Faith involves believing without evidence - does this hamper the ability to think scientifically?

Question

One needs to be sceptical / critical when trying to learn science and contributing to scientific knowledge.by research, etc. Has anyone experienced the contradiction between faith and science? Faith means believing something without proof, but any true scientist cannot do that - atleast, that's what I seem to think, although I know many famous scientists who were religious. I don't like the view that we must "segregate" the two - faith and science - into two "compartments" in one's mental life, because this implies duplicity in one's thinking patterns. Is faith required to explain what science cannot? If so, are we justified in pursuing faith, or should we pursue science alone, since it gives fact, rather than fantasy? I understand the importance of "the moral of the story", in religion - one must not throw the baby (the moral) out with the bath water (the story which is fiction / metaphor). But I hate going only half-way in religion - ie., not taking the Bible as literal truth.

Answer 1

honestly, religion has become the roadblock to advancement. we do evolve, physically and transpersonally...small examples, tonsils and spleens seem to have less of a need as organs than in much earlier times, this might be a form of adaptation, but to a religious person, it is some sort of act of a god..that is the explanation always given when something cannot be understood, faith...it relaxes the mind and gives the human the chance to have an out rather than face the unknown, and admit it, faith would make it be some thick saucy "feeling" as to what something is and by so doing, faith makes solid that which is not there....there is another word for that, it is called self-deception.

Answer 2

Yes, although there are scientists who believe in God, these are not people who have a literal faith. Science involves questioning and querying and faith involves shutting out questions and queries in complete belief - one is pretty much the antithesis of the other.

Personally, I don't find faith a comfortable idea - it seems impossible to believe without questioning. Questioning is what has got the human race where we are today - if no one had questioned whether there was a better way to carry things than on one's back we'd never have tamed a horse and invented a wheel.

I don't see how you could take the Bible as a literal truth - people like to say that it's the word of God, but it's been written and re-written and mistranslated (and even correctly translated, words in one language are hardly ever the direct correlation of a word in another language and worlds and meanings slowly get skewed over time as language itself changes) and mauled about for thousands of years (including the old testament) and half of it is missing (all the apocrypha - who decided what was and what wasn't worth going in?) and besides that it's all seen though different human eyes - even Matthew, Mark, Luke and John differ in the telling. How can something that doesn't agree within itself be the literal truth? It's impossible.

What I don't understand is why religious people think that a lack of belief in God means that you can't appreciate the universe - yes I appreciate it and wonder at it but I still don't believe something made it!

My lack of belief in God is not faith - it's a complete lack of it, I don't need proof that there isn't a God, although as far as I am concerned the lack of proof is proof enough.

Answer 3

Faith and science are coming so much closer together especially when you look at the quantum physics level - ref: film 'what the bleep do we know'.
You seem to be approaching the spiritual understanding as a scientist - try standing back from all you have ever learned in life and STOP THINKING - get to the 'all is energy' level and there you have God and science holding hands. We need to alter our perspective and vibrational level to find 'proof' that spirituality exhists - go to the non thinking, peace within - meditate!
And hey the Bible was written by man for spiritual 'infants', like a parrable, by accepting the spiritual truth that runs through the stories of the bible we can embrace the message but not the message bringer - it is the point of the message that is the spiritual truth not the contents on the page, that brings the faith and understanding. So stop beating yourself up over this one! - friendly smile

Answer 4

I am a chemist, but I am still religious. A person can think scientifically and spiritually because essentially science did come from religion. Science was not considered such in ancient times but religion was very powerful. Science grew out of religion to explain those things that people could observe. At first they were all placed under God's, Abba's, the Great Diety's power but eventually people came to understand the more intricate workings of the universe and the observations were not necessarily given to the One's power. This does not have to be the case though and therefore science and religion can be placed together.

Answer 5

As you pose it, you may be facing an intractable dilemma. It is certainly true that some deeply religious people excel in science. But depending on the "science" in question, scriptural literalism may, or may not, be a definite show-stopper. For example, most religious chemists don't have to develop elaborate intellectual soft-shoe routines to feel comfortable about the direction their field is taking. (And even here, they'd do well to steer clear of the silly arguments re the so-called “carbon-dating controversy”.) And even though I don’t consider math a science as such, those good folks are more or less totally exempt from worries of scriptural inconsistencies with relation to their work. (Even otherwise ignorant tribal elders knew how to add.)

Where the rubber meets the road is in fields like biology and some branches of physics. Sticking with bio, it’s no accident that 80% of National Academy Of Science biologists are atheists. And current thinking in the field has it that “biology doesn’t make sense without evolution.” Again, even here there are very creative people who keep their religion, but scriptural literalism would be next to impossible to maintain as consistent with the findings and work.

So, for example, if you want to believe that Joshua stopped the sun from orbiting the earth, then either keep away from astronomy & physics, or take the scriptures as allegorical and not literal.

Answer 6

In the Methodist faith, this is encouraged. However, faith, hoope and love are not rational constructs. In true scientific argumentation, they do not have a valid place.

Oddly enough, most of the srguments I see on this topic basically place Christians in the light of being foklks who have given up on being ration and are blind to anything but their beliefs and faith. This is far away from the truth.

I suggest the book of Proverbs IMO. The fear of God is keeping the mind open to learning wisdom. That means that a faithful person can indeed have a very scientific mind nd outlook on life. Its too bad Newsweek and the media are taken as the Gospel and not the Bible.......

Answer 7

Brother, faith isn't believing without evidence.

Faith is believing the evidence of things not seen.

Do you believe in the structure of the atom? In the existence of black holes? Science accepts these things (and many more) as working theories (which is what most scientific "facts" actually are).

Mathematicians accept the existence of the square root of -1. Of course, no such number can possibly exist! But many equations would otherwise be insolvable.

Faith doesn't contradict any of the "hard" sciences -- if you look closely enough, you'll see that it's integral to EACH of them. At the VERY deepest level, no one (with an "open" scientific mind) who works closely at the frontiers of any science can resist being awed at the wonders of this existence that our creator has given us.

Answer 8

I guess it all depends on your definition of "faith". There are a great many atheists who have total faith that there is no God at all. They believe this without any kind of proof. Amazing, actually.
There are many things science can explain, and that is fine. There are also things science cannot explain, and that's fine also. Just remember, your Bible was never meant to be a science textbook. After all, if God had told us how to create a universe, complete with life, we'd all be running around, creating universes. Talk about chaos!!

Answer 9

Beleiving in the gosple message is not some "leap in the dark", it's a walk in the light of God's revelation to mankind. There are many proofs to back up the essentials of the gospel account but true faith is a gift of God.

Click on the Answers button @ http://web.express56.com/~bromar/ and you will find many articles with scientific evidence to support the Bible.

Answer 10

Many scientists use science to bolster faith- meaning that they believe in a divine creation and our spiritual history, while looking to explain current mysteries using science. In a sense they believe that science itself is divine...a higher power's works manifested before us. Not exactly what I believe, but I have read of scientists reconciling this problem that way...for the opposite view, one that discusses the need to outgrow religion as a whole, read selections of Bertrand Russell, a late 20th century English philosopher. Good, critical stuff...