Do science and religion offer different ways of learning about the human...

[gary]

...experience of the world? And if so, in what way does religion help people to learn about the world in which they live?

[Kev]

From my experience, Science teaches a more impersonal aspect on humanity. Religion focuses more on a personal relationship with God and hope for life beyond death.

Personally, I believe both are absolutely necessary for the optimal human experience. Understanding the world, the human mind, and how it all fits together in a more "eternal" perspective is essential to having personal peace. Perfect science and perfect religion are the same. The difficult part is discerning the pure science/religion from the traditions and dogmas of men.

Comparing how science helps you learn against how religion helps you learn is probably the wrong approach. Science should compliment you understanding of religion and vice-versa. Which should give you the best view on understanding the world around you. Most conflicts come from imperfect knowledge of either science or religion. In those cases, the wise thing to do is to patiently wait until more information becomes available.

[AstroK]

I don't think it does.. It gives people a narrow minded look into the world, and it gives them the answer to answer all their curiosity and stops them searching for what is really truth...


goddidit all, god did everything, the bible holds all the answers and bad things happen cuz the devildunit

[mommanuke]

They both offer a way to learn, but one of them is based on hard evidence and the other is based on wishful thinking.

[purplehazexx]

Religion seperates people. Al Quaeda wants to destroy us because that is their "faith".

science deals with reality.

[Zargon]

Yes.

In science, every statement is about the observable and is verifiable or deniable by some experiment or other. Each scientific hypothesis is tested and if it is highly successful in predicting the outcome of experiements, it is regarded as a theory or even a law.

In religion, most statements are about things that cannot be observed. For instance, the ultimate disposition of souls, the approval or disapproval of gods and things like that. Such statements have no practical usefulness. There is another body of statements in religion that does touch on the practical, and that is observations about human behavior. Some religious people have been astute observers of human behavior. However, the value of their observations is still not as good as scientific observations, because in the latter case, each hypothesis is tested and any hypothesis that doesn't have predictive value is rejected. Religion tends to retain these hypotheses regardless of whether they bear out in the real world.

[NoGodsaNoMasters]

Science deals with reality

Religion deals with wishful thinking


"Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs."
- Ludwig von Mises

[krsrlz]

Depends on your view of things.True science is experimenting with no assumed bias to begin with. But that happens as rarely as religion is obeyed as it's said, not as the person thinks it says.

Religion generally has some morals to it. I'm going with the Christian/Jewish religion here because 1) I'm familiar with it, 2) it's fairly popular and 3) it's the best for my example here. Also, some religions may be slightly less with the morals.. Islam for example. Not trying to start a flame war but any religion that offers sex for killing people.. Really..

Read the 10 commandments. Most of them are in our laws today. Don't steal, murder, etc. Adultery is generally considered bad taste at best but not illegal. Pure religious rules are left out such as thou shalt worship no other gods before me, but for the most part, it teaches people to be less evil and as such, it helps people to get along slightly better.

Science is learning how the world works. Not so much about how humans work unless you go into sociology or psychology. I have some issues with psychology, but for the most part it's ok. Those are generally scientifically understanding people. But for the most part, science is about the world, religion is about morals. They go together suprisingly well.

@ all the people that say religion is only wishful thinking. (which happens to be an awesome as band btw)

Find some Jewish scholars. I've seen several commentaries,documentaries, etc that I unfortunately cannot remember the name of. But the Bible, Jewish version anyways, has quite a bit of science involved. The english NIV version is missing so much. I've actually decided to learn Jewish and Latin just so I can read the Bible as it was written. Some Jewish scholars have made claims based only upon reading and studying the bible. Which have then been proven years later by non-Jewish/Christian scientists. And usually grudgingly.

Also because english bibles usually suggest that the leviathan is a crocodile and behemoth is an elephant. Fire breathing crocodiles aren't around all that much and elephants sure don't have tails like trees. Possibly japanese minature trees with all branches removed but.. And if the bibles contradict themselves, what else have they changed/left out?


PS: If anyone wants to pm/email me to debate anything I bring up, feel free. I love being proven wrong or being given another debating technique. Being proven wrong means that I usually learn the truth so am quite happy to listen to whatever you say.

[JohnnyY]

Culturally speaking, religion gives outsiders a fantastic view into a society. If there is a law-imposed religion on everyone, and everyone willingly accepts, that shows what the people place value on. It works opposite as well: if there isn't a law-imposed religion, it shows that the society appreciates the religious freedom that their country gives them.

And science isn't about the "human experience". "Human experience" falls more into sociological/psychological/cultural/ philosophical studies, where science deals with finding out how nature works and seeing what we can do with it.

Religion provides comfort to those who believe in it. The lack of religion provides comfort to those who don't believe in any gods, and that's just fine too. Science provides comfort to those who it's available to (medicine, water purification, and buildings, for instance). For those who don't have any access to scientific things, it's a very sad and almost unimaginable reality to those of us who are lucky enough to have science make such incredible things.

[friendofgod65451]

Religion focuses not on the physical world at all. It focuses on the spiritual dimension. Science focuses only on the physical or natural dimension. It is a shame that the two fields of study don't work together more to explore how the spiritual affects the natural, and vice versa.

Religion can still help us learn about the world because the spiritual dimension affects the physical dimension, so if you learn about the spiritual dimension, you learn some things about the physical dimension too.