Can Religion and Science Coexist?

[damnedifIknow]

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In May 1988, a 13-year-old girl named Ashley King was admitted to Phoenix Children’s Hospital by court order. She had a tumor on her leg—an osteogenic sarcoma—that, writes Jerry Coyne in his book Faith Versus Fact, was “larger than a basketball,” and was causing her leg to decay while her body started to shut down. Ashley’s Christian Scientist parents, however, refused to allow doctors permission to amputate, and instead moved their daughter to a Christian Science sanatorium, where, in accordance with the tenets of their faith, “there was no medical care, not even pain medication.” Ashley’s mother and father arranged a collective pray-in to help her recover—to no avail. Three weeks later, she died.

This tragic story backs up the chief argument Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, makes in Faith Versus Fact, namely that “it is time for us to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term ‘person of faith’ as a compliment.” In the book’s 262 pages, Coyne tackles arguments stating that belief in God is a laudable quality, and reasons instead that faith is detrimental, even dangerous, and fundamentally incompatible with science, even while peacemakers try to find common ground between the two. Coyne, it should be noted, has spent much of his career objecting to religious rejection of Darwinism—he published a bestseller, Why Evolution Is True"

*One of the most significant examples of conflict between religion and science is the global-warming debate, and Coyne takes care to stress the religious roots of the arguments against climate change. He refers to Rick Santorum’s claims about it all being a “hoax” and the Illinois Representative John Shimkus’s 2009 Genesis-based testimony before a House subcommittee. Religion and climate-change denialism are inextricably linked, Coyne writes, because people of faith have a vested belief in “God’s stewardship of the planet, and his promise to preserve it until his return.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/religion-science-coexist-faith-versus-fact-coyne/396362/

[mr blur]

1. No, but can religion and anything coexist?

Religion is built on faith, which is certainty without evidence.

As long as there are religious people willing to say, "My beliefs are just as good as your facts" then it is impossible to take them seriously, and I see no reason why they should be treated with any more respect than, say, UFO conspiracists or Flat Earthers.

We are supposed to give up reason because they live their lives based on fantasy and fear?

Excellent thought from your clip:

“it is time for us to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term ‘person of faith’ as a compliment.”

[skepticscott]

2. Obviously they do "coexist"

But there are conflicts between them that cannot be completely reconciled. Despite the efforts of some in Religion to argue otherwise, they are not compatible, any more than democracy and slavery are compatible, despite the fact that many intelligent people at one time thought nothing of having the two "coexist".

And of course, all previous resolutions of conflicts between what science shows to be true and what religion declares to be true have been in favor of science. Every single one.

[mr blur]

4. OK, they obviously do exist, at the same time, but

as you say are irreconcilable. Think of the enormous cognitive dissonance necessary to claim to be both a scientist and a devout Catholic.

[Arugula Latte]

3. Short answer: No. Not really.

I know educated people who are Christians. They "believe" in evolution and know that science is explaining more and more of the workings of the universe. Yet, they still believe in a god and the magical zombie guy. So they are setting up two realms in their own minds, the realm in which things are believed because of evidence and vigorous scientific study, and the realm where things are a bit hazy and you have faith in things that obviously aren't "true" because you really want to buy into it. They would say science and religion co-exist, but in reality you can't have it both ways.

[Warpy]

5. Only if the religious don't mind a god that keeps getting smaller

as science fills in the gaps he's always resided in. Otherwise, it requires a degree of compartmentalization that a lot of people aren't capable of.

Mostly, they'll choose one or the other.

[DetlefK]

6. As neighbours? Yes. As roommates? No.

The philosophical and logical discrepancies between these two approaches of explaining the universe are too fundamental. They can exist separately, but you can never get them to work together, unless you conveniently start ignoring all the contradictions.

[AlbertCat]

7. Who cares?

Only one is "correct".... and we all know which one that has proven to be over and over and over....


Can theater and reality co-exist?

[olddots]

8. isn't science about studying beliefs

Where religion is about not studying beliefes ?

[bvf]

9. I would substitute "knowledge and understanding"

for "belief."

[passnobuck]

10. They do actually "coexist" but do they compliment each other?

And the answer from over 50 centuries of history of both religion and science and math is that they certainly do NOT compliment each other.

There are thousands of times in the last 5-6 thousand years of human history where one works to negate or immobilize the other.

I'm on the side of science, and let religious folks alone just as long as they keep their stuff out of my government and out of my science. But I find very few religious folks who want to stop meddling in science. They always think that they have more to add, but all they add is bullpucky and nonsense.

[RussBLib]

11. a religion that quit trying to have its way with people...

...and a religion that quits trying to force its views into public policy could co-exist with science.

They would have to give up all claims to an authority higher than the community of man.

Give it up, preacher! would take on a new meaning.

The sphere of religion would have to shrink down so much that all that is left is a simple faith in God or some kind of God.

Go to your churches. Listen to your sermons. Stay out of public office.

Jerry Coyne is right: A phrase such as "person of faith" should rightly be referred to as an albatross and not a compliment.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. I was reading a book which described the incompatibility

in world views between religion and science as "an assumption of knowledge" vs "an assumption of ignorance". I hadn't thought of it that way before, and it clarified to me why there simply is no middle ground.

The book is "Sapiens".

[onager]

13. Not here in East Jesus.

The local papers seem to run at least one letter or editorial per week "disproving" evolution. I keep waiting for the absolute deluge of Nobel Prizes that should be coming soon.

Just last week, one of the local savants wrote that, to convince religious believers, science needs to provide irrefutable proof of evolution.

Say what? Science doesn't do irrefutable. If somebody refuted the theory of gravity tomorrow, science would just get busy adjusting to the idea.

Religion does irrefutable. But not very well.

Example: I just read a history of the Papacy, and many modern Catholics must be unknowingly headed straight to Hell. Depending on whether their ancestors followed the Irrefutable Truths of the Pope in Avignon or the Pope in Rome. Since those two spent much of the 14th century merrily excommunicating all of each other's followers.