In what way is scientific truth the same /different from religious truth.

What kind of truth are you referring to?

Belief alters truth, for one.

I’d attempt to answer more, but it seems that Monty is crafting yet another epic quip. I’ll let him work his magic ;)

I think there are many things religious which happen to be a fact and can be outright proven. But when you believe in a religion or higher deity you have faith not necessarily truth.

Religious Truth: Only people of x religion believe y is the truth. Those who do not believe y do not usually belong to group x.

Scientific Truth: People of many groups (a, b, c…) believe x. And, x cannot be proved incorrect by a consensus of groups (a, b, c…).

I think I confused myself.

Well one of my favorites is the “Men have one less rib” thing, everyone should know about the Adam and Eve thing where God made Eve out of one Adam’s ribs so men have one less rib, but it’s wrong. Men and Women have the same amount of ribs and that part is a bunch of malarky. Also like there’s that mountain in Turkey or something where they think Noah’s Ark landed, but the catch is, you can’t walk up the mountain and you can’t fly over it, so there is no way of knowing except by the words out of the mouths of the people that claim it’s holiness. Oh not to mention that science says the Earth is like 4 point something billion years old and the bible says that it’s like a few thousand. Um, I can’t think of too much else off the top of my head, but I do say that I am not Christian and one of my favorite things to say to the overly religious people who say I’ll go to hell for not believing is “My religion says you’ll go to hell, what do you think about them apples?”.

Religious truth? Is there such a thing? Who would possibly designate it? How would you ever get a consensus, much less agreement? (And I’m being completely serious, not sarcastic).

I liken it to knowing about a person.
You have the tangible facts: Brown hair, Brown eyes, 5’10”
And you have the discernible facts: kind, happy, loving

Scientific truth is what we can point to as proven and commonly understood while Religious truth is still a mystery that looks slightly different depending on the observer.
——

Know that there are two kinds of knowledge: the knowledge of the essence of a thing and the knowledge of its qualities. The essence of a thing is known through its qualities; otherwise, it is unknown and hidden.

As our knowledge of things, even of created and limited things, is knowledge of their qualities and not of their essence, how is it possible to comprehend in its essence the Divine Reality, which is unlimited? ... Knowing God, therefore, means the comprehension and the knowledge of His attributes, and not of His Reality. This knowledge of the attributes is also proportioned to the capacity and power of man; it is not absolute.

`Abdu’l-Bahá

Religions have absolute truth. They can be certain they know something. Scientists know that you can never be sure you have truth. Even things that have lots of evidence might be misleading.

I can’t seem to find the exact quote, but Richard Dawkins once summed this up nicely:

The difference between science and religion is that science works.

Image

This thread seems to mostly be an occasion to praise science and bash religion. I would argue that we should be discussing the distinction between myth and fact, and not a battle between science and religion. There is no such battle. Myth does indeed have failings when it is used in place of fact, but the converse is also true. Also, there is overlap between the two; a thing may have equal degrees of both mythical and factual truth. So also, a thing may have one kind of truth and lack the other. In either case, there is still a difference between these two types of truth. I find that Jacques Ellul’s The Meaning of the City contains a nice articulation of this distinction. Ellul says that he believes that “in order to be precise, every author should give his definition of myth,” since it is used to mean such varied things. In the first footnote explaining his use of the term “myth,” Ellul says the following:

“When I use the word I mean this: the addition of theological significance to a fact which in itself, as an historical (or supposed to be such), psychological or human fact, has no such obvious significance. Its role is therefore to make a fact “meaningful,” to show it up as bearing the revelation of God, whereas in its materiality it is neither meaningful nor of the nature of revelation. It does not destroy the historical reality of the event, but on the contrary gives it its full dimensions.”

Much later in the book, he says in another footnote:

“Must we again call to mind that here we are dealing with a myth? Not a falsehood, but a sign, not material reality, but truth, not legend, but the revealed word, not a description, but a message, not an identity, but an identification.”

In using the story of Ninevah (and its conversion at the preaching of Jonah), Ellul points out some problems with the story that seem to preclude its historical veracity. Rather than making an effort to explain how our historical knowledge is false or incomplete, he simply states, “This story cannot be real, but it is true.”

Scientific truths are concerned with creating reliable knowledge, made up of verifiable facts. Religious truths are different; they are literary truths. In literature, something “rings true” not because it is factual but because it makes internal connections leading to insight and wisdom. In this respect, fiction can access deep truths about the human psyche and the human condition.

