Science and religion are not allies in the search for truth.

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I believe science and technological advancement has been so important in the development of the world, and its unity as human beings, to an extent.

But I think believers in God are dancing with the devil, so to speak, by listening to the scientists. It is the scientific findings and research that is making religion look outdated in the eyes of many people.

The more a person starts turning to science for the answers, the less that person needs to turn to God. I have heard and read so many comments from people that religions are false. They are believing this because, science has come up with the answers to what a lot of people thought was mysteries from God. An example I read here recently was from an agnostic or atheist in another thread:
melbourne_guy said:
It doesnt matter how good or bad the poeple of the past were the point is they had no understanding of the world so they had to make stuff up. When they saw lightning they said god was angry, when they saw the sun move across the sky they thought a horse was dragging it. These are the primitve minds with which you get your religion from.
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When was the last time you saw a documentary on wildlife or the universe that mentioned anything about God being the creator of them? God and religion are controversial topics, and people as a whole would rather not talk about religious beliefs.

One has to either be doubtful of relgion and fully believe in the evidence presented by seemingly irreligious scientists, or one has to fully trust their own religion and be skeptical of scienctific beliefs. Would this be a fair statement?
 
MH84 said:
One has to either be doubtful of relgion and fully believe in the evidence presented by seemingly irreligious scientists, or one has to fully trust their own religion and be skeptical of scienctific beliefs. Would this be a fair statement?
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no, not really -

What mystery of God has been disproven by science?

And I would say to Melbourne guy, that these “primitive” minds forgot more than we know. 👍

In that respect, thank God for the Catholic Church preserving the written word of men, as well as many other art-ifacts from mankinds past. 😉
 
MementoMori3283 said:
What mystery of God has been disproven by science?
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Perhaps I didnt phrase that as accurately as I should have. What I meant was what Melbourneguy was saying. eg. pagans believing God was angry when there was a huge storm or lightning. Or what about Christians in the middle ages flagellating themselves because they thought that the Black Death was punishment from God?
 
I’m going to disagree. There are 2 reasons why religion and science clash. 1. both are seeking for “the truth”,but they have not arrived at all of it. 2. POWER There is a lot of power in the concept of truth. Many in both camps are honest seekers and there are also some in both camps who want power and abuse science and/or religion to get it.

Most religious people I know believe that their are natural laws that God operates in (at least as a general rule) and anyone who knows anything about science knows that it can not prove nor disprove God’s existence or actions.
 
Fides et Ratio

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Weve got to keep both together. We can’t let the devil own science. :mad:

Catholics are great scientists and we need to remember it! And we need to get back into the media and everywhere else being real Catholics, too. Too many Catholics that are in science or the media are just Catholics in name.

I’m not saying we have to believe in the earth as being 6000 years old. Whatever the truth is it is. But we have to get in there and mix it up and not just let people who hate the faith call the shots. Because they will and they do!
 
MH84 said:
Perhaps I didnt phrase that as accurately as I should have. What I meant was what Melbourneguy was saying. eg. pagans believing God was angry when there was a huge storm or lightning. Or what about Christians in the middle ages flagellating themselves because they thought that the Black Death was punishment from God?
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ok - so are you saying that ignorance by man in someway negates God?

If you do not believe that God uses His creation to perform His will, well then I guess you could subscribe to the naivety of man. By that I mean, natural occurences such as earthquakes, tornadoes and floods are effects within the world created by God. Indeed, one could argue successfully that God created these occurences due to secondary causality. However, it is still a mystery whether the driving wind parted the Red sea or dried the waters.

If I was standing at a distance that I could observe a violent thunderstorm with an unending gale force wind and a time after was to see a bearded man leading a mass of people towards me, and upon getting within earshot say to him, “wow, that was some storm”, and he replies, “it’s a miracle!”, what then?
 
MementoMori3283 said:
ok - so are you saying that ignorance by man in someway negates God?

If you do not believe that God uses His creation to perform His will, well then I guess you could subscribe to the naivety of man. By that I mean, natural occurences such as earthquakes, tornadoes and floods are effects within the world created by God. Indeed, one could argue successfully that God created these occurences due to secondary causality. However, it is still a mystery whether the driving wind parted the Red sea or dried the waters.

If I was standing at a distance that I could observe a violent thunderstorm with an unending gale force wind and a time after was to see a bearded man leading a mass of people towards me, and upon getting within earshot say to him, “wow, that was some storm”, and he replies, “it’s a miracle!”, what then?
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I think you are arguing against your own misrepresentation of my post.
 
MH84 said:
It is the scientific findings and research that is making religion look outdated in the eyes of many people.

The more a person starts turning to science for the answers, the less that person needs to turn to God. I have heard and read so many comments from people that religions are false. They are believing this because, science has come up with the answers to what a lot of people thought was mysteries from God. An example I read here recently was from an agnostic or atheist in another thread:
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melbourne_guy:
It doesn’t matter how good or bad the people of the past were the point is they had no understanding of the world so they had to make stuff up. When they saw lightning they said god was angry, when they saw the sun move across the sky they thought a horse was dragging it. These are the primitive minds with which you get your religion from.
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MH84:
I think you are arguing against your own misrepresentation of my post.
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I am sorry. I thought I was merely discussing what you presented.

