Yay! Isn't this how science and religion should work together?

Question

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/14/evangelical.rift/

The National Association of Evangelicals yesterday stuck to its guns in taking up such causes as addressing global warming and stopping torture by the United States.

Forgetting global warming for a second, just the idea that living up to the Biblical responsibility for stewardship of the earth is an issue at all, is fantastic!

As for the global warming, isn't that the way it is supposed to work? Science should be trusted with what it does well ... giving us information, but it cannot mandate what to *do* with that information. That takes will ... and isn't will where *faith* is supposed to be relevant? Morality is about *personal action* ... not about telling *other* people how to act ... and certainly not about dictating to science what results it must arrive at in order to make the moral choices easier.

Would you agree?

GobyDude: That's almost what I meant, but not quite.

It is science's job to answer the question of whether global warming is occurring, and what (if anything) we *can* do about it. But the decision to actually ACT on that information is not a scientific decision, but a moral decision. And religion can indeed have a role to play there (on the decision of whether it is our job to act).

Answer 1

It's never this simple. Even science has proved incapable of separating itself from politics and the public eye to seriously treat the global warming issue as science. I take my Christian responsibility of stewardship of the earth even more seriously than I take science. The evidence seems to support the contention that global warming is happening, and that it is influenced by human activity. There is less evidence that it's outside the bounds of normal climatic variation. There is no evidence of its future direction other than computer simulations based on assumptions that people have chosen.

As a steward, I would take precautionary measures appropriate to the risk and balanced with the cost and the needs of other risks. Science should be enough to do it all objectively. It isn't. My faith would make it an obsession. Enough to make me choose what was right and best instead of what was popular or would make money or build political power by misdirecting public effort.

Answer 2

I think religions should address moral issues, such as torture, not scientific ones, like global warming.

If that's what you are trying to say, then yes I agree with you.