Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival - Session 1

http://www.thesciencenetwork.org

Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, the first of The Science Network's annual Beyond Belief symposia, held from November 5 to November 7, 2006, was described by the New York Times, as "a free-for-all on science and religion," which seemed at times like "the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told." According to participant Melvin Konner, however, the event came to resemble a "den of vipers" debating the issue, "Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?"

The event was conceived as a response to the efforts of the Templeton Foundation to reconcile science with religion, according to its underwriter Robert Zeps, who told an interviewer, "I am not anti-Templeton in the sense of funding scientists to say mean things about religion. I simply believe that all study should be free of any particular agenda besides learning...Most take the position that the religious right are just nuts who are loud but frankly undeserving of a response...I believe that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and pretty much all of the tech age wealth is firmly on the side of science and they need to step up and say so in a way that is heard by the anti-science lobby."

Many conference participants leveled strong criticism at the activities of the Templeton Foundation, including claims that it attempted to blur the line between science and religion and that it funded "garbage research" aimed at showing a healing effect of prayer.[1] The conference devoted its final session to "the negative effects of introducing religion into medicine." A Templeton spokesperson responded by warning against "commercialized ideological scientism," the effort to profit from promoting science as the only guide to truth.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• * Catholicism
• * Clash of Cultures
• * Darwin
• * Einstein
• * Evolution
• * Galileo
• * God
• * Intelligent Design
• * Islam
• * Morality
• * Newton
• * Richard Dawkins
• * Two Cultures

[ogp12]

So can one be a scientist and be religious at the same time?

[TheScienceFoundation]

@ogp12 As much as you can believe in intangible magic while understanding the real world.

[ogp12]

I don't feel prepared to support my argument well, but I meant to say that for an individual they serve the same purpose. I would disagree that they are opposites, rather two different phenomena things that do contradict on some subjects

[TheScienceFoundation]

@ogp12 They're polar opposites, they 'contradict' in the sense that accounts given by mythology contradict reality.

[wraith168]

@Teltaminoru Sure thru the centuries many great scientists held on to their faith. Their beliefs were still colored by their faith and a lack of understanding of the world around them. The more humans learned the less the idea of a god was needed. As the centuries have passed, scientists that hold on to some faith in a god have drop considerable to the point where the great majority of modern scientists don't believe in the existence of a god.

[wraith168]

@ogp12 Saying we have no idea is fine. That's is what any go scientist would say and then they would go looking for the answers to what we don't know. Saying we have no idea and then attributing our lack of knowledge to a an all powerful being that can do anything we can imagine without a shred of credible evidence of a being like that existing is not the way to go. As someone already said, that is a god of gaps. Unless evidence is presented it should be discarded.

[UniversalRee]

Listening to these talks is like going to church, as I remember it (I'm a fully lapsed Mormon, without the personal motiviation to get my name off the church rolls): some speakers are better than others, some more interesting. The advantage, here, is it's not a potpourri of wishful thinking and indoctrination in a creed that does not represent reality. I'm not too old to learn stuff, and I love hearing people who agree with me talk.

[hasenj]

He made a factual mistake about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt wanting to stop science education. This is simply not the case.

[ogp12]

@LuqmanNaq It depends on what you mean by religious. I'm not christian, buddhist, muslim etc. See, I watched this video a while ago and don't quite remember what was said in it. Also, I don't think I have matured enough intellectually to fully back my opinions. My disillusionment with science comes from the fact that I am involved with academia and in my opinion science/research has lost its true mission for a variety of reasons. Youtube is also not the place to be having serious discussions.

[LuqmanNaq]

@ogp12 Ok, an 'interesting idea' would be called a hypothesis, meaning it has no evidence supporting it. The problem is when people try to say that because something is unknown that religious/new age dogma has the answers - it's called the god of the gaps argument. Simply saying 'I don't know is fine', scientists are normally open when the say they don't know something, or if they are just presenting a hypothesis. Are you religious?

[ogp12]

@LuqmanNaq I'm proposing 'we have no idea', but just because something contradicts the mainstream 'model' doesn't mean we should discard it.

[LuqmanNaq]

@ogp12 So are you proposing a 'god of the gaps'?

[ogp12]

@stephenddblyth How life originated? What was before the big bang? When did the laws of physics emerge? How do lizards regenerate limbs? One has to be extremely stubborn not to see the long list of questions science fails to even begin answering.

[stephenddblyth]

@Teltaminoru im not talking about god just religion, they are to differing things. religion is based in opinion and faith that most of the time can be de bunked by science or will be. most scientists if they believe in 'a' god of some kind, they may say yes whether they believe in religion they will prob say 'which one' just having more than one religion makes them all invalid by assosiation.