Is science incompatible with religion?

[Makaze]

I honestly have no idea how my post had anything to do with the "purpose" of science.

Assuming you were attempting to answer the original question, your posts read as a critique of science à la "science and religion are the same".

[Radiant head]

I probably didn't make myself clear on how religion and science are obviously different, but I wasn't really interested in talking about new atheist truisms.

[Makaze]

I probably didn't make myself clear on how religion and science are obviously different, but I wasn't really interested in talking about new atheist truisms.

Did you answer the question in the thread title?

[feplus]

God is not falsifiable, it is not a scientific claim. According to science, you cannot claim it, because it cannot be proven to be false.

This does not mean religion and science are incompatible. It means not all religious claims are scientific claims. That is obvious.

Edited November 6, 2015 by feplus

[Makaze]

This does not mean religion and science are incompatible. It means religious claims are not scientific claims. That is obvious.

If they cannot interact with, justify, or contradict one another, how could they be any less compatible?

Edited November 6, 2015 by Makaze

[Rapier]

"Probably". Because statistics, not faith. I have woken up alive day after day for the past 18 years with the sun rising in the east. I am pretty sure it's going to continue doing so.

And the only thing that might make the sun rise in a different direction is if a huge comet smashed earth off orbit. Which has happened once in Earth's HISTORY, when it was hit with a mars sized rock. That is statistically very, very rare. Our existance is indeed a flimsy one, but history shows that it is highly unlikely that the sun won't rise in the east tomorrow morning, and that's the conclusion I have come to- "probably".

Context please. Also just because someone is right about one thing, doesn't mean they're right about everything. The modern scientific method does not lead to "God". I'd be impressed if you informed me of one train of logic that indicates it does. Because from the modern scientific method of "your claim needs to be falsifiable" the definition of a scientist is, indeed, atheistic (due to the sheer lack of evidence and contradictions in the bible) or agnostic (because god /could/ exist, there is no evidence for it, so the agnostic cannot make a judgement).

Yes, it's called doublethink. Beneficial doublethink but doublethink all the same.

First paragraph: You waking up alive for 18 years and seeing the sun rise in the east every day doesn't mean it will continue to happen again in the next week. For the sun to rise in the east, all we need (ok, this is not so simple as it sounds when I phrase that) is for the Earth's magnets to change in polarity. Maybe this is more unlikely than I think it is (I'm terrible with science), but I don't think anyone can answer that it is likely they will be alive in the next week or month. There are healthy people who discover they have a tendence for cancer and other nasty diseases, and death doesn't need to come by natural causes.

Third paragraph: I did not say science leads to God. I cited Francis Bacon (who was a distinguished scientist). .... Which I mistook for Karl Popper for some reason. I'm dumb. Anyway, your definition says that scientists are necessarily atheists or agnosticists. I've demonstrated that it is wrong because there are non atheist/agnosticist scientists. Do you think my counterexample is flawed in some way?

lol. so have you recently read about hume or something?

it's not a leap of faith to believe i'll be alive tomorrow, or in the next ten minutes, or next second, because (although i'm currently sick) i'm a healthy young person. healthy young people have established that they don't simply perish at the drop of a time. moreover this is assuming that a scientist disregards the (probably accepted) possibility of death in the first place, so it's not 100% certainty, and it's not certainty without evidence.

maybe there's a problem with induction alone, but we've got good reason to believe the sun will rise in the east for billions of years to come, if not even looking at the actual physics of the situation (orbits, mainly), but simply by looking at the geometry of the problem. science is about making predictions; if we can't predict that the sun will rise, or that i'll likely be alive next week, then the work that went into making those predictions are worthless.

it's like saying we can't know the speed of light in a vacuum at any given moment in time. it's, by accounts of physical discovery and theory, inaccurate to even feel that about science. (ie, that would stem from a poor understanding of the science in the first place.)

I've read about it almost a year ago but I forgot half of the things I did, unfortunately.

