Science and Religion

 I concede that every story of creation is as valid as the scientific one. I concede that we may never know.

I propose however that religion will never get us closer to the truth and yet science might well get us there eventually.

I propose that nothing we do, science or religion, can or ever will show us the whole truth of the creation of the universe because we are incapable of knowing it.

My belief or hope, is that the external force/being/Creator which is the unknowable option I choose to go with is pleased that we are finding out more and more about how creation (in its widest sense) works. But all we are doing is akin to discovering the rules (grammar and syntax) of writing. It tells us what some of the rules are but those rules don’t and can never tell us how the idea of writing was created or why it was created and tells us only a fraction of the essence of the person who was the writer.

I see neither as good nor bad . People can use science in a bad way but science as a concept corrects itself over time. It tests and changes.

Yes it should do, Alex, but we are becoming so skewed by money and politics that it has become very hard to go against the grain that the establishment has decided is correct. In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they’re different. Look at how the establishment scientists lied about Cv19 – money and politics do not the best interests of the majority bring.

Religion however is easier to use for bad. And it doesn’t correct itself over time it becomes engrained entrenched and open to fanatics.

Well some religions correct or alter over time. What was the reformation if not a democratic correction of Christianity? And the practices and teachings on morality of the C of E for example have changed massively since WW2 such that it is now hardly any different from liberal secular society at large.

I don’t decry religion I just don’t think it necessary. I DO think anti authoritarian thinking is anti religious thinking.
I agree, in that all forms of closed-minded certainty of thinking is religious. Religious behaviours (unshakable acceptance viewpoints; the out-casting of heretics; forms of words/mantras that show you’re part of the group; songs; symbols; etc) do not require supernatural belief.

If religion was taught as if “there might be a god” I would find it more acceptable than the certainty that is communicated.

Teach religion as a possible world view rather than a definitive world view and I would be more comfortable.

Religion IS taught in this way Alex in the vast majority of schools including, ironically, C of E schools. All (most) religions are taught side by side along with humanism in Religious Studies GCSE and A Level for example. That was even true in 1983 when I took Religious Studies A Level. One paper was Christianity (it was a Cathedral School after all) and one was a comparison of the beliefs of the main religions.

If spiritual studies compared the trials of Aphrodite or Tom Brown or Oliver Twist or Harry Potter to those of Joseph with equal vigour to understand human dilemmas, then I would approve.

Religious stories have value like all stories but that doesn’t mean they are true. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t true either.

The values can be true whilst the stories are not.
I agree in the same way that the values can be true as well as the stories. Indeed the stories can be true but the values wrong. We’re back to choosing which unknowns we prefer again.

Coercion is convincing children and the vulnerable to hold opinions that are potentially false.
Who gets to decide which views are potentially false? And why do THEY get to do their supposedly benign coercion?
ALL views are ‘potentially’ false, in that we may and often do change our mind as to their veracity over time.

The truth IN the value of the stories should be discoverable and able to be witnessed. Whereas The truth OF the story is irrelevant and should not be taught or defended with threats of sacrilege or blasphemy.
It’s dangerous to dismiss the personal testimonies of many people over millennia simply because you don’t like the implications of what they’re saying.

If the human race was reduced to few mating pairs and all books and technology was destroyed. Then eventually the exact same science and technology would be rediscovered with the same scientific laws.

But we would not have the same religions with the same stories although we may rediscover the same human values needed to survive.
So what?

This simply means that we are incapable, however high a pedestal we hubristically put ourselves upon, of comprehending fully what the God/External Force/External Being is. Therefore, we will always see different glimpses of it creating differing ideas/religions.
Imagine an express train passing through a small country station at 90mph. The passengers will see it as a blur only. Even if they try to see the detail they will only be able to see a small fraction of the detail of the whole and between them, the passengers will see many different fragments of detail. When describing the station, they will all give differing accounts of their little fragment which are true but only in part; none can accurately describe the whole.
For all we know, time as we experience it, may be totally different for that external Being. i.e. the laws of physics etc we have may not be the same outside our universe.
And even if we were to discover the same values, this could simply show that the spark/values put in us by the creator Being can only be extinguished by that creator, not by us.

 

Every argument against coercion and authoritarianism is an argument against belief in a religion being the gospel truth!

We should educate enough that children can challenge religion not just believe it.

We should educate enough that children can challenge religion and science and political ideology and literary criticism and all accepted norms across society not just believe it. Providing that this challenge means to rediscover the purpose and value of these things and alter them only as much as is necessary to improve them; not just automatically gainsaying or ripping-up everything that’s gone before.

I think you said Carl Sagan said something similar very recently.

Sagan was an avowed atheist; the scientific method and reductive materialism was his religious behaviour. And there is much to be said for it but not to the exclusion of all else.

I rest my case

Your case rests on looking to how religion operated in the past or the most extreme forms of religion today. The religious issues you rail against don’t exist to all intents and purposes (certainly not in Christianity) in the UK any more; (Islam is a worrying issue I grant you) i.e. in the Christianity of the UK, the beliefs & teachings you don’t like are seen far more in the breach than in the observance.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail. This is an erroneous way to think.
It's religion AND science, not either/or. Each of us must take the parts of both that we need to make a foundation upon which to live.

Response to an aggressive and rude scientific materialist

When you say the laws of physics are natural phenomena, you are really saying that they exist but you don't know why or how they came into being in the first place.

The latest idea (now the equally unlikely big-bang theory is in doubt) is that the universe (and therefore the laws of physics) has always been there. But this is just as much a ‘useful yet unproveable slight-of-hand’ as anyone claiming that these things must have been created at some point by an external Force or Being.
The latter view is just as likely as the former and both are ultimately beyond our grasp to prove definitively one way or t'other.

When you say that a new civilization would not replicate the precise theistic beliefs we have, you are right, at least I suspect you are. But to that I ask, so what?

This simply means that we are incapable, however high a pedestal we hubristically put ourselves upon, of comprehending fully what the God/External Force/External Being is. 

This seems a reasonable hypothesis since any External Force/Being that is capable of creating the universe containing the laws of physics and time etc is likely to be advanced beyond our understanding to the same extent as our abilities and achievements are to an ant or a mouse. 

The plethora of ideas about what God is are likely to be the manifestation of our attempts to comprehend the (to us) largely incomprehensible.
Of course we desperately want to fully comprehend, and in our arrogance may tell ourselves we do but I think we can only see small glimpses.
I realise that it's much easier to either pretend we have the full and complete answer or the opposite extreme, to say there is nothing there to be found.

I can see that if your view of life the universe and everything is that unless you can see, touch, measure or weigh it. Unless it fits with a mathematical formula or a law of physics it doesn't, more it CAN'T exist; that if we can't find it, it can't be there, then you will not see any merit in my arguments.
But it’s a very narrow and limited way of looking at the universe's existence and I am sorry for that.