Science versus religion

[justifier]

Quote: You describe science as it should be, but not as it is.
Answer: No, I describe what I and my associates learnt, taught and practised.

So you learnt, taught and practised it as it should not be?

Yes, I've seen ego interfere with the pursuit of truth and research distorted by financial constraints; but usually there comes a breakthrough, often based on new techniques of observation.

My point was that science is not a perfect system; simply because, since it is a human endeavor, human factors are involved. Even when the steps are conscientiously adhered to, human limitations and error are involved. The whole reason we have science at all is that human knowledge is limited, and this is itself one limitation on current scientific investigation itself.

You and other scientists aspire to the ideal in scientific investigation, but not all scientists are. We can't just consider the good scientists and ignore the bad ones. The scientific community is made up of interdependent individuals, so we cannot isolate the good scientists from the bad ones.

Therefore you cannot hold science up as a perfect standard against which to compare other fields, like religion, as you implied in your original post.

Quote: Science is not the highest authority
Answer: No, truth is the highest authority, and true science often the best way to discover truth.

Truth is not itself an authority. An authority is a source of truth (real or alleged). Truth cannot be an authority on itself. Truth doesn't just turn up to your university and proclaim itself - it must be discovered and reported. ("Authority" can have the sense either of being a genuine source of truth or somebody who decides and/or imposes supposed truth.)

Whether or not science is the best way to find truth, it is not perfect itself. Science only deals with truth in one field: the natural world. The natural world does not include everything that exists, therefore science cannot be the highest source of truth about everything or even the things it does deal with. There are other kinds of truth: philosophy (which science was originally classed as just one branch of, and properly still should be), theology, the arts, mathematics, and so on. Science is a branch of philosophy because it is a system of human thought and inquiry, one particularly concerned with the natural world.

Theology is not invalidated as a field by science, because science can only make statements about the natural world. It cannot directly confirm or deny the truth of religion, since religion is concerned with the supernatural - things outside of the natural world, to which science is restricted.

However, scientific discoveries and theories can be used to judge the truth of religious claims where they concern the natural world in some way. But at that point we are engaging in philosophical thought apart from direct science, which is only about direct investigation of the natural world.

Quote: many scientific ideas have been imposed by authorities who forbid those ideas to be questioned
Answer: Yes, as Lysenko's work was upheld by Stalin and therefore "unquestionable"; but where are Stalin and Lysenko now?

It didn't stop with Stalin and Lysenko. It doesn't just happen under political dictatorships and other such dictatorships are still in existence. Russia is still a dictatorship; Stalin is gone but he was replaced. Lysenko and Stalin are both gone, but unscientific ideas continue to be imposed by others.

Quote: Your central notion that science conflicts with religion is contradicted by history. Modern western science was founded by devoutly Christian men who based their investigation upon their religious ideas. They were not merely deferring to the dominant religion of their time and country. They had no "difficulty" being religious. There was no conflict with their religion and their science - their science stemmed from their religion.

Answer: Yes, Galileo and Copernicus held views on the solar system which were obviously shaped by their religious environment.

The church did not officially sanction the geocentric universe. The Bible does not support a geocentric universe. Galileo was originally only opposed by academic establishment, not the church. Hence it was a case of scientific dogmatism. That dogma didnot come from the Bible but from ancient Greek ideas which were still popular though much of it had long been discarded by many scholars. The church only became involved in censuring Galileo when he made an offensive remark about a high church official, who up until then had been a good friend who was supportive of his work.

Galileo never actually proved his ideas at that time - they were not proven until 200 years later. Copernicus was not officially or widely denounced by the church at all in his lifetime - he was criticized only by a minority of clerics who believed in extreme literal interpretations of scripture, which the text itself does not indicate are correct ones. His ideas came under church censure only after Galileo's falling out later on. Add to that, Galileo and Copernicus were themselves Christians, and they even used passages from the Bible to defend their views.

Religious authorities have persecuted alleged heretics for various reasons, not necessarily to do with actual , genuine religious ideas. Usually such persecution is politically motivated or based on religious apostasy rather than orthodoxy. And of course some religions are bound to be in error from the beginning, as some of them must be for others to be true. But this is not exclusive to religion. The same has frequently happened in science, and science is just as prone to it, because just as there were those who treated religion as the final authority, there are those who treat science as the final authority and are reluctant to admit it is prone to perversion and error.or that their own particular notions are unscientific.

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace's views on evolution were obviously derived from their religious beliefs. Or were they in fact condemned by religious authorities? (What a sarcastic #### I am)

What the many early scientists whose ideas are the solid foundations of modern science, such as Newton, Pascal, Boyle, Kepler, Linneaus, Fleming, Faraday, Herschel and Dalton?. They were inspired in their work by their religion and their thinking stemmed directly from their religion. They weren't fighting it.

Darwin was not a founder of western science. Darwinism is also not supported by any scientific evidence and actually conflicts with numerous observations. It had to be revised many times from it's original form to even keep up with later discoveries. It serves no useful purpose in other scientific work. Scientists spend most of their time just trying to fit the idea with the evidence and vice versa.

Evolution was merely a dogma based on philosophy rather than science, as many leading Darwinists and a number of evolutionist commentators have openly admitted. Many of these, such as Thomas Huxley, referred to evolution as their "religion". So yes, Darwin did derive his ideas from his religious beliefs - or at least his ideas about religion. Darwin's scientific ideas were very much shaped by his religious background.

You can prove with repeated experiments that Isaac Newton or Michael Faraday were right but you cannot use it to prove that Darwin was right. You can't make any direct observations at all of evolution occurring in the past or in the present.

Quote: So your task is to show that science contradicts all religions and, further, that it disproves any conceivable religion, e.g., that it disproves the existence of any kind of God.

Answer: No. It is impossible to disprove the existence of "any kind of God". For instance, consider a microscopic God, who has not acted in our universe for a million years. The existence of such a God would be very hard to disprove or prove.
First, define your God. State what God's nature is, and what God's actions are, and I will happily go in search of the entity you define, and be delighted if I find God. But "any sort of God" is far too vague a definition.
As well might I attempt to prove or disprove the existence of the great invisible sea serpent, which never yet has been seen.

If it depends on the type of god, if it's too vague, then why are you certain that science necessarily conflicts with all religions?

Proving the non-existence of a particular type of God is not something you could do in one forum thread and arguments over it would go on forever in my experience. All I meant to do was correct a logical error in your post, which was that you indirectly assumed that all religions are wrong when you assumed that science conflicts with all of them. You don't know that it does.

I think you have taken it on authority that science disproves religion and have not investigated for yourself. This is not scientific thinking. In order for science to be reliable, scientists need have a complete and correct perspective on the nature and proper place of their field

Another false assumption underlying your OP is that religion is exclusively theistic. Non-theistic beliefs can be religious in nature as theistic beliefs are. Evolutionism is religious and, as I already mentioned, leading evolutionists have eagerly admitted. it. Evolutionism is not based on science, it is an interpretation of scientific observation according to a theological belief or assumption: "God does not exist". Evolution itself is not science, it is a philosophy according to which observations are interpreted, and often selectively and with extreme bias.