Religion vs Science & viceversa

Why religion is afraid of science?

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” –Albert Einstein
My Grandfather was a Cherokee Medicine Man, a very outspoken cuss, and one who never minced words. He served in WW2 and Korea with the U.S. Army where he retired as a Sgt. Maj. So, when he spoke, I would listen. He told me one day as we were fishing; “Religion is a scam and Jesus was a gifted Con Man”.

That statement stuck with me throughout my life.

The points he made went like this: After primitive man conquered fire (he was quick to note man never discovered fire, he learned to harness it), he would sit around the campfire and discuss the days events. My grandfather would tell me how many Indian Nations still do this as they pass down stories and legends.

Primitive Man, when sitting around the campfire, more than likely wondered how he got there. What was the force which caused him to be there? What were those lights in the sky at night? What was that orb which gave off light and chase away the dark? Man was still in the hunter gatherer stage of development so he had nothing to go on to answer his questions.

Somewhere, someone got the idea there was a spirit, a deity, who created everything. This satisfied many people and it answered all their questions. Soon, someone had the idea, possibly after a bad storm, that offerings should be made to this deity or in some societies, deities. The offerings would range from food to precious items to humans themselves. Men would appoint themselves as conduits to the Gods and would create laws they said the God gave to them.

My Grandfather said the pure idea of religion was corrupted by those who only sought wealth and power over everyone else.

In a Native American Tribe, the medicine man wields great power. It is him who determines if the tribe went to war or moved to better hunting grounds. The Medicine Man had the gift of second sight and could see into the future. Even the Chief would defer to the Medicine man in affairs of the tribe. Rare was the Medicine Man who abused his power.

In the White Man’s religion, my grandfather would say, corruption ran rampant. The church had a scheme to get power and riches. No one was going to stop them.

Except science. The leaders of the church knew science could blow their whole scheme to hell if it became accepted and religion was tossed out. So they fought tooth and nail to denounce scientists as pawns of the Devil and were God Haters.

Behind closed doors, however, science was needed. Astronomy was needed, for example, to determine when to celebrate Easter by the position of the moon. There needed to a way to test gold in order to make sure it was pure and thus eligible for use in many church ornaments. Geometry was needed in church construction and the physics had to be applied in order to assure the whole structure did not collapse. Even the science of acoustics was needed so the sermon could be heard throughout the cathedral. Religion passed this off as miracles of God or divine provence guided them. No need letting the people know otherwise or else they may question.

The acceptance of science is needed by all churches today. Let’s take a Mega Church of today. One thing the church needs is electricity. There are books out there in Private Christian Schools which state no one knows for sure where electricity comes from but it is everywhere. It claims it cannot be seen or felt. All someone has to do is ask whomever pays the bills to see the electric bill. In fact, they can do that at their own house! A company, located somewhere in the state, through the power of coal, natural gas, atomic energy or water, generates the electricity which passes through wires to the house or church. What is not taught his how the generators are spinning magnets which create electricity. As for not seeing electricity, all they need to do is watch a thunderstorm. Can’t feel it? Stick your finger in a light socket and turn the switch on.

Also in the church are computers. In small churches it is more than likely there are a handful of computers, a router, and not much else. The big mega churches will have servers and an IT team. The mega church will have a television and radio studio with technicians to run the whole thing. All these wondrous devices are the result of science and technology. With out them, they could not get their “message” out to people who are at home.

Religion is comfortable with this, but what religion fears is discoveries that can call into question everything they have been preaching. The Vast Antenna Array (VAA) which listens for sounds from stars, they fear, could one day pick up a signal from another civilization proving we are not alone. With their power extending into the Government, they can get politicians to cut funding to the VAA thusly ensuring no discoveries will be made. They can make sure the manned space program goes no where and the robotics necessary to explore other worlds are never developed. They may not succeed thoroughly, but they can restrict funding.

The science needed to determine the age of something needs to be debunked as inaccurate and unproven. Science cannot be allowed to say the earth is millions of years old after their Holy Book said it was only a few thousand. Dinosaurs co-existed with man ala dinotopia.

Religion knows if science can debunk everything they have taught as being gospel, then the grip they have on people will be broken and the cash cow they have been milking will be gone.

Science afraid of religion

Opinion: Science is scared of religion

There's so little scientific study into the facts of religious events that DW's Zulfikar Abbany says it feels like most scientists would rather not touch it — and those who do get shouted down.

Science and journalism are kindred spirits: Both rely on curiosity, the courage to ask tough questions, and deal fairly and ethically with the answers. Sure, it doesn't always happen that way — there are plenty of dodgy scientists and many more unscrupulous hacks. But you get the idea.

