Why is Scientific Inquiry and Study a Religious or Spiritual issue?

Answer 1

You've already gotten at least two great answers, but I'll go ahead anyway.

Science itself is the pursuit of knowledge, which is accepted by many to concern only what is perceived by the senses or concluded through logic; if we begin to say that we require faith to have "knowledge" of some things, we have moved outside the scope of scientific inquiry and study.

Many of the religious are so convinced that their holy text is the "One Truth" that they ignore or even FIGHT against anything that, after being concluded via valid analysis, comes into conflict with it. It frustrates me that these same individuals use science and products thereof in their everyday lives, yet criticize it whenever it does not match up to their preconceived notions of truth.

However, as scientific theories become more and more accepted, religions often begin to bend to it, with many of the faithful twisting the words of their text around to show how it had ALREADY detailed these complex theories. To the objective observer, it is clear that religion has already lost in the game of worldly knowledge, but those caught in its mind trap are simply more convinced of its truth. Simply put, when a text becomes subject to interpretation, it loses its authority to the authority of the interpreter. These holy books MUST be read literally to determine if they are historically and scientifically accurate, otherwise they really are nothing more than a collection of parables and fairy tales that, while quaint in some cases, are unnecessary for a "moral" individual. I would also like to point out how even these stories are greatly offset by the violence of the deity and its chosen peoples.

What has made science a religious issue is the perception that, rather than existing to better mankind and come to greater knowledge, it wishes to destroy all dissenting thought. This is one of the greatest cases of projection in history. After all, it is religion that immediately seeks conflict with science because of disagreement, it is religion that has stood in the way of scientific progress for centuries, even millennia now, and it is religion that believes it already has all the answers. Religion is static; science is not. When confronted with evidence against a theory, science renews its search into that particular area and "fixes" itself when it finds a flaw. Some like to point out that this is no better than religion, but, on the contrary, scientific knowledge is not limited to one book (as in religion) and is not perceived to necessarily be "the truth," as it is open to new data. Now, ARE there scientists who seek to destroy religion? Yes, of course - but it must be understood that, not only are they a reaction to religion's attacks, they do not represent science as a whole.

If religion must exist, it should look into philosophy, salvation theory, metaphysics, etc, but it should NEVER attempt to decide worldly knowledge. Someone once told me that the Big Bang is in the Bible because God spread its hands outwards to create the universe, an inside-to-outside motion. The absurdity is clear: religion as legitimate knowledge is DEAD.

Answer 2

Scientific Inquiry should not be a religious issue. The only times it has ever been one is when one church or another, from the Roman Catholic Church to modern day evangelicals, feel threatened by it because it contradicts their beliefs. Observation, logic, deduction, even common sense all too often fly in the face of religion, of faith in what one is taught rather than what one can observe and deduce for themselves.

Oplist, what school did you go to? Anyone from a reasonably normal public school learns that many scientists were Christians, or followers of some other religion. No educated person would think that even Galileo and Copernicus were not Christians (though not in the modern "born again" style), even though they contradicted the Church and paid a dear price for doing so. And a reasonably educated person knows that for decades, if not centuries, nearly all science in the western world was done by Christian monks and other learned Christian men (not women, unfortunately), especially by the Jesuits.

Of course most of the science done by Christians in the middle ages and prior to that was faulty because they most often relied on faith in their religion, scripture, superstition and astrology rather than observation, experimentation and deduction.

We cannot and must not let modern day fundamentalists once again stifle scientific education, research and thought by allowing them to force schools to replace real science with that based first on their religious beliefs and only secondarily on the scientific method. If we do not stop them from doing so, real science will be severely hampered and we will take a giant step back toward the middle ages.

Answer 3

It is not, to me. (The application of discoveries may be a religious or spiritual issue, though.)

But it is to many people. And I think I understand why.

Short answer: the scientific method has been pretty much accepted as the *only* means to discovering the truth of any thing, and is being applied to religion/the numinous (an area that was kept separate by our predecessors, even recently).

Long answer:

By the end of the 19th century, the Western world had achieved such astonishing advancements through science and technology that they began to think that the rational and pragmatic was the only means to "truth"...and they began to dismiss mythos (religious thought, religious practice, religious mysteries, and religious rituals) as false and superstitious. And so was born scripture literalism, out of the acceptance that the scientific method of proof is the only valid measure of truth - the attempt to turn holy books into literal history or science textbooks, ignoring completely that the value of religion is not in its factual accuracy.

It's a bad idea.

It would be far healthier, IMO, to reclaim the separation of mythic/mystic and scientific thought. Religious scriptures were not intended to be science textbooks. And the measuring devices of the scientific method are not applicable to religious insights.


Do we think that the *point* of the story of Echo and Narcissus ought to be utterly ignored because we know that nymphs never existed? And ought we to dismiss the insights into human behavior supplied by Aesop's Fables because we know, scientifically, that lions and mice don't actually talk to each other, or that wolves don't actually wear the skins of sheep in order to fool other sheep?


Again, religious truths are not like the proofs of scientific rationalism, but more like the intuitive insights of poetry or music or art. Conflating the two only results in bad science and bad religion.


But I don't think that it's going to go away, because a lot of people are threatened by modernism. There are people who, seeing that the world has accepted the scientific method as the only valid path to truth, feel that their most sacred values are being challenged, and who are motivated by fears, anxieties, and desires that are not unpredictable in the face of the modern (and largely secular) world. The "timeless truths" are now put under the microscope and found to be historically false or scientifically invalid.

And so they push back, and try to reclaim the value of their religious texts by insisting on the literal, material factuality of the stories in those texts (Yes, dinosaurs *are* in the bible! etc.). And they become more entrenched in their positions because *they have thrown away* the value of mystic/mythic thought and accepted scientific rationalism where it doesn't belong; where, in fact, it actually destroys the value of religion.


Well, OK, there were *two* religious movements that arose as a direct result of the acceptance of scientific materialism as the only means to the truth: Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism. The first is an attempt to apply the rules of proof that work so well in scientific rationalism to religion (resulting in all kinds of bizarre readings of scripture), and the second is a reactionary rejection of all rationalism; but again, this is not a reclaiming of the numinous.

Things don't develop in a vacuum. We never start with a "clean slate". What has gone before affects what happens now.

Modernism was the midwife for the very kinds of religious developments that the modern scientific community expresses such contempt for.

And, quite predictably, the more that fundamentalists (with or without the additional layer of Pentecostalism) are criticized, the more entrenched they become.

Anyone with a scientific mind ought to be able to see it coming. After all, Newton said it a long time ago.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"


*** And observation would tell us that the power of mythos is still very much alive, or people would not flock to movies like "Lord of the Rings". Ignoring that, or roundly criticizing it as primitive superstitiousness, will not make it go away.

Answer 4

It isn't, or at least shouldn't be. I fully support it, and believe that the scientific method of inquiry functions best in the absence of religious conclusions that might queer the interpretation of the data.

Answer 5

there are alot of scientists who happen to be christian. and alot of christians who happen to welcome scientific study.

Galileo, Isaac Newton.. etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science

its too bad that schools do not tell that well known scientists that they study were actually those who believed in God.
.

Answer 6

because science scares the devout religious... and they worry that it will "corrupt" the less devout (read: more intelligent) followers