Are Science and Religion Incompatible?

[civ2]

Whiskey
I kinda disagree.
Jews and Israel are a perfect example of how G-d said, and G-d did.
Also, there is a 1000 year old commentary that mentions a situation, when "nations of the world will claim that Jews stole the Land of Israel" and that we should answer to that: "G-d created the entire earth, first gave that land to some nations and later took it from them and gave it to the Jews".
This was said at the time when the idea of having a Jewish state in Israel was simply ridiculous, also I didn't hear of anyone claiming this, prior to our renown 20th century Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when Jews were, and still are, named, labeled and considered exactly "aggressors and thieves".
But this was predicted, like I said, 1000 years ago.
And even the answer was given, though modern Israel tries its most to IGNORE it, thus ending in even more violence from both sides...

EDIT:
ghost and winner
I can speak for myself.
I'm totally religious, yet the ONLY "science" I reject - is the one that is based SOLELY on assumptions, and is beyond the reach of ANY human.
This is simply speculation with claiming to know things you can't know, than positing it as the ULTIMATE truth.
So, let's call it "science religion", and I'm fine with it.
But to call it "scientific" as in "proven", I disagree totally.
As of bombers and other lunatics.
Dudes, this ain't no religion at work - but rather MONEY and POLITICS.
Eg. the suiciders from Palestine provide their families by blowing themselves up, cause the "government" PAYS the families of the "heroes".
Nothing to do with religion - MONEY and POWER only.

 

[ghostmaker650]

-face plant- And how do you think God made man.......maybe using evolution the Book of Genesis doest go into detail. Nature can be a messy thing. In nature the strongest survive and the weakest often die out we are apart of nature.

I don't think god made man.... But if I wanted to be Christian or Jewish then I'd have to believe he created Adam from dust and Eve from Adams rib. It says it right there in the bible, I swear I'm not making this up.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Whiskey
I kinda disagree.
Jews and Israel are a perfect example of how G-d said, and G-d did.
Also, there is a 1000 year old commentary that mentions a situation, when "nations of the world will claim that Jews stole the Land of Israel" and that we should answer to that: "G-d created the entire earth, first gave that land to some nations and later took it from them and gave it to the Jews".
This was said at the time when the idea of having a Jewish state in Israel was simply ridiculous, also I didn't hear of anyone claiming this, prior to our renown 20th century Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when Jews were, and still are, named, labeled and considered exactly "aggressors and thieves".
But this was predicted, like I said, 1000 years ago.
And even the answer was given, though modern Israel tries its most to IGNORE it, thus ending in even more violence from both sides...

Why would they ignore it? Don't they have every reason to try and prove some right of ownership to that land?

 

[innonimatu]

Galileo was presented with the proposition "Come up with actual scientific proof or STFU", he did neither (well he came up with a crack idea that would have one high tide a day which is observably false...) so they made him STFU by sentencing him to house arrest in a... palace... then he complained and whined about being homesick so they sent him home and had servants take care of him... stellar parallax was finally proven in 1838

Fortunately our modern secular authorities no longer sentence people who hold scientifically wrong ideas to house arrest. Else the Pope would still be a "prisoner" in the Vatican.

 

[civ2]

whiskey
I'm not Israeli, so I don't know...
Still, I get really disappointed by it.

 

[El_Machinae]

I just don't think that religion really has anything progressive to offer. I mean, it's got a high amount of latent utility, but each individual component could be improved upon. But, I guess it might just be like complaining about pizza not being healthy enough.

 

[civ2]

I claim, with all certainty and strength, that if you remove religion, you remove the only basis for objective (as in non-subjective) morality, that you can take your child and point at, saying "this is what you should do".

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

We would still have every reason to be moral without religion, you know. It is part of what makes us social creatures and allows us to function as such.

 

[civ2]

whiskey
Pardon, but I don't buy it.
You have no proof to back it up - the entire society of today's is raised on religious morality to the extent of not even feeling that effect.
But it is so.
Only Tarzan and Mowgli could prove you right, but we don't have such examples, do we?