So why are science and journalism so scared of tackling — either proving or disproving — some of the greatest, unsolved propositions of our human existence? It's Easter. So, yes, I'm talking about events of religious significance, such as the Resurrection of Christ.

It can't just be because it's too hard. We've got astrophysicists who say they've "heard" the Big Bang. And journalists who say they can explain financial markets and other social ills. But few would dare attempt to explain miracles like Jesus' Feeding of the 5,000, his Walking on Water, or, indeed, the resurrection.

But aren't they fascinating questions?

Take the resurrection. People have been known to "come back from the dead" — people whose hearts stop and restart or even those who lie for years in a coma — and yet, even in our age of modern medicine, we don't fully understand what happens. What trauma the people experience, how their brains suffer, do they remember anything when they are back?

And as a result we're happy to research that. But the resurrection is one we would rather not touch, and especially not at Easter. (Oh, but we can ask this areligious loudmouth, who happens to have a Muslim name, to write an opinion piece. That's a safe bet. Thanks, Ed.)

Scientists are believers too

My feeling is we've been cowed into silence — by our own fears of offending the faithful, and by their response. But we desperately need to break through that.
Many early, Western natural philosophers were deeply religious. They used enquiry to understand and explain nature as it was created or formed. It could be a dangerous business at times. Some, like Giordano Bruno, were burnt for heresy.

But the church was also often supportive of scientific research, and as philosopher Steven Nadler once told me "they only stepped in when the conclusions of that research, or the thinking, clashed with dogmas of the Catholic faith, or seemed inconsistent with what the Bible proclaimed to be true."But bear this in mind: Nicolaus Copernicus, who devised the heliocentric theory of our universe — that everything revolves around the sun — was religious and is said to have had a good relationship with the church. Add to that Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Leibniz — they were all among the faithful.

The same goes for a little-known software engineer called Carl Drews, whose master's thesis came under hellfire in 2009 for suggesting he could explain the Parting of the Red Sea. Using computer modelling, Drews said he could pinpoint the historical event of the Exodus to 1250 B.C., that it had happened at the Lake of Tanis in the Nile Delta of Egypt, and that it was probably caused by a storm surge.

The response, reproduced in an article in The Washington Post, included creationist Ken Ham saying there was no need for "a naturalistic explanation of a supernatural event" and Jim West, a professor of theology at Quartz Hill School, complaining that "scientists can no more keep their ignorant hands off the Bible than a dog can rid itself of fleas."

The split from science

Why would anyone react like that? Don't religious folk understand that science may one day prove a supernatural event happened the way it's described in the Bible and that that would put all the doubters to bed? Perhaps not. Perhaps they are also unaware that Drews is Christian, and it never stopped his mind from wondering.

But, then, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it in a piece on religion and science, the relationship between the two worldviews has long been "complex" — and again, they have not always been viewed as separate. But that complexity is true of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, to name the world's top three religions by number of followers.

"As Muslim intellectual life became more orthodox," suggests Helen De Cruz, who wrote the entry, "it became less open to non-Muslim philosophical ideas, which led to the decline of Arabic science. […] Scientific ideas, such as evolutionary theory, were equated with European colonialism, and thus met with distrust."

Hinduism, meanwhile, is complex as it holds very diverse religious and philosophical schools. "Cārvāka proponents rejected Vedic revelation and supernaturalism," writes De Cruz, "instead favoring direct observation as a source of knowledge." When India came under British rule, Hindus "came into contact with Western science and technology" but it was a "challenge to assimilate these ideas" with Hindu beliefs.

Divisions of this sort exist in many faiths — as well as in the sciences, which, let us not forget, are their own form of belief system. No theory is ever 100 percent, and that's partly why the sciences keep moving. Our ideas about the universe are true only by "a convergence of evidence," writes Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, in Scientific American. A convergence of evidence seems a little shaky to me, but it is better than the "internal validation" upon which so much of religion is based. Religion is true because we believe it — just as Sigmund Freud believed religion was an attempt to overcome an Oedipus complex.

You might think it's an interesting idea, but like the miracle of Jesus' resurrection, how are we ever going to prove it?

Perhaps we never will. Only the difference between a science like psychology and belief systems like religion is that psychology would welcome the chance to be right. Religion doesn't need proof. Facts undermine the whole purpose of "having faith."

But who cares who is right? What matters is what is true, and some truths can vary, but we'll only find out by asking those tough questions.

Heretics! And the dangerous beginnings of modern science in glorious graphic detail | DW | 14.07.2017

If you think scientists have it bad today, spare a thought for the early philosophers - some even got burnt for heresy. Philosopher Steven Nadler and graphic artist Ben Nadler talk us through their book, "Heretics!" DW: A major theme, I found, in your book "Heretics!" was thinking differently.