incompatibility of science and religion

Incompatibility of science and religion
Physics Today "Letters", May 2008, page 10

The ongoing dialog in the Letters section regarding science and religion has been most interesting (see, for example, PHYSICS TODAY, January 2008, page 10, and February 2007, page 10). However, I think the writers are missing the point. The two disciplines start with different and incompatible perspectives. What I would call true science is totally objective. Whatever a scientific investigation turns up, even if it overthrows previous work, must be accepted as long as the findings pass all tests. Religion starts with truths that cannot be falsified and must be accepted. Any scientific evidence to the contrary is therefore false.

In the multiplicity of religions and sects, there is room for people to believe in various aspects of science. For example, the Big Bang can be seen as an act of divine creation billions of years ago, with no later divine interference in the evolution of the universe. Or everything humans see can be taken as having been created in six days a few thousand years ago. Regardless, religious people accept divine intervention and reject any attempt to refute whatever degree of intervention they believe in. True science holds that religious beliefs must be subject to testing and that they so far have not been proven.

Religious people, whether lay or clergy, can and do make contributions to science. But in the larger sense, the religious cannot claim to be true scientists. As long as belief can trump scientific findings, religion and science can never be compatible. Therefore, I recommend that scientists and religious people work together wherever possible, but that scientists continue to vigorously promote their findings and to expose what we believe to be false or misleading information. On the other hand, scientists should recognize that religion, with its matters of life, death, and morality, is grounded in individual and collective belief and not subject to scientific argument.

I would also like to say a word about "theory." I think it is time we dropped the word; it carries too many interpretations. We should speak of "models" instead. Implicit in the word is the notion that models are snapshots of current knowledge, are subject to change, and must be constantly tested. Even evolution can be considered a model. In this way we may separate science from the immutabilities of religion.

Michael C. Schneck
(mikeschneck@comcast.net)
Ashburn, Virginia

this is based on his own unproven belief that science can disprove religion, don't you think? otherwise there is no reason for such a claim, as belief will never have the option to "trump scientific findings".

a religious scientist who comes across the situation where their religion is somehow disproven has three options:
1. cease to be religious and continue being a scientist
2. cease to be a scientist and continue with that religion
3. continue to be a scientist and find a religion which has no proof against it.

and there will always be a religion with no proof against it as long as there is Christianity

julz

It has to do with proof in a different way. Religious people have their 'faith' as their "proof". Obviously this is 'not good enough', as it can not count as scientific evidence. Hence it's never compatible. It has nothing to do with assuming to be right or be able to disprove religion.

I have to say though, even with scientific evidence, how do you disprove religion anyways? Often people simply adjust their belief a bit, something that's VERY easy as there's so much stuff that's multi-interpretable.



No pun intended, but all of those options are a bit funny in my opinion. If the person really would be a scientist he would be aware of how theories can be proven wrong and how there is no scientific proof in favor of religions.

All he really has to do when science disproves his belief is change his personal view to fit the new data. If this means that because the Christian God can't possibly exist, then he or she should accept that. It would be a pretty unnatural thing for a scientist to simply disregard evidence and keep on believing in there own things. I'm aware there might be a certain 'comfort zone of their own theories' that they rather wouldn't see changed drastically because of some proof, however if facts disprove things you have previously believed in, then you should adapt your view.

It's like when you find out Santa Claus isn't real... It might hurt, but you have to live with it.



Why? There are plenty of things in the Bible that we can or could prove to be wrong actually. Whether 'Christians' would accept any genuine rebuttals is something else. Again, this is why there's an incompatibility with science, religion doesn't usually accept scientific evidence.

if you can conclusively, you'd be the first. forget Catholicism for a second, and Christianity is basically the belief that Jesus died for our sins and rose again, and that believing in Him let's us get into Heaven instead of Hell. other things like historical accuracy of the Old Testament are neither vital nor able to be disproven by going back and checking out if it actually happened.

find me a possible way of proving that wrong. until then, like i said, there will always be a religion with no proof against it as long as there is Christianity.

no one thinks faith == proof. faith is belief without proof.