@monty and aidie: while the answers here are all very good and well thought, yours are particularly insightful.
My old testament professor in seminary had us first start our semester’s studies discussing myth. There is truth to be found everywhere. I liken it to Aesop’s fables. While none of those short stories are in fact, historical fact, they all reveal truth.
So does the Bible, which contains both historical truth and religious, or revealed truth.
This type of truth offers to me a much richer life than if I lived solely from what can be found in science books.

I tend to agree with the last three myth-based Christian responses above with one significant caveat. I think picking an exclusive literary truth to organize your entire life around can be dangerous and limiting. I think it is a given the metaphor activates many, but not all, human imaginations in a way that helps them realize some truths about life. But, if you organize your life around one set of metaphors, you could miss out on the dynamic process of your own natural development. Christianity contains some amazing mythic content, but it probably does not belong at the top of the poetic pantheon.

Maybe your question wants to say, “How do material truths and poetic truths interact?” Religion is just institutionalized poetry.

Mythical truths/religious truths (Plural of truth? It even looks ridiculous.) are individual and personal. No one person can say the truth they find in the Bible is the the truth everyone finds in the Bible, ergo, no definitive truth. But, I am fairly sure we all experience gravity, ergo, definitive truth. I’m not saying our scientific explanation of gravity is absolute truth (science will admit this as well), but gravity itself is universally definitive, ergo, universally true.

@Del Love the chart!

@hoeipdx
I do engage a breadth of literary truths, but the reason I elevate one to the status of holy text is because I hold that there are some particularly deep and important truths expressed there that can only be engaged through a subjective faith (and by “subjective,” I am not referring to the presence or lack of veraciousness).

@tinyfaery
Yes, truth can be pluralized. [poor example removed by me] The following well-known statement includes three postulated truths:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Science concerns itself solely with the phenomenal world. Its truths have to do with bringing our conceptual model of the physical world into agreement with our actual experience of the world. We feel that we‘ve found some measure of truth (though scientists are loath to use that term) when the way we think about a particular aspect of the world is in perfect alignment with what we actually observe.

In this way of looking at truth, objectivity is prioritized. The assumption is that phenomena exist and function independently of the observer and his thought, and so the benchmark of truth is the object of observation, not the subject who observes. If what we think about the world is at odds with observable phenomena, then our thinking is suspect and we withhold the stamp of truth.

It’s harder to generalize about what constitutes religious truth. In some cases, there is simply an imposition of a particular conceptual model about the world based on the claim that the source of the imposed model is privy to information not available through observation alone. The acceptance of these “truths” is predicated on confidence in the reliability of the source. If that confidence is high enough, then the conceptual model can even supercede data from one’s own observations.

But there are other kinds of religious truth. In some cases, religion concerns itself mainly with the subject/object relationship itself. The independence of the phenomenal world from the observing subject is called into question. While science has tentatively considered this to be a consequence of certain theories, it can’t fully explore the merging of subject and object without abandoning its core assumption. So this becomes the domain of religion. Religion alone can ask the question, “What if our conventional model of subject and object isn’t the way things fundamentally are? What if there is a level of being at which that dichotomy doesn’t exist? Is that level open to our experience?” If that is the case, as some religions claim, then that would constitute a kind of truth that science would never be able to postulate or confirm.

Seen in this light, the phenomenal world and the thinking subject are only manifestations of each other. They can be considered separately, as science does, and that can have great practical utility. But religion admits the possibility that this separation is only a provisional one, not the fundamental truth, and this has profound moral utility.

But, is metaphorical exclusivity the primary poetic tool that is the most utilitarian method of exploring the potential unity between subject and object?

These are some pretty important Religious truths:

Hindu: This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. – Mahabrata 5:1517

Judaic: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary – Talmud, Shabbat 31A

Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. -Udana-Varga 5:18

Christianity: Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. – Matthew 7:12

Muslim: None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. – Number 13

Baha’i: Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself. – Baha’u’llah

Notice the same theme repeated across the religious spectrum. Must be some truth to it.

Yes, but those truths are not only religious truths.

@ontheroad: actually, I’m not sure those edicts are religious truths. A guideline as to what you “should do” is not a truth. If my mother says, “Don’t talk with your mouth full”, it’s not a truth of the household.
.
.

What I tend to think of as religious truths are the moments of enlightenment where you come to know of something for certain through divine inspiration. When I was young I once went to a place of breathtaking beauty in rural China. And looking at the mountains, I suddenly had this very overwhelmingly feeling of joy; and a sense of meaning in the universe. [my words are a poor approximation to the certainty and clarity of that feeling]

In this sense, I think of religious truth as the moment where a truth of the universe (“this is how things are/will come to pass”) becomes realised or revealed. Buddha under the bodhi tree seems to be the classic example; or John’s revelations.