IMHO, Lightning is both an act of nature with certain laws governing its arrival and appearance as well as a creation of God to be used at His disposal.

I often here people speak that science “creates” life, whether it be animal, plant or human. I would like to see science create something from nothing. 😉
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MH84:
They are believing this because, science has come up with the answers to what a lot of people thought was mysteries from God.
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What mystery has science solved?
 
MH84 said:
That when there is lightning, that doesnt mean God is angry!
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Really, it seems to me that you can not prove your position, and neither can science. Science has determined the cause of different types of lightning within nature. Science has not disproven that God utilizes lightning…🤷
 
teancum79 said:
I’m going to disagree. There are 2 reasons why religion and science clash. 1. both are seeking for “the truth”,but they have not arrived at all of it. 2. POWER There is a lot of power in the concept of truth. Many in both camps are honest seekers and there are also some in both camps who want power and abuse science and/or religion to get it.
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I’m going to disagree with point 1. Science isn’t about Truth, it’s about knowledge. Learning how the world works and how we can use this new knowledge to do things. Science is a method of attaining knowledge that has proven to be extremely useful. Although some may treat scientific findings as Truth (ie. some sort of absolute, unchanging answer to life, the universe, and everything), most scientists simply treat scientific facts and theories as what we think we’ve figured out so far, and treat science as a method for increasing our knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
tonyl said:
I’m going to disagree with point 1. Science isn’t about Truth, it’s about knowledge. Learning how the world works and how we can use this new knowledge to do things. Science is a method of attaining knowledge that has proven to be extremely useful. Although some may treat scientific findings as Truth (ie. some sort of absolute, unchanging answer to life, the universe, and everything), most scientists simply treat scientific facts and theories as what we think we’ve figured out so far, and treat science as a method for increasing our knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Its sad though, how as the world in general obtains knowledge through scientific means, the more it feels there may be no God after all. And that we can, and perhaps will, find the answers by ourselves.
 
I know of a gigantic world religion which validates itself using science (or pseudoscience)

Islam.
 
MH84 said:
Perhaps I didnt phrase that as accurately as I should have. What I meant was what Melbourneguy was saying. eg. pagans believing God was angry when there was a huge storm or lightning. Or what about Christians in the middle ages flagellating themselves because they thought that the Black Death was punishment from God?
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The wages of sin are death. How that death comes about remains a mystery.

I’m not saying that God allows crack cocaine to exist to mete out punishment against users, abusers and dealers, as well as the scourge it wreaks upon society in general, but one has to wonder.

…or was there lightning in the Garden of Eden? 😃
 
MH84 said:
I believe science and technological advancement has been so important in the development of the world, and its unity as human beings, to an extent.

But I think believers in God are dancing with the devil, so to speak, by listening to the scientists. It is the scientific findings and research that is making religion look outdated in the eyes of many people.

The more a person starts turning to science for the answers, the less that person needs to turn to God. I have heard and read so many comments from people that religions are false. They are believing this because, science has come up with the answers to what a lot of people thought was mysteries from God. An example I read here recently was from an agnostic or atheist in another thread:

When was the last time you saw a documentary on wildlife or the universe that mentioned anything about God being the creator of them? God and religion are controversial topics, and people as a whole would rather not talk about religious beliefs.

One has to either be doubtful of relgion and fully believe in the evidence presented by seemingly irreligious scientists, or one has to fully trust their own religion and be skeptical of scienctific beliefs. Would this be a fair statement?
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No, that’s very silly. Science is useful but it cannot give life meaning. The more people who worship science explain just how science supposedly gives their lives meaning, the less convinced I am. Science cannot explain morality without explaining it away, for instance.

This is not to support Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science and religion are “allies” precisely because they are often enemies or at least rivals. They help correct each other.

Edwin
 
The scientific method is just one aspect of the means used to discover a certain class of truth whereas we receive other truths by divine faith. Those truths we receive by divine faith are those we can only know because God reveals them–for example, we can only know the truths about grace or transubstantiation, etc. by faith. But even faith is completely reasonable since God is perfect truth and therefore He gives perfectly credible testimony.

We receive truth by human faith as well–that is, from the testimony of humans–when we judge them to be credible. This is, in fact, how we learn most of what we believe about history and the various sciences, as few of us actually perform the experiments ourselves (and we of course were not present when past historical events take place–or even when contemporary events take place outside our sphere of sense).
 
Just to add, the more knowledge we have about the Creation, that is, the physical world, the more we can appreciate God.

St. Robert Bellarmine wrote a great book on this topic called, “The Mind’s Ascent to God by a Ladder of Created Things.”
 
Contarini said:
This is not to support Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science and religion are “allies” precisely because they are often enemies or at least rivals. They help correct each other.
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They are allies because they oppose each other? right… more like rivals.
 
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