actually the point is that there is no scientific proof against them (or at least all of them). therefore: science and religion are not incompatible because a scientist can be religious without compromising his/her ability to reject a theory when it is soundly disproven.


that's what i said. if your religion is disproven and you agree with the proof, adapt your view. but the new view no longer conforms to your religion, so you cease to have that religion.

those three options cover everything: the first two are choosing science OR religion, the third is choosing science AND religion, but there is no room to choose both AND not change your religious view.

a scientist doesn't need proof for everything they're told. if he/she did, he/she would be plagued with terribly trust-less relationships and have a very hard time spawning new scientists believing in things without being given proof is called faith ("hell no... scientists can't have faith can they?").

science and religion are not incompatible.

i'm sure that's pretty straight-forward now.

julz

I do. But this way:
Faith is belief based on internal, personal proof.
Science is belief based on external, impersonal proof.

The fundamental problem is that internal proof cannot be made external and vice-versa.



Bingo! A true scientists is exactly as Julz describes... since we have no evidence FOR or AGAINST most religions, a scientist can choose which to follow. Thus a scientist can follow any religious belief that doesn't contradict their scientific belief. Jesus died on the cross for our sins? Fine, no problem. The Earth is 4000 years old? Problem.



Why can't it be a change in your scientific outlook? The Jesuits are perfect examples of this. But honestly, I'm having trouble understanding this third option anyways...


Hmmmm... I dont' think so. Everything that I know, I have seen derived, proven, or exposed sometime in my career. I think you mean though that when someone from the COBE experiment comes to me and says "Omega is close to one thus the universe is flat" it is true that I have not worked out the Omega... nor do I know how to go from Omega to Flat. But I trust (yes, have faith) that my fellow scientists have used the same base knowledge I was exposed to, use the same methods I have been exposed to, and thus I'm confident that if I DID understand, I would likely reach the same conclusion. Note that this is not always the case. It is very common for a scietist to say, for example, "Omega is less than one and thus the universe will expand forever"... but when others check his work, follow his proof, and is found to be wrong... that's it... point dropped. I personally don't have to do this; but my colleagues will and thus science progresses.

As well, consider that by design, scientists are skeptics. Thus just because Stephen Hawking says "black holes evaporate", it's not until several other people independently check the "proof" that it's believed. And when that proof changes, so do our believes.

So it's not accurate to say that scientists don't need proof... we don't need to SEE all the proof EVERY TIME but we do have to trust that our fellow scientists are doing exactly what we would do (follow the scientific method), that their proof is valid (measurable in standard units), and that anyone around the world can follow the same proof and get the same results (repeatable experiments).

And when that trust is broken, it's found out and the guilty parties punished! How can you not love a system like this?

well, that was what i was trying to put across. i didn't mean to come across as "scientists don't need proof at all". my point was just that the view of the letter you originally posted only holds if a scientist cannot have faith.



there are many religions that aren't well-known, so i wouldn't be so bold to assume there are none that can be disproven by science. if a scientist within a religion finds that it is undeniably disproven, that scientist can only remain a true scientist and be religious by finding a different religion that hasn't been disproven.

i did leave out the fourth option though: stop being a scientist AND stop being religious, but i can't imagine someone looking at this option simply as a direct result of the scenario i mentioned.

i looked up Jesuits and found too much information for me to read without being late to uni this morning, so i was wondering if you could elaborate on them? i may misunderstand your meaning by "change in your scientific outlook" but i thought that was implicit in any discovery.

cool, i'm glad we're in agreement there. and i'm not sure if your stab at young earth theory is also meant to be a point where Christianity can be disproven. many Christians do believe in a young earth, but many don't or don't care. i personally don't believe that the earth has to be millions of years old. i haven't looked into it, but i don't need to because it doesn't matter to me. i don't think there's enough proof in the Bible that means we Christians have to think the earth is 6000 years old ("in the beginning" at 4004 BC or something). if, as a Christian, i would have to believe in a 6000 year young earth, that's the only reason i would care about the age of the earth.

so, yeah, science and religion are still compatible, just as you said

julz

They are a JudeoChristian religious sect that has always had a strong leaning towards science. There are many advances in science and math that are attributed to Jesuit Priests.

