I've heard it said that there is no conflict between science and religion

[Tobin S.]

Carl Sagan said it, Michael Shermer said it, and Al Gore did as well in his An Inconvenient Truth documentary. Those guys see religious teachings as allegories and metaphors. The problem is that there is plenty of conflict if you take religious metaphors as literal truth which many religious people seem to do.

I'm a live and let live kind of guy. Religious fundamentalists can believe what they want. I just wish they'd stop trying to turn my country into a theocracy and quit trying to destroy the best tool we have for the advancement of humankind- and that is the goal, make no mistake about it. If you listen to conservative talk radio it won't be long before you hear someone say something to the effect of this being a Christian country founded by Christians, we don't need no stinkin' separation of church and state. I don't think those are just random nutters.

[uriel1972]

1. They are highly organized and well disciplined nutters n/t

[salvorhardin]

2. "it won't be long before..."

Various individuals and groups have been staking that claim for decades. See Rousas John Rushdoony for one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousas_John_Rushdoony

[laconicsax]

3. People who say there's no conflict are flat-out wrong.

To deny the conflict you have to deny the fundamental conflict between dogmatic faith and open-minded rationality, the centuries of religious opposition to scientific research, and the ongoing efforts by religious persons to silence the dissemination of established scientific facts.

It might be said that those who deny the conflict are spineless accommodationists too afraid of contradicting someone's deeply held fiction to tell the truth.

[salvorhardin]

4. You know the standard reply to that

"oh, but that's not my religion. That's just a caricature of fundamentalist Abrahamic religions. I'm an enlightened Zen Xian who can tie their mind into three different knots before breakfast. I don't believe in dogma."

That being said, we do have to be careful to note that, of course, there's nothing that prevents someone from reconciling their religious beliefs with scientific evidence. Plenty of people do it (including at least one member of this group that I know of).

Also, if we're being intellectually honest, we have to understand that science and rationality do not necessarily lead to atheism, nor does religious belief prevent one from being rational or accepting scientific evidence contrary to their religious beliefs.

[laconicsax]

5. You say reconcile, I say compartmentalize.

That religious people can accept empirical truths only shows that the mind can be divided against itself--that it is possible to simultaneously hold contradictory views.

[uriel1972]

6. Call me a loony if you want,

but I believe in gods. I don't believe in creation, they are part of the natural world and come out of the big bang like everything else. They are not all knowing or all powerful. I can't prove them as I have only my personal experience to go on. It drives me around the bend sometimes. I am fully prepared to accept that they are nothing more than my mind at work if someone can get them out of my head, so far the drugs and therapy haven't.

I am a skeptic and firmly believe in "Don't invent beings if you don't have to" ( Occam's razor), but these damn gods won't leave me alone. I don't block them off in a compartment in my mind, they are a part of my everyday thinking, I just don't talk about them as I can't prove them. As far as I can tell they intervene in the world through people, but it's hard to tell. They are more a disembodied conciousness than anything else.

I don't see ghosts, I don't believe in esp or the other paranormal hoo-ha. I just have these damn gods in my head.

[salvorhardin]

8. I don't think you're a loony

I think you're a perfectly normal, sane rational person who just happens to believe in gods. I also think you're wrong, but that's neither here nor there.

[uriel1972]

9. I don't blame you

I can't hand you my experience and show it to you. And I can't say for sure that you are wrong, part of me leans that way.

[salvorhardin]

7. Everybody holds contradictory views

Compartmentalize doesn't quite work I think. Take a look at what uriel said. Just like our brains fill in missing pieces in patterns, many people do reconcile their religious beliefs with science.

[laconicsax]

14. I think we're quibbling over semantics.

[uriel1972]

10. I've been thinking

Science is the systemic use of doubt to formulate hypotheses about reality that can be tested. Religion is the systemic use of faith and dogma to glorify a vision (which may or may not be based in reality) that must not be questioned. In science primacy is given to evidence and proof. In religion evidence and proof must be subjugated to the vision. Whilst religion and science need not be in conflict on every issue the systems are essentially hostile to each other. This is how I see it, make of it what you will.

[salvorhardin]

11. Hostile, I'm not sure of. I would say agnostic.

Science is agnostic of religion, in the scientific method doesn't know (or care) about religious belief.

I think there's something else going on too. I think that when a scientist says, based on science, "This is true," she means something very different than when a religious believer says, based on their religious beliefs, "This is true." I think the definitions and standards for truth vary for people depending on context.

Scientists and skeptics are very much concerned with veridical truth while religious believers, at least within the context of their religion, are more concerned with what "feels" right. I don't mean the latter in a derogatory sense either. After all, the majority of the stuff we believe is immune to scientific or skeptical inquiry. There are things that aren't scientifically testable such as the belief that there is an objective world that exists independently of our experiences.

Further, I would suggest that we can't chose what we believe. Our beliefs aren't under our voluntary control and are formed as a result of our experiences, memories, our other beliefs and the methods we use to evaluate evidence. We can chose to indirectly influence our beliefs by changing our mental habits such as seeking out contradictory information, learning new methods of evaluating evidence, traveling to other places, reading and listening to others. But we don't have access to the underlying mental machinery that forms beliefs in our brains.

BTW: I'm heavily cribbing from Jim Lippard here.

[uriel1972]

12. That may be true of science,

but I think the opposite is true of religion. Religion knows and cares what science has to say as it directly confronts religious belief: ie young earth creationism, heliocentrism etc. Science has redifined what a rational person can believe a god can or cannot do and poses a direct threat to the interventionist, miracle believing crew. I think religions naturally like to call certain areas of enquiry off limits to science, which is anathema to the philosophy of science.

[salvorhardin]

13. Right., In that sense, science and religion are incompatible.

Wherever religion makes testable claims about the real world, and science contradicts religious claims, then one has four choices: 1) Reject religion, 2) Reject science, 3) Modify religious beliefs in light of the new information, 4) Put your fingers in your ears and sing, "Na, na, na, I can't hear you."

Sadly, too many people choose 2) and 4). There are a lot of people though, like yourself or Ken Miller, who pick 3).

[TZ]

17. Yes. I have met many of the number 3 category

Being in the sciences professionally. Quite a few actually. Most of these people understand that religion and science are different things entirely...its less science vs. religion as it is faith vs. testable hypotheses I think.

[salvorhardin]

18. "its less science vs. religion as it is faith vs. testable hypothesis"

That's a good way of putting it.

[Iggo]

15. You say they can believe what they want.

But what they want is for our country to be a theocracy.

[mr blur]

16. It's the Rational vs Superstition -

how can there not be a conflict, really?