Why do some non-theists and theists alike believe the opposite of god (s) is science?

Oh good Lord, this is how Monday is starting out?

@Adirondackwannabe Yes, Happy Monday! I haven’t slept in a month so all days are flowing through me without names.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Nothing like a light question to start the day. I don’t think either side has all the answers. It’s the circle of life and we just have to go with it.

@Adirondackwannabe Well, as I mentioned elsewhere, religion questions are light to me because it’s not a trigger topic for me like it is for some people. What I’m asking is ‘why are there these two particular sides?’ Clearly, the truth is that there are many sides and many ways people find answers to all their questions, which is what I guess you’re saying but…why is the ‘war’ between theists and non-theists often presented as ‘science is inferior’ vs. ‘science is superior’...inferior to what? superior to what?

Hey, haven’t you heard? Some people don’t like questions that allow people to criticise religion or god :P

There is the debate that the entire notion of god (not religion, just whatever god is) is out of the view of science, due to the elusive nature of the notion (meaning, no one knows what “it” is, so how can we apply it to physical measure).

Others think the opposite, that even the notion can applied to the scientific method.

I think some people are looking at the notion of god as a tangible, physical entity. When some think of how the universe was created, we may tend to think of a physical creation by a physical entity. And if not, some still see some type of “spirit” or whatever. Whether it was some entity that just “set off” the creation, or did something else, people are measuring the notion of god in different ways.

Concerning your main question, people are confusing science with the scientific method, rationalism, skeptism, critical thinking etc. If we can’t measure “god”, or miracles, or believe humans can walk on water, that is something that is in opposition to the scientific method and critical thought.

No one knows what god is, but when people make claims about god and its actions, that is what is in opposition to critical thought, because there’s nothing to measure in the first place.

@Adirondackwannabe This is the best Monday start, ever. I’m “on” coffee, so I’m ready for action!

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I think people that are deeply invested in one side or the other think they have all the answers so they feel the need to attack the other’s position. Do I know all the anwers? No. So I’ll respect other’s views.

@Blackberry In my head, science, as a field, is often at odds with critical thought. Many scientists believe their work is objective without recognizing what constrains them, socially (or financially), to the topics they study or research. The scientific method is one of humanity’s greatest inventions, so to speak, and I stand by it but I don’t see how it can be applied to religion though I do get what you’re saying…some religious scientists have tried and are still trying to prove the physicality of some religious ideas…people have been trying to weigh the soul, to see the angels, auras, whatever…many research institutions/colleges have departments that, supposedly, bring these two warring sides together…I find that fascinating…

@Adirondackwannabe Not to sound like a bitch (:)~) but what does not knowing all the answers have to do with respecting or not respecting views of others? That is, you should respect people or their views as you choose but not because you don’t know the answer to something.

Tradition maybe? I could not agree more that religion and science do not need to be at war.

Some religious people want or need their religion to have all the answers. The problem is that book does not have all the amswers to the mysteries of the universe. It was written before modern science.

An example in history that lives on today, to go with my tradition answer: The plague was the devil. Later science made discoveries about disease, bacterias and viruses. Yet still, we hear plague is a punishment from God, look at the horrible things some extreme religious leaders said about AIDS.

The church in history worried about losing control of the people I think. Galileo was first criticized by the Catholic church, but later they promoted his discoveries. I think the Catholic church is one of the better examples of being able to separate religion and science as far as Christianity goes. From what I can surmise they see God and the bible as matters for the soul, and science as an explanation of the physical world.

I attribute this to a lack of information and understanding. There IS such a thing as fact. If the facts, when proven incontrovertably, challenge some aspect of belief, then belief must change.

All right. I find that within the amount of time I have taken to “craft my response”, the points I was making have been covered by @Simone_De_Beauvoir, @JLeslie, and @CaptainHarley.

Points all around for agreeing with me at lightning speed. :P

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – I also have not been sleeping, so I apologize if I am misinterpreting your question.

Are you advocating Stephen Jay Gould’s “nonoverlapping magisteria” position?

