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INTERVIEWER
Are religion and science simply two systems that don’t merge?
ROBINSON
The debate seems to be between a naive understanding of religion and a naive understanding of science. When people try to debunk religion, it seems to me they are referring to an eighteenth-century notion of what science is. I’m talking about Richard Dawkins here, who has a status that I can’t quite understand. He acts as if the physical world that is manifest to us describes reality exhaustively. On the other side, many of the people who articulate and form religious expression have not acted in good faith. The us-versus-them mentality is a terrible corruption of the whole culture.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written critically about Dawkins and the other New Atheists. Is it their disdain for religion and championing of pure science that troubles you?
ROBINSON
No, I read as much pure science as I can take in. It’s a fact that their thinking does not feel scientific. The whole excitement of science is that it’s always pushing toward the discovery of something that it cannot account for or did not anticipate. The New Atheist types, like Dawkins, act as if science had revealed the world as a closed system. That simply is not what contemporary science is about. A lot of scientists are atheists, but they don’t talk about reality in the same way that Dawkins does. And they would not assume that there is a simple-as-that kind of response to everything in question. Certainly not on the grounds of anything that science has discovered in the last hundred years.
The science that I prefer tends toward cosmology, theories of quantum reality, things that are finer-textured than classical physics in terms of their powers of description. Science is amazing. On a mote of celestial dust, we have figured out how to look to the edge of our universe. I feel instructed by everything I have read. Science has a lot of the satisfactions for me that good theology has.
"There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"
Originally posted by Faiol
NO
RELIGION DOESNT STUDY ANYTHING
religion says that everything you need to know its inside a book
[religion] is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or more in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs
Originally posted by Faiol
reply to post by maria_stardust
lol
so you need to have a religion ( to read a book and believe in everything written in that book and to interpret the book the same way the elite religion people want you to?)
to be able to grow spiritually/whatever ?
sorry, but thats not true
religion is a prison and a control tool
you may have the illusion of growth, but if you cant accept any other idea besides a fixed idea from a group of individuals, you CANT grow ..
Originally posted by depth om
You latch onto personal interpretation and emotion, concerning the word "Religion".
I am discussing free of emotion.
Originally posted by maria_stardust
reply to post by depth om
Ummm... no.
Religion allows for spiritual growth and introspection.
Science allows for the study and understanding of the world around us through a rigorously controlled process.
This isn't even a case of apples and oranges. It's more like oil and water, they simply do not mix.
[edit on 7/13/2010 by maria_stardust]
Originally posted by vinrock
Originally posted by depth om
You latch onto personal interpretation and emotion, concerning the word "Religion".
I am discussing free of emotion.
"Science" - Latin "scientia," meaning "knowledge".
You latch onto personal interpretation and emotion, concerning the word "Science".
You are discussing free of comprehension.
[edit on 7/13/2010 by vinrock]
Originally posted by Faiol
NO
RELIGION DOESNT STUDY ANYTHING
religion says that everything you need to know its inside a book
Originally posted by maria_stardust
reply to post by depth om
Science operates in a vacuum and is free from philosophical constraints. In other words, it is what it is.
Originally posted by maria_stardust
reply to post by depth om
Science operates in a vacuum and is free from philosophical constraints. In other words, it is what it is.
The only common factor that science and religion share is perhaps the quest for truth and knowledge. However, one is achieved through internal introspection and the other through quantifiable observation free from outside interference.
Originally posted by depth om
I did choose definitions of science and religion, but no emotions were involved, the definitions are for the sake of this discussion. They are obtuse but wholly applicable.
Religion - a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
Experiment as ritual. For result.
[edit on 13-7-2010 by depth om]