Can Religion and Science Coexist?

[Korugar]

Similar to what jmizzle said...

Anyone who believes in a God of some sort should answer yes to this question. Since science is nothing more than understanding of the world(and beyond), the most basic idea is not contradictory to religion in any way. Of course, you can disagree with what the majority of the scientific community is saying at the present time(or vice versa, what the so called "religious" community is saying at the current time), but neither of those things are necessarily accurate, nor are they always representative of science or the religion itself.

[Daxx]

Some interesting responses. Here's an interesting question for the theists in the thread (most of you are giving very deistic responses): once you've ruled out supernatural influence upon the universe, what evidence is left for God's existence?

Are we just back to the first cause argument?

[killybob]

what evidence is there? well as far as i personally see it, there is lots. the main one i can think of comes in the following question: How did life begin? i find it impossible to see how creatures (however primitive) could simply happen in some bubbling prehistoric swamp. how do you get a creature with a fully functioning reproductive system, respiratory organs, and luck enough to survive enormous volcanic activity? how? if anyone has a theory then i would (genuinely) be fascinated by whatever crops up. remember i'm not disputing evolution, only the origins of life.

[doublecross]

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/up-from-the-ooze


Then evolve from there.


It has been shown experimentally that the conditions of pre-historic earth, will, after enough time, randomly produce amino acids, which could then form proteins, and from there, evolution is possible.

[johannhowitzer]

Truth is truth.  If a religion is based on truth, and a given scientific theory is based on truth (truth being that which corresponds to what exists within and possibly beyond the universe), they will necessarily agree.

[doublecross]

Furthermore, certain religions are more of a philosophy than what you are thinking of as a religion.


Not all religions involve a deity. Not all even involve any type of supernatural or spiritual components.

In fact, I know several people who follow religions of their own creation, that do not contradict with anything that I know about the Universe.


It is ok to feel strongly about one side of this argument or another, but please refrain from anything that sounds like calling EVERY RELIGION A LIE WITHOUT PROVIDING ANY PROOF, OR EVEN LOGIC.

Even if your goal is to convince everyone that religion is wrong, doing so by insulting it is not the way to do it.

[killybob]

It has been shown experimentally that the conditions of pre-historic earth, will, after enough time, randomly produce amino acids, which could then form proteins, and from there, evolution is possible.

can a protein on it's own reproduce, respire, and survive for long enough to evolve? and can evolution really make such an innately simple amino acid change and become more complex? how on earth did the proteins just happen to have the capacity to mate or asexually copy itself? religion vs science is truly an impossible topic as every time science (supposedly) disproves religion the argument can always arise "you can't directly disprove the existence of a deity. ever." religion is a sticky topic. for me being religious brings comfort and community. and being scientific brings new knowledge and insight. unfortunately being of that age the two sides of me clash and for the meantime i will probably fight for both sides of the argument. although i do think science and religion are inexorably entangled and must coexist for the sake of peace.

[doublecross]

If you are really interested in the science behind it, I recommend that you read The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. 
Yes, a protein is capable of doing that, given enough time.

Just as if you had an infinite supply of scrabble tiles, and you kept randomly mixing them, you could eventually get full length, amazing novels, so too can billions of years of time passing in a soup of nutrients and amino acids eventually create a simple replicating protein that can then, slowly evolve other function.

[QuantumT]

religion vs science is truly an impossible topic as every time science (supposedly) disproves religion the argument can always arise "you can't directly disprove the existence of a deity. ever."

This is really the worst argument for anything. For starters, anything that can't be disproved is inherently scientific. But to really see how silly of an argument it is, I can replace the word deity with anything I want, and the argument remains just as valid.

[doublecross]

religion vs science is truly an impossible topic as every time science (supposedly) disproves religion the argument can always arise "you can't directly disprove the existence of a deity. ever."

This is really the worst argument for anything. For starters, anything that can't be disproved is inherently scientific. But to really see how silly of an argument it is, I can replace the word deity with anything I want, and the argument remains just as valid.