@Blackberry I can criticize any particular aspect of humanity I want. I often criticize every aspect of humanity, for good measure’s sake. I am teaching a class later on in the semester and I grouped religion and science together into one class (actually, I’ll teach it in two, but you get my drift) because, whether I like it or not, people do group those together (regardless of the actual connotation of this correlation) and I must address some of what we’re talking about here in my class.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Yeah, that’s what I mean. We’re trying to find the answer to “everything”, so if our great scientific method can’t figure it out, it’s either too great and awesome to be subjected to science, or, it doesn’t exist because it can’t be “discovered”.

Essentially, both sides are using “science” as a “weapon” to prove they are right. And that is another problem, that we’re assuming one side is right. But…as we all know, there’s no winner or loser in this debate, because no one knows, even if we’re 99% sure.

@tom_g Not especially, since I have no clue about that. :) But, can you elaborate his position?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Didn’t sound like that at all. I think Blackberry answered it for me.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir ”describes the NOMA principle as “the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).” Wiki.

In fact religion and science are on the same side. Both are about gaining knowledge. The Catholic church, at one time, was the largest support of science in the world.

The problem started happening when scientific knowledge began to contradict church received wisdom. I think this is where the split began, and as religion sought to defend its knowledge against the contradictions of science, the split seemed to grow wider and wider, at least, among most of the people.

I think it is mostly a psychological issue. People, as we know, don’t like change. The knowledge taught through religion was seen as crucial to survival and when the scientific method lead to new knowledge that questioned or contradicted the old, it seemed like there was a great danger, Most people did not want to change, especially about fundamental philosophical issues.

So people dug in their heels against the new knowledge and clung to the old, and an oppositional relationship between religiously derived knowledge and scientifically derived knowledge prospered. The battle goes on an on.

Part of the problem is that much of the knowledge does not appear to affect most people in their daily lives. So they can safely hew to religious knowledge without really hurting their lives. For practical things, most people accept the new knowledge, but about fundamental matters of the universe, no one really has to care about the nature of a black hole or indeed, even how evolution works. It works whether or not people believe in it.

As long as scientists make technology based on the science that religious people don’t believe in without pushing it down anyone’s throat, people can go on believing what they want. Hell, there are people who believe there are magical creatures inside computers. You don’t need to know how something works in order to use it. Thus people can believe almost anything they want and it won’t affect their ability to function.

It hurts around the margins, such as with funding for science, but if we advance more slowly and poor people have higher mortality rates and none of us is as well off as we could be, we don’t notice because we don’t have that hypothetical alternate future to compare ourselves to. So religious knowledge can lay claim to vast expanses of human cranial matter, and we don’t know the harm it causes.

Thus the battle goes on as people hew to traditional knowledge instead of opening their minds to new explanations for phenomena. It doesn’t matter that these explanation work better. The old ones work well enough, and the harm they cause is imperceptible, even if it is quite significant.

Scientists, of course, see the harm, and get very frustrated and angry. Probably most non-religious folk see it, as well. Since religious people are emotionally attached to their way of knowing, it is impossible to dislodge them and open their minds to try to understand what the scientific method is. Many refuse to learn the first thing about science and are proud of their ignorance (religious jellies excluded, of course).

For this reason, there is really no point in talking to religious people. They will either have experiences conforming to their religion, or perhaps something will open them up to wanting a greater understanding of the scientific method and changing their standards of evidence required to know something. Argument can not do it.

A discussion between atheists and theists is not a discussion. It’s a contradiction (albeit a sophisticated one) as Monty Python might show us. People engage in these discussion either to throw brickbats at each other (in a non-violent way—at least, over the internet), or just to needle each other.

A question like this is a very subtle form of instigation. It asks people to explain the inexplicable and in the process, will surely set loose the fires of hell. Or the wrath of heaven. Whatever. What fun!

I don’t know. I have never understood the separation.

Perhaps it’s simply the dividing of faith that triggers it. From both standpoints faith/belief is essential to the wellbeing of their respective areas. Because they both “feed from the same bowl” as it were they are in some ways competing thus putting them at odds with each other. Add a naturally defensive nature when one’s beliefs and resources are threatened and a touch of feeling the need to “demonize” the competitors to improve your own position and there you have it.

Yes Simone, glad you brought this topic up. Creationists have no problem seeing science as God letting us have a behind the scenes look at how He does things.

My confirmation instructor always said that we didn’t have to fear science. Science is always discovering things we never knew.We are confidant in our faith and in the end, science will validate God.

Yeah, science get’s a bad press sometimes. I mean the opposite of god surely must be….well, nothing!

