace scientific reality. This has been demonstrated in the polling I referred to in an earlier post ...




If you said, "When doctrine and reality clash, there is a reluctance to cast aside doctrine," then I would completely agree with you. People are naturally reluctant to change core beliefs, whatever they are. History, however, shows that over time this reluctance is won over by the weight of evidence.

If you expect people to immediately change their minds the instance new information becomes available, then you are being unrealistic. Change takes time. But in the end history shows that in the conflict between doctrine and reality, reality wins.

Of course, that's why the majority of mankind is non religious. Oh wait,,,we have the risen Christ, Mohamed talking with angels and Joe Smith talking thru his hat all of which are accepted as reality by a large segment of humanity.

 

[Dinwar]

Yes, if I'd said that it would be hypocritical. I hope that I've explained.

Only after I provided the Roman Catholic Catechism. And even after that people have been questioning how I can possibly know about religion. You may not have said it, but you certainly acted on the premise.

If you expect people to immediately change their minds the instance new information becomes available, then you are being unrealistic.

If someone believes something that contradicts the data, than they are wrong, simple as that. If they believe something that conflicts with science, due to their religious belief, then that religion, to that extent, conflicts with science. Again, simple as that.

 

[citizenzen]

If someone believes something that contradicts the data, than they are wrong, simple as that. If they believe something that conflicts with science, due to their religious belief, then that religion, to that extent, conflicts with science. Again, simple as that.

So when is a person wrong over String Theory?

When is the magic point that that becomes accepted science?

I just want to make sure.

I'd hate to be "wrong".

It's as simple as that.

 

[Dinwar]

When is the magic point that that becomes accepted science?

If you knew how science worked, this would be obvious: When the individual researchers believe that enough data supports the theory. Unlike religion, there's no central authority in science, not even in any individual discipline.

And I never said that religion was necessarily wrong when it conflicted with science--just that it did in fact, and to that extent, conflict with science. It's something of a tautology, so I'm rather surprised that anyone objects to it. To argue otherwise is to argue that one can conflict with something without conflicting with it.

 

[Egg]

If you knew how science worked, this would be obvious: When the individual researchers believe that enough data supports the theory. Unlike religion, there's no central authority in science, not even in any individual discipline.

And I never said that religion was necessarily wrong when it conflicted with science--just that it did in fact, and to that extent, conflict with science. It's something of a tautology, so I'm rather surprised that anyone objects to it. To argue otherwise is to argue that one can conflict with something without conflicting with it.

So when other individual scientists disagree with the researchers' conclusions we would say that science conflicts with science?

 

[citizenzen]

So when is a person wrong over String Theory?

When is the magic point that that becomes accepted science?

If you knew how science worked, this would be obvious: When the individual researchers believe that enough data supports the theory.

Dinwar, I believe that you are forgetting some very import aspects of our time-honored scientific method ...

Confirmation

Science is a social enterprise, and scientific work tends to be accepted by the scientific community when it has been confirmed. Crucially, experimental and theoretical results must be reproduced by others within the scientific community. Researchers have given their lives for this vision; Georg Wilhelm Richmann was killed by ball lightning (1753) when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite-flying experiment of Benjamin Franklin.

To protect against bad science and fraudulent data, government research-granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation, and science journals including Nature and Science, have a policy that researchers must archive their data and methods so other researchers can test the data and methods and build on the research that has gone before. Scientific data archiving can be done at a number of national archives in the U.S. or in the World Data Center.​

Reproducibility

Reproducibility is the ability of an experiment or study to be accurately reproduced, or replicated, by someone else working independently. It is one of the main principles of the scientific method.

The results of an experiment performed by a particular researcher or group of researchers are generally evaluated by other independent researchers who repeat the same experiment themselves, based on the original experimental description (see independent review). Then they see if their experiment gives similar results to those reported by the original group. The result values are said to be commensurate if they are obtained (in distinct experimental trials) according to the same reproducible experimental description and procedure.

The basic idea can be seen in Aristotle's dictum that there is no scientific knowledge of the individual, where the word used for individual in Greek had the connotation of the idiosyncratic, or wholly isolated occurrence. Thus all knowledge, all science, necessarily involves the formation of general concepts and the invocation of their corresponding symbols in language (cf. Turner).​

Scientific consensus

Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the scientific method. Nevertheless, consensus may be based on both scientific arguments and the scientific method.

Consensus is normally achieved through communication at conferences, the publication process, replication (reproducible results by others) and peer review. These lead to a situation in which those within the discipline can often recognize such a consensus where it exists, but communicating to outsiders that consensus has been reached can be difficult, because the 'normal' debates through which science progresses may seem to outsiders as contestation.​

That you would suggest something becomes accepted science when an individual believes they have enough data to support a theory is frankly mind-boggling. What was that you said about me not knowing how science works?

 

[Egg]

Of course, that's why the majority of mankind is non religious. Oh wait,,,we have the risen Christ, Mohamed talking with angels and Joe Smith talking thru his hat all of which are accepted as reality by a large segment of humanity.

I don't suppose many do accept all of those things, but I get your meaning.

What would you propose as a scientific test for a one-off miracle that happened centuries ago?

 

[Leumas]

I don't suppose many do accept all of those things, but I get your meaning.

What would you propose as a scientific test for a one-off miracle that happened centuries ago?

Examine the heads of people who believe it...and see how to sell them more rubbish.....wait...the second part is actually being done all the time.

 

[westprog]

What would you propose as a scientific test for a one-off miracle that happened centuries ago?

Don't hold your breath for that one. The actual scientific tests are slow in coming.

