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2 comments:
I think it sort of goes without saying that a literal interpretation of say, the Bible (not to pick on Christianity, but I'm most familiar with it, so there it is) is incompatible with science, and we do see a lot of religion vs. science battles happening in, for example, the U.S. (in I think Kentucky, there's a museum of creationism where wax mannequins of people and dinosaurs are together in the same display).
Having said this, that can't be whole story. My Dad, for example, is more religious than me - i.e., somewhat religious, and I am not at all. But he is far more scientific than I am, he has a science degree, whereas I wallow at lowest rung of the path of acension as often as possible. I haven't really asked him - maybe I should - but I suspect that the more science you know and understand, the more you realise that science and religion really describe different things, and serve different purposes.
For example, my Dad can know far more about physics than me, but he cannot know any more about the fundamental nature of existence than myself. I take philosophy classes, but whatever view I end up with is still not definitive and it never will be, except for myself. So, it would seem to me that religion sticks around as a sort of, not so much explanation for how the world works - it doesn't do that as well as science, and scientists who are religious seem to have no real difficulty accepting the more explicative verses of their holy texts as being allegorical, not literal - but as sort of a "respect."
You attend church to "respect" the fact that as descriptive as you can be about your experience, there is also an unknown there - a big one - and people have lived and died before you with a certain ceremonial dedication to this thing called religion, and it worked for them, so you do it, too, and prefer not to be questioned on it, and no respectful person would question it, since they haven't got any more definitive ideas as to how to deal with the mysteries of existence. If they think they do, well, that's something Dr. Freud would probably have a lot to say on (i.e., they're probably psychotic).
I too think that a literal interptretation of religion and science seem to be at odds. First of all, if science is based upon the idea of the "scientific method", and the scientific method can not be used to prove the existence of God, then there is already an inherent tension. Secondly, it seems like the more we learn from science, the more we learn that much of what religion taught us was incorrect. For example, many religions look at homosexuality as an abomination against God, and as such, see it as a sinful choice that a person makes. Science is telling us that it is in fact, a biological difference that determines ones sexual orientation: the size of the hypothalamus differs in gay vs. straight men, etc.
It just makes me feel like with the more scientific knowledge we gain, the more we will see that there are too many contradictions between religion and science for them to ever be reconciled.
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