The post which started the thread had a link to my webpage. I will show this link after submitting 20 posts on this website. It will allow you to see 60 interesting statements about peaceful coexistence between scientists and theologians. For the time being let me paste the beginning of the content of my webpage (only 8 comments instead of 60 are shown).
Do not mix spirutuality with science
Ludwik Kowalski, Professor Emeritus
Montclair State University
New Jersey, USA
Introduction
In October 2010 something prompted me to write about conflicts between between those who believe in God and those who actively criticize believers. Yes, a long time ago I was an aggressive atheist, as described in my on-line autobiography (1). This certainly has something to do with my motivation. In any case, after realizing how poorly qualified I am for dealing with the ongoing ideological conflicts, I started probing the Internet. The following set of questions was posted on several websites.
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Can science and religion coexist peacefully? This is a good question to start an interesting discussion.
Person 1: Did God create us on his image? Did we create God on our image?
Person 2: The answer is “yes†to each of these questions.
Person 3: That's an interesting thought, I'd like to know how both could be simultaneously true. There are thousands of verifiable instances of humans creating new religions, and none of the former option.
Person 2: The first question is theological (not scientific); the second question is sociological (scientific). Theological questions are not answered by using science and scientific questions are not answered by using theology. Likewise, theologians say that the universe was created in seven days, as revealed in holy books. But astronomers say that they have evidence that the universe has been changing for billions of years. Scientific methodology is not used to validate holy books and holy books are not used to validate scientific claims. Mixing science with religion is not useful.
Person 3: I think that science can be used to test the claims made in holy books. If the claims made in holy books were correct, we would expect scientific inquiry to support them. Yes, holy books contain pronouncements about the physical world. Such pronouncements should not be taken literally. They represent incorrect beliefs of our ancestors. Faith and science were not yet separate disciplines. The world was not created in seven days, six thousand years ago. Theologians know this; many of them do not take such stories literally.
Person 2: Holy books do not define God in terms of material attributes. The best a scientist can do is to confirm that God is not a material object. But that would not be a surprise to sophisticated theologians; they have already accepted this--God is a spiritual entity.
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Qeuestions asked by Persons 1 and 2 were mine, other questions were from Internet strangers. My goal was to generate more Internet comments, and to learn from what other people think. I was overwhelmed by the number of replies, some of which are shown below. They made me think but they did not enable me to write the intended essay. Instead of abandoning the project I decided to share selected message, as received, and add my own comments. I hope that this will be useful to some people.
Replies and comments
What follows are comments made by strangers and my insertions (in red).
Comment 1
...The answer "YES" to the first question and "YES" to the second question is a mental incoherent developed by a person trying to play semantics. It is like asking "Does cat catch mouse? Does 'mouse' catch cat?" and that person answered "YES YES" because he think "mouse" is a dog named "mouse. ..."
No, the “cat and the mouse†is not a good analogy. The accusation of mental incoherence would be valid to a person who rejects the idea of peaceful coexistence of science and faith--a person who wants one area of inquiry to win over the other. Does it have to be this way? Who benefits from such conflicts? “God created us in his image†is spiritually acceptable. And “we created on God in our image†is physically acceptable; God belongs to the spiritual world, not to the physical world. Our ancestors believed that God is a material entity but we do not have to accept this.
A year ago my dentist was very frightened, after a diagnosis of aggressive cancer. Six months later I saw her again, still working. But her head was covered; she had lost her hair. But she was very different yesterday--her hair had grown back.. I am fine, she said, because God is in my heart and because he does not want me to die. How can anyone have doubt that God exists in her spiritual sphere? Telling her that God does not exist would be just as arrogant as telling Galileo that his astronomical findings should be ignored.
Comment 2
Religion is the science of our distant ancestors. ... Attempts to qualify or defend religious truth claims with scientific terminology are not only inaccurate but I would say demonstrably fraudulent both by the standards of science and by the letter of the religious scriptures themselves. There needs to be a line in the sand on this issue. ...
Comment 3
... Clearly, most humans “mix†theistic precepts quite often with both secularist values, as well as scientific idea.* The inconsistency does not seem to bother them all that much...
Comment 4
You wrote: "... If I believe that the purple dragon will build me a space ship and take me to the planet he made just for me, no amount of faith in this idea will change the fact (proven by observation) that I in fact have not found myself in possession of a spaceship made just for me to travel to a special planet. ..." I agree. I was referring to the concept of God, not to poetry (psalms), glorification, or "events" described in holy books. Some of these events are no longer taken literally, even by some theologians. Many theologians are not hostile to science; many scientists are not hostile to theology. That is how it should be--the more the better.
Comment 5
You wrote “We have absolutely no reason to accept the premise that there is even such a thing as a ‘spiritual entity.’ What makes us, us is our personality, our thoughts, our minds. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that a mind can exist outside of a physical brain. So start with that...if you can even offer some kind of plausible theory as to how a mind...what makes an entity sentient...can exist outside of some kind of physical, MATERIAL, brain....then we can move to the next step of asking if God....or any entity...actually exists.†By spiritual entity I meant God, not “what makes us us.â€
The “soul†is also not a material entity, as imagined by our ancestors. My arguments are based on the assumption that we live in two words, material and spiritual. The brain is a material entity.
Comment 6
I would argue many religions disagree. Mormonism and Islam both came to be by God issuing "orders" to people. But I agree that mixing science with religion is not useful. Person2 wrote: “Holy books do not define God in terms of material attributes. The best a scientist can do is to confirm that God is not a material object. But that would not be a surprise to sophisticated theologians; they have already accepted this--God is a spiritual entity.†God is not natural, however he does have an effect on the natural world. Therefore we should expect to come across some sort of inconsistencies in the natural world which would give evidence to a supernatural. Even then, if we did, they could simply be a matter of our own ignorance and not god. So, its a tough question.
Yes, the idea of living in two worlds, spiritual and physical, will generate many difficult questions. Are these two worlds influencing each others, and to what extent? That is one of such questions. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to answer.
Comment 7
Person2 wrote: “...theologians say that the universe was created in seven days, as revealed in holy books.†Not all theologians. Many liberal Christians do not read the Bible literally, and "creationism" is very rare among modern Jews. Person2 also wrote that “Scientific methodology is not used to validate holy books and holy books are not used to validate scientific claims.†That is true, which is why mixing science with religion is not useful. Science cannot be done with an eye to supernatural intervention, or we would never have learned that thunder isn't the sound of the gods' bowling alley -- and we would still be dying of diseases that are easily prevented and cured, assuming that illness and death were the will of God. A scientist may or may not be personally religious, but his or her religion cannot directly be applied to the scientific work or it ceases to be science; but then, that's true of a given scientist's politics, too. Cf. Trofim Denisovitch Lysenko. Science must be objective and free of philosophical, political or religious influence.
How can I, a nuclear physicist, disagree with this?
Comment 8
Yes, mixing science with religion is not useful. Science can only answer falsifiable questions; Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. A lot of otherwise intelligent people have a lot of misconceptions about science, and I did too.
Comments 9 to 60 are not shown because of the length limit.
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