As such, they are a prime example of religious people that work in the realm of science AND religion and can modify EACH to fit the other.

http://www.jesuitsinscience.org/



That's exactly the point. Since it is scientifically impossible for the Earth to be that young, any argument built upon a young earth, be it religious or scientific, is equally impossible.

On things that can't be proven scientifically, we accept all alternatives but favor none. Otherwise we would be saying that that I can't prove something is right but I do know it is wrong... which is contrary to the scientific method. Hence I can't prove god exist, but neither do I know he doesn't, and thus it remains a individual "possibility" (that any individual can choose to believe it valid or not and be equally correct) but not a scientific "possibility" (such that a singular belief emerges consistently as being more correct than others, in spite of what I personally believe)

On things that can be disproven or proven however, we accept only those things that fit with those fact and dismiss any alternatives. Of course, should one of those alternatives, at a later time, fit the facts better, we have no problem accepting it.

This is also where the Jesuits come in for they have maintained their religion (and quite at peace with it BTW) for hundreds of years in spite of, and often inciting, scientific revolutions.

This sentence lacks scientific proof and thus is itself an unscientific proposition.

For being incompatible, it does not suffice that two perspectives are different. They have to contradict each other. This is not necessarily the case with science and religion. Science can be and is compatible with religion; it only is not compatible to _any_ religion.

In the beginning of mankind, science and religion were indiscernible. The first religious world views attempted to explain the world - just what science does. The first astronomers were priests, astronomy was a religion. Science and religion had the same roots, they only developed in different, but not necessarily incompatible directions.

Religious ideas that were indeed incompatible with science only came up much later - such as the idea of a dogma. If a religion has the dogma that the earth was created in six days, it has certainly a big problem with science.

On the other hand, modern Protestantism for instance does not contain dogmas and thus is compatible with science. Some people consider Atheism a religion. If that is the case, then it's a religion that is also compatible with science.

The next line was however:


So his starting perspective for science is one that is mutable (and that has been proven in the past and present) and religion as one that has an immutable world view (which again has been proven in the past and present). Both these perspectives can be studied, researched, and tested and thus, it is a scientific propostion.



And that is the point of the article and our previous conversations: that as long as religion doesn't comment on something that is overtly dismissed by science, then religion can be compatible with science. Hence my statement that Jesus dieing on the cross for my sins is no problem (since science makes no commentary on sins or jesus's life) but saying that the earth is 4000 years old is a problem (since that is scientifically impossible).

I dare say we are all in agreement and merely stating it a different way?

Why? How many days does it take to create the Earth?

Thats because 'modern Protestantism' does not believe the Bible literally. Don't you think it is a weak and cowardly for a religion to throw out whats contained in its Holy Book in order to 'modernize' and fit with science or to fit with society?

I have more respect for any sincere atheist then I would for a Protestant who would conform simply because its the easiest, most appeasing way.

If there is a God, and if He did inspire the Bible then it might very well conflict and become incompatible with mainstream science. Of course. Specifically the segment of Christianity which actually believes that the Bible is the Word of God. And those that believe the Genesis report of Creation. But this incompatibility poses no problem.

correct.




Prepare to have your mind blow a gasket:



Like to make an attempt at interpreting that verse? Instead of coming up with individual ideas about what faith might or might not be...why not check out the manual where it is defined? I don't suppose this will fit with 'modern Protestantism' but I like to read the Bible simply for what it says.

Uhhh... yeah... that's pretty much what we have all just finished saying. We leave faith to the religious. Science can't comment on faith; likewise faith has no place in science.

A bit late to the discussion, but welcome none the less.



