Please name one thing about the natural world described more accurately by religion than science can provide

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I guess my first question would by Why? I just don’t understand the challenge and its implication that science and religion are competing explanations of the natural world. I do not see this to be the case, and, in fact, I think science is a subset of a religious worldview so that the statement water boils at 100 degrees celsius is not mutually exclusive with, say, the Christian beliefs articulated in the creeds. Science, after all, is predicated on the religious premise that existence is intelligible and is discernible through reason and inquiry (i.e., science) because existence was rationally created, endowed with logos from the divine Logos.
 
Windfish said:
I guess my first question would by Why? I just don’t understand the challenge and its implication that science and religion are competing explanations of the natural world. I do not see this to be the case, and, in fact, I think science is a subset of a religious worldview so that the statement water boils at 100 degrees celsius is not mutually exclusive with, say, the Christian beliefs articulated in the creeds. Science, after all, is predicated on the religious premise that existence is intelligible and is discernible through reason and inquiry (i.e., science) because existence was rationally created, endowed with logos from the divine Logos.
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Science contradicts genesis:rolleyes:, therefore science is God. What do you say to that windfish?🙂

I like the last part of your paragraph. I suppose that could be a good argument; that the intelligibility of the universe corresponds to the intelligence of a mind so much so that it would seem that the universe sprang forth from a mind?
 
Religion places the natural world in context. We humans need context in order to understand what we experience. To deny that is to deny a basic part of what we are. And why do we have that part of ourselves when other creatures don’t seem to? Dogs and cats don’t wonder about their place in the scheme of things. Whales don’t either, even though they are highly intelligent, nor do elephants or even apes. Only man feels that something about himself needs explaining within the context of something greater than himself.
 
cho_pilo said:
Any takers?
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Why science exists in the first place. Science cannot on its own solve the problem of induction. Philosophy has tried and failed to solve this one too. Only religion, the christian religion that is, can provide an adequite answer to this.
 
Della said:
Religion places the natural world in context.
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Why does “context” matter, and why do we need religion?
Della said:
We humans need context in order to understand what we experience.

To deny that is to deny a basic part of what we are.
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So what if we deny what we are? Why does that matter?
Della said:
And why do we have that part of ourselves when other creatures don’t seem to?
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We evolved.
Della said:
Dogs and cats don’t wonder about their place in the scheme of things. Whales don’t either, even though they are highly intelligent, nor do elephants or even apes.
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So?
Della said:
Only man feels that something about himself needs explaining within the context of something greater than himself.
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Does that mean that there is something greater than man or is it just an illusion of our biochemical make-up? What does one mean by the word “greater” beyond its normal reference to size?
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
I like the last part of your paragraph. I suppose that could be a good argument; that the intelligibility of the universe corresponds to the intelligence of a mind so much so that it would seem that the universe sprang forth from a mind?
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Well, we actually have a VERY limited view of the universe, and yet science posits that its observations are universal laws which apply equally and everywhere within the physical universe. In order to extrapolate that concept from our very limited observational powers, we have to base that on one VERY religious precept: that the universe is rational.

If the universe is NOT rational, then there can be no such thing as universal scientific assertion, since all we can say is “in this constrained subset of the physical universe, at this constrained timeframe, under these circumstances, we have observed that the universe tends towards behaving in X manner”
 
promethius said:
Well, we actually have a VERY limited view of the universe, and yet science posits that its observations are universal laws which apply equally and everywhere within the physical universe. In order to extrapolate that concept from our very limited observational powers, we have to base that on one VERY religious precept: that the universe is rational.

If the universe is NOT rational, then there can be no such thing as universal scientific assertion, since all we can say is “in this constrained subset of the physical universe, at this constrained timeframe, under these circumstances, we have observed that the universe tends towards behaving in X manner”
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Promethius:

Actually, we have to intuit (pure induction) that the universe is intelligible, not rational. Now, while intelligibility is a metaphysical aspect of living, I am not sure that it is a religious precept. But, perhaps you could explain? 🙂

God bless,
jd
 
On further meditation on the OP’s question, I think it could be summed up in the word sin. It is obvious that human beings are flawed. But why is this? Is it because of natural selection? Doesn’t seem likely. So, why do we do such horrendous things? (And such wonderful things–what is virtue?–science cannot tell us). The Church teaches us we’re flawed/wounded beings because of original sin. Science cannot tell us anything about it, and never will be able to.
 
Della said:
On further meditation on the OP’s question, I think it could be summed up in the word sin. It is obvious that human beings are flawed. But why is this? Is it because of natural selection? Doesn’t seem likely. So, why do we do such horrendous things (and such wonderful things)? The Church teaches us it’s because of original sin. Science cannot tell us anything about why we are so flawed and never will be able to.
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👍 Great post!
 
Della said:
On further meditation on the OP’s question, I think it could be summed up in the word sin. It is obvious that human beings are flawed. But why is this? Is it because of natural selection? Doesn’t seem likely. So, why do we do such horrendous things? (And such wonderful things–what is virtue?–science cannot tell us). The Church teaches us we’re flawed/wounded beings because of original sin. Science cannot tell us anything about it, and never will be able to.
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A thing is horrendous in your subjective opinion according to your taste. There is a natural desire to survive and reproduce, and each individual has their own idea of what it means to survive and what it takes to survive. Every individual has an idea of what they are willing to sacrifice when it comes to pleasure and pain. Thus it seems reasonable, in a resource driven world, that ones persons desire will come in to conflict with another persons desire, and war will perhaps ensue. Philosophically speaking, I don’t see why original sin need be employed in-order to understand human behaviour.

