Can Science + Religion Co-Exist?

[dreadfulpenny81]

The answer is YES.

A recent study from Rice University indicates that 15% of scientists at major research universities see science and religion in constant conflict.
They interviewed a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants, pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U

Comments

[mahnmut]

Unlike religion or politics, science will mercilessly pursue the evidence with repeated experiments.

Other than that, are they compatible? Well, anything is compatible, we're humans after all. Yesterday I learned that onion is compatible with strawberry jam (or so I was told), but meh. It'd be kinda weird and maybe a little, um, how was the word believers like to use... oh yes, "unnatural" to try.

[mahnmut]

I mean... What distinguishes science and religion is critical thinking. Investigation. Self-dissection. It's a merciless process that's at the core of the former and is the complete antithesis of the latter.

[harry_beast]

The scientific community to battles over funding, PR campaigns for competing theories, grudges, personal animosity and political influence. Scientists may not be as pure as you think, though I agree with the "merciless" part.

[mahnmut]

Scientists are humans? Daaaarwiiiiiin!!1

[htpcl]

Scientists are just some monkeys with thumbs.

[htpcl]

And yet, a crappy theory eventually gets kicked out of the way, no matter how many grudges will have happened in the process.

[kylinrouge]

Scientific theories are never proven. They just haven't been disproven yet.

[mahnmut]

Have you been running for DQ of the Month, EEEH?

[allhatnocattle]

Politics is a science.... like Poli-Sci. It is not yet perfected, rather it's experimented with, refined, and studied. It is full of theories, er, mostly theories with large holes. And there certainly is evidence that some prototypes work better then others, depending upon what goals to be achieved.

In this regard, religion is also a science of a sort.

Certainly the hard sciences, chemistry, geology, physics, etc are much further along. In hard science most formulas work, and most experiments obey common theories.

The trouble is with poli-sci, and theology, is this human variable... we havn't enough understanding of psychology and sociology that politics and religion depend upon. Heck we havn't even a close understanding of medicine or even biology.

[onefatmusicnerd]

Ethics, not the human variable, is the trouble. The research done in the first half of the twentieth century is amazingly reliable, but we are no longer allowed to treat humans as scientific subjects.

[allhatnocattle]

There are limits...

[stephantom]

I agree with this.

When I was younger, I got this idea that "real" religion is religion that questions itself and evolves, pursuing the ideals of human justice and truth.

Then I figured out that what I was talking about was actually philosophy, which is a kind of science, really.