Maybe it is some of the natural divide. A large majority of scientists are athiests. The uneducated tend to be easily swayed by religion, strict in their devotion, and lack scientific knowledge. Than there is this huge group of people in the middle who are thiests, educated, and value science. We probably focus two much on the extremes, what divides the two groups, than the people who easily see how God and science can coexist.

I always enjoy these questions, at least to the point (and sometimes ‘just after the point’) where they turn into flame wars. (Sometimes the first flame is cute or at least interesting.)

It has always seemed to me that science and religion, for all the good that they can do, fail at answering the most fundamental aspects of each other. Namely, science won’t ever tell us “why” we are here to enjoy this universe, and religion never adequately or sensibly answers the questions of “how” we got to be here.

Though I’m an agnostic atheist, I define my atheism in a different way than some: “suppose there is a god; so what?” I’m not opposed to the idea or the Being, but it has no relevance to me. You could call me a meh-theist, if that’s an acceptable word. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t like to ponder the Infinite.

I look around at all of the “stuff” that surrounds us, and I don’t just mean the stuff on my desk, in this world, or the Solar System. I mean – where the hell did the Universe come from? Why? I don’t believe that science can ever say “where it all came from” or why it’s here in the first place. If religion wants to tackle that question, then I think it’s a fine one to address.

On the other hand, selected fragments of scrolls written thousands of years ago by the deep thinkers of their day – and I salute them – should not be the extent of our scientific observation, either. Nor should the limits of their thought define the limits of our own.

Science and religion are natural partners, in fact. Ego seems to get in the way.

One of my favorite quotes is relevant to this:

“There is no shortcut to truth.”

-Alfred North Whitehead, from his work Religion in the Making

Definitely worth a read.

It seems to me that science and religion get along pretty well until the science conflicts with a particular religious claim. The US is seeing this friction right now with evolution/modern biology. There are people, such as Francis Collins, who are able to somehow resolve the conflicts between the evidence and faith, but there are also people who cannot. Those people are loud, have some power, and are able to affect science education in this country.

Regarding Gould’s NOMA – I never agreed with his assessment primarily because there are claims that we call “religious” which are not merely spiritual claims. They are claims about the state of the natural world, and those claims are testable. Once a claim is testable, we use the best system we have for testing this: science. The attack on modern biology in this country, in my opinion, is one that has such legs because we have adopted Gould’s position to some degree.

For me, God and science go hand in hand.

@Leanne1986

Great answer! I agree! : )

I’m shocked this rant got serious answers. Of course science and religion are in conflict. God-based religion* is a way of understanding the world based on fairy tales made up thousands of years ago. Science is a way of understanding the world based on empirical observation.

The two modes of reasoning have yielded wildly contradictory conclusions over and over, yet for some reason millions of people still cling to things that are factually untrue despite irrefutable evidence and a scientific consensus to the contrary. Education and public policy decisions have been made based on fairy tales instead of facts. Of course scientists are going to get all butt hurt at religion.

On top of this, not only have leaders of major religious movements actively persecuted scientists, but by some definitions, they have decided that belief in god shouldn’t even depend on proof!

The only “god” I can conceive of that’s reconcilable with religion is some kind of deist abstraction that is so far removed from the way god has been treated by major religions as to be unrecognizable.

*I am referring here to the religions with a defined god (Buddhism, Unitarianism, etc are exempted).

@nikipedia I also feel the same way, but I answered Simone’s question from the basis of god and science only, because many of us know that religion and god are two very different things.

@nikipedia Unclench, this wasn’t a rant because, again, this topic doesn’t make me butt hurt like you. I understand the history of the conflict quite well, thanks. I am also not interested in expanding upon the exhausted topic of why religion doesn’t work for you or others who think science is better. You know my stance and politics but this particular questions is trying to get at something different than what you’re giving me. What you conceive of, as of this moment, is irrelevant.

@Blackberry @tom_g Yes, I suppose (in an ideal world) I would be aligned with Gould’s views.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – Are you at all concerned that this view doesn’t seem to explain the current state of affairs within the US? @nikipedia touched on that a bit.

@nikipedia I disagree that religion is a mode of learning. That’s not ultimately, in my opinion, why people choose to be religious, and this is why the question is an interesting one for me.