Better that you think like a meta-physician and point out that “contextual desires” cannot be explained by quantification. The desire to live only makes sense if there is such a thing as life as opposed to death and that life is better than dying. These concepts have holistics meanings that transcends physical cause and effect explanations and reductionism. A purely physical rendering of reality can make no sense of these desires; it can only say that they exist. Thus science becomes useless when it comes to explaining qualitative experience. The existence of Guilt only makes sense if there is such a thing as something objective to feel guilty about; since emotion is a response to objective human actions, It would be wise to point out that they all correspond so meaningfully to how we treat people that it strongly suggests that human life is objectively valuable and that there is such a thing as Objective moral law. It also implies design since emotions are meaningfully consistent and interactive to such a degree as to suggest that we were created to interact on the emotional level of purpose value and morality. That’s why I said that the existence of guilt cannot be understood or explained by science.😃
 
Della said:
On further meditation on the OP’s question, I think it could be summed up in the word sin. It is obvious that human beings are flawed. But why is this? Is it because of natural selection? Doesn’t seem likely. So, why do we do such horrendous things? (And such wonderful things–what is virtue?–science cannot tell us). The Church teaches us we’re flawed/wounded beings because of original sin. Science cannot tell us anything about it, and never will be able to.
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true. likewise with the capacity of humans to choose to act on the weaker instinct, such as compassion, as against stronger instincts, such as fear for one’s life. (e.g. if a building is burning down and someone else cannot get out)
 
beyond the philosophical discussions above, which, in my opinion, clearly weigh in in favor of a rational belief in god for us humans and in favor of our belief in a logos-driven universe (at least from a human and therefore likely also from all or some space-faring humanoids’ perspectives, which is important to note in this day and age of factual evidence for a continual extraterrestrial presence around earth), there is, to return to the original question of this thread, the fact that religious thought can explain “miracles” better than can scientific inquiry.

as a nonexpert (which is very important for all to note here), i believe that what separates christians and other religionists and other open-minded spiritualists from atheists is this: belief in things which normal empirical observation and corollary scientific experimentation cannot account for well, meaning that, in the sense of the contemporary scientific methods (for all of the verbs that follow) scientists cannot identify, observe, hypothesize, measure, and conclude from their examinations of certain so-called miraculous or supernatural events, at least so far as contemporary scientific methods allow for. however, many scientists of today and hopefully more scientists of the future, rather than to obliterate religious faith from earth, as many of their peers seem to hope to do now within today’s nascent and growingly popular literature movement which espouses that science has utterly disproven god, will publish and disseminate widely that factual and empirical evidence exists which, beyond the shadow of a doubt, provides rationale for concluding that religious faith may be grounded in reality and that science may not now and may not ever be able to explain away or to prove experimentally claims of religious experiencers, such as certain claims to witnessing marian apparitions (which provide evidence for divine communication from mary and for god’s love of catholicism), biomedical miracles (which provide evidence for the power of prayer), near death experiences (which provide evidence for an afterlife), out of body experiences (which provide evidence for a human spirit separate from the physical body), and many other things such as human beings spontaneously speaking backwards latin (which provide evidence for the devil), etc. this list of factual evidence supporting religious faith does not even begin to do justice to the whole picture, given that catholic christians have examined critically and can point to copious historical and modern evidence for miracles and for the christian faith in particular.

with love
whitecrayon
 
whitecrayon

i believe that what separates christians and other religionists and other open-minded spiritualists from atheists is this: belief in things which normal empirical observation and corollary scientific experimentation cannot account for well,

One such area of science’s weakness in accounting for the phenomenon of religion is music. Sacred music in particular. I don’t know how atheism or science can account for the stirrings in the heart produced by certain chords of music produced in a certain sequence. For me the life of the spirit is proven beyond a shadow of doubt by the fact that music can relate so well to supernatural, as well as natural themes.

Why does Mozart’s “Ave verum Corpus” have such profound power to move our souls if what the music stands for doesn’t even exist?
 
A physicist once explained to me how water molecules (H2O) form a perfect sixty degree angle so that when water becomes solid (freezes), it forms a hexagonal crystal. The ice crystals actualy expand as they form and so ice is less dense than water and it floats.

This has profound implications for life on earth - if ice didn’t float, the seas and rivers would freeze solid from the bottom up, killing the life within it. Instead, water is the only substance known to man which expands and gets lighter when it goes from liquid to solid, thus freezing at the top and preserving life.

The thing which science cannot describe about this phenomena is why - why is it this way? That’s not to say that science has not tried but the best they have come up with so far is that it is random occurance - mere chance.

This brings us to the ultimate thing which science has not been able to describe which religion has - what the meaning of life is. The answer is in the first chapter of the Prologue to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

-Tim-
 
patricius79 said:
true. likewise with the capacity of humans to choose to act on the weaker instinct, such as compassion, as against stronger instincts, such as fear for one’s life. (e.g. if a building is burning down and someone else cannot get out)
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Yes, why human beings can be altruistic. Science cannot answer that. :yup:
 
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