Religion And Science Can Coexist, Scientists Say In New Survey

[cbayer]

Just heard Arianna Huffington interviewed on Science Friday. She was talking about their new Science section. She has a particular interest in the intersection between Science and Religion. I realize this article is from September, but it is a good overview of that topic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/religion-and-science-can-coexist_n_974116.html?ref=religion-science

by: Jaweed Kaleem

A majority of scientists say religion and science don't always conflict, according to new survey results released by Rice University.

The study, conducted over five years through in-depth interviews with scientists at universities whose fields range from biology and chemistry to social sciences like political science and economics, dispels the widely held notion that religion and science are incompatible.

“When it comes to questions about the meaning of life, ways of understanding reality, origins of Earth and how life developed on it, many have seen religion and science as being at odds and even in irreconcilable conflict,” said Rice sociologist Elaine Ecklund. Yet, a majority of the scientists Ecklund and her colleagues interviewed saw both religion and science as “valid avenues of knowledge” she said.

Ecklund and her team interviewed 275 tenured and tenure-track faculty members from 21 research universities in the United States. Only 15 percent of respondents said religion and science were always in conflict, while 15 percent said the two were never in conflict. The majority, 70 percent, said religion and science are only sometimes in conflict.

[MarkCharles]

1. Isn't freedom wonderful?

One can simultaneously advocate for the discovery of truth, while personally choosing to affiliate one's self with a movement and group of people who claim to be a religion. That's what freedom is all about.

One might wish to note that this isolated sampling, in NO way, implies an endorsement by the discipline of science for any particular religion. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that human beings who do marvelous scientific research and teaching find a need to align themselves with something we call "religion" as those same people continue to disprove many of the myths that most religions put forth as "truth".

We have already learned that the Earth and humankind is not 6000 years old. We have disproved that the sun and other stars revolve around the Earth. We have disproved that demons and sin cause mental and physical illness. We have disproved that Satan is responsible for all the human-caused suffering on Earth. We have found that women can and should be equal in rights and powers to those of men. We have found that the exact times and dates of the life of Jesus are well disputed by the astronomical record. We have found that snakes never talk. We have learned that witchcraft and Satan didn't invade the souls of women in Salem, Mass and that the culprit may have been other causes, lead poisoning from drinking mugs, or a simple case of schizophrenia. We have learned that few gay, lesbian, or transgendered people are actually acting with evil intent, (just like the heterosexual population). We have learned that the world did NOT end on a dozen different dates predicted by righteous believers over the last two centuries.

So where is the "science" in religion Not evident. Where is the religion in science? Not at all evident, as well. Maybe most scientists involved in this survey simply like being members of a congregation that uses the same analogies in how they communicate about their shared values, and THAT is what they conceive of as their "religion" safely coexisting with their work in science.

But the most important point, one which religious believers want to make here, but cannot, adherence to the concepts and discipline of scientific research is IN NO WAY an endorsement by science of the validity nor the "truth" of any religion.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I'd like to know how she justifies the 'avenue of knowledge' remark, applied to religion

I've never seen a convincing argument from a member of a religion that it gives knowledge; only beliefs. I'll be very surprised if a majority of scientists think religion is an 'avenue of knowledge'. Just because they say science and religion are 'only sometimes in conflict', that does not mean that religion is an avenue of knowledge.

[cbayer]

3. Isn't that an underlying concept in Buddhism?

Are not the Noble Truths and attainment of wisdom avenues to knowledge, according to the Buddhists?

Whether one accepts it or not, I think they would argue that it is an avenue to knowledge (but probably have little interest in convincing you of that).

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Perhaps it is, but I doubt a majority of these scientists are Buddhists

so I'd still like to know how Ecklund justified her words.

[cbayer]

5. I just put that out as an example because I think, to a lesser degree,

members of many religious groups feel the same way. They feel that they do get enlightened and that, if they listen closely to the spiritual side of themselves, they gain insights and knowledge. Some may feel that god is actually telling them something, while others may feel that it is something that merely resides within themselves.

