• Question: Do you think religion (belief in God etc.) and science coexist or do they contradict one another?

    Asked by anthony848 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 11 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      That’s a hard one and depends partly on the religion, I think. My own opinion is that there is no “higher power” and that a literal interpretation of the bible doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (look up Richard Dawkins & evolution for a very highly opinionated takeon this). Likewise, just because we don’t know what there was before the big bang, it doesn’t mean we have to attribute it to a god/higher power/sky fairies. It’s OK not to know the definitive answer. That said, I have friends who are deeply Christian, work in research and have no problem with the two concepts side by side.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      There are quite a few famous scientists who hold a strong belief, Lord Kelvin, Einstein and even Darwin! I know of a few colleagues with strong faiths, so belief in god and being a scientist are not mutually exclusive. Saying that, I would argue that a literal reading of any holy book is quite contradictory to scientific evidence. For example, the fossil record contradicts the story of earth as told in Genesis.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      As the other guys have said, a lot of people are scientific and have religious beliefs. Religious and philosophical ideas can fill gaps that science has so far not fully answered.

      But science is gradually increasing our understanding of the natural world and has proven that many old religious ideas are false. Religious people used to think the world was flat, they thought the sun went round the earth, they thought the world was created in 7 days.

      As we find out more about the true nature of life and the universe, we find out that religion ideas (and a belief in god) are increasingly unlikely.

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      This is a tough one!

      I think that they can coexist in that scientists can follow religion and believe in God. Science doesn’t get in the way of certain aspects of religion, such as living your life according to certain values, virtues and traditions.

      Ultimately however, if taken literally many aspects of some religions do contradict science; evolution a fundamental example. Throughout history, I feel like the more science has advanced, the less we have ‘needed’ religion to explain things. A lot of people, including some excellent scientists that I personally know, will ‘choose’ rather than ‘need’ religion. And I of course respect that, even if I don’t share their views.

      One important difference in my opinion is that while science has continued to change and grow, which stems from never stopping to ask questions, making mistakes, learning from them etc, religious explanations for certain things have not changed for thousands of years, which makes the scientist in me is very skeptical.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      It’s definitely possible for people to be (brilliant) scientists and to be religious – like the others have said above. Science has disproved many long-held religious believes, but at the moment comes up short to questions such as “what happened before the big bang?” “What is the mind?” etc, and these holes can be filled by the existence of God.
      I think the main conflict between the two things is that most religions require need you to believe things by having faith, while science needs you to make decisions based on evidence. In fact, scientists don’t believe things unless they are proven to be true.
      The belief in a God is a tricky one, because often the lack of evidence is given as a “proof” for God’s existence, and I don’t think this the right scientific conclusion.

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