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LINK Science, God, and the cosmos: Science both erodes (via logic) and promotes (via awe) belief in God - ScienceDirect

Quote from abstract: These findings suggest that scientific engagement does not always erode belief in God. Instead, science-inspired awe can increase representations of God as a mystical cosmic force or as being beyond imagination.[1]

I like this study for several reasons:

  1. It calls itself a study not an experiment, nor does it purport to prove anything. It just states a correlation between belief and awe.

  2. Good sample sizes: exploratory study (N = 322), Study 1 (N = 490), and Studies 2 and 3 (combined N = 570)

  3. The senior author eloquently states something I've said for a long time: '"A lot of people think science and religion do not go together, but they are thinking about science in too simplistic a way and religion in too simplistic a way," said Adam Cohen, professor of psychology and senior author on the paper. "Science is big enough to accommodate religion, and religion is big enough to accommodate science"'. [2]

  4. Building on the above, this can go a long way to explain how many scientists can have a belief in a god though not often the mainstream gods. As an agnostic, I would add that while we can safely dismiss many gods, it is difficult to dismiss all gods, or put another way, the core idea of a god for even if all mainstream definitions fail, many people still have this sense that there is something, someone, larger than ourselves out there... and that if past definitions, poorly informed as they were on the totality of nature, failed to adequately state and give boundaries to this purported entity, that doesn't mean said entity is false and non-existent, merely mischaracterized and thus a proper characterization of what is meant by god can be a valuable endeavor for many... especially scientists who are driven by curiousity and, as the study shows, can be motivated towards theological musings based on a personal sense of awe.


[1] [sciencedirect.com]

[2] [medicalxpress.com]

TheMiddleWay 8 July 20
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10 comments

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0

Bullshit.

0

I think it's a load of crap. If religion could accommodate science, people would not have been tried for heresy and even executed for it. A 'sense of something larger' isn't religion. Magical thinking that permeates religion is antithetical to the fact based functioning of science. I've never needed religion to feel awe at the universe around us and all of it's amazing complexity in the micro and macro world. Until you take the need for 'belief in things unseen' from religion, it cannot bear the scrutiny that science demands.

@TheMiddleWay Religious scientists compartmentalize their thought processes. They don't expect to pray for a solution to a problem, they use the scientific method of observe, hypothesize, experiment, evaluate and revise. They question, they doubt, they query Religion has no place for these things and thus is NOT necessary and, if actually considered when doing actual research, must be rejected for it's very 'faith based' nature.

0

@TheMiddleWay. Carl Sagan wrote a great book...in fact his last...on this very topic. You might like it...called the "Demon Haunted World". You can go directly to page 210 wherein the "tools of the skeptic" are carefully laid out.

Enjoy coming to the truth....thanks for joining us in debate, here.

R

0

As an agnostic surrounded by Christians most of the time, I get a lot of chances to ask them questions, or present positions, they can't answer. As a child growing up, I remember that asking Christians where God came from does no good. They just say he's eternal, and doesn't need a creator. So I like to tell them that the Sun, the Moon, and the stars are eternal; they don't need a creator. Then of course they say everything has to have a creator.

Then I just smile and agree with them.

0

Why does anyone care if there is GOD? There has never been a GOD effect any of the forces of the universe/nature nor has GOD effected the composition of matter. Belief is in the mind so believe what ever. GOD(S) are a thought experiment. GOD(S) don't change anything and believing in them does not change results of any experiment just interpretation for the masses,

0

I won’t use the words “science” and “awe” in the same sentence.

1

I look at it this way.

I prescribe to the idea that consciousness is a state of matter. The universe (the multiverse) is alive and this consciousness is divided out and manifested into this plane of existence. Once the container it is manifested into ceases to be the consciousness is returned back into the whole.

Where, when and in what is random, pan-galactic and omni-universal.

To think that we human animals are somehow special in our sharing of the universal consciousness is hubris.

[pbs.org]

Do you have some evidence to support this assertion?

1

Since there NEVER has been offered up ANY Empirical Evidence for the existence of God/Deities other than in myths or a single book ( the bible, etc) that can be tried and tested and thus proven to factual and truth, then it is more logical and reasonable to say that God/s/Deities are little more than figments of the imaginations of man.
However there has been literally OVER-WHELMING Empirical Evidence, tried and Tested repeatedly offered up that sheds almost mountains of doubts that such 'Supreme Entities' ever existed, therefore Logic, Reason, etc, can never go hand in hand with the Blind Faith of Religions.

1

It's because science can't prove there is or isn't a God. That's why science reinforces the religious in their belief. It's the same with non-believers.

Religious person: Science can't disprove God, therefore it leaves my belief open to the possibility that God is real.

Non-religious person: The religious can't scientifically prove that God exists, therefore there is no reason for me to be open to the possibility that God could exist without proof.

2

solid.

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