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Is science & religion compatible?

Shouldn't religion be classified as 'Paranormal : fraud' along with psychics, mediums, spiritists & mystics?

atheist 8 Apr 25
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No

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I think the question you're really asking is "Are science and fundamentalism/literalism compatible?" and the answer to that is so obvious as to not need asking. But the way you have worded your question makes it sound like you are asking "Are science and art compatible?" which is an equally unnecessary question for the opposite reason.

skado Level 9 Apr 26, 2018

@slavenomore I'm guessing (since there is no scholarly consensus) that your definition of "religion" falls closer to fundamentalism/literalism than to art, in which case I would have no argument with what you're saying.

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It very much depends on the extent to which you take your religious beliefs. If you believe that God made the world 6,000 years ago in six days, that there was a global flood, that Earth is flat and/or that all animals were created as they are now, then that flies in the face of accepted scientific fact and all the available evidence, so you necessarily cannot accept science without suffering cognitive dissonance.

If you believe in any form of interactive god, you need to accept that its interactions have not been empirically demonstrated, only anecdotally. So, you're accepting something based on faith and not the scientific method. It stands apart from science, and doesn't stand up to science, but it doesn't interfere with science.

If you're a deist, who just thinks someone or something kick-started the universe then left us to it, same as the above.

So yes, science and religion are compatible, but only as long as your religious beliefs are vague enough not to contradict modern science.

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As Christopher Hitchens once said: They are not only incompatible, but irreconcilable.

@atheist " And the lion will lay down with the lamb but the lamb won't get much sleep " Woody Allen

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@atheists

They have secular Kabbalah texts, which would fall under the topic of "philosophy of science".

@atheist

It tells me that before forming reference material, there has to be a premise to it, and grasping the existence of that premise creates indefinite answers about the nature of reality, and stuff.

@atheist

You know.

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Many great scientists have been religious but it can interfere with their work. Darwin studied for the clergy. Einstein rejected quantum theory "I refuse to believe that god plays dice with the universe". My own namesake lord Kelvin was a bit of a religious nutter. Though this is priceless, how many colours are there in the spectrum of light? Seven you answer as you go though "Richard of York gained battles in vain" Wrong, take a look again (dig out your dark side of the moon album). There really are six but Newton thought 6 was the devil's number so he split purple into indigo and violet to make it 7.

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Reading down here it gets confusing when people answer the title of the post without addressing the actual question extrapolated under it.

For clarity here, my answers are based on the question

Shouldn't religion be classified as 'Paranormal : fraud' along with psychics, mediums, spiritists & mystics?

not
Is science & religion compatible? which I have addressed elsewhere and to which the answer is obviously, not under any circumstances.

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Put it this way
everything that is described as a godly miracle in the bible, is described as black magic in the same book when anyone other than a Israelite or Christian does it.

Oddly most Christian claim belief in magic is blasphemous, even though the bible acknowledges it enough to order the death of its practitioners

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not christian,maybe Hindu,as they believe in other beings from space

Why not Christian?
The Bible has witches, prophets, soothsayers, spiritualists, unicorns, leviathan, magic, flying men, ghosts , demons (various), angels (various), magic fish, curses, charms, talking donkeys and snakes, Behemoth .....

I could go on but all that sounds a bit Harry Potter-ish to me.

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Only to a cognitively dissonant mind.

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If I owned a bookstore, I'd put the Bible in the Fiction section.

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I think that when a religion is taught through a mythos it can work for a society as long as it's plausible or believable within the science of its time. But when the science of the day proves the myth to be a myth, false, not something that really happened, that shakes the very foundation of the religion. That's when the religion needs to go the way of mythology and allow its lessons to be taught in a literary sense, rather than in a literal sense. We see that happening already, I feel.

Religions based on a supernatural creator, like our Abrahamic Monotheism, which are not supported by the science of the day, and are subject to the scrutiny and skepticism of a modern worldly internet society, should be classified as paranormal.