@tom_g I am absolutely concerned and I leave that particular kind of bitching out of that thread because I wouldn’t be able to maintain clarity since the negative ways religion is part of our public and political life are absolutely maddening.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, I don’t really think they’re “opposites” but I do think they represent two very different and often conflicting approaches to how we understand the world.

But a lot of this has to do with what the word “God” means. A lot of people use the word “God” to mean a vast, unknowable force, or even the universe itself. Obviously science admits the possibility of vast unknowable forces, and science understands the universe to exist. So if you want to label these things “God,” then whatever.

On the other hand, religious people use the word “God” to generally mean a specific deity; in the English-speaking world, Yahweh, the god of the Bible. I think this god, and the theology and epistomology surrounding him, is very much in conflict with science. First of all the Bible’s description of how Yahweh created the world is in direct conflict with science. But more broadly, the way Yahweh-worshipers go about understanding the universe is often very different than the way scientists understand it. Yahweh-worshipers start out taking the Bible as true—whether literally or “metaphorically,” (whatever that means)—and then interpreting reality to match up to this assumption. You can’t do real science like this, and if you try to do science around what the Bible says, you’ll end up with holes.

@Qingu Yes, I agree with your last sentence most of all.

There are things that can’t be explained by science but there are things that we just interpret as being done by a god while the science did that part. Don’t you wanna hear gods and science work together? I mean whatever god is out there I’m sure he supports science .

I agree that science and religion do not need to be enemies, but I think you hit a lot of the reasons why it is perceived as so.

Over time the scientific process has answered a lot of questions that people used to need the concept of gods to explain. Lightning is no longer Zeus throwing bolts around, and now the big bang theory threatens the idea of God’s seven days, and I get the sense that people don’t like the idea of scientific theories trying to replace gods as explanations for life’s mysteries. They believe science is trying to eliminate the “need” for gods in explaining how the universe works.

And then there’s evolution, which as you said can absolutely coexist with religion as evolution is an explanation of change, not of origin, but I think the reason people butt heads over that is the implication that humans evolved from apes, rather than being special creatures set down upon the earth exactly as we are now by a deity.

I wish this perceived polarization were not so, and I don’t think it needs to be so, but because they tend to wander onto very similar territories, I don’t think the polarization will end any time soon.

@Hibernate And I’m sure many believers would disagree with your last statement.

@Mariah, I disagree that evolution can coexist with religion. If you look at Christians who believe in evolution, it isn’t so much “coexisting” as it’s them shoving aside or ignoring the parts of their religion that contradict evolution.

But evolution isn’t the only thing that does this by a long shot. Heliocentrism is another good example. The Bible clearly says the sun revolves around the earth. Instead of this statement “coexisting” with heliocentrim, it’s simply ignored, or interpreted nonsensically as a “metaphor” despite metaphorically signifying nothing.

Morals are another example of not coexisting with the Bible. The Bible explicitly allows slavery, says that women are the property of men, and commands genocide. But our modern, post-enlightenment morals say all these things are terrible. So what do Christians do? Well, these nasty parts of the Bible become “metaphors” (whatever that means), or they become part of “back in Israel’s day,” which somehow means we can safely ignore what they say and pretend that God never ordered these laws.

The history of so-called “coexistence” between religion and modern thought has simply been the steady shrinking and cordoning-off of religious belief—to make room for modern thought.

The nature of faith is to believe what you are told and in some cases to look within for confirmation.

The nature of science is to look out into the world, seeking to disprove what you have been told, and to work against the impulse to say, “I know because it feels right.”

@Simone_De_Beauvoir yes. As long as you can say different people won’t agree with it.

Science understands things by breaking them down and analysing the components in finer and finer detail until all you are looking at is a grey soup. There is nothing wrong with that except it isn’t completely satisfying. Science may explain everything but it will never be the full story and it isn’t the only way of appreciating the world. Science can explain the thunderbolt, but the thunderbolt that strikes us cannot be glibly explained away. The flowers in the vase on the windowsill are just that, the flowers in the vase on the windowsill.

@Qingu I am not a theist so I’m not the person to turn to for explanations or justification about the things that are in the Bible that are either factually or morally wrong. I am confused by those things too.

When I say that evolution can coexist with Christianity, I mean that reasonable Christians can accept the widely agreed upon fact that the process of evolution occurs. They might not believe that humans are a result of evolution, which you and I can disagree with all we want, but the ideas can – mostly – coincide.

