Why science can't replace religion - Vox article

[teachercd]

20 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I see absolutely no reason why both Religion and Science can't co-exist as valid thought processes and beliefs.  I find people who claim they can't, usually have ulterior motives....even if they don't admit it to themselves.

Yep!

[ZRod]

I've always liked the theory from NDT that  'God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.' Although, I don't think humankind will ever be able to explain everything about the universe and our existence, so God will always reside somewhere. 

 

[Landlord]

2 hours ago, Nebfanatic said:

Do you have to believe this idea as factual to be religious? Could that 6000 years not be interpreted in an entirely different way to provide another perspective on the relativity of time? Thats my point.

 

 

No, that's MY point hahaha. Of course you don't have to believe that is factual to be religious. Of course it can, and must be interpreted a different way. That's the point I was making. Religion and science encroach on each others' domains all the time, and it's not that one must win, just that one always will. The age of the earth, for instance, is something that a person can not simultaneously hold a scientific and a religion-based literal fundamentalist belief on. One will win out. Once you have knowledge pressure of one possible answer from one philosophy and means of understanding the world, and then you have another with a different answer from a different approach and a different methodology, but the answers are answering the same question, you will lean into one lens or the other. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Nebfanatic said:

You are throwing religious ideas to the wayside because they aren't scientifically factual but why do they have to be? Why can't I acknowledge earth is a billion years old scientifically and still ponder the meaning of the bibles timeline? You are so sure in science being more correct in some areas but I don't think you should be. Science is finding out all of the time just how wrong we are about many things. Like I said, the idea that anyone knows more than anyone else because they pursue science and logic is absurd. The dogmatic religious guy is just as right as anyone else because we all know nothing. Obviously the Earth isn't flat and no amount of belief will change that, but these perspectives have some merit in a world beyond our physical perception. I think the main issue you are getting at is when people apply metaphor or a metaphysical idea to the physical, observable world and it is in contradiction with what we are observing. 

 

This is all going beyond my original post. Yes ideas contradict and yes there is tension between science and religion but their shouldn't be. Both worlds get too big for their britches. Science is simply an observation of the world around us and making further assumptions based on our observations. When they try and assume the unobservable and declare God isn't real for this reason or the next they have gone too far. Religion is a relationship with a source energy. This relationship is personal and unique to each individual who enters into said relationship. Trying to aggressively overlay your set of beliefs onto everything and every person has gone too far. They can easily coexist but they can also easily clash. Openmindness is key in both areas because either side can become incredibly dogmatic. Its always good to remember 'my knowledge is but a grain of sand' 

 

 

Edit: I do not believe or endorse flat earth beliefs. Had to make a quick disclaimer 

 

I think you're just drastically misunderstanding my point. I am a deeply spiritual person. Maybe one of the most so on this board. I'm also a materialist/empiricist/pragmatist. Sometimes. Depends. I'm not throwing religious ideas to the wayside, or trying to beat science into people, or discouraging contemplation, or aggressively trying to make sure everyone believes the same way I do. Not even close on any of that.

 

I'm not even saying whether there 'should' or 'should not' be tension between science and religion - I'm only saying that there is. Always has been, and likely always will be. But I'm optimistic about the future ways they might intersect. 

[BigRedBuster]

50 minutes ago, ZRod said:

I've always liked the theory from NDT that  'God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.' Although, I don't think humankind will ever be able to explain everything about the universe and our existence, so God will always reside somewhere. 

 

 

Naaa....not buying that quote.

[Landlord]

51 minutes ago, ZRod said:

I've always liked the theory from NDT that  'God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.' Although, I don't think humankind will ever be able to explain everything about the universe and our existence, so God will always reside somewhere. 

 

 

To the contrary, I think. Well, kind of. I think that God being explained by NDT is a God worshipped by many people. Especially many Americans. It's a neatly packaged, fast food convenience God. But a God of deep cosmic and mystical thinking (the kind of God that you feel goofy even giving a name or a label like 'God' because it seems so silly and inadequate for the ideas being pondered) becomes more and more compelling the further you dive into the rabbit hole of science. For a good number of people at least.

 

Here's two interesting quotes from Rupert Sheldrake, a very well known English professor/researcher/author/biologist/etc., in a book of his:

 

“While I was an undergraduate, I didn’t doubt atheism, but I began to worry about the truth of mechanistic science. I found it hard to believe that the universe was nothing but a           machine, and that animals and plants were also machines, with no purposes or feelings, and that we too were machines, with brains that were essentially electronic computers. I started reading Goethe, who gave me the idea of a possible holistic science.”

 

“What I learned from living in India was the sense of God’s presence in the natural world… In the atheist universe of materialism and Neo-Darwinism, God is at best an optional extra, part of a belief system confined to the brains of believers. But as the sciences move beyond materialism, we are recovering a sense of the life inherent in nature as a whole, and in self-organizing systems at all levels of complexity.”

[ZRod]

Zeus and Thor, gods' of thunder; but thunder is the sound of super heated air resulting from lighting, which is an electrostatic discharge in clouds.

 

The moon and stars placed in the sky by God; but they are the result of billions of years of gravitational forces and collisions that broke, shapped and energized the celestial bodies.

