• Question: Hello, do you think that religion has any say in science?

    Asked by Lilymarie to Robert, Ian on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by Tee.
    • Photo: Robert Bowles

      Robert Bowles answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      I don’t think it has much say in science itself. I think religious people will comment and offer opinions on scientific findings but it doesn’t necessarily affect the science itself.
      I think that religious people can try to exert an influence on science if they choose to, by affecting the political and social environment in which science exists, but no more so than any other group of people.

    • Photo: Ian Cade

      Ian Cade answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      If you have a ‘How?’ question i.e. one that is about how something works and is amenable to scientific enquiry (so you need to be able to come up with testable hypotheses about you question) then science is the *only* (sensible) way to approach such things… On these matters religion has very little useful to contribute.

      If on the other hand you have a ‘Why?’ question about meaning, or you have a system that is not amenable to scientific enquiry (for example what it means to be a self aware conciousness in a universe) then you might want to look at religious and philosophical discussions… On these matters science has and should have very little to say.

      Sticking points are areas occur where there is a question that was not amenable to scientific enquiry (so had a religious ‘answer’) but now it is (given that our scientific understanding of the world is greater).

      Obvious examples, that are inexplicably controversial, are ‘evolution’ and ‘the creation of the Earth’. Both used to have only religious answers. However, both can now be very simply described using physical theories which do much better jobs of predicting these phenomena than the old religious answers.

      Importantly this change in understanding does not (or at least should not) affect the validity of other religious views, especially on questions of meaning (‘Why?’ questions)

Comments