@tinyfaery – I think that the majority of people would agree that Nature came before human conceptions of both Science and Religion. In that regard, Gravity is not only a scientific truth, but not any less valid. It is just our way of explaining a natural law or principle.

@lifeflame – I think that enlightenment or divine inspiration is also a religious truth (though the definition of divine could be argued here by those seeking disagreement rather than unity). Another would be the concept that there is a power greater than ourselves and still outside of our ability to fully understand.

My concept of religious truths are principles that exist across the spectrum. But I’ll refer to my first answer that religious truths are not set facts and thus are more open to individual interpretation because we don’t yet have all the answers.

Science codifies what we have defined as understood and Religion codifies what we believe.
Both are meant for the betterment of society and the progress of humankind.

“Both are meant for the betterment of society and the progress of humankind.”
If only it always worked out that way.

The fundamental observation about scientific truth is that it is falsifiable. In other words, there’s always an outcome of an experiment that could cause us to question what we already know.

Religious truths tend to be unfalsifiable, meaning they’re not scientific. There’s no way to argue with them, or test them. You either believe them or you don’t.

Some types of problems—ethical ones, say—are very difficult to put in a scientific context: how do you test if a choice is ethical in any objective way? On the other hand, people have been very clever at expanding their ability to look at the world in an organized way (this is the heart of the scientific method, after all), and it’s been able to increase it’s sphere of influence more and more. Certain religious power centers tends to dislike it whenever they lose influence, as they inevitably do when science moves into its territory.

Plenty more to say on this topic, but I think the issue of falsifiability (this was Karl Popper’s contribution to the discussion) is the real answer to your question.

On this matter of subjective interpretation, belief and falsifiability, the mystic traditions (which are to be found among all of the major world religions) insist that religious truth isn’t subject to personal interpretation. People outside these traditions think that because they emphasize finding truth for oneself by introspection, that truth must be a personal one, what’s “true for me”. But that’s not the case.

Even though they look inward for truth, these traditions assert that this “inward” is the same for all beings. Beyond all of the personal psychology that differentiates each of us is, they say, the same being. Penetrate far enough into this one being and “inward” is found to be “outward” as well.

That makes no sense as a concept, but that doesn’t matter in the context of these traditions because they say that this is all verifiable by direct experience. You don’t need to understand it intellectually because you can experience it first-hand. That experience is so concrete and consistent that its legitimacy can be verified by questioning.

Yes, there are some traditions like Buddhism who are very precise about how to search for truth introspectively… e.g., ways to meditate to attain a spiritual insight; obstacles you are likely to encounter ; flashes of peak experiences of Oneness; the development into a plateau experience…

Ken Wilber put it really nicely, I think, when he said: if you have a really complicated mathematical problem, you don’t get the general public to vote on the answer. That would make no sense, because the general public has not enough experience to understand the math problem or the proof. However, this mathematical truth has to hold within the community of mathematicians; and furthermore, any one who devoted enough time to acquaint themselves with the necessary math should come to the same conclusion.

So to build on Harp – the mystical traditions would argue that there is truth that is verifiable through direct experience.

So, then, if I understand what you are saying, 2 + 2 = 4 because we can each look “within” and verify that this is so. And it is so for everyone who agrees to the terms of the equation.

Indeed, we are able to arrive at mathematical, literary and religious truths because we are all more alike than we are different in our internal processes.

@tiny – “If only it always worked out that way.” I agree, just look what the atomic bomb did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or what the Nazi tanks and bombers did to Europe, or anthrax and chemical warfare…oh, were you speaking of science or religion?

@monty – “we are all more alike than we are different in our internal processes.” I agree fully.
—-

I just read something on the plane that reminded me of this conversation:

the fundamental basis which comprises all spiritual things…which lasts and is established in all the prophetic cycles. It will never be abrogated, for it is spiritual and not material truth; it is faith, knowledge, certitude, justice, piety, righteousness, trustworthiness, love of God, benevolence, purity, detachment, humility, meekness, patience and constancy. It shows mercy to the poor, defends the oppressed, gives to the wretched and uplifts the fallen.
(Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 46)

Both actually.

Fair enough.

Galileo expressed compactly the difference between scientific truth and religious truth. He said that science tells how the heavens go and religion tells how to go to heaven. In other words, science provides us with laws of how things operate. It tells us that cerain conditions will lead to certain results. What science is not able to do is to tell us which results should be achieved.

Science provides the tools and religion tells us how they should be used. Scientific truths can be verified by experiment. Religious truths can only be evaluated by what we feel in our hearts. Religious statements of fact have to be interpreted metaphorically. Religion gets itself into trouble when it takes metaphors, like God, to be facts.

Scientific proof is literal. Religious proof figurative.