With the "Rise of the Nones" growing higher in the more educated countries, monothesism will be a thing of the past someday, and the religious texts will be in the Mythology section of the library.

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Of course not! religion doesn't understand science! Religion is Mythology!

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There are a lot of good debates on this one. Daniel Dennett does a good job with these.

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No they are not. It takes a whole lot of cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics to say they do.

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Not compatible. At all.

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Science is compatible with anything that’s demonstrably true and incompatible with anything that’s demonstrably false. Science does not speak directly to the existence of god(s) one way or the other; it makes no attacks on any of them, but if it attacks the foundations they were built on, then those foundations ARE demonstrably false and it stands to reason that at least THOSE gods who stand upon shoddy premises don’t exist.
THOSE religions are incompatible with science because they attempted explanations that turned out to be misguided. They claimed objective truth, but objective truth doesn’t falter under increased scrutiny and doesn’t wilt under brighter light.
Science is a remarkably simply test; if true, you pass and if not, then not. Anyone that claims that science attacks their religion is just complaining that the test is too hard and admitting that they (the authors of said religion) didn’t study for it.

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I've always said yes. For those who have only faith, they can always see science as Man's way to explain the work of God; it is provable - so it must not (cannot) go against God. This is no more than an updated way to explain the nature of things, since we have learned so much more than man could comprehend to write down two millenia ago.

I would be inclined to agree if and when the keepers of religion are willing to make the concession that admits that there was/is a wide knowledge gap between what was written in their sacred texts and what is known to be true and update their dogma accordingly. But does that actually happen? Realistically? Coherently?
The deeper I come in understanding of the knowledge that science gives us, the less I’m inclined to believe in the existence of god(s). But I’ll be the first the first to admit that it does not (and likely cannot) fully discount the existence thereof. If someone brings forth an argument that doesn't conflict with what I already know to be true, I’ll be at the very least willing to consider it. But feel free to miss me with young earth creationism, women with six arms and elephant heads, pantheons that live apart from us on mountains or alternate dimensions, but still deign to mingle with and procreate (really?) with mere mortals. I’m okay, thanks

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Science and religion can totally exist in the same way bacon and sausage do. Science explains natural phenomenon, religion explains the motivating impulse behind it all and outlines a system of social behavior to foster the continued survival of a culture thousands of years ago. Some of it is outdated and needs revision, but as long as you let science have its sphere of influence and religion its, they can coexist quite fine. It's when religion tries to do something science has already proven reliably and repeatedly simply by merit of anecdotal evidence from eyewitnesses 1700 years ago regarding events 2000 years and 4 language translations ago that the two start to conflict.

@kcuhcortsa my point is that if one chooses science, with its focus on replication of observation and the work that explains how things work is a better system of understanding the world and natural phenomena than religious narrative, which is largely or entirely reliant on anecdotal evidence in the form of oral narrative tradition, but faith/religion/spirituality does not intrinsically require that facet to serve an anthropological purpose. Removing the elements of religion which attempt scientific explanation and leaving behind the moral, ethical, and social ideologies as intended by religious systems, using religion as philosophy, I suppose. So I suppose I've kind of argued against myself, and will have to change my statement: yes, but only if you gut religious paradigm to suit a hybrid model.

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Yes, absolutely. One standard interpretation of quantum mechanics is that the material world can't exist without conscious observers. That's pretty much what George Berkeley, Bishop of Coyne contended in the early 18th century, and it is amazing to me that Bishop Berkeley's theory is still viable three centuries later. Perhaps that explains why Berkeley college at Yale and Berkeley California were both named after him.

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Absolutely not.

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I say no, absolutely not. Faith is suspension of understanding, and science is the search for the truth... With Christianity, from the very first chapter of the Bible, one must deny science. We know that Genesis is flat out wrong; but the faithful "know" that the sciences are all wrong. They're at odds with one another from scene one.

Religion should be classified as a mental illness

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Science is compatible with religion only to the degree that the religious person is willing to admit that much of the dogma and scripture are nothing more than cultural myth.

@atheist hmm

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