Of course not. That's not my job. That is the job of the religious, you perhaps. That way your interpretation can contend with other religious interpretations... you leave us scientists out of any "religious interpretation" since as I've said above, we are perfectly content leaving that up to religion. Of course, when you interpretations and our facts contradict, there will be a rumble... but we can work through that peaceably as we have in the past. And thus if your interpretation of faith as per that quote above and my statement are the same, then that's great! One more data point to validate my opinion!

since when is modern Protestantism cowardly? the teachings of the New Testament are quite clear that since Jesus' first coming, traditions save no one and all that we need to believe is that Jesus is the Son of God and He died for our sins, and rose again. it makes no attempts to be more modern -- it still (in general) believes active homosex is a sin and that you should save sex for marriage. where has it tried to be more modern? it only tries to go back to the roots of Christianity: Christianity as Jesus and the Apostles said it should be.
i wouldn't take "evidence" so literally (especially in such an old translation as the KJV). other translations say "conviction", among other things.
but it doesn't disprove Christianity as Christianity doesn't depend on some peoples' interpretations and calculations leading to a 6000 year old earth.

i know in general we're in agreement that science and religion are compatible, but i just had to pop-in where you guys put across that Christianity is incompatible with science.

julz

No, that proposition was neither proven nor tested because it becomes obviously false when applied to religion in general. I just want to point out that a generalization of religion, like most such generalizations, is wrong.

Of course I see that the whole discussion in PHYSICS TODAY has a certain religion in mind: the special world creation dogma by some US fundamentalist groups. They should however not be confused with religion in general or Christianity in general.

When you look into a science book, you'll learn that according to our astronomical and physical observations gravity needed 9.1 billion years for creating the earth. You may calculate yourself how many days this took.


Most Protestants would object. They think that they are interpreting the bible more correct and literal than you, and that the idea of a 4000 BC creation is neither Christian nor biblical.


If a certain interpretation of the Holy Book does not fit with science, then the interpretation itself is weak, and not the the people who recognize that.

It requires extreme courage to change fundamental religious views. Protestantism was up to this challenge. Many parts of Christianity followed. Some still haven't found the courage to perform that step. Who is the coward here?

That is correct. This is why it is a proposition that is to be applied on a per religion basis. Certain religions, like the Jesuits do not have an immutable world view and thus are at compatible with science. Others, like the Young Earth Creationist do have an immutable world view and thus are incompatible with science.



No doubt. Though it does not invalidate his statement when applied outside the US and outside fundamentalism.

But it does disprove Young Earth Creationist Christianity. Sorry if I wasn't specific on that. I clearly do not put those nutjobs as representing the majority of Christianity as evident by my first "Jesus" example. The idea being that when science says something is impossible, religion has no clout to say otherwise.

okay cool. that's clear now.

julz

Yes, he did not change his opinion on that specific occasion. Otherwise he changed his opinion many times - often after haggling with humans.

Read the bible! You can easily see your God's flexibility in his dialogs with Abraham or Moses. Don't just pick some quote from the bible that supports your idea and ignore all the rest that contradicts it.


Then Jesus is for you a traitor too? He said "Turn the other cheek", knowing that his God JHWH said 1000 years before "Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound."

The bible is full of examples how your God changed over time and adapted to the changing ethics of human society. Just read it with a open mind and learn from it. If the bible would have been continued in the last 2000 years, you'd probably read how your God some day accepted the Copernican system, Newtonian mechanics, Relativity Theory, the Big Bang, and eventually even the UN charter of human rights.

And yet there's a problem with making this distinction in my humble opinion, because what exactly would be a "real" Christian then? I'm pretty sure Christian fundamentalists think of themselves as real Christians. I'm aware of how this will be different depending on who you'd ask, but at least when it comes to scientists we can simply objectively measure if they are 'real' scientists or not (as in; do they use the scientific method and so on).

It's like the debate on whether or not the Pope has really anything to do with 'Christianity'.



Of course scientists can believe whatever they want about such claimed historical events, however if they are honest they should know it's as much a theory as it is a myth when it comes down to evidence. Perhaps such beliefs are comforting and therefore valuable, but when it comes to truth finding such beliefs are pretty pointless and without any uhhhm "real" value.

I think there are still multiple reasons for believing in God as a possibility regardless of the truth-value of the Bible and these claimed to be historical but largely unproven events though. The combination scientist+religious person is very possible, hence ID-like theories.



In this context it's also interesting to see how the Quran tends to be more consequent with these kind of things than the Bible.

@jcl you have deleted my entire post and replaced it with replies to only certain parts of it. Why did you do that?

God never changed the system of justice...life for life,eye for eye, and tooth for tooth was fulfilled when Jesus gave His life for all.



