Is There Any Room For Science In Modern Religion

I'm interested in hearing a bit more about where exactly various religions, or religion generally in it's modern implementations stands on the issue of science and reason. Is the scientific method generally seen as a valuable tool, or is it seen as superfluous or even as man's inferior version of God's absolute truth, and unnecessary since everything that's worth knowing has already been written down in a holy book such as the Bible? Do religions generally see qualities such as curiosity, inquisitiveness, the desire to seek out knowledge and gain a better understanding of our world desirable qualities, or are these qualities looked down upon or even evil, and if so why? What's the harm in closely scrutinizing things?

 

So are you asking what a religions texts actually say, or the interpretation of said text and actions of it's practitioners?

from my experience, most all religions encourage investigation of the natural world, it's some of the practitioners of various religions that have issues.

 

Im interested in both, and perhaps more interested in why interpretations tend to change over time as if influenced by the knowledge of the current culture and science. Isn't God and His word unchanging?

 

There seems to be a spectrum of the acceptability of science in religion, ranging from fundamentalism which is mostly against science to Intelligent Design (which technically could be dissociated from religion itself) that is much more acceptable of science. Generally religion seems to slow scientific progress down often due to ethical, moral concerns and perhaps just to flex the power that the religious institution(s) hold but then they also seem to integrate scientific ideas when they become acceptable in other aspects of the culture.

 

Go visit some churches, find out

 

A religion has no stand on anything. We stand. Invariably we are not favorably inclined toward those who don't take us seriously and this is the only difficulty a religious practitioner has with science. It's objection that makes a thing objectionable. That everything is written down does not change the fact that it is necessary to learn how to read. A person who says however that written material interprets itself is delusional. The why of the delusion is that we want to protect the things we love and we certainly love to be right and we can't be if we are wrong. The answers of why any person does anything lies in the characters of the person. We find those most agreeable who agree with us. If science doesn't agree then it is deemed superfluous. Religion by definition is an approach for the knowledge of god.

 

kind of depends which modern religions we're talking about, and which flavors of them.

if you understand what science really is, it doesn't matter that much what else does or does not accept it.
science and religion, are really concerned with completely seperate area that don't overlap at all.
so there really isn't even a question of conflict, other then really a minority of fanatics try to manufacture one.

now i happen to believe that neither christianity nor islam have the slightest idea what they're talking about, at least if you try to take either of them the way some fanatics do.
that beliefs exist because the ego refuses to accept that it doesn't know everything, while even a moment's sober reflection will recognize that it really can't.

now there is certainly a range of beliefs, that are far less corrupted by their appeal to ego, then these two dominant ones.
its really an abuse of the word "religion" to mean just christianity, or just christianity, islam and judaism, by it.
an abuse of the word, and a totally senseless one at that.

 

I think science and Judeo-Christianity are absolute enemies. I mean the facts of science leave little room for it in the 21st century. In the Middle Ages it was excusable to think that Earth was the center of the Universe and that it was ruled by this Grandfather figure who slung lightning bolts and killed on a whim and roasted people alive in Hell (which was underground somewhere). If you disagreed or proved something with science then your ass might end up in a dungeon full of rats, branded as a heretic and waiting to be burned alive. Now with technology being where it is and knowledge of things beyond this sphere.....there's not much room fo it at all!!

 

LOL......yeah if you accept such a juvenile interpretation/understanding.

 

Only extreme fundamentalist religions are enemies of science. Many of the world's great scientists have been "Judeo-Christian". A dozen who come readily to mind are Gregor Mendel, Catholic monk and father of modern genetics; Georges Lemaitre, Catholic priest who proposed the Big Bang theory; John Polkinghorne, quantum physicist and Anglican priest; Francis Collins, head of NIH, former head of human genome project, evolutionist and devout Evangelical Christian; Freeman Dyson, physicist, mathematician, and progressive Christian; Sir James Jeans, physicist; Sir Arthur Eddington, astronomer, mathematician and physicist; Louis Pasteur, who developed the germ theory of disease; Lord Kelvin, formulator of the first and second laws of thermodynamics; George Washington Carver, botanist and agricultural researcher; and Kenneth Miller, evolutionary biologist and devout Catholic, who defended Darwin before the Dover, Pa. School Board. For more, see Dan Graves, Scientists of Faith; Henry Morris, Men of Science, Men of God;, Eric Bennett, Scientists Who Believe. and Nancy Frankenberry, The Faith of Scientists. If we broaden the definition of religion to include deism and pantheism, we could add Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and mathematical physicist Kenneth Davies.

 

When I still went to church, an Eastern Orthodoxish one, the priest's wife actually was a licensed nurse and also taught organic chemistry and phramacology courses at a local college, so I'd have to say no, they are not necessarily in conflict with one another, I also heard her and others openly accepting Darwin's ideas. Things of this sort are not so black and white after all.

 

I don't see the profession of the priests wife as being very relevant. You have to look closer than that; look at where they do in fact conflict. For example, ask yourself how they come to know about the holy trinity, or christ's rising from the dead, etc. where the rubber meets the road.

 

It's not really where the rubber meets the road. Ancient man valued Mythological language much more than the modern mind, which takes it all very literally. There is good evidence that older humans experienced a "picture-thinking", where a certain symbol or picture would elicit a certain feeling, and this is the basis for the various Mythological stories of Gods and demons, etc.

Now we just look at it very logically and rationally (and limitedly), and think "oh, pity those simple fools of the past", when really we're just looking at it from a completely different angle.

If you apply the Trinity and Christ's resurrection to an archetypal Myth, then it's irrelevant whether there was or wasn't a historical Jesus, with the various claims.

What matters is the symbolic nature of the various religious figures, and what the symbols represent. This is the eternal value.

 

"The narratives of the doctrine are its cloak.
The simple look only at the garment - that is, upon the narration of the doctrine; more they know not.
The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak, but what the cloak covers."

-The Zohar

 

i have no love for christianity nor islam, (because the do, ultimately teach hatred of logic), but not all beliefs, nor even all believers in them, isolate themselves so thoroughly from the real universe science explores.