Quote:
Originally Posted by Roadking2003
Totally false. You need a huge amount of faith to believe some "science" as some of it cannot be proven. It's conjecture and forecasting.
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Comments like these only demonstrate a fundamental scientific cluelessness. Science accepts
a postiori that
nothing can be proven. We can reach lesser or greater
confidence in the likliehood that something is true, but everything science proposes to "know" is explicitly tentative and subject to revision should something better come along. While to the dogmatist that might seem a bit weak kneed, history proves that it is one of the greatest sources of pragmatic power for science as a human enterprise.
Outside of mathematics and deductive reasoning, the word "proof" has no place in science.
Science makes no claim to absolute truth, but strives instead to
incrementally approach it. As the scientific method assembles theoretical explanations for natural phenomena they are ruthlessly tested against the data of the real world. That which works is retained. That which does not is discarded on the trash heap of discredited ideas, among them phlogiston, orgone energy, the luminiferous aether and creationism.
Herein lays the tension between religion and science. Having no prejudice for dogma, science in its progress cannot help but periodically disprove that which is held dogmatically by certain religions. It is not an
intentional assault on religious dogma, but that dogma has often through history been the collateral damage of science's assault
on ignorance. While science adapts to new information, adjusts to an ever expanding ability to view the heretofore invisible, and willingly abandons even once dearly held beliefs when proven untenable, religion cannot afford to do the same. To challenge (for example) the inerrancy of the Bible is not a collateral issue to the Christian faith; it cuts directly to the dogma of its divine inspiration and authority. As
prominent creationists have always been explicit, "How can an inquirer be led to saving faith in the divine Word if the context in which that Word is found is filled with error? How can he trust the Bible to speak truly when it tells of salvation and heaven and eternity which he is completely unable to verify empirically (if) he finds that data which are subject to test are fallacious?"
Religion evolved originally to serve several purposes, one of the most immediate being to explain the otherwise baffling phenomenon of the natural world. The seasons were explained by Persephone's six month sojourn to the underworld during which her mother Demeter, goddess of the fertility of the earth, mourned her daughter's absence and neglected her duties. The rainbow was explained as a promise from Yahweh that he would never again destroy the world by flood. The clouds raced across the sky personally moved by Allah's intention and will. Volcanoes erupted as shows of anger by the goddess Pele, and the Nile flooded and ebbed at the action of the river god Hapi.
But as science explained more and more of the universe via the operation of invariant natural law, there became less and less for the gods and goddesses to do. And as the solid domes of the seven firmaments were replaced by an awesome expanse of intergalactic space, the thrones of the many gods became more and more remote. What was a daily and immediate experience of god to the ancients became an impersonal encounter with impersonal forces like gravity, momentum and time. And humanity's central role in the perceived purpose of creation was progressively moved farther and farther off the midway and into the remote corners of an unimportant sideshow.
And therein lays the most fundamental reason science and religion are not friends. Religion is pinned to the central presumption of mankind's cosmic importance. Call it hubris, call it arrogance, call it pride, but most religions serve
not to glorify their gods
but to glorify man. "Look at how important we are that even the creators of the universe should care about us and hear our prayers."
Even those gods that were malicious and arbitrary often seemed more emotionally satisfying than the unconscious and invariant operation of natural law. They at least cared enough about us to make us suffer.
Science rests on upon an axiomatic acceptance of its own incompleteness and inadequacy. It is by definition never "good enough" since that would imply the end of the scientific endeavor. Out of that foundational humility has risen the single most pragmatically productive enterprise in all of human history. This is how science cures disease, increases crop yields, splits the atom and sends men and women into space.
And religion does not.
But the cost to our egos is something that many cannot bear. The conflict between science and religion is that between humility and narcissism. Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else.
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