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

Re: seems pretty obvious to me

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Nothing in science is ever proved, only provisionally accepted or disproved. Though faith has some hold in religion: while no doubt scientific knowledge is thoroughly grounded in observation, we have no time individually to verify everything that provides the theoretical background to what we're investigating, so we to some extent do rely on "faith": the faith that the world is there, the faith that the world is observable, the faith that observation is ceteris paribus repeatable - and, in some ways, there are axiomatic and probabilistic elements there also.