Why do people still believe religions over science...?

Question

... when religions have proved to be wrong so many times when it challenged scientific knowledge? For instance:

- the earth is flat: WRONG!
- the earth is the centre of the universe: WRONG!
- the sun goes round the earth: WRONG!
...

How come religion hasn't lost all of its prestige yet, when it talks about science?

Answer 1

Religion is about believing what you want to believe because it feels good. Science is about believing what is indicated by the evidence regardless of whether it makes you feel good. Therefore sometimes religion can be more attractive, even though it's fiction.

Answer 2

Science and Religion have different objectives. Science tries to explain HOW things work. Theories formed from experience can be tested by experiment. Religion is about WHY, giving meaning to the way things work. Theories formed by experience cannot be tested, only believed.

For an idea to be understood, it has to be presented in terms that make sense to the listener. One can't explain radio or television to a person who has no concept of electromagmagnetic waves. A car can only be magic to a person unfamiliar with electric motors, combustion engines or plain old gears.

No one works in a vacuum. We all rely on a "conventional wisdom" or "common sense" to guide our basic understanding of the world. It's like our operating system. We'd be hopeless if we had to figure out the world every time we woke up.

But this wisdom doesn't have to be correct. People understood the world was round before Isaac Newton theorized gravity, but they couldn't explain what holds the world "up". The concept of bodies flying around each other in the aether was probably a difficult sale. Now most people are comfortable with it.

Heliocentrism was even harder to accept because it LOOKS like the sun flies over the standing Earth. Only when people see how the theory explains seasons, phases and retrograde orbital loops better than the geocentric model can they accept the theory.

Science did not arrive fully formed. It stumbled out of religion, down wrong tracks like astrology, alchemy and spontaneous generation, until it learned how to operate. Results change constantly. Imperfect ideas are discarded in the light of new evidence. Newtonian mechanics works, mostly, but Einstein's theories work better, even though they're harder to comprehend and most people can't see the difference in ordinary life.

This sense of impermanence bothers some people. Who wants to believe that everything you know will eventually be proven wrong? And ideas that aren't fully comprehended don't stick in the mind. People fall back to the old system, which was good enough.

When scientific understanding reaches a new breakthrough, religion needs time to explain it, to give it meaning. Until then, people who seek permanence and meaning feel lost and reject the new ideas. So far, advancing cosmology has only made the Earth tinier and more off-center in the universe. Evolution proves that humans were not God's special creation. And the extinction of the dinosaurs proves both that God doesn't take care of everything and that there are a lot of missing chapters in Genesis. That can be threatening to someone who's spent their entire life believing the opposite.

When religion can explain WHY a scientific theory is so, religious people calm down. It's a new revelation because religious leaders have explained it on behalf of God. Scientists can come from anywhere and say anything without appealing to any permanent authority. We all know that things aren't really changing, we just understand better. But how can you judge a new idea as true without God's say-so?

It is this appeal to authority that keeps many religions in business. You can't trust people. Look at all the crackpot theories, hoaxes and urban legends! Only God can confirm the truth of something.

The only way to overcome a religious prejudice against science is through education. Either explain WHY a thing is (good luck!) or show how much better sense it makes than the old understanding. Be prepared to wait a generation or two (by which time something else will come up).

Answer 3

There is something very strange about religion, specifically the Abrahamic faiths and the effect they have had in the Western world. Look at the commandments and imagine a 'God' saying that, written thousands of years ago. They are still the foundations to what an uncomfortable majority would call the 'perfect society'. Christ was perfect for Europe: Rome, through Paul. Christianity is Judaism almost inverted, with God as a human-being (something completely unnaceptable to Orthodox Jews and Muslims: it makes sense if 'you' are all 'you' believe in though). The Catholic church approximated the Solomonic system with plenty of Eastern sensuality and Roman bureaucracy. With RC's degeneration and the Reformation, Jesus was taken even further from his original context and made a wholly personal Saviour from Original Sin (another Christian concept:the Holy Qu'ran says that Adam was forgiven by God). Muslims got in too, somehow...it's amazing that Mohammed managed to get them all 'in-line' with Christian/Judaic belief so quickly. Christians seem to be a big part of the theological problem because of Jesus. And it seems a moot point, like so much else with Judaism.

