How does science and religion mix? Why do people think that they are somehow compatible?

No Chance without Jeeves: How does science and religion mix? Why do people think that they are somehow compatible?
Religion and science don’t mix. Okay? Science inspires free thought and religion forces you to adhere to an imaginary pixie fairy that cannot be proven by scientific means. Science allows you to question everything, religion says that if you question god you burn. Religion says that people were made from dirt, when evidence proves we evolved and have common ancestry to fish, Apes, Orangutans, etc.

When scientists tried to prove religion was a bunch of crap, religion mocked them. Come on, this is getting old, the bible is not correct.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Nihil
Science and religion don’t mix, because science is based in reality, and on reason.

Answer by Thomas Jefferson
Religion is based on faith and dogma. Science is based on facts and evidence.

Answer by Human
If science leads to the truth, and i believe that my religion also leads to the truth, then there should be no mix up here.

And guess what? There has been none. They both go hand in hand perfectly.

“When scientists tried to prove religion was a bunch of crap, religion mocked them.”
Who is mocking who here?

Answer by Felphil
You have totally gone off to the other extreme view of the issue. Without God, science can have no laws of nature to learn from for nothing would be created not even you. Atheists have also persecuted Christians for not submitting to their godless believes. So much for your so called freedom.

Answer by Jackal
Your god may be Science, but the truth of the matter is that Science is a gift from God.
You are not correct in saying that religion does not allow to question. Religion encourages discussion, exploration, and scientific endeavour; at least, my Religion does.
I suggest you do a little research before making any more uninformed comments. Please, if you have any self-respect, do not put your ignorance on display.

Answer by Spark
God ≠ religion

Look at the Bible to see who God is.

God = Master, Lord, Savior, killer, torturer, King, Omnipotent, etc.

Christianity = misrepresentation, disorganized, debates, external manifestation of corrupt desires, various beliefs, incomplete observations, failing investigation.

God ≠ religion

Religion and science are incompatible but belief in God and science are compatible.

Answer by Grand Poobah
In a somewhat abstract sense, it can and should.

“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
-Albert Einstein

This is what he meant in saying, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” Religion in this case is the antithesis of dogmatism, and is simply a sense of “humble admiration.”

Answer by Munchkin
Christianity does not say if you question you burn – are you just regurgitating an untruth you’ve seen someone else say? It strikes me as hypocritical that so many people that claim to depend on rational thought and the ability to empirically test their beliefs would so easily and confidently disseminate half-truths and fallacies they’ve picked up from others without exploring the issue for themselves.

In any case, I don’t suppose you much care whether your polemics are valid or not as long as you can cling to them tightly enough.

In a short sentence: sceince explains how, God is the why

Answer by GeeDawg42
A very big question, hard to cover in this forum. First you don’t seem to have an objective or complete view of Science or Religion, so I can see why with your bias you can’t see the compatibility.

In general terms both Science and Religion are searching for objective truths, usually with different methods but these are the goals. If you hold a logical view that real truth will not contradict other real truth, then as we search down these different paths then these truths, if they are really true, will agree not conflict with each other.

If you really kept to pure hard Science & only empirical evidence then you wouldn’t see anything that conflicts with some religions, others there would be conflicts (like the earth isn’t riding on the back of a big turtle or held by a really large guy, per our experience in space).
There is more conflict with the faith elements of Science with the faith elements of Religion. If you don’t think there are faith elements of Science then, like I said, you don’t have an objective view of Science.

Overall there seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding, and perhaps an intentional blurring, between hard natural science (based on the scientific method) that are the observable & objective facts and the man-made categorizations & organization of these facts into whatever form or theory suits us. These man-made structures may help us organize and understand the facts better, or may mislead us as well, but they are Not facts in and of themselves. Accepting these non-observable, non-testable theories as facts themselves is a leap of faith.

So you should understand that not all faith is irrational or goes against reason. Ignorant stereotyping & under-investigated atheistic dogma leads people to think this way. [1] Plus it’s poor logic to use argument by insult [2] “imaginary pixie fairy” especially when much of what you believe is also cannot be proven by hard scientific means and relies on billions of unobserved miracles that go against observed natural processes. These by faith, are accepted as occurring even though they can never be reproduced or observed by the scientific method.

The common, but limited definition of faith does not understand the concept of a reasonable faith. One based on evidence and experience that leads us to trust a God who has a proven track record. You are under the Kierkegaard’s definition of faith is opposed to reason [3], which is not the case in the real world, except for blind or under-investigated leaps of faith.

As beings of limited perceptions and limited knowledge we rely on many things by reasonable faith just to get through the day. So when we say we know something, we usually have reasons. These are based on our personal experiences or the interpretation of available evidence. And as we are taught by others what they know, our trust in them as a valid source of truth also builds into this web of reasonable faith. We should continue to challenge things we take on faith and see how firm they are and if they are based on blind trust or objective truth.

This is the kind of reasonable faith we can have in God & Jesus as Lord.[4] The kind that has proven itself and continues to do so again & again in history and archeology etc.

So as a student of Science & Christianity, I have not found any incompatibility with any of the hard facts of either. There is no fact in science, history, archeology, etc that is denied in the Bible.[5] [6] In fact much of the Bible is considered real history by National Geographic and The Smithsonian. And is often used to help archaeologists [7] make discoveries. So much so that the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology has an official statement on “THE BIBLE AS HISTORY.” In it they say:
“… much of the Bible, in particular the historical books of the old testament, are as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than many of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories. These Biblical records can be and are used as are other ancient documents in archaeological work. For the most part, historical events described took place and the peoples cited really existed.”

I know it is easier to just insult & dismiss what doesn’t agree with your worldview bias. But if you really think you are rational and open-minded, please really look into the evidence and don’t assume it isn’t there because you have never really looked into it yourself.

Hope this helps you at least understand another view, even if you don’t agree with it.
“faith is not a substitute for knowledge, but the response to it.” Udo Middelmann

Answer by Ulrich
It’s useless to debate with atheists. There are a lot of websites showing that Genesis fits science (for instance . But they don’t go there and read it objectively. Their attitude is only comprehensible face to the absurdities of creation science. Otherwise, they can’t be excused because they want to have the bible to be wrong. This is not a scientific attitude because one must always be open to learn something new. Atheists however want to have confirmed their axioms, which is a contradiction in itself because man with his limited intelligence and knowledge is not able to establish any irrefutable eternal axioms, in any case not an axiom about the existence of God. This is why atheists are pretentious. Most people are delighted to have a book that gives us accurate historical details. Atheists however are disappointed. This is sick because they should be delighted as well, even if it is not always easy to show the historic accuracy of the bible.

Answer by Felix
Religion doesn’t ” force” me to do anything. You also fail to recognize that the Lord is not any one religion. The major religions all speak of one Lord, which is then diluted into separate identities and downgraded into some human form. Let’s face it people; the Lord does not have to prove existence by coming down in some form or reincarnation. The creator of the UNIVERSE does not have to prove anything. What the Lord has done however, was to create a world so perfectly balanced, meticulously designed to sustain life in an ever expanding universe equally as marvelous that one cannot fathom it forming from a random series of events. Science cannot explain how the genetic code, so complex and intricately woven to produce life can be the product of well, absolutely nothing. You would think, being the rational skeptic, that there is surmountable evidence that we did not come from apes and that the cosmos, so perfectly derived, was not an accident. To believe that would be irrational even from a scientific view.