 

[Integral]

Kant and Mill would like to have a word with you...

 

[Pangur Bán]

This is not a yes or no question. Science is religion and religion is science, in that they are both explanatory systems for humans and the universe around with surrounding hero-figures and myths. The distinction is completely ideological.

As a matter-of-fact answer to the question, our concepts of "science" and "religion" are incompatible when they are understood as offering competing explanations of the same thing.

 

[civ2]

Int
Philosophy is pure speculation, I'm talking about actual proof.
Which you can't have, or at least don't.

 

[Integral]

Int
Philosophy is pure speculation, I'm talking about actual proof.
Which you can't have, or at least don't.

I see we're not going to get very far.

I'll only note that one does not have to be religious to accept moral realism.

 

[civ2]

Int
Very simple: What's BAD?
How do you know and define it?
Or, more important, how do you differentiate between "good for me, good for others" and "good for me, bad for others"?
If you don't have something as a token "bad/good", this will confuse you, or lead to prioritizing "my good is the only parameter I care about".
That's where "objective bad/good" kicks in, to show you the difference.
A very strong example:
Was Hitler good or bad?
Well, sane people will say BAD.
But WHY?
From his own point, he was making only good for the entire Germany (trying at least).
But the millions of killed people (starting with 6mil Jews) will disagree, and say, he was as evil as a murderer can be.
Who is right then, if you take away the token "don't murder"???

 

[Quackers]

Tired old debate but HuffPo has an interesting discussion here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/science-religion-incompatible_n_1327263.html

My answer is yes and Schermer explains it well. Sure you can state God in terms of an unfalsifyable vague deism that is compatible with all science now and yet to be discovered. But that is not what religion is for most of the world. It has specific tenants that have been falsified repeatedly over the years. I would add that to come up with God as a hypothesis, even in the vague deistic way, is simply not scientific. The hypothesis has no explanatory power and is untestable and where a religious dogma has been tested it has invariably been disproven and the goal posts are moved all the way to God started the big bang and was never heard from again. I suppose if that is where religion wants to move then it is not an impediment to science, but it is barely a religion.

The argument from the other guy is that hey there were religious scientists, in fact most of the great scientists in history were religious. I’d add the current NIH head is dogmatically religious. This simply proves that people can have cognitive dissonance not that the underlying tenants of the 2 ideas are compatible. It’s like saying I know statisticians that play craps therefore statistics must be compatible with winning at craps for who would play something they are guaranteed to lose money at? Note. I play craps, I know the statistics but while I am playing I invariably think I will win-cognitive dissonance.

I for one don't use the scientific method to analyse every part of my life to see if it is true or false. If I act on an emotion I could break it down to just "neurons in my brain pulsating and vibrating" and therefoe disregard it as something primitive and pointless; i would rather not. Do I believe in science anymore?
The second guy is right though obviously they are compatable considering science has boomed in some very religious societies.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

I claim, with all certainty and strength, that if you remove religion, you remove the only basis for objective (as in non-subjective) morality, that you can take your child and point at, saying "this is what you should do".

The basis for my moral is empathy. If I sit in the sandbox in kindergarden and hit someone with my little shovel, it probably hurt them as mutch as it would hurt myself to get hit.

Theres no need for a invisible super-parent threatening to punish me if I misbehave. The reason I don't hurt other people is because it hurts to get hurt. Not because I fear eternal damnation.

Besides, if the objective basis for morality accepts slavery but not sex between two people of the same gender, its worthless.

 

[civ2]

tycho
The "objectiveness" of religious moral is NOT about punishments, it's about WHO tells you what's right/wrong, and the ensuing WHY.
Only someone beyond everyone, can provide everyone with something truly non-subjective.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Tycho Brahe is an interesting name. He devised as solar system with earth at the centre to fend off what some saw as the anti-Christian arguments of heliocentrists. Newton believed gravity was a kind of spirit. Modern quantum physicists talk constantly about probability and other elements of their field with religious and mystical metaphors.