@Mariah, but that’s what I’m disputing. I don’t think there’s an “coinciding” going on when modern Christians accept evolution. Accepting evolution doesn’t “coincide” with anything the Bible says… it just replaces what the Bible says. When a Christian accepts evolution, he or she is ignoring or interpreting away their religion’s sacred text says about the topic.

Which is fine, but I think we should call a spade a spade.

The Bible was written by man. We do not know how long one day is in God’s eyes.

BTW: Not all theists follow the bible.

I guess if we insist that someone only truly accepts the process of evolution if they accept any and all implications of evolution (including, most importantly, the idea that humans evolved from apes) then you can say that Christians cannot logically accept both a literal interpretation of the Bible (which is pretty much only held by extremists anyway) and evolution side by side. I don’t know, I don’t believe that what is written in the Bible is all factual, so I’m not really the person to defend anything it says.

My main purpose in saying that these things can coexist is to promote the idea that Christians and scientists don’t have to be sworn enemies and can actually play nice. If this means that Christians have to readjust their view of how literal the Bible is, that’s fine with me.

@SpatzieLover I don’t know know if your BTW was aimed at me, but don’t worry, I am well aware. By saying I am not a theist I am clarifying that I will not defend anybody’s holy book.

Hmmph! My family traces its roots all the way back to single-celled protozoans, @Mariah. Those of you descended from apes are all johnny-come-lately.

@Mariah Sorry I missed edit…It was aimed to @Qingu

@SpatzieLover, it’s not just the length of days. It’s also the order of events (for example, the Earth is made before the sun; plants grow before animals). It’s also that god is described as single-handedly shaping and creating each kind of animal, when evolution says that all living things evolved over time from a single-celled common ancestor.

If you want to interpret all of that as “metaphors” because it conflicts with scientific fact, fine. But I’m not sure what you’d say that they’re metaphors for. In fact, it would seem that such an interpretation is really just a nice euphemistic way of saying “the Bible is wrong here.”

Whoa, did you know the bibles are on sparknotes? Lol.

Suppose there is a god. He made everything that we have discovered through science. It was all there well before we started questioning and experimenting. He may not have given us the answers, but he gave us the intelligence to figure them out for ourselves. I see no conflict.

I actually do think science does have all of the answers – we just don’t know how to find them yet. We don’t even know what all of the questions are.

@Supacase the conflict is that this god bears absolutely no resemblance to the gods described in the Bible or the Quran.

If you are positing the existence of a god who creates “through science,” who did not create humans from clay, who did not give laws to our ancestors, who did not impregnate Mary who then gave birth to Jesus, who did not die for our sins and resurrect himself as part of some salvation deal, and/or who did not reveal the Quran to Muhammad in a cave—you are simply talking about something completely different than what religious people are talking about. In fact the “God” you are talking about bears far more resemblance to “The Atheistic Universe” than any being put on the table by religious people.

It’s not clear exactly how life started here. Some theorize that life started in the heat vents from the core superheating water in the ocean to organize the building blocks of life into the first replicating organism. Other theorize it happened in the ice flows. Still others contend it started where the oceans lap against the shore creating a primordial slime. Who knows, maybe it happened in all three or more. Or maybe it was the hand of God.

What seems clear is that all the writings about God have come from man not from God. Is there a chance that a God really does exist, maybe. Is there a chance that he has actually spoken with someone, hell who knows. What seems clear to me is that if there is a God and he has spoken (in some form) to man, it is unlikely we understood the explanation.

Most of the discussion here seems to be about science and organized religion rather than god. I couldn’t count the number of separate organized religions, what are the odds that just one of them got it right?

Are cows really sacred? What ever happened to not eating fish on Friday? If there really is a God, is his only real concern that we worship him? Seems like an unlikely scenario. It seems to me that if there is a conflict between religion and science it is with the human writings about religion rather than any conflict with the concepts. But who knows, maybe it was Eric Van Danken that got it right.

Becuase Creationism believes God created the World and the opposite to this would be how to explain the creation of the World with a complete abscence of God-Science has done this through the theory of Evolution.Another Theory would be that we are Aliens imported onto Earth from another Planet such as the Star Trek Theory,but this doesn’t quite explain where the original Aliens came from or how they were born.