Why is it that religion and science cannot both explain life on earth?

Question

To me, it seems perfectly logical that both could co-exist, side by side. Why do both parties refuse to acknowledge the other?

Answer 1

Some scientists do. And I do too.

Answer 2

Science is an exploration of mechanism, the key question is how does it work. They are not concerned with why it works that way. Religion is about first cause, the multi-verse works the way it does because that is how the Gods created it, and man's relationship to the divine, which are separate and unrelated issues. There is no conflict between science and religion, never has been. The conflict is between science and people who fear the loss of power, wealth, and privilege that would result should their congregations ever started questioning the infallibility of the people running the Church. Not questioning the faith, you understand, just the clergy.

Answer 3

Because science relies on observation of available data, as well as testing verifiable facts, to come to its conclusions; it is based on EVIDENCE. As new data becomes available, or new techniques are invented to test the data, the conclusions may change, or they may be strengthened; either way, our knowledge continually increases.

Religion, on the other hand, has no such process for finding the truth. It relies strictly on belief and faith, and on stories handed down from ancient cultures who had no science and thought the world was a flat disk with a starry dome over it. Despite the utter lack of evidence in favor of any of these stories, the believers continue to believe in them; their knowledge does NOT increase, but remains stagnant because of their refusal to accept new data and new testing methods. You can show the believer a mountain of evidence disproving the notion of a worldwide flood or creation by fiat, but they will not change their mind, insisting that it MUST have happened because their holy book says so, and the evidence be damned. As a last resort, they will accuse scientists of consorting with the devil, of deliberately hiding facts, etc., so that their faith may remain uncorrupted.

So, no, science and religion cannot coexist. There is no evidence pointing to anything being the result of entities with magical powers, and all the wishful thinking in the world won't change that. Also, you must ask yourself exactly WHICH religion science is supposed to coexist with? There are hundreds of them, and were thousands more in the past. Do you expect science to support every last one of them, even where they contradict each other? Or should we just pick the most popular one and find facts to support it?

Answer 4

Truly empirical studies will never refute the Living Word of God. Much of so called science is not in agreement and any time a scientist sets out to prove a theory it is based on what he believes to be different than currently accepted "believed" science.

Answer 5

Because scientists refuse to admit the fact that God had to create the things that caused the "scientific" creation of the world. God created it, the method isn't important. I have no problem acknowledging that some scientific theories could possibly be partly valid, but when those scientists get to saying that God coudln't have played any part in it, that's where I stop believing science.

It's not religion refusing to acknowledge science, it's science refusing to acknowledge religion.

Answer 6

Evolutionary theory, though, is a bit different. It's such a dangerously wonderful and far-reaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable, despite the vast body of supporting evidence. As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still. Many fundamentalist Christians and ultra-orthodox Jews take alarm at the thought that human descent from earlier primates contradicts a strict reading of the Book of Genesis. Their discomfort is paralleled by Islamic creationists such as Harun Yahya, author of a recent volume titled The Evolution Deceit, who points to the six-day creation story in the Koran as literal truth and calls the theory of evolution "nothing but a deception imposed on us by the dominators of the world system." The late Srila Prabhupada, of the Hare Krishna movement, explained that God created "the 8,400,000 species of life from the very beginning," in order to establish multiple tiers of reincarnation for rising souls. Although souls ascend, the species themselves don't change, he insisted, dismissing "Darwin's nonsensical theory."
Other people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll drawn from more than a thousand telephone interviews conducted in February 2001, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Evolution, by their lights, played no role in shaping us.

Only 37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin—that is, divine initiative to get things started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.) Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-forms without any involvement of a god.

The most startling thing about these poll numbers is not that so many Americans reject evolution, but that the statistical breakdown hasn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewers posed exactly the same choices in 1982, 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creationist conviction—that God alone, and not evolution, produced humans—has never drawn less than 44 percent. In other words, nearly half the American populace prefers to believe that Charles Darwin was wrong where it mattered most.

Answer 7

I agree. They can. I think they just tackle the same issues from different perspectives.

The Bible was never intended to be a scientific text. It was meant to be something easily explainable [like most Origin stories are]. I think lot of Christians take Genesis way too literally for their own good. (Oddly enough, they don't seem to have that problem with Revelation. I mean, if they understand that Revelation has a lot of symbolism to it, why can't they fathom the possibility that Genesis does as well?)

Answer 8

Typically, science tries to prove how things happened without a God. Religion just believes that God did it all. Therefore this creates a tension between the groups as a whole. Some individuals don't take offense to either side though.

Answer 9

Science relies on evidence and it's rational. Religion doesn't, it's irrational.

It's like asking sane people to just co-exist with madmen. Just try telling a crazy person the voices in their head are not real. Same thing for the faithful.

Answer 10

Science will and often does co-exist and agree with theology. God is not religion. Religion to me is man trying to reconcile himself with his creator.

Answer 11

Buddhism works nicely with science in this category, in which science is beginning to increasingly seen as "agreeing with" the Buddhist concepts of life on earth and many other concepts.

"The Quantum and The Lotus" Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan

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