What do you think? Is Religion against science?

Question

I just read this news story:
LONDON, APRIL 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Catholic bioethicists welcomed a recent breakthrough in the treatment of heart disease using adult stem cells taken from bone marrow.
Researches from a London-area hospital, led by Sir Magdi Yacoub, have grown part of a human heart from adult stem cells offering hope for millions of cardiac patients. The new tissue could be used in place of artificial valves currently used in heart disease treatment. ...
Father Paul Murray, secretary of the committee, said: "Sir Magdi and his team generated the heart tissue from stem cells found in bone marrow. The technique is ethical because the stem cells were taken from the patient's own bone marrow rather than from an embryo in the first few days of life."
BBC News reported on Monday one of the medical advantages of the new treatment: "In theory, if the valve was grown from the patient's own cells there would also be no need to take drugs to stop the body rejecting it."

Father Murray asserted: "This development vindicates the consistently held position of the Church, of Catholic ethicists and many other experts in the field who have always maintained that the greatest potential for actual cures lay with adult rather than embryonic stem cells.
"Now that we have concrete results using adult stem cells and a time frame for their practical use in restoring health, let us leave behind once and for all the fruitless and destructive research on embryonic stem cells which is still years away from this exciting point."

So is religion really against science?

Gastounet: Please name one scientist that was burned.

Autumn_zuber: Actually they are against fertility clinics that waste embryos. It just doesn't get as much press as the abortion debate.

Dear DoH: Dan Brown's book is fiction. It's a great story because it's fiction.

Thank you Melanie T: but you forgot to mention the other side of the argument also brought up in the article you copied and pasted from, namely, "Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc." Remember, the charges were "Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation. Holding erroneous opinions about Christ. Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass. Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity. Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes. Dealing in magics and divination."

Melanie T: Also "in 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy."

Also, the quote you said was his response to the church was actually to the secular authorities. They not the church, put him to death.

Answer 1

Religion doesn't have to be against science--it depends upon the person wielding the paradigms. The two can co-exist, and be logically, ethically, and emotionally harmonius. Or, one can weild one as a weapon against the other. It all depends on whether the user is trying to find common ground, or trying to find a way to disagree.

Answer 2

I as a christian have no problem with the furthering of science and use of stem cells that don't involve the "cultivation" of fetuses for the advancement of science. I do have a problem when we are aborting children that haven't even started their lives so someone else can continue theirs."The technique is ethical because the stem cells were taken from the patient's own bone marrow rather than from an embryo in the first few days of life."This is how we should and are in america; furthering the research on stem cells.

Answer 3

Religion and science have always diametrically opposed to each other. It all boils down to creation vs evolution. If you believe that life evolved from pond scum, you believe in science therefore the basic tenet of the Bible that God created man in his own image is not believable.

Go read Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons. A very well written murder mystery that explores this subject.

With regards to stem cell research, the Catholic Church believes that life starts at conception, therefore using a embryo for research is murder. They liken it to abortion.

Answer 4

Science isn't against religion. Both have coexisted since many years and the Catholic Church has never been against science or stem cells just embryonic stem cells.

Answer 5

the church has always been anti science.

Read some of Steven hawking's books. That describe the conversations he has had with the Vatican.

You want to know of someone that was burned for science?

"Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it."
Giordano Bruno - to the christian church after being sentenced to be burned at the stake.
February 8, 1600

This death sentence "to be burned alive" was caried out on Febuary 17th, 1600.

He was burned alive for believing that the sun was just a star and the stars in the night sky where just like our sun only much farther away, and that those stars have planets going around them just like our sun.

Giordano Bruno has sense been proven correct.

His trial was overseen by the inquisitor, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. Instead he appealed in vain to Pope Clement VIII, hoping to save his life through a partial recantation. The Pope expressed himself in favor of a guilty verdict. Consequently, Bruno was declared a heretic, handed over to secular authorities on February 8, 1600. At his trial he listened to the verdict on his knees, then stood up and said: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." A week or so later he was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, a central Roman market square, his tongue in a gag, tied to a pole naked and burned at the stake, on February 17, 1600.

All his works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. Four hundred years after his execution, official expression of "profound sorrow" and acknowledgement of error at Bruno's condemnation to death was made, during the papacy of John Paul II.

In the same rooms where Giordano Bruno was questioned, for the same important reasons of the relationship between science and faith, at the dawning of the new astronomy and at the decline of Aristotle’s philosophy, sixteen years later, Cardinal Bellarmino, who then contested Bruno’s heretical theses, summoned Galileo Galilei, who also faced a famous inquisitorial trial, which, luckily for him, ended with a simple abjuration.

Galileo Galilei was spared only because he recanted his findings that the earth was not the center of the universe and that not all bodies go around the earth.

Galileo Galilei has also been proven correct.

Answer 6

No. Protestants are against the idea of evolution and the Big Bang.

Catholics however, believe that God created mass and let it evolve by itself. Therefore, the Big bang theory and the theory of evolution is supported by Catholics.

Catholics however, do no support sciences that are unethical. For example, killing a baby through abortion. Thou shalt not kill. This is not a matter of science. It it just more of a matter of common sense.

Answer 7

We are leaving the Age of PISCES....What is PISCES-It's a pair of Fish that represents Pisceans, a symbol which prompts others to suggest that these people 'go with the flow' and 'don't make waves.'

This is also found in the Holy Bible-Mark 14:13, "And he sendeth forth two of his disciples, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him." The two disciples, fishes, are going into a city (astrological house) where they shall meet a man bearing a pitcher of water (the constellation of Aquarius).

The prophesy decoded in Mark is that humans, as we are currently leaving the Age of Pisces, are encouraged to be initiated into the Age of Aquarius. The two fish as disciples represent Pisces. As you can see in the Symbol picture of Aquarius there is one fish that has apparently went astray while the other is swimming into the pitcher of water. The final initiation, after journeying through the evolution of consciousness, is a type of baptismal. The end result of this baptismal, during this great period of transition, is the manifestation of the Christ (Ka'rast) consciousness on the earth again.

IT IS ALL ON THE BRINK OF CONVERGANCE>>>>

Answer 8

It has always amazed me at the seeking of TRUTH. We, as humans, will find in our exploration of science, one day far beyond my life time, that the search for science will end in religion. Once all questions are answered, science will find that God is the end result of everything, and the beginning of everything. We will come to realize that science is the search for the potential that God has given man kind, and that everything that could possibly be answered has already been known by God. That is my belief, and as such I know that God will allow things in their due time, regardless how hard we search.

Answer 9

Religion isn't against science. Religion is against the open minded thinking that makes for good science. That kind of thinking leads to the obvious conclusion that there is no substance to any religious beliefs. The behaviors taught by religions are generally good but not the close mindedness that is need to preserve them in the face of truth.

Answer 10

Not all. The Catholic Church seems to be evolving. But conservative Protestantism is definitely anti intellectual.