There are very few things you can count on, the immutability of God is one of them.

Yes, sorry, I just noticed that I had indeed accidentally deleted your post. I clicked "Edit" instead of "Reply". However I think the essence of your post was in the passages I quoted.

The problem with your approach is that you have a very fixed image of god that is incompatible to the bible. Of course, for any bible quote you're posting one could post 10 quotes that just tell the opposite. Out of context bible quotes won't gain much. If you want to understand the bible, you need to read what's happening and not just pick some quotes.

Read the dialogs between God and Moses. Moses often manages to change God's intentions:

And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.

And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it , And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: (...) if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. (...)

God refrains from killing Israel after hearing Moses' arguments. Notice that Moses did not ask for mercy. He simply threatened god with bad reputation.

In the further events of the bible we'll see the Hebrew god changing from his initially aggressive and criminal character to the forgiving, merciful character that the New Testament propagates. God is tamed step by step, until he finally sacrificed himself to the humans. If you really want an immutable, unrepenting god, consider converting to Islam.

I disagree that this shows the mutability of religion, JudeoChristianity in particular.

Consider: when Jesus came along, some people believed he was the messiah; others didn't. Those that did founded Christianism; those that didn't went right on believing what the Tora says. To whit, Judaism did not change as a religion when Jesus came, it merely spawned a new one.

Consider: further down the road, when certain books came in contention with modern ideas, the Protestants spawned from Roman Catholisms. Note that once again, the parent religion, Roman Catholism, did not change but merely created a child religion.

Thus IMO the authors contention that all relgions are in fact immutable. That after their creation events, there might be small adjustments to interpretation and small details, but the big dogma, no matter what it is at the time of that religions creation, remains inviolate. Furthermore, this is in sharp counterdistinction to science in which very little of the ideas set forth at any fields creation event are unchanged over time.

Examples of this include: Newton and Einstein; Darwin vs. Modern Synthesis; Bohr and DeBroglie. In each case the former was a creation event for a scientific principle and the latter is a mutation of this creation event. Note as well that in changing, each did not spawn a child science like religion spawns child religions. We don't consider Newton or Darwin to be an "alternative" to Einstein and the Modern Synthesis as one might say that Judaism or Protestantism are viable alternatives to Christianity.

Your point is taken in that even within a religious text we see evidence of a mutable god but it's not god we are talking, he/she/it can change all he/she/it wants... once. But once a religion sets it's roots, it rarely if ever move. It sways, and it may grow, but more often will bifurcate instead of actually change.

though, Roman Catholicism does change all the time. 60 years ago there was no salvation outside the RC Church, but since Vatican II every other religion is supposedly RC in essence, they just don't know it, and are still saved if they follow their own hearts' morals, but will be subject to a long Purgatory (Purgatory itself being something Roman Catholics decreed between 1400 and 1500 after Jesus human-life and ministry).

but i agree that jcl's quotes do not show mutability of Judeo-Christianity.

Protestantism is trying to go back to the roots of what Christianity was before Roman Catholics changed it to be tradition-dependant and conforming to Pagan ideas (if any RCs are here, don't take that offensively -- it's just the general Protestant view of it, and you guys think we're heretics anyway ).

many Christian and Jewish teachers/scholars/rabbis/what-have-you would say that where God is "persuaded" in the Bible, He is just testing those who "persuade" Him. moses "persuaded" God to keep His promise, but God has always kept His promises whether there was someone to remind Him or not.

sending Jesus down was prophesied way back all over the place in the Old Testament, so i don't think much "taming" was done. in the end, His judgement will be just as harsh and unforgiving to those who haven't personally accepted the gift of His Son as it was back in the old days.

julz

Yes, my quote does not prove the mutability of Judeo-Christianity. You can not prove anything with a single quote from the bible. The bible was written by authors of very different opinion and background, and for almost any quote you can find a counter-quote.

Nevertheless I object to the idea that religions don't change but only spawn. Almost all fractions of Christianity, even the most fundamentalist section of our friend Nitro_2008, have remarkably changed since their beginning.