 

[CommonKnowledge]

I claim, with all certainty and strength, that if you remove religion, you remove the only basis for objective (as in non-subjective) morality, that you can take your child and point at, saying "this is what you should do".

Animals that live in groups like gorillas display morality because they've learned that co-operating and functioning as a group is better than going solo. Semi-autonomous robots have performed simulations whereby they're given a choice as to whether or not they compete (kill other robots) or co-operate and share resources. Morality isn't human specific and it certainly isn't religion specific.

A paper on robotic alturism for those that are interested.

Spoiler :

Evolution of Cooperation and Altruism

Experimental evolution was also used to investigate whether robots could evolve cooperative and altruistic behaviour and, if so, under what conditions. Cooperation is defined as an act increasing both the direct fitness of the individual giving help and the fitness of the individual receiving help; by contrast, altruism reduces the direct fitness of the individual performing the helping act [35],[36]. The experimental setup consisted of a foraging situation in a square arena containing ten sugar cube-sized wheeled robots, small tokens that a single robot could push, and large tokens requiring at least two robots to be pushed (Figure 6). The robots had five infrared distance sensors, four of them sensing objects within a 3-cm range and a fifth, which was placed higher, having a 6-cm range. These sensors allowed robots to locate the tokens and distinguish them from robots. Robots were also equipped with two vision sensors to perceive the colours of the walls (Text S1, section 5). Their fitness was proportional to the number of tokens successfully pushed within a 4-cm zone along a white wall (the three other walls of the arena were black). A large token successfully pushed along the white wall increased the fitness of all robots within a group (10 robots per group) by 1 fitness unit, while a small token successfully pushed increased the fitness (also by 1 unit) of only the robot that pushed it. The fitness of individual robots was measured in populations containing 100 groups of 10 robots each.

In one experimental condition, the arena contained only large tokens, and the only way for robots to increase their fitness was to cooperate in pushing them [37]. Accordingly, robots readily evolved the ability to cooperatively push large tokens towards the white wall in all 20 evolutionary replicates that were conducted. However, when the arena contained both large and small tokens, the behaviour of robots was influenced by the group kin structure. In groups of unrelated robots (i.e., robots whose genomes where not more similar within than between groups), robots invariably specialised in pushing the small objects, which was the most efficient strategy to maximise their own individual fitness them (i.e., large tokens provided an equal direct payoff as a small token but were more difficult to successfully push). By contrast, the presence of related robots within groups allowed the evolution of altruism. When groups were formed of “clonal” robots all having the same genome, individuals primarily pushed the large tokens even though it was costly, in terms of individual fitness, for the robots pushing (Video S6).

Similar results were obtained in experiments where groups of light-emitting, foraging robots could communicate the position of a food source at a cost to themselves because of the resulting increased competition near food. In these experiments, robots again readily evolved costly communication when they were genetically related, but altruistic communication never evolved in groups of unrelated robots when selection operated at the individual level [38],[39].

These experiments are interesting in two ways. First, they demonstrate that the same general rules apply for experimental evolution of robots and real organisms. Theory predicts that altruism, defined as an act of helping that decreases the direct fitness of the individual performing it, should only evolve among related individuals, and this is also what has been found in a wide range of organisms, ranging from bacteria to social insects and social vertebrates (e.g., [40]–[45]). Second, it demonstrates that cooperation and altruism can evolve even in organisms with simple cognitive abilities (in both the token pushing and communication experiments, robots had neural network controllers consisting of less than 15 neurons).

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292

 

[civ2]

You all ignored my direct question:
Define Hitler as bad or good.
If bad - why? He was working for his country's general good.
If good - why? He was a mass murderer and a maniac.
You'd come up with two opposite definitions.
But if you exploit the token of "don't murder", you can surely say, that he was bad, based on that token.
The subjective good that could result for the country, was no excuse to commit something against the non-subjective prohibition.