Death doesn't need to come from natural causes. Being a healthy young man won't help someone should they have an accident. And if speaking about death that freely is... odd, to say the least, we can apply the same stuff to other, minor things, such as relationships, or even the bus an hypothetical person always rides at 12:00 PM. X believes they'll still be in a relationship with their boy/girlfriend next month, or that their bus will arrive at 12:00 PM everyday, even if it is perfectly possible for X to break up with their boy/girlfriend next month and for their bus to not arrive at 12:00 PM tomorrow, or next week. The point is that there are many factors going around us that are completely out of our control, and they can influence our life in ways we can't expect, although we're led to believe nothing will change. Some of them aren't even that hard to happen.

Low probabilities of something happening doesn't mean it won't or can't happen, yet we live as if the latter is a given. Ok, you can claim low probabilities are irrelevant and unnecessary to think about, that it is an absurd to worry about unplausible things. Then... I'm not sure about this. :V But it succeeds in showing that our brain has a vice of expecting our routine to always continue the same, I think.

Basically, most scientific explanations, like about thunder storms, gives us some remote understanding of phenomena we used to attribute to gods. But for me, most scientific explanations feel so crazy and ridiculous as unscientific explanations. To be clear I'm very much pro-science, it's just on a philosophical level, science just kind of makes me go "wtf" a lot of the time because the whole world feels as absurd as before I heard the scientific explanation. You might be able to explain that lightning and thunder aren't caused by gods, but I'm still wondering what electricity even is on a fundamental level.

So basically science isn't some linear exploration, it's just mostly shifting paradigms and putting layers between our senses and the absurdity of it all.

I don't think absurdity is a valid mean to judge whether something is true or not. Black holes are made of insane troll logic (from what science has said so far) and yet they exist.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Rapier

[feplus]

If they cannot interact with, justify, or contradict one another, how could they be any less compatible?

They are compatible because (until a religion makes scientific judgments) the truth of one set of claims does not compete with the truth of the other set of claims.

Edited November 6, 2015 by feplus

[Lord Raven]

Basically, most scientific explanations, like about thunder storms, gives us some remote understanding of phenomena we used to attribute to gods. But for me, most scientific explanations feel so crazy and ridiculous as unscientific explanations. To be clear I'm very much pro-science, it's just on a philosophical level, science just kind of makes me go "wtf" a lot of the time because the whole world feels as absurd as before I heard the scientific explanation.

I think I know what you mean, but I think relativity and QM are the only things that have thrown me for a loop. Even QM I've made my peace with.

You might be able to explain that lightning and thunder aren't caused by gods, but I'm still wondering what electricity even is on a fundamental level.

The movement of charged particles, namely electrons, is electricity. The lightning you see in the sky are extremely focused and extremely dense charged particles, known as a plasma.

Nothing crazy or ridiculous about that right? Unless the idea of this tiny charged particle that is effectively a point in space known as an electron is absurd and ridiculous to you, in which case I don't know what to tell you. There has to be some fundamental building block for science and an electron is one of those.

So basically science isn't some linear exploration, it's just mostly shifting paradigms and putting layers between our senses and the absurdity of it all.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with the latter. I mean yeah it's sorta wonky because it can seem counter-intuitive, but they are models that correctly predict things and maybe it's because I've generally just grown numb to things but they aren't particularly absurd. Especially because under certain circumstances many things sort of revert to every day and more 'intuitive' phenomena.

[Phoenix Wright]

Death doesn't need to come from natural causes. Being a healthy young man won't help someone should they have an accident. And if speaking about death that freely is... odd, to say the least, we can apply the same stuff to other, minor things, such as relationships, or even the bus an hypothetical person always rides at 12:00 PM. X believes they'll still be in a relationship with their boy/girlfriend next month, or that their bus will arrive at 12:00 PM everyday, even if it is perfectly possible for X to break up with their boy/girlfriend next month and for their bus to not arrive at 12:00 PM tomorrow, or next week. The point is that there are many factors going around us that are completely out of our control, and they can influence our life in ways we can't expect, although we're led to believe nothing will change. Some of them aren't even that hard to happen.

Low probabilities of something happening doesn't mean it won't or can't happen, yet we live as if the latter is a given. Ok, you can claim low probabilities are irrelevant and unnecessary to think about, that it is an absurd to worry about unplausible things. Then... I'm not sure about this. :V But it succeeds in showing that our brain has a vice of expecting our routine to always continue the same, I think.

