Science and religion: could you help me with more examples, please?

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I want to show DCs that science and religion are not always and inherently at loggerheads.

I know the example of Georges LeMaître, the Catholic priest who was the father of the Big Bang theory.

Can anyone help with further examples?

Gregor Mendel, the father of Genetics, was an Augustinian monk (see here)

Sorry, I do realise Wikipedia's not very scientific. Link just for basic biographical info, obviously!

There is the vatican observatory

Lots of scientific discoveries were made by Muslim scholars.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

Also since monasteries were places of learning thats why a lot of the scientific discoveries were made there.

This "science versus religion" is a recent development IMO

Francis Collins was the director of the Human Genome Project, and is a Christian writer (having once been an atheist).

There is also
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_Dobzhansky who was an Eastern Orthodox geneticist.

There are tons of scientists who have worked in scientific realms - physics, biology, chemistry - who have been and are committed theists. In the UK at the moment, John Lennox, John Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath are just three religion/science writers and commentators with a professional background in both areas.

"
"This "science versus religion" is a recent development IMO"

Yup. Dates from the beginnings of "proper" science!

Simon Conway Morris (University of Cambridge)- a world authority in palaeontology is a christian. Mathew Ricard, a tibetan buddhist monk was a biochemist (buddhists don't really go in for god though). Isaac Newton is an historical example, as is Einstein (to an extent). I know personally of a few others (I am a scientist myself!), but many are not in the public arena as such. There is no need for a lot of the science vs. religion debate. I am mostly into applied aspects of buddhism - there is no conflict with science at all. The Dalai Lama has also engaged with the scientific community on neuroscience. A lot of the eastern religions have concepts which are rather similar to many modern scientific theories / measured phenomena, these are explored in the book 'The Tao of Physics' by F. Capra.

Hope thats of interest !

Yes, one of DS's closest friends is Buddhist, so that's really helpful.

We've also come up with Polkinghorne.

Any others?

this website for historical famous scientists

interesting article on whether or not one can be a scientist and believe in God, no names but good for discussion

another useful discussion article written by a physicist

Hope that helps in a broader sense.

There's this:

www.ordainedscientists.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science

Oh this is a big one

www.tektonics.org/scim/sciencemony.htm

In short, there are lots of resources out there...

Showing that there are religious scientists doesn't really show that science and religion are compatible though does it?

If you follow that logic you could also say that the presence of believers in the prison population shows that murder/rape/theft what have you is also compatible with [insert religion here].

All it really proves is that people are capable of holding mutually incompatible beliefs.

Are your DCs really interested in the Top Trumps of religious scientists, or is what they are really interested in whether their understanding of science is compatible with religious ideas?

Himalaya - how do you think science may or may not be compatible with religious belief ? It also depends on the religion. You could argue that aspects of Taoism with its concept of polarity (yin and yang) within a greater reality has some similaries to electric charges or fundamental particles in a field. You could argue that 'dependant origination' in buddhism with its concept of cause and effect depending on prevailing conditions - has some similarity with classical physics. Christianity teaches that there is one God that had a son who basically recommended being nice to people. Scientifically, there is no evidence for resurrection, therefore you could argue it is a belief not a testable hypothesis or a measurement. I think that literal interpretations of the bible would probably fail many aspects of the scientific method which is essetially measure stuff, hypothesis about its meaning and test again.

However - you don't have to use scientific methods for your own experiences or beliefs.

Very hard to see how religion and science are mutually incompatible beliefs. Even at the furthest philosophical reaches science suggests for eg 'there was a Big Bang' and religion suggests 'there was a Big Bang and God did it'. Evolution and Creationism, sure, are completely at odds, but only fundamentalist Christians of a certain stripe are Creationists.

Meantime, actual scientists use science as a tool to find out more about our world. Many religious people do it to find out more about our world and God's intent in it. Doesn't make their findings any less scientific. Other religious people use their religion as an excuse to block scientific advancement. That's a shame, but it's their loss.

The whole science/religion debate is a red herring, imho.

Totally, lucysnowe.

Mentioning the names of some scientists who are also theologians (rather than simply scientists who have a theistic faith) is to point towards some fairly decent books they have written in which they precisely discuss the compatability of science/religion and its red-herringness as an issue. It's not just a nice list of names, but a reading list: Francis Collins, Polkinghorne, Lennox, McGrath.

