It is nothing more than a two extreme sides claiming they know the secret of life. When they should realize they are saying the same thing. Just that they are using thier own techinical terms.

Religion speaks about life, ETHICS and help humans live it in a correct manner while Science helps the religion by giving explaination to things in our lives. Sometimes Science succeed and other times it fails due to lack of capabilities. But some Extremists use religion as a reason to battle a certain scientific discoveries without a solid reason are, but mostly they are wrongly understand their religion. Thus religion could be considered as the main ethical guidlines one would use in science; however, falsely claiming that a religion is against a certain science with no ethical reason would show that Science and Religion doesnt agree together. The real thing is that Religion is helping the direction Science is going ethically.

I've been meaning to post to this, but was waiting for others to post, and just now got time to do it.  My feeling is that science and religion both have similar goals in some respects:  they both try to bring understanding to a sometimes confusing universe.  The difference between the two (at least for the most part) is in the kind of questions they each try to answer.  Science deals with questions that have concrete answers.  If one asks what the location of Jupiter will be on April 23rd, 2017 at 5:00 UT, the answer is not open to interpretation, nor is it a matter of belief.  The postion of Jupiter can be predicted quite accurately.  This is what science does.  If instead one wants to know what happens when we die, or why we exist in the first place, there is no definitive answer.  This is where religion, or more generally, philosophy comes in.  Religion provides answers to these types of questions.  The belief that the answers a particular religion provides is based solely on faith.  There can be no proof.  I think people decide what they want to believe in these matters, and then find a religion or philosophy that matches those beliefs.

     Another aspect of religion that was mentioned by another poster is ethics and morality.  Most religions have some code of acceptable behavior.  There is no corresponding code in science.

     I've run out of things to say, so I'll leave it at that for now.  If anything brilliant pops into my head (anyone want to calculate the odds of that happening?) I'll post again.

Dave

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value -- Albert Einstein

I disagree with the fact that they are different. They are both beliefs that something is true and will always be true.

Like for example the Juipter statement. It may be where it should be according to the physics. But, where would it be if a massive blackhole formed between saturn and Juipter. Now, I do not claim to know a lot about the planetary motions, but i think that the blackhole would cause a difference in the orbital pattern.

Now in an organized religion such as christianity there is another belief. Lets say you go through life believing that you will go to heavan if you are good and are a devout church goer. Then all of a sudden the pope says that there is no such place as heaven or hell. Kind of like a blackhole don't you think. Your belief of where you will be when you die will change. Just like the beleif that juipter will be where it is expected t be in april 2017.

I'd like to also compare both of these two things to the known position of an electron in orbit around a nucleus. There is just no way to be able to predict every physicsal fact about it.

The title of this subject i think is misunderstood. Since religion is define (in one way) as A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. I beleive science is just another religion like christianity. It just has different parameters that it works on. I know quite a few scientists who pursue a principlir or activity with zeal and conscientious devotion. Like the fact that if you drop a bowling ball and a peice of paper, from the same height that they will strike the ground at the same time. (ignoring air friction)

I do not have anything against people who pursue either background as long as they continue to question thier beliefs. Not in a self doubting way as to break down thier ability to function rather to be open to other possibilities that something else could happen.

How many times are you wrong before your right? and then how right are you?

Religion and science cant really be debated fairly...

Science is technically what we can so far logically explain as to why things happen the way they do and so on.

Religion is about the ethics of why WE do things more over and not why things do things!! The only thing that i can recall Religion trying to prove or explain is where we (life) came from. Since science says that we all could just be here by chance and pure luck, religion has to deny this because it tells us our lives have meaning blah blah blah and if evolution is true then what meaning could our lives possibly have?!!

Religion is to control, Science is to release!!

Post removed on April 14, 2012 at 3:25 PM EST.

The discussion so far seems to be focused on organized religion, but I am interested in something else.  Let's start with a poll, and that might lead to some discussion.  How many of you believe that the universe was created by some higher power?  If you say that you do, please fill us in on the details of your particular concept of this higher power.  If you don't, please give us some reasons why.  I will put my two cents in after a few others have responded.

Dave

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value -- Albert Einstein

Interested in God and religion of famous scientists.
Do you know of a good reference?
Interested in compilation of beliefs of as many famous thinkers as possible(artists included).
Thanks.

Religion is a complete waste of time, it is aliniating, and it's a great bussines. I think it is better to believe in god alone without religion. I'm an atheist. At the contrary science doesn't want to tell you how to live, it is only methods and a collection of knowledge.