 

Those are two examples of the recession of religion the way I see it. Religion attempted to explain a natural phenomenon until science was able to understand how it truly occurred. You can still find the beauty of God if you want though, something set all that in motion and science will likely never be able to explain the source of that catalyst/God.

[knapplc]

5 minutes ago, ZRod said:

Religion attempted to explain a natural phenomenon until science was able to understand how it truly occurred. You can still find the beauty of God if you want though, something set all that in motion and science will likely never be able to explain the source of that catalyst/God. 

 

Your second sentence falls into the same fallacy that made the first sentence. Just because we don't understand something (yet) does not mean there are gods. 

[Nebfanatic]

49 minutes ago, Landlord said:

 

 

No, that's MY point hahaha. Of course you don't have to believe that is factual to be religious. Of course it can, and must be interpreted a different way. That's the point I was making. Religion and science encroach on each others' domains all the time, and it's not that one must win, just that one always will. The age of the earth, for instance, is something that a person can not simultaneously hold a scientific and a religion-based literal fundamentalist belief on. One will win out. Once you have knowledge pressure of one possible answer from one philosophy and means of understanding the world, and then you have another with a different answer from a different approach and a different methodology, but the answers are answering the same question, you will lean into one lens or the other. 

 

 

 

I think you're just drastically misunderstanding my point. I am a deeply spiritual person. Maybe one of the most so on this board. I'm also a materialist/empiricist/pragmatist. Sometimes. Depends. I'm not throwing religious ideas to the wayside, or trying to beat science into people, or discouraging contemplation, or aggressively trying to make sure everyone believes the same way I do. Not even close on any of that.

 

I'm not even saying whether there 'should' or 'should not' be tension between science and religion - I'm only saying that there is. Always has been, and likely always will be. But I'm optimistic about the future ways they might intersect. 

We agree much more than we disagree. I love listening to Sheldrake. Alot of what I was saying wasn't directed right at you as well to be clear.

 

On a side note I think the best approach as a scientist is agnostic. There is no way of knowing by hard evidence whether or not God exists and there is really no use in trying.

 

I tend to believe God resides in the lived experience, something which cannot be quantified or observed but is directly related to the physical space we occupy and explore scientifically. Its extremely hard for many to seperate the two as they are entirely interconnected but are not the same thing. 

[ZRod]

14 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Your second sentence falls into the same fallacy that made the first sentence. Just because we don't understand something (yet) does not mean there are gods. 

I understand that, but I think it speaks to the human need to assign meaning and significance to things we don't fully understunderstand.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, ZRod said:

I understand that, but I think it speaks to the human need to assign meaning and significance to things we don't fully understunderstand.

 

It's one of the most fundamental human needs, but I don't think it's productive to resort to gods to answer questions. 

[Nebfanatic]

3 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

It's one of the most fundamental human needs, but I don't think it's productive to resort to gods to answer questions. 

Some would say God is the source from which all answers flow

[knapplc]

2 minutes ago, Nebfanatic said:

Some would say God is the source from which all answers flow

 

 

Too many questions come from the answer "god," the first of which is, "Which god?"

 

[ZRod]

10 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

It's one of the most fundamental human needs, but I don't think it's productive to resort to gods to answer questions. 

Agreed, but in my little chimp brain I can't see past the big bang; and it wonders what was on the other side of that, where did all this matter come from, how is it possible for something to exist where there was nothing, how is there even anything here at all. I can't see an explanation for that, and I feel like I'm going to glitch the Matrix, or I need a heavy dose of DMT to find the answers. That's why I view something greater, a god if you will, as a possibility. I'm not religious, but I find some virtue in the thought that there is something beyond our understanding, if that makes sense... Or at least it keeps me from going insane when I try to process the thought of how we even exist.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, ZRod said:

Agreed, but in my little chimp brain I can't see past the big bang; and it wonders what was on the other side of that, where did all this matter come from, how is it possible for something to exist where there was nothing, how is there even anything here to at all. I can't see an explanation for that, and I feel like I'm going to glitch the Matrix, or I need a heavy dose of DMT to find the answers. That's why I view something greater, a god if you will, as a possibility. I'm not religious, but I find some virtue in the thought that there is something beyond our understanding, if that makes sense... Or at least it keeps me from going insane when I try to process the thought of how we even exist.

 

Gods are certainly possible. But in the absence of any evidence of their existence, is it materially different to say that things I can't comprehend are science too deep for us to understand vs. a god did it?

[Landlord]

4 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Gods are certainly possible. But in the absence of any evidence of their existence, is it materially different to say that things I can't comprehend are science too deep for us to understand vs. a god did it?

 

 

Only if they're different and/or useful and helpful to you. 

 

Some days my conception of God is nothing more than the energy and physics sustaining the universe. Other days my conception of God is much closer to a personal conscious entity that knows me and has desires and intent for me and the world. Other days its somewhere in between. It all depends on what I'm looking at, why, and what I need from it. 

 

The language isn't that important imo unless you make it important. Many people serve the god of science/rationalism/imperialism/capitalism/whatever without naming them as gods. Many others serve "God" that's really just a snuggly security blanket for them when times are hard. Is that God any less of a god than anything else we don't call god but people still worship?