You would be better off I think dealing with them as different perspectives on the world. As a science teacher I have a lot of interesting conversations with students who are going through the process of trying to get to grips with a new perspective (scientific method) when they have been brought up with firm religious beliefs which contradict the theories I am telling them about. It is one of my favourite bits of my job - they really engage with the subject when they do this.

I think the view that science and religion offer mutually compatible views of the world is a polite fiction.

Historically wherever scientific knowledge has increased, religious explanations have retreated. For example on creation, on the sun going round the earth, on the causes of disease and disability etc...

As TheFallenMadonna said religious ideas about the world and scientific knowledge are contradictory. For example;

Nuroscience investigates how the mind works, as a property of the physical brain in action. Religions say that some essential part of us (including consciousness, and perhaps personality, emotion, memories?) exist seperately from the physical brain and are immortal, can be reincarnated, go to heaven/hell etc; these are not mutually compatible views of how the human body works.

Evolutionary biology has shown how all organisms evolved through the process of natural selection. There was no plan, no purpose to it, Humans are no more evolved than moluscs. Everything that makes us human evolved - love, compassion, language, reason, art, free will - as a survival adaptation or a sexual attractiveness attribute. Religion says we are special, created by god for a reason, and to a plan.

Advances in astronomy and cosmology have shown us just how vast the universe is, and how tiny earth is. Religion says that earth is the whole point of the universe. I suppose these ideas are not strictly contradictory, but they don't exactly point in the same direction.

Are these the kinds of questions your students ask TFM?

Lucysnow - yes you can make religion and science compatible if you reduce the explanatory power of god to zero, and say he 'lit the touchpaper of the big bang' and nothing more. But this kind of god is then mutually incompatible with the everyday religious kind who dictates holy books, intervenes in the world, cares what people wear and who they have sex with etc...it is impossible to know anything about this kind of god.

Yes religious people can do science. But they do it by erecting mental barriers. The dont bring 'the soul' into biology for example, even though it is an alternative explanation of living processes.

DandyDan I haven't read much of McGrath etc... - can you say what they say to about these questions?

Otherwise these lists of eminent names are just being used as policeman lined up around crime scene to deter rubberneckers 'nothing to see here, move along now', similarly with the Newton was a Christian argument 'smarter people than you don't see any contradiction here, don't worry your head about it.'... This is just teaching children to erect mental barriers.

there is no contradiction within Islam - religion and science are seen as different ways of knowing God - science is to investigate the created reality - the religious view of the created reality sshould be to do with what is done with it, not intended to take the place of scientific reality. the story of the date farmer who goes to Mohammed for advice and is told by the prophet that as he has been farming dates all his life, he knows more about it than the prophet does is particularly illustrative on this point.
Where scence seems to contradict religion - then furher investigation is requied - it dos not make the scientist a heretic.

th view of Christianity - in the eyes of many scholars at least - is very similar - the bible is not intended as a work of science, an therefore taking things like 'the four corners of the earth' to mean the world is square is daft - it is a metaphor (or possibly a mistranslation - it could be 'four cardinal points')
Jesus did not intend to tell people about science - he want to tell them about God. otherwise the phrase 'render unto caesar what is caesars' applies - religion is not intended to tell us everything

EdgarAleNPie - you are studying to be an RE teacher, right?

I think you need to be able to ask yourelf some more challenging questions.

For example, you say there is no contradiction between science and Islam because Muslim scholars say there isn't. Surely you can't expect your pupils to accept this 'because I say so' argument. What skill would you be teaching them.

Anyone can say anything is compatible with science. Homeopathy, ghosts, reincarnation etc.. To say otherwise is tantamount to admitting it is not true. So to see whether a religion is really compatible with science you need to look at it's truth claims about the world and see if they stack up against the evidence, surely?

Do any religions really believe the world has corners?

Darwin was a Christian, he was training to be a parson (sort of a vicar).

His Origin of the Species is probably one of the most misquoted books of all time - between Hitler hijacking it to say "survival of the fittest" (the real quote is 'survival of the best able to adapt') and atheists using it to 'prove' that there is no God...

There are many, many scientists who are Christians.

