Is there really a divide between science and religion?

Question

Is there really this huge divide? A divide supposedly made manifest by such things as including intelligent design in science text books?

Are these two areas really all that mutually exclusive?

I look forward to reading your answers!

Just to clarify - I am not asking if these two fields are different. That much is obvious. I am asking if their needs to really be this supposed mammoth divide between the two areas.

Answer 1

Yes, as they are two fundamentally different concepts.

Science is about establishing hypothesis, testing, gathering evidence, and refining the hypothesis. The premise (hypothesis) must be something that can falsifiably testable. In other words, you must be able to construct a test such that it can pass or fail. If a test passes, you have evidence that your hypothesis is correct. If it fails, you have to go back to the drawing board.

Religion, on the other hand, has no such rigorous testability. Religion is based on faith and belief. You can neither prove, nor disprove religion as no falsifiable testability can be established.

You can not create a scientific experiment that proves or disproves that some Creator exists, for example. And saying that we exist therefore a creator exist is a logical fallacy.

I'm not saying one is more correct than the other. They are just two completly different idealogies on how to understand the universe.

This is why Intelligent Design caused such an uproar. Fundamentally, someone decided they would try to sledgehammer the idealogy of falsifiability into the idealogy of belief. The end result was something that made absolutely no sense, from both the religious side and the scintific side.

They were basically trying to say that you could use the scientific method of testability down to a point, but after that you had to take it on faith. Huh? Science doesn't work that way. You can't arbitrarily say "and then magic happens" and still have your argument be scientifically sound.

It would be like saying you can take something on faith, until you reach some arbitray boundry, then you have to use the scientific method to prove your point. For example, you can take it on faith that Jesus existed, but now you have to scientifically prove that he turned water into wine. Huh? That doesn't really make sense either.

Very different ways of thinking.

~X~

Answer 2

Depending on who you ask. Let me elaborate.

Whether there is a divide or not depends on an individual's interpretation of both science and religion. So many answers here have highlighted the differences between these two. It is observable that for many who answered your question, they think of religion as something that is unquantifiable, subjective, spiritual beliefs that as opposed to science have no concrete basis other than the faith of the individual.

But can't we have a slightly different perception? I would say that science can potentially strengthen religious faith, if an individual is open to such an idea. But before that, the individual must first realize that what is most important in a religion is the values that it preaches, everything else, for example the explanations in the scriptures of how the world came about, just cannot be taken for word by word.

Take Christianity for example. It says in the book of genesis that god created the world in seven days. Science theorized, with careful observation, that there was the Big Bang, the earth only came about more than 10 billion years later, and only 400 million years after that did life come about.

If someone can appreciate this theorized history of the universe, how intricate, delicate and wondrous it is, and look at it as a creation of god, won't it further enhance religious beliefs? The individual must be open enough to say "the bible was written such a long time ago, now we know better, that the universe took a longer time to be created, nevertheless it still is a testament of the greatness of god".

Science can highly complement religion, only when a person is open enough to think so.

Answer 3

They are absolutely different. The bedrock of religion is faith, knowing without proof. The bedrock of science is proof, knowing without faith. A person who truly has faith believes no matter what proof to the contrary is presented. A true scientist will never believe no matter how much proof to the affirmative is presented.

Even with all that being said the two are not mutually exclusive. They only seem that way. Some people see things and believe a god or a spirit or a purpose beyond explanation is behing all those things. Other people see the same things and believe they can find a cause or reason behing everything. However, they don't actually exclude each other. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or you cannot prove a negative, thus a ture scientist cannot say religion is wrong simply because they have no proof of it. Similarly, having faith does not mean you cannot accept that all things people can observe can eventually be explained.

Answer 4

In modern times science has become a religion. Its called secular humanism. And its supposedly "quantifiable conclusions" beg at least as much faith as any other religion. Both begin with a presupposition. Science says that only the physical world is relevant, and therefore all answers begin there. Religion says that the metaphysical world, due to its transcendent nature, is the true source of knowledge. Until 1800 or so, scientist assumed the "God hypothesis" and believed that their job was merely to discover the inner workings of a physical world which was created by a metaphysical being.

Answer 5

Yes a massive divide, are you kidding? Science is quantifiable and can be evidenced. It has a proposition which is then examined through rigorous testing before a conclusion is reached. religion is just making things up without any evidence and denouncing counter opinions as blasphemy, Christians state their religion comes from the bible, but the don;t question where that came from. Religion is also elastic in it's beliefs o that it can remove any critical information and adapt to scientific discovery, eg when it was proved the Earth was not at the center of the solar system religion adapts to say "that's okay cause God made the whole solar system" (see answer 1and the "Red Sea answers" as a stunning example of this) religion has no empirical value and continually moves the goal post, it is based on mythology and superstition and cannot be independently validated.

Answer 6

Absolutely. Science is a way of inquiring about the world. A systematic way of generating and testing knowledge. It is assumed that all "facts" are working hypotheses anyway.

Religion - on the other hand - is a dogmatic system of beliefs. Inquiry into premises and assumptions is not encouraged.

So yes, there is a huge divide.

To the person speaking above me: Yes, language areas light up in both. So what?

Answer 7

Science and religion are like the two wings of a bird. They must complement each other perfectly for the bird to be able to fly.

Science helps mankind not to fall into superstitions and fanatical beliefs.
The moral values taught by the great religions of the world help mankind to carry ahead an ever advancing civilization.

Answer 8

Yes, there is a huge divide. That divide is known as language.

Science speaks the language of the observable, whereas religion speaks the language of the Spirit.

Watching the two try to communicate is pretty amusing. Like watching an Indian man try to court an Italian man... violence is sure to ensue.

Answer 9

The divide in your mind is real enough. I find your use for the word 'really' rather disturbing; as if there were a half way measure between real and unreal....The joining point of religion and science is faith, which, like human kind, fails now and again. In man's infinite negativity, he is, according to this condition, a perfectionist of unreal proportions, and both science and religion spring from this common ground.

What you are asking is 'are religion-abolitionist atheists really so for the negation for religion and are religionists so for the negation for all that is not theirs?'. Is insanity a real condition?

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phc2b1b.htm

"(1) The Idea of Belief
Φ 528. In the form in which Religion here appears — for it is religion obviously that we are speaking about — as the belief which belongs to the realm of culture, religion does not yet appear as it is truly and completely (an und für sich). It has already come before us in other phases, viz. as the unhappy consciousness, as a form of conscious process with no substantial content in it. So, too, in the case of the ethical substance, it appeared as a belief in the nether-world. But a consciousness of the departed spirit is, strictly speaking, not belief, not the inner essence subsisting in the element of pure consciousness away beyond the actual: there the belief it has itself an immediate existence in the present; its element is the family."



http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/li_terms.htm

Answer 10

Yes,but religion can use science to prove or disprove the biblical accounts of history. The parting of the Red Sea by Moses was pr oven possible by science. The Great Flood was proven by science with a scientific explanation of how it occured.