The Hebrew religion of the year 60 AC, the time when Paulus founded Christianity, was very different to the Hebrew religion of Moses' time 1300 years before. The changes are reflected in the Bible. There were many changes in religious laws, in the character of god, and in god's covenant with Israel. At the beginning, it was a physical covenant, with god's duty to protect Israel by killing all its enemies. In the end, the covenant was spiritual only. Although Israel fulfilled their part after their return from the Babylonian exile, god never protected them against the Romans, and allowed full extinction in 130 AC. The character of the covenant and the character of their god had changed to Israel's misfortune.

You can even see the change statistically by just comparing god's kill rate. The bible often mentions the numbers of the people killed by god. The kill rate, from an average of several 10,000 per year at Moses' time, goes constantly down to a few per century. The last person ever killed by god, before his suicide in the Jesus incarnation, was king Herod.

Religions do change. This usually shows in struggles between the progressive and the conservative fractions - that's exactly what you're seeing today with the conservative fundamentalists in the US. In an attempt to maintain the identity of their particular religion, they have developed that strange counter-science that you can find on their websites.

as a side-note, many Christian's believe this was God's punishment to them when they failed to see the end of their Old Covenant and the beginning of their New Covenant.

julz

If you take a look at Christianity there have been many many small adjustments through time, those combined together make it a pretty different thing from the first 'set religion'. Whatever that was, because the separate authors of the Bible alone didn't create the Bible in one day, let alone the selection of texts that happened on various occasions through time, together with some editing to make sure it stays (more) coherent.

There has been as much 'evolution of content' going on when it comes to religious ideas, as there has been an evolution of psychology in the way the text are written.

The Bible in itself is already prove for this, as it shows a changing God.

I think that you have a limited understanding of the covenants involved in the Bible and that perhaps this is leading you to underestimate the unchanging nature of God. Thats ok though, thankfully I am here to inform you

If there is any constant which we can trace throughout the Bible it is the covenental framework. Covenants were initiated by God to:

Adam
(before sin)Gen 1:2
(after sin)Gen 3
Noah Gen 6-9
Abraham Gen 12-22
Moses Genesis 19:40/ Gal 3:14
The Nation of Israel(Palestine at the time) Deut 27-33
David (2 Sam 7; Psalm 89; Psalm 132)
The two houses of Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
And finnally the everlasting covenant

All of the covenants have the same basic elements:
1)Words (including promises, terms, and an oath)
2)Blood (including a sacrifice, mediator, and sanctuary)
3)Seal (various signs, tokens, and seals)

All of the covenants had different durations, some were everlasting and some were temporal. This duration was linked to the fact that some covenants were revocable and some were irrevocable.

Revocable covenants are those in which God obligates Himself to fulfill the promises of those covenants based upon man's obedience to the attached conditions. I think that this was the case in your previous misunderstanding of the Mosaic covenant.

So in conclusion if you are to study the Bible closely you will indeed notice that God Himself, neither His framework with dealing with man through the covenants never changes throughout the entire Bible. He always uses this same framework of covenants, and each covenant has the same basic elements.

After the Bible is where people, institutions, councils, and religions start making all sorts of individual changes to religion.

But you are mixing a general statement with a specific example.
I still maintain that these conservative fundamentalists represent a SPLINTER group off of mainstream religion and in now way represent a changing of or evolution of the parent religion.

Jesus is still resurrected after 3 days despite the scientific impossibility of said event... the holy trinity is still alive and kicking in all it's "three as one" paradox... Allah still demands daily prayers... and the Buddha still maintains that suffering is the root of all discontent.

Yes, there have been micro-changes to interpretation, but I believe that the doctrine have been inviolate.

(PS: As I write this, I find myself in an odd reversal of position. Much as I lambast people for incorrectly using theory, models and Facts, so too do I lambast myself for (IMO) not using doctrine, scripture, dogma, and conon correctly. So please correct my usage of these as the posts go on)

I understand why you believe this, but it's a lot less black and white in my humble opinion. If your idea is that God can be whoever he pleases to be and that it's right either way when it comes to consistent behavior and that any change doesn't matter, then that's fine with me. Still, you really can't claim God doesn't change throughout the Bible, even from a contextual point of view with the various covenants in place....

But I think it has to do with your belief that in God's eyes, not every one is equal?