 

[Dani]

So when other individual scientists disagree with the researchers' conclusions we would say that science conflicts with science?

No. Disagreement makes science advance, while in the context religion, it tends to produce splits.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is only a clash where science and religion come to different conclusions. ....

So when the scientific conclusion based on the evidence is that gods are fiction...... I think that clears it up nicely.

 

[dafydd]

I don't suppose many do accept all of those things, but I get your meaning.

What would you propose as a scientific test for a one-off miracle that happened centuries ago?

Alleged miracle.

 

[epix]

Science accepts only the highest available attainable standards. The ideas it develops are usually non-intuitive, but are much more reliable to work with. There is no faith in science: Only challenge.

That's an attribute disconnected from the reality. Intuitive thinking is deeply rooted in every person's basic mental organization and there is no bit of science done using processes that the brain is not wired for. But intuitive thinking can be properly "channeled" and optimised. This is a trick that is not easy to learn but some folks that made great leaps in sciences were just born with this kind of ability. Many people believe that the thinking process goes along with what is later presented in the prestigious Nature journal. That's far from the truth.

Religion is not a method of investigation and it doesn't claim to be. It's disturbing that so many people lack the skill to realize the difference between religion and its crossovers.

 

[Mudcat]

Religion is not a method of investigation and it doesn't claim to be.

It doesn't matter what it does or doesn't claimed to be. Religion is what we would call any other system of ancient beliefs mythology. And mythology, despite what you might say of it, was an early attempt by man to understand the world.

It was early science, though I'm using a very loose definition of science here.

 

[Humes fork]

There are certainly some interesting discussions to be had around a subject such as that brought up in the OP.

Indeed, I'm fascinated by that this thread on average has increased with almost two pages a day since its creation.

Unfortunately, the first issue we hit is that the word "religion" is just far too broad to really make any pointed statements about it at all. So we just end up having people criticising (or maybe defending) some narrow, blinkered idea based on limited personal experience which is whatever is conjured in the mind for them when they talk about "religion".

Yes, but religion (like science) is a human enterprise, and it makes sense to look at what many religious people believe. And they believe things like "God created the world" as well as various historical claims about the exodus, the patriarchs, prophets and so on. I'm not making this up, there are billions of people who believe this.

We also have the fairly fuzzy "incompatible with science" which could mean a number of things. Are we talking about having beliefs that prevent someone from utilising scientific methodology? Might we be referring to a disagreement in fundamental assumptions about the universe which need to be in place for science to have any legitimacy?

"Incompatible with science" means that they contradict each other.

If we mean that biases are present which skew the way evidence is interpreted, this is certainly not limited to those with religious leanings. I'd be surprised if anybody would make it into such a category and even if they might, who could be trusted to be unbiased enough to be the judge of that?

Sure, that's why we have peer-review.

If we're just talking about holding beliefs which don't fit into the findings of the mainstream scientific community, then there are certainly many religious people who would qualify, but there would also be many highly qualified non-religious scientists who would also fit that description over one thing or another.

Umm, yeah? Does it somehow make religion compatible with science?

I kind of get the impression that actually what some people mean is that theism is generally at odds with a materialist or positivist view of the universe. This may well be the case, but it's a clash of philosophy rather than science.

See above.

An interesting thing about the issue of science is that if it does demonstrate something near enough conclusively, it's rare that even those at the extremes of religion will refute it (so long as they understand the evidence). Creationists will usually attempt to argue over scientific issues, rather than dismiss science in principle. To me, that doesn't suggest incompatibility - science doesn't insist on a particular interpretation of evidence or a belief in particular conclusions (even if certain flavours of religion arguably do).

As has been (repeatedly) stated, the incompability between science and religion is not a priori, but a result. We could imagine a universe in which creationism was the best hypothesis, it's just not the universe we find ourselves in.

 

[epix]

It doesn't matter what it does or doesn't claimed to be. Religion is what we would call any other system of ancient beliefs mythology. And mythology, despite what you might say of it, was an early attempt by man to understand the world.

It was early science, though I'm using a very loose definition of science here.

Your argumentation leads toward this inescapable comparison: Homo erectus was one of the nature's attempts to evolve special species. Homo sapiens is not compatible with Homo erectus. Duh. Why does it take over 700posts to discuss a similar issue?

 

[Resume]

What would you propose as a scientific test for a one-off miracle that happened centuries ago?

I'd first try to establish such a thing actually occurred.

 

[Egg]

"Incompatible with science" means that they contradict each other.

Sure, that's why we have peer-review.

Umm, yeah? Does it somehow make religion compatible with science?

That's whittled it down a bit, but what does "contradicting science" actually mean? Science isn't a set of doctrines or beliefs that can be contradicted and there are plenty of grey areas. As you point out, when scientists contradict other scientists we don't claim science is incompatible with itself, we sometimes even call it "peer-review". Disagreeing with scientists' findings isn't necessarily an incompatibility with science.

And no, this doesn't somehow make religion compatible with science (other than possibly semantically), I'm trying to clarify what point is being made here. If we phrase the idea in a less controversial and broad sweeping way as something like "some religions have doctrines which are in disagreement with the consensus of mainstream science" what point is being made beyond that?

Saying science and religion are not compatible makes it sound like religious people might be incapable of being scientists which is demonstratively untrue.

 

[citizenzen]

"Incompatible with science" means that they contradict each other.

Here ... I'll try to frame this argument in a more rational way. And I urge everybody to try to rewrite the sentence above in a way that makes more sense ...

"Some aspects of religion are incompatible with our current understanding of science."