Well, to be fair, one cannot disprove the truth.


I could say "You can't disprove Nuclear Fission", which doesn't make Nuclear Fission unscientific.


I do agree that it is not a well articulated argument, but I will play devil's advocate here, and try and turn it into something that has substance.


I bring up Cartesian Dualism.
This states that the brain and the mind are separate. The brain is the physical organ that science controls, and that science explains.
However, there is a separate consciousness, the mind, that science has no jurisdiction over.



One can apply a similar argument to religion, and say that even if the concept of a deity does not fit with our knowledge of science, that is just the "brain" half. Science could not disprove the "mind" part of the existence of a deity, because it is a different area of knowledge. 

Thus, the claim that science can't disprove a deity, would be one that actually has some philosophical merit, and logical merit as well.

[QuantumT]

religion vs science is truly an impossible topic as every time science (supposedly) disproves religion the argument can always arise "you can't directly disprove the existence of a deity. ever."

This is really the worst argument for anything. For starters, anything that can't be disproved is inherently scientific. But to really see how silly of an argument it is, I can replace the word deity with anything I want, and the argument remains just as valid.

Well, to be fair, one cannot disprove the truth.


I could say "You can't disprove Nuclear Fission", which doesn't make Nuclear Fission unscientific.


I do agree that it is not a well articulated argument, but I will play devil's advocate here, and try and turn it into something that has substance.


I bring up Cartesian Dualism.
This states that the brain and the mind are separate. The brain is the physical organ that science controls, and that science explains.
However, there is a separate consciousness, the mind, that science has no jurisdiction over.


One can apply a similar argument to religion, and say that even if the concept of a deity does not fit with our knowledge of science, that is just the "brain" half. Science could not disprove the "mind" part of the existence of a deity, because it is a different area of knowledge. 

Thus, the claim that science can't disprove a deity, would be one that actually has some philosophical merit, and logical merit as well.

It has to be possible to disprove something in order for it to be scientific. There are plenty of experiments that could be done in the area of nuclear fission that could show it to be false with certain results.

Deities, however, are generally defined in such a way that no possible test could disprove their existence, so the analogy with nuclear fission doesn't really hold. They're more in line with the statement:

"If I drop this pencil enough times, it will fall up."

This statement is completely unscientific, because there is absolutely no way to prove it wrong.

For an example of a scientific statement:

"The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s."

This statement is possible to disprove. You go and measure the speed of light and if you get anything different than this, then it's disproven.

As for the whole brain vs. mind thing, I don't think there's any evidence that the mind exists outside of the brain, so it's probably not worth bringing up.

[Daxx]

can a protein on it's own reproduce, respire, and survive for long enough to evolve? and can evolution really make such an innately simple amino acid change and become more complex? how on earth did the proteins just happen to have the capacity to mate or asexually copy itself?

Disclaimer: I am not a biologist, and my knowledge of abiogenesis is about as sketchy as you'd expect an interested lay person to have in an emerging field. The following is my attempt to answer to the best of my knowledge. If I'm wrong I would like to be corrected, preferably with references to the relevant work.

Proteins can replicate under a number of conditions. For evolution by natural selection to occur, all you need is a protein that gets copied relatively reliably and frequently. Considering a vast number of chemical reactions occurring in parallel over vast time scales, the probability of this happening is not as low as ID proponents would have you believe.

Respiration is commonly included in definitions of "life", but isn't really required here. Respiration is just a process which facilitates other chemical reactions. "Survival rate" for a protein doesn't appear to be particularly relevant here AFAICT either.

The evolutionary process that we are talking about works by natural selection. The principle behind heredity and selection is very simple, and can indeed be generalised down to this level of complexity (all it requires is imperfect replication with a selection pressure on the rate or instances of replication).

To answer your question about how proteins "happen" to have these properties of replication: it is a function of their chemical makeup and the way they interact with other chemicals. For more details on the actual processes involved, I suggest checking out some of the literature. Abiogenesis is a developing field with different hypotheses about various mechanisms.