I just watched "Contact" for the second time...

[arib]

... and I'm forced to wonder:

Why do so many scientists, as well as many religious figures, see science and religion as diametrically opposed to one another?

I mean, I'm a fairly religious person, and science is something that's very important to me. In some cases, scientific acheivements don't adversely challenge my faith, they help me define it.

I'm sure I have more to say, but I'm tired right now. SO, I'll open the discussion up to you, my friends. What do y'all think?

Comments

[rosefox]

Where did I see a quote recently about creation and evolution? Something along the lines (heavily paraphrased) of "I don't understand how anyone who professes faith in the Christian God can believe that He would create entire strata of fossils simply to mislead us--or that He wouldn't be capable of creating evolution".

I have been known to say that the words "always" and "never" are, to me, proof of the existence of God. I find it unimaginable that by chance a universe could have come about where something could always be true, or never be true. What an extraordinary thing it is that in base 10, 2+2=4, no matter what else is going on in the entire universe! Contemplating things like that touches my soul and makes it thrum as though part of a greater harmony.

by chance?

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/complexity.html

quoting from the website...

Life is too complex to have happened by chance.

Another is the "randomness argument". What is "random", anyway? We are never told. It says that self organization cannot occur because the process is "blind" and "random" that is supposed to drive it. Never mind that the system has a finite number of states it can occupy and its history can constrain its future states. This borrows from the thermodynamic argument the confusion over entropy and open system states.

The theory of evolution doesn't say it did happen by chance. This argument completely ignores natural selection. Please read:

Life in Darwin's Universe
G. Bylinsky, Omni Sept 79
The Evolution of Ecological Systems
May, Scientific American, Sept 1978
Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life
Dickerson, Scientific American, Sept 1978
The Evolution of the Earliest Cells
Schopf, Scientific American, Sept 1978
The Evolution of Multicellular Plants and Animals
Valentine, Scientific American, Sept 1978

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(done with the quote)

just for arguments sake, think about this...religion is not the same as belief in god(s)...many people believe in a divine yet do not ascribe to a particular theological dogma or follow a certain theocracy...you can believe in a warm, fluffy invisible something if it makes you feel better...but that's all it is...meanwhile, organized religion is there to tell you what to do and how to do it, based on the leaders of that religion...just seems to me it's just another way for people with power to maintain power, and we all know what power does, as the catholics from which I came have given evidence...so ugly, such vile hypocracy...I hope all the people involved in the coverups and conspiracies are punished

Re: by chance?

[rosefox]

Dude.

Who invited you and your strawmen to the party?

Re: by chance?

[arib.livejournal.com]

*shrug*

Dor some religions, possibly. Lumping all organized religions into the "organized religion is just a way to keep the little people down" camp is quite rash.

By your line of reasoning, governments, which are an organized system with a codified set or rules and punishments, fall under the same heading. (Yes, the grammar in that sentence was atrocious, mea culpa.) Instead of doing something because -Deity of your choice- says to, you're doing it because -government X- says to.

Blaming religions as a whole for the actions of some of their practitioners is bordering on groundless discrimination, not to mention paranoia. While the media has brought the recent scandals in the Catholic church to light, it's more how certain individuals handled matters, IMO, rather than how the religion as a culture dealt with it.

FInally, if you're not willing to sign your name to your words, I'm not gonna bother discussing them.