No matter "how", His wonders to perform, millions of people were united under a single God of Israel. Whatever the reason-that's the fact... and it keeps people wondering.

Maybe Christianity should stop calling itself Abrahamic and leave Islam and Judaism to get on with it. Atheism's doing a good job too though.

Freedom's only hope is that everything Moses knew he stole from Akhenaton. Or a paranoid android.


sweetdreamspussycat.

Answer 4

I am not sure that any religion said that the earth was flat or that the sun orbited the earth. But there is one religion that is supported by science. Islam. The Koran told us many things that are only now part of scientific knowledge. Things like how babies are formed in the womb, how the mountains act as a stabilizing force on the earth's surface. Check it out for yourself at www.islam101.com and you can see, if the Koran is not divinely inspired how did the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) know these things, he was not an educated man and these things were not known until the last 2 centuries.

Answer 5

And to think I was just reading a question about how Christian harass the good little scientists in their forums, sheesh.... Okay, I'll play.

Because science has yet to answer one very simple question. How did it all start? Where did the material that caused the big bang come from? and if you follow genesis, you'll notice that something written over two thousand years ago, pretty well reflects the Scientific theory of the History of the Universe, barring the difference in time lines.

Science is not there to kill God. It's there so that we can understand better what God has made. best wishes.

Answer 6

First of all, the Bible does not say the earth is flat, the earth is the center of the universe or the sun goes around the earth. I have no idea where you came up with the idea it does.

Regardless, there is NO scientific proof the Bible is wrong. Even places the Bible mentions that history did not reveal are being found all the time to have existed by excavating ruins of these cities. No place has history OR science proved the Bible is wrong.

A number of things mentioned in Job are just now being proved by scientific discoveries. God knew them back before the Jews became a nation (or that is when it is supposed Job lived.)

Answer 7

You base your accusations on wrong ideas. Sceince has disproved it's self, not religion. Mabye some of the people who developed the scientific ideas such as the earth being flat or the center of the universe were religious, but It was not religion in it's self that they got the idea. Science is based purely on making obsevations, and Science had disproved its self time and time again. You act like All scientist agree with each other on everything.

Answer 8

Of all things known on this planet,, Humans knowledge of Science is the most backward. What the so called expert scientist believes to be true today will be laughed at 100 years from now. Even Einsteins theories are being broken on a daily bases.
Evolution?? it's all guess work,,they don't have a clue.
Faith?? well it's just that,, Faith

Answer 9

I have been wrong as a person several times over and over again,yet still some people believe me and a lot would not,it,s the same as religion,some preach the word of God and are as guilty of gross atrocities and genocides throughout history,accepting culture and not sticking to biblical facts are what makes the challenge to truth in religious beliefs a mirage these days and the interpretation of the bible more bleak.Science is not always a proven fact but what the bible predicts you can count on with the precision of a blind man,but it takes an open mind to have the gift of discernment and interpretation,gifts that we as human beings were born with but selectively shunned ,not all religions are wrong in their theological beliefs,although most miss their mark.the basis of belief,right and wrong is the ability to mathematically calculate unbiasedly all the information that we receive,good luck and thank you for the question.

Answer 10

At one time those idea were Scientific facts.. Science changed as knowledge increased. And as the Word of God became available to the people long held dogma was modified to be more closely tied what the Bible really says. The Bible says no where that the earth is flat it fact it says God created the circle of the earth. No where does it ay that the earth in the center of the Universe, that was man's idea and science agreed. The Bible doesn't say any of the things you contend. It does say that God spoke and the universe was born.. Sort of sounds like the Big Bang to me. Looks like the Bible doesn't go against science just how some people in another time saw things sort of the same way they looked at science.... Jim

Answer 11

Because science doesn't have a convincing answer to exactly what we go through after we physically die except that we decompose - and that's not very inspiring. People will always want to believe that there is something more.