I don't think absurdity is a valid mean to judge whether something is true or not. Black holes are made of insane troll logic (from what science has said so far) and yet they exist.

the point is that's it's not faith. there's reason to believe the sun will rise in the east, that a healthy young person won't die out of nowhere, or that a relationship can last awhile.

probability isn't the focus, it's predictability. there's a reason to believe those things, and it's based off of either sound logic or valid empiricism.

what are you trying to say about black holes? lol it's not made of "insane troll logic," whatever that may mean.

Basically, most scientific explanations, like about thunder storms, gives us some remote understanding of phenomena we used to attribute to gods. But for me, most scientific explanations feel so crazy and ridiculous as unscientific explanations. To be clear I'm very much pro-science, it's just on a philosophical level, science just kind of makes me go "wtf" a lot of the time because the whole world feels as absurd as before I heard the scientific explanation. You might be able to explain that lightning and thunder aren't caused by gods, but I'm still wondering what electricity even is on a fundamental level.

So basically science isn't some linear exploration, it's just mostly shifting paradigms and putting layers between our senses and the absurdity of it all.

bold: i have a hard time believing this. how you feel about an explanation is irrelevant, especially if you're not versed in the actual science. additionally, most scientific explanations are intuitive. as lord raven has said, it's typically only the field of physics, and within physics it's pretty much only relativity and quantum mechanics, that causes people to feel, "no way that's true." but, as far as we know, it is.

as an example, which you may not know, mass, luminosity, and radius for a star in the main sequence are proportional to each other. this means that if one increases, the others do. so if a main sequence star has a lot of mass, it's gonna be really bright and really big. but, when studying star remnants, and a star becomes either a neutron star or a white dwarf, we find that mass and radius becomes inversely proportional. at first glance, this may seem ridiculous, but when you study the mechanics of stars vs. star remnants, perhaps unsurprisingly the mechanisms found to keep those systems stable are different.

[Radiant head]

The movement of charged particles, namely electrons, is electricity. The lightning you see in the sky are extremely focused and extremely dense charged particles, known as a plasma.

Nothing crazy or ridiculous about that right? Unless the idea of this tiny charged particle that is effectively a point in space known as an electron is absurd and ridiculous to you, in which case I don't know what to tell you. There has to be some fundamental building block for science and an electron is one of those.

The scientific explanation (lightning is caused by difference of charge between clouds and the ground) isn't ridiculous in of itself, but at the same time it tells me nothing about the fundamental nature of what electricity is. It's just one paradigm of attempting to understand it. Maybe some people in labs sort of know what electricity is (one of the four fundamental interactions, carried on by some boson or other? etc) but even they don't know much about it on a fundamental level.

I did minor in physics, and every scientific explanation mostly just has me squinting and thinking this is absolutely bonkers rather than making me feel like I have better understanding of reality. To say nothing of the least of trying to explain what consciousness is, etc.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Radiant head

[Makaze]

I don't think the question is being answered by this tangent.

[Lord Raven]

Maybe some people in labs sort of know what electricity is (one of the four fundamental interactions, carried on by some boson or other? etc) but even they don't know much about it on a fundamental level.

Electrons go from low potential to high potential and clouds generate a high potential, and the electrons follow the path of least resistance. This is actually fairly intuitive, because many of these principles quite often apply to classic mechanics (well in reverse cause negative charges). The interaction is created through photon exchange from my understanding of it but I didn't do shit with particle physics. I mean electricity is literally the flow of charged particles.

I'd say that's pretty fundamental. I don't think it's fair to call them absurd at that point.

How do you define fundamental or absurd? I mean, at best, science is more about creating models to predict phenomena rather than creating models to attempt to understand it. But even still, I'm not sure what about this is absurd.

I'm also wondering right now - since I'm really just nitpicking at this topic because I don't feel like these threads have the potential to really go anywhere - how this point relates back to religion? Are you saying both concepts are equally absurd?

I don't think the question is being answered by this tangent.

I don't think the question will be answered in this thread. Edited November 6, 2015 by Lord Raven

[Makaze]

I don't think the question will be answered in this thread.

I meant I don't belive the tangent attemps to address compatibility in any way.