I personally feel that science and religion aren't really against each other if not viewed from a hard core religious or scientific perspective.  I recommend for reading on this topic:
The Mind of God by Paul Davies.  It goes on the scientific basis for a rational world.  I found many of the authors opinions I agreed with.  Read it and see what you think.

Science has already discredited religion. The latter just exists now to make people stupid and ignorant.

Religion hinders scientific progression.  For example, religion is often taught and passed down from generation to generation, and it is enstilled at an early age.  Many scientific concepts cannot be accepted by these people, such as super string theory or the big bag or even evolution, to speak of science on a smaller scale.  Religious people deny, or refuse to take part in these scientific "investigations", thus limiting the amout of future scientist in these fields.  In event, many minds are wasted, thrown away to an ancient text, written by unintelligent people, long before science.  

I, as an active atheist and graduate student in physics (research in bose-einstein condensation), cannot understand how one can beleive such nonsense as religion.  How dare people even try to debate or compair the two on an itellectual level.  This is not possible as they are two worlds, the world of reason e.g. science, and the world of ancient fallacy e.g. religion.

Here is an interesting thing to toss into the Science vs. Religion discussion.  Have you guys heard of the opening of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY?  Here's the website if you haven't heard about it.

http://www.creationmuseum.org/

I'm curious to your thoughts.  Mine, I personally find the making of such a museum based upon so little factual evidence rather scary.  Especially since they seem to disregard scientific fact and reasoning.  Other thoughts?

i feel that each has its place and they are not mutually exclusive.

From my point of view science is "a method" and "not a subject." The method can be summarized as "the systematic use of the rational faculty." I use it as far as possible in all my walks of life. The following is a sample:
______________
Narratives, like those of biographies and autobiographies, which purport to tell the truth have had limited value in American psychology. Science has never been able to deal with their complexities, some writers argue. I would argue, as many do now,that hermeneutics and reconstruction both are useful tools in examining autobiography.  They can bring out its meaning; delve into cultural-historical context or indeed a host of other contexts;  examine inconsistencies, baises, textual distortions, dishonesties, basic assumptions, omissions, the power of perspective.

For the longest journey, as former secretary-general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskold once said, is the journey inwards. It is a sacred journey and one that has to do with coping and surviving. It is part and parcel of the autobiographical act.
________________
R. Frederick Price(that's me) "began assembling his Notebooks" in the 1960s and 1970s, but little remains from these collections.  In the 1980s and 1990s Price began to assemble an extensive collection of notes from the humanities and the social sciences, not so much observations as quotations from his reading, photocopies from books, magazines and journals and, by the late nineties, material from the Internet. A vast amount of this, too, has been lost, given away or left behind where he lectured and taught.   His poetry, of course, contained the sorts of notes that came from observations and ideas.  By 2003, as this statement was being recorded, over one hundred and fifty two-ring binders and arch-lever files as well as over fifty booklets of poetry filled with notes represented Price's collection of Notebooks.  -Ron Price with thanks to 1&2Matthew J. Bruccoli, editor, The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, NY, 1945, p.viii & p.ix.

Science and Religion have similarities and differences.
Both have one great commandment, and both are a call to action to those who follow them, but they aren't inconsistent and you can certainly do both.

As for religion, there is one great commandment, per Deut. 6:  You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and strength.  All other commandments and rules depend from this one, at least according to the western monotheistic faith traditions.  

What we know about faith can be learned from the stories contained in the old and new testaments, e.g., about Moses, Samuel, Saul and David, Jonah, Ahab and Elijah, and the stories about John, Jesus, Peter and Paul, for example.  These people struggled with the concept of God and what God was calling them to do.

As for science, Galileo (and he is as good an authority as anyone) has stated:  Science knows but one Commandment -- Contribute [to Science].   All that we know about how do do science, the processes we call "The Scientific Method"  derive from that one basic principle.  

If you want to know what science is about, the place to start is with the basic stories that you should have read in high school, or maybe in college, such as De Kruif's Microbe Hunters and, of course, James Watson's Double Helix.  There are also biographies written about Kepler, Copernicus, Joseph Henry, and other early leaders in science.

I would say that some of those who have contributed to this thread earlier on could stand to read, or perhaps re-read, some of these stories and remind themselves of what it means to do science.


And again, it is certainly possible to Love the Lord thy God wholeheardedly, and at the same time to Contribute to Science! Indeed, it would be consistent to do both.