[edhopper]

6. I am not belittling their fields

but when we talk about science and religion, we usually mean the hard sciences, Physics, Astronomy, Biology etc..., Not the soft sciences like the Sociology and Economics. As I said, I don't want to make light of their contributions, but I hardly see where there is a conflict between Religion and Economics. Ask 10 physicist about the speed of light or 10 biologist about evolution and you will get the same answer. Ask 10 economist something and you will get 10 different answers.
So in this survey, how many of the scientist where from the hard science field? How many of the 15% who said science and religion are never in conflict are from the soft sciences?
In other words i think this survey is pretty worthless.

[Ron Obvious]

7. Coexistence

"Science and Religion can coexist" is such a meaningless phrase. Science and Pizza can coexist as well, but I don't go to Pizza Hut to find out about the world.

Religion is not a source of knowledge. Wherever it has made actual factual claims about the universe we live in (6,000 year old earth, sun goes around the earth, etc, etc) it has been shown to be in error by science. That leaves two possibilities. The fundamentalists hang on to the factually incorrect claims, the liberal theists have retreated to hang on only to the currently untestable claims (supernatural gods, life after death, karma, whatever) that remain after you scratch off the failed testable claims. However, since their track record on real world claims is so utterly miserable, it doesn't inspire any confidence in their claims about the untestable supernatural either.

Religion is mankind's first attempted, primitive narrative to explain the world in which we live from the infancy of our species. It has been discarded in favour of Science which has a rather better track record. Religion, like astrology, have nothing to tell us about the world we live in. Science and Religion can coexist when Religion comes to terms with that.

[MarkCharles]

8. Where is the data and the primary source for this material?

I fail to see a link, nor even an abstract.

Please point out the data, and the link to the original source of the peer-reviewed publication.

OKAY?

I could post that 75% of scientists believe in intellgent life on other planets, but I might be wrong or right, without some actual data.

Isn't Rice a religious University?

[cbayer]

9. OK (Whew that was hard) - and, no, Rice has no religious affiliation

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01586.x/full

[onager]

10. Arianna Huffington - Scientist or Theologian?

Try "moonbatty anti-vax crackpot."

Anything this woman publishes about "science" should be taken with a grain of salt as big as the (mythical) Mrs. Lot, on her way outta Sodom:

HuffPo suffers the unfortunately common media delusion that science works like politics. Due to this, it is known for shamelessly pushing pseudoscience and woo (especially Deepak Chopra and the MMR scare), and has been caught deliberately lying about doing so.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post

Huffington Post: Irresponsible mouthpiece for the World of Woo (10/2011)

Huffington Post is notorious for publishing anti-science garbage. But I don't think anything they've vomited into the Webosphere is as egregiously misleading and anti-scientific as this piece by one Robert A. Kornfeld in which he purports to let us all know exactly why your physician's belief in the efficacy of modern medicine is a myth and in which he exposes an ignorance about genetics so profound that I may lose hope in humanity.

http://biologyfiles.fieldofscience.com/2011/10/huffington-post-irresponsible.html

The Huffington Post delves deeper into the woo (3/2009)

Still, for all the nonsense and pseudoscience nurtured in the pages of Arianna Huffington's little vanity project, there were some places I didn't think even HuffPo would go. There's some woo just so ridiculous that even HuffPo wouldn't touch it. Or so I thought.

I was wrong.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/the_huffington_post_delves_deeper_into_t.php

[EvolveOrConvolve]

11. I think that religion and science ask fundamentally different questions

They can coexist because they're completely different concepts. But, as science learns more about our natural world, religion is forced further into the realm of the supernatural and the abstract. It's only when religion directly confronts science (for example, with creationists) does the coexistence come into question.

Don't get me wrong, I think that religion is the greatest impedance on scientific progress, but that effect will (hopefully) diminish with time.

[Deep13]

12. Yes, they lied most convincingly.