[Elieson]

All roads lead to somewhere

[dondon151]

They are compatible because (until a religion makes scientific judgments) the truth of one set of claims does not compete with the truth of the other set of claims.

haven't we had this discussion before

the bible makes many scientifically falsifiable claims, such as the parting of the red sea, the solstice at the battle of jericho, the raising of jesus, and creation itself. contemporary religion has attempted to pass these claims off as metaphor because they know that these claims are either unfalsifiable or untrue.

[feplus]

haven't we had this discussion before

the bible makes many scientifically falsifiable claims, such as the parting of the red sea, the solstice at the battle of jericho, the raising of jesus, and creation itself. contemporary religion has attempted to pass these claims off as metaphor because they know that these claims are either unfalsifiable or untrue.

Most of these examples are of a religion making scientific claims. In such cases the compatibility of science and that particular faith depends on whether the claims are allegorical, and if not [ii] whether the claims are true.

Miracles do not contradict science because they are a temporary suspension of physical laws. "Physical laws cannot be temporarily suspended" is not a scientific claim.

Then you have more basic religious arguments, like "God exists" or "God is a trinity," which are plainly compatible with science.

Edited November 6, 2015 by feplus

[dondon151]

Miracles do not contradict science because they are a temporary suspension of physical laws. "Physical laws cannot be temporarily suspended" is not a scientific claim.

this sounds extraordinarily suspect. miracles getting a free pass on obedience to physical laws means that they are not falsifiable. they can't be scientific. if the solstice at the battle of jericho really happened, then that wouldn't mean that physical laws were violated once; that would mean rather that our understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed because it cannot account for this observation.

it's been the case throughout history that most miracles have been debunked as one of two things: natural phenomena that only seem miraculous because the present parties did not understand the mechanism behind their occurrence, or plainly false and/or exaggerated claims. if believers are looking for miracles to affirm their beliefs, then of course they will tend to make miracles of the mundane.

Edited November 7, 2015 by dondon151

[feplus]

Miracles are not scientific. The existence of miracles does not make physical laws fundamentally flawed, it just means that a hypothetical god would be able to suspend them. Unsurprising.

Most miraculous claims are indeed bunk.

To you and others reading, here is a simple way to settle this issue: produce a strictly religious claim (no empirical content) that is incompatible with a strictly scientific claim (no metaphysical content). If you can produce this, the two are at least occasionally incompatible, if not then not.

We can make it simpler. Examine the most fundamental religious claim: God exists. This god is not personal, does not involve himself in the affairs of the world, does not answer prayers. In what specific way would the presence of this deistic god contradict science?

Edited November 7, 2015 by feplus

[dondon151]

Miracles are not scientific. The existence of miracles does not make physical laws fundamentally flawed, it just means that a hypothetical god would be able to suspend them. Unsurprising.

i think that you've snugly adjusted your definitions to make your claim appear viable, but this is really not the case. if someone were to describe an event that violated the law of conservation of energy and it was thoroughly concluded that there is no confounding explanation (i.e., no measurement errors or outside influences that were unaccounted for at the time of observation), then the conclusion is not that the event occurred due to the agency of the divine, but that the law of conservation of energy is incorrect. ignoring the latter conclusion is tantamount to neglecting data in science.

if every time that an observation contradictory to previously accepted physical law was ordained a miracle (and then not investigated further), then science would be full of miraculous exceptions.

To you and others reading, here is a simple way to settle this issue: produce a strictly religious claim (no empirical content) that is incompatible with a strictly scientific claim (no metaphysical content). If you can produce this, the two are at least occasionally incompatible, if not then not.

We can make it simpler. Examine the most fundamental religious claim: God exists. This god is not personal, does not involve himself in the affairs of the world, does not answer prayers. In what specific way would the presence of this deistic god contradict science?

deism purports that god created the universe. if that were the case, then there should be evidence of this.

suppose that it were discovered that the universe did not have a finite beginning. then this observation would contradict the existence of a deistic god, since creation requires a state of non-existence before a state of existence.

Edited November 7, 2015 by dondon151

[Baldrick]

They are compatible because (until a religion makes scientific judgments) the truth of one set of claims does not compete with the truth of the other set of claims.