A couple of quite amusing scientific examples might include;

• the observer effect (as in, the fact that human observation seems to affect the result. NOT the testing by it's nature changes the tested, but the observation of the testing. I can't remember where I read about it (sorry!) but it might well have been the New Scientist which DP buys and never reads. The gist was that subatomic particles were behaving as expected, quite boringly, going through a filter or something. Researcher left the room to get a cup of coffee or whatever, and came back to find that while he was gone, the sub atomic particles had stained all around the filter, as if they hadn't been going through. They appeared to be fine now though... Hmm...

And repeat until someone worked out the stain got bigger the longer the observer was out of the room.

They couldn't work out why and have decided to just mutter about dark-matter and unseen things.

Also, the double-slit experiment, which is similar but a bit different. You can definitely look that one up on Wikipedia. It basically proves that realistically we know very, very little about how the world works - however much we think we do!

Oh, and the moon is made of cheese. Not religious, but interesting nonetheless. I remember seeing on TV once that the moon is made of something LIKE cheese, maybe had the same density or something?!

Also, FYI Himilaya,

Neuroscientists DO NOT KNOW, nor do they claim to know, where consciousness comes from. They have not found 'the bit of the brain' that produces consciousness. They can stimulate bits A and B to look and feel exactly like a normal, awake brain but they cannot CREATE consciousness.

And pray tell, how do YOU know there WASN'T a plan in evolution? Were you there?! Yours is a ridiculous argument to make! The whole point of faith is the not knowing.

And I absolutely (and I'm sure many others agree) DO NOT feel like religion or God has shrunk as scientific knowledge has increased. Quite the opposite - I'd say that God seems bigger. It's not hard to make a bunch of animals and people out of clay - it's really quite impressive to a fasten a universe out of atoms of a hundred different elements!

I would absolutely say that my knowledge and understanding of God increases every time I learn something new about the earth.

The whole point of science is that it is measurable, it is moderated. The whole point of spirituality is that some things are not possible to measure or moderate.

And as I said not too long ago on an earlier thread, why OH why is it always the militant atheists who are more evangelical than the christians?! [confuused]

ScotlandR - my point is that the theory of evolution does not include a plan. ! So when people say 'I believe in evolution, but I also think god was behind it' then I don't think they understand evolution.

It is like saying 'I believe in the electron theory of electricity, but I still think god is pushing the electrons around the wire', or I believe in the germ theory of disease, but I think god pushes the germs towards people he wants to punish.'

Yes I am a bit 'evangelical' about this, because it bugs me that so many educated people fundamentally misunderstand one of the most important ideas in science (while thinking they understand and support it). I do wonder if it is poorly taught in schools because of the religious sensitivities and the mental barriers we encourage children to errect
in their minds.

What a ridiculous thing to say!

By your logic, "just because mummy flicked the switch on the kettle, mummy was PERSONALLY the one who heated every water molecule"!

Perhaps before accusing all people of faith of 'not understanding science', you should wonder whether you are the one who doesn't understand faith?

For example, you say there is no contradiction between science and Islam because Muslim scholars say there isn't. Surely you can't expect your pupils to accept this 'because I say so' argument. What skill would you be teaching them.

that is the standard line. surely a whole book could be written on the exact implications of that? and that, factually stated is the line taken. it is not a 'because i say so argument' - It isn't an argument at all! it is a statement about what one particular religious goup believes.

being able to learn and understand a fact is the skill there! analysing the correctness or coherence of that belief ..i haven't gone into.

and you have misunderstood my post. religion does not have to be judged by a scientific standard. science does not have to be judged by religious standards.
That was understood by various scholars of many faiths (and scientific disciplines)

if you want to push the point that - in ones faith - one may abandon the kind of reason you employ as a scientist when believing in god - that is a different sort of argument again. that's an argument that people employing scientific logic shouldn't believe in God.

I might agree with you there - but it still doesn't mean that all religions feel the need to treat scientifc statements as things to be judged against a religious standard or vice versa.

To put it simply - science is a set of principles for describing nature and understanding the way things work (or appear to work). Religion is generally a set of beliefs with some sort of code of morality, often a cosmology of some sort and sometimes some philosophy on the human condition. They are different things. Parallels can sometimes be drawn. One can be a scientist and 'religious' or a theologian and have no problem with science or vice versa.