Are Science and the Bible REALLY in conflict??

Question

http://www.watchtower.org/e/200609a/article_01.htm

Answer 1

Science proves the bible true.

Answer 2

I say they are not, but that is because I am an "old earth creationist" sort of Christian.
I can read Genesis literally and find no conflict between what the text says, and what science has to offer.
Those Christians that do (we are mostly talking protestants in any event) are known as "young earth creationists." They are the most vocal about insisting that the Bible is contradicted by science.

Answer 3

You can read the bible in whatever way you like. One of them is called "metaphorically", and you can go as far in that as you like to make it confirm with scientific observations, until there's nothing left of it.
You can also read the bible from a scientific point of view, which has been done many times already, and then most of the miracles, supposedly done by god, are explicable in a scientific way, without the hand of god, or there is no indication what so ever that an event like that ever happened. This reduces your god to minimum, rendering it almost obsolete.
You have been given freedom of choice by your god, so make your decision, but I made mine already.

Answer 4

Yes, they are. One is based on knowledge gained through observation and experimentation, the other is based on the stories of bronze age sheep herders. There is a huge conflict.

Answer 5

No. But the teachings of the Watch Tower Society and the Bible are....

Answer 6

Well, I won't look at your watch tower site, but the answer is, No, the Bible and science are not in conflict.

Answer 7

Yes.

Answer 8

Yeah, they are... but it's kind of a one-sided conflict. Essentially, it's a turf war... and on one side (science), you've got some guy who is strolling through his yard, looking up at the sky, oblivious... and he accidentally kicks over an ant hill (religion) that he's not even aware of. On the other side (religion), you've got the ants scurrying about, trying to put their ant-hill back together again... and trying to figure out a way to destroy the big dumbass (science) who messed up their place... and the poor guy STILL doesn't realize that he screwed up their ant hill... and probably wouldn't care, even if he DID know.

From the perspective of science, the origin of the universe ranks as an interesting physics problem. Science essentially is oblivious to god... to religion... to the idea of 'creation'... and rightfully so. Science looks for natural explanations for natural things. The presumption of science is that everything that can exist and anything that can occur in the universe is, by definition, natural... even if we cannot presently understand it or explain it. Again, this is as it should be. When Napoleon asked Laplace why he did not mention god in his book about astronomy, he replied: "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis."

Religion doesn't see it that way, though:

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, SCIENCE says: "We don't know... OK, boys... let's roll up our sleeves, dig in and find out."

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, RELIGION (imagine South Park - Officer Barbrady) says: "That's too complicated. God did it. Move along. Nothing to see here. Everybody go home now."

Religion exists in a strange netherworld between two logical fallacies (flaws in thinking)... the 'Argument From Incredulity'. I goes something like this: "I can't understand (or imagine) how that might have come to be; therefore, God did it." and the 'God of the Gaps' fallacy, also known as the 'Divine Fallacy'. The God of the Gaps lives at the bleeding edge of science... and religionists view the advances of science as an encroachment into their territory. They are at war, fighting a rear-guard action against the advance of knowledge... and the preoccupied scientists, for the most part, don't even KNOW that they're in a fight.

Science doesn't attack god. That is true from the perspective of science... as I said, science is oblivious to god... he/she/it is simply out of scope. From the standpoint of the religiose, though, science is the mortal enemy... because science is a primary source of KNOWLEDGE... and it is KNOWLEDGE that threatens 'god'. First they took away the earth being the center of the universe, and the focus and purpose of all creation... the god of the gaps got his butt whipped. Next thing you know, lightening is just an electrical discharge... not a manifestation of the wrath of god. The god of the gaps got his butt kicked again. Disease caused by germs, not demons. Ouch. Planets aren't wandering stars... they are bodies that orbit the sun. Whap. Stars aren't little lights placed on the firmament (the solid barrier between heaven and earth... i.e., the sky)... they are actually suns, like our own, unimaginably far away. God of the Gaps gets kicked right in the nuts. And on, and on, and on. The God of the Gaps has NEVER won a fight with science... NOT ONCE. Every time there is a scrimmage between science and the God of the Gaps, another gap gets filled up with knowledge, and the God of the Gaps slinks away, with his tail between his legs. Earth isn't 6,000 years old... it's 4.5 BILLION years old. G of G gets kicked in the balls again. And on and on... and on.

Well, they're tired of getting kicked in the balls... so, they've changed tactics. Rather than fighting the battle on the basis of knowledge and evidence, they fight it on the basis of lies and misdirection. Science won't engage them... heck... it won't even acknowledge them. So, rather than engaging science, they just appeal to their constituency, which is scientifically ignorant for the most part, and feed them a bunch of plausible sounding pseudo-scientific lies. Take 'Intelligent Design'. The strategy is not to argue this on a scientific basis... it is to "Teach the controversy"... except in the scientific community, THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. But their constituency doesn't go to the scientific community for their scientific information... no... they go to the people they TRUST... their SPIRITUAL LEADERS... and they get fed pseudo-science, misrepresentations and lies.

Willful ignorance, lies and delusions are winning. Science is losing. The God of the Gaps, FINALLY, is holding the line against knowledge, reason and critical thought.

So, while it is true that science doesn't attack god, that doesn't really matter... because as long as they PERCEIVE science (in general) to be an attack on god, we're going to be in an ongoing fight. At some point, in the near future, we need to wake up and realize that, or we're going to end up back in the Dark Ages.
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Answer 9

Yes, one is about logic and the other illogic. They're not compatible.

Answer 10

depends how you interpret some of the story's from the Bible.Science would say lots of if is impossible.