That's true as long as a religion is entire made up of statements on ethics, morality and the like. You don't get very far into the Bible before you encounter a scientific claim. ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.")

[feplus]

Suppose the following:

1. The law of conservation of energy (as we understand it) is true and always in effect, so long as the world is left to its own devices.

2. God does not leave the world to its own devices and during his involvement suspends this law briefly.

These statements are compatible. Both could be true without contradiction.

How scientists would evaluate this phenomenon is not an interesting question. This has no impact on the compatibility question.

(edited for accuracy)

I did not mention that our hypothetical god was a creator god (admittedly the deistic label was misleading). He could be, he could not be. If he is, maybe he fashioned the universe to appear eternal to human minds.

Edited November 7, 2015 by feplus

[Lord Raven]

Suppose the following:

1. The law of conservation of energy (as we understand it) is true and always in effect, so long as the world is left to its own devices.

2. God does not leave the world to its own devices and during his involvement suspends this law briefly.

These statements are compatible. Both could be true without contradiction.

How scientists would evaluate this phenomenon is an interesting question. Maybe they would reconsider the law. Maybe they would try and fail to replicate the exceptional case. This has no impact on the compatibility question.

pretty easily, you said the law holds only if the world is left to its own devices then say it's not

they'd pretty much go "welp it's no longer a closed system but it's still conserved if it were." they would also state numerical limits as to where it applies and where it doesn't, cause in reality energy's not always conserved (not that simply anyway - it's definitely not always mechanically conserved) but from a numerical standpoint energy conservation can still be used as a model. We still use energy conservation in places where it's not 100% valid but it still works out.

it's really not that interesting, I mean when we learned about relativity and shit like that they basically did the same thing

I know this is just an example but it's not as interesting as you're making it out to be

Edited November 9, 2015 by Lord Raven

[dondon151]

Suppose the following:

1. The law of conservation of energy (as we understand it) is true and always in effect, so long as the world is left to its own devices.

2. God does not leave the world to its own devices and during his involvement suspends this law briefly.

These statements are compatible. Both could be true without contradiction.

How scientists would evaluate this phenomenon is not an interesting question. This has no impact on the compatibility question.

yes it does. science would still have to attempt to come up with an explanation for this observation. if this observation was indeed due to the influence of a divine power, then it has to be proven. i agree that your statements can be true without contradiction, but it does not mean that miracles are not scientific claims. things don't exist outside of physical laws just because you deem them to do as such. if a law doesn't account for every observation, then the law has to be amended or replaced.

I did not mention that our hypothetical god was a creator god (admittedly the deistic label was misleading). He could be, he could not be. If he is, maybe he fashioned the universe to appear eternal to human minds.

if your hypothetical god can't be observed, that it's not scientific. my imaginary pet wyvern is defined to have no influence on the physical world; you can't prove that he doesn't exist either.

Edited November 7, 2015 by dondon151

[Phoenix Wright]

The scientific explanation (lightning is caused by difference of charge between clouds and the ground) isn't ridiculous in of itself, but at the same time it tells me nothing about the fundamental nature of what electricity is. It's just one paradigm of attempting to understand it. Maybe some people in labs sort of know what electricity is (one of the four fundamental interactions, carried on by some boson or other? etc) but even they don't know much about it on a fundamental level.

I did minor in physics, and every scientific explanation mostly just has me squinting and thinking this is absolutely bonkers rather than making me feel like I have better understanding of reality. To say nothing of the least of trying to explain what consciousness is, etc.

what had you squinting, specifically? traditionally, a minor in physics doesn't cover much...

[feplus]

things don't exist outside of physical laws just because you deem them to do as such. if a law doesn't account for every observation, then the law has to be amended or replaced.

Miracles are not scientific (supernatural) but they have observable consequences (empirical). If a god suspends a natural law to perform a miracle, the cause cannot be understood through science. Scientists can investigate but will never "find god" under a microscope. The most they will be able to conclude is that an otherwise absolute natural law was violated in this sole instance.

The alleged existence of both our hypothetical god and your pet wyvern are not scientific claims. If we wanted to argue one or both was real we'd have to produce non-empirical justification.

Edited November 7, 2015 by feplus