Science tells you how the world works to the extent it can explain it.

Religion offers no such explanations to natural phenomena apart from the claim that the world was created by God.

Science can reject the claim of religion if it has an alternative explanation to the cause of the created world or take the agnostic stance as it should when it’s uncertain.

Yet science should not seek God for it would lose its utility, in addition to probably not finding God anyway.

In general the mindset of the atheist is ignorant but maybe that’s how God wanted them. As a believer I find it hard to reconcile their stupidity to God…it must be wilful then on the part of the atheist, yet there is in them the wish to believe. If God does not exist for them they will wait for some kind of super-intelligence to be created by man, essentially God, you can see such speculations in action between the passionate atheists in this forum, imbuing such a future intelligence with all sorts of god like qualities.

Or aliens, atheists love them aliens.

No. Science will never eventually replace religion. Because there will always be people that desire to contend with the status quo using alternative views/ideas. If science is the status quo/mainstream, then alternatives are likely spiritualities and religions - which would be side/marginal-stream.

If everyone says "down" there will invariably be people who profess "up". This is human nature.

However, from a second, separate angle as to why science will never replace religion, science doesnt explain/prove ethics. And ethics dictates the limits and usage of scientific method. So religions focusing on philosophising/contemplating ethics are outside the purview of science but are useful/informative - as they study ethics/morality and benevolence etc. Therefore science could not abolish such endeavours.

From a third perspective, religions - unlike science - can be created at any moment in time. Religions die off. New ones are formulated. And new religion have the potential to embrace and adopt current scientific knowledge in their dogmas/doctrines.

So no, science will never replace religions. I for one am glad of that because they are merely different flavours of reality ice-cream. Both have their unique advantages and disadvantages for people. Faith often provides more comfort to a person than facts. And so faith has an important use.

Between them they enable freedom of an individual to focus on either knowledge from proof or wisdom from subjective intuition/experience.

Religion offers no such explanations to natural phenomena apart from the claim that the world was created by God. — invicta

Not true. Not all religions have a God-head - buddhism, taoism, jainism etc. This is such a common misconception about religions. Abrahamic religions should not be conflated with "religion" or "spirituality" as a whole set.

Many religions and spiritual practices have parallels with scientific concepts. There is considerable overlap on numerous occasion, those overlaps and parallels should not be ignored, as likely they point towards the same fundamental truths.

Some religions then, mostly the Abrahamic, keep forgetting about the fringe religions out there. There’s Scientology too if anyone’s interested, you’d have to have deep pockets though.

In any case the scientific mindset and the religious one are not mutually exclusive, you can be both a Christian and a Scientist, in fact some of the best ones have been such as Newton, Pascal, Riemann, Lord Kelvin the list goes on.

There’s Scientology too if anyone’s interested, you’d have to have deep pockets though. — invicta

Haha agreed. That one made me laugh.

Science will need to explain how consciousness can come from non-conscious stuff before it can replace religion. And I'm not holding my breath on an explanation.

In general the mindset of the atheist is ignorant — invicta

I agree in the sense that religions and spiritualities are innumeral. And to be a true "atheist" one must not believe in "all" religions/spiritualities - including those that have come to pass, those that are current, and those yet to be established. This is absurd. And i find religions and spiritualities to be incredibly rich and diverse. Many might appeal to any single individual, if they were simply aware of them.

Which is why at most one can be "agnostic" lest the claim they have full knowledge from a scientific perspective of the entire universe, its origin, meaning/purpose, and end.

In any case the scientific mindset and the religious one are not mutually exclusive, you can be both a Christian and a Scientist. — invicta

I absolutely agree. Bravo. And i think this is an exemplary trait in such a person as they are open minded, unbiased, curious and receptive to any and all possible explanations for existence, hopefully as a beautifully elegant synthesis/relationship between all of the tools of understanding available - like science and intuition/instinct/trust from the realm of non-objective.

And of course tolerant too.

yes!

They both have different objectives and questions. Science is there to proof the evidences how the nature works, and how we interact with it. But religion interprets this as granted. I mean, religion is a seek of faith, not evidences. If the ocean is blue is due to God's aesthetics despite that science will show you otherwise with facts. Will a religious believer care of what science can or cannot say? No.
On the other hand, both disciplines tend to confront usually. A scientific is always in continuous skepticism, but a believer believes in God blindly. It is not about replace one or another but how they repel each other. Don't expect an absorb because humans always have questions, so religion and science will be there as a candle, illuminating our uncertainty

. Science knows how to do: how to make a computer, an aircraft, bombs. But it sometimes lacks the wisdom of what to do and what to leave undone. — Art48

Absolutely. A round of applause for this. If science deals with raw knowledge and thus power/control, the i would expect/hope religions or spiritualities deal with how to use such knowledge/power/control to good or ethical ends.

Religion and science are not actually at odds with one another. At least they dont have to be anyways. They simply deal with different domains of the whole (reality). Science discovers the reason, and spirituality ideally compliments it with the "ought-to's" - the ideology, the best applications of reason going forth.

A scientific is always in continuous skepticism, but a believer believes in God blindly. — javi2541997

Again, as i said earlier, not all religions have a God. Buddhism, taoism, jainism and many more do not have a Godhead. We must not assume that religion automatically means there is a blindly followed/obeyed God.

Religion and spirituality deals with the subjective. Our emotions, feelings, intuitions and instincts about what is "right" and "wrong". Science does not concern itself with the "use" of knowledge towards rights or wrongs (ethical application) but rather the attainment of knowledge in the first place.

Religion, on the other hand, is the same old, same old. The crucifixion of Jesus. The raising of Lazarus. The loaves and the fishes. I heard those stories as a child. They are still around today, same as ever. Same as they were a thousand years ago. Religious people may spin those facts as an advantage. “See,” they might say, “the unending power of God’s Word. Indeed, his word shall endure forever.” But the foundational religious texts are still a finite resource.

You could also spend many lifetimes studying just Christian theology and not read a fraction of all that has been written, let alone doing an in depth comparison with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or historical religions. As with science, there are constantly new developments in theology. While it doesn't move as quickly as science most of the time, at times it does, i.e. there have been multiple periods where numerous new sects have formed with radically different interpretations of Christianity over a short period.

In the Abrahamic tradition the core texts have remained largely the same for a long period, but even this isn't absolute. The early church had myriad new "books of the Bible," that were ultimately deemed non-canoncial by orthodox Christianity. Judaism had something similar with the deuterocannonical books that show up in the Targum but were later removed from the Canon or the Books of Enoch, which circulated widely but are only canonical in Ethiopian Judaism and Christianity.

The Reformation saw several books removed from the Protestant Canon (although they were still included in copies of the Bible and read in churches until they were cut for printing costs in the 19th century, strangely given American Evangelical antagonism to the texts now). The Book of Mormon was "revealed' relatively recently and new, quite different sects of Christianity have emerged since the 1800s, e.g. the entire Charismatic movement.

The Sethian Gnostics rewrote Genesis such that the God creating the material realm was a demonic figure names Yaldaboath and Jesus gives mankind the fruit of knowledge with the aeon Wisdom.

Few people today believe that there really once was a garden with a talking serpent and a naked couple

Few people believed that in 100-500AD when Church doctrine was formed. Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, etc. all interpreted these allegorically. To be sure, the less educated probably did tend to think of these more as factual records of discrete events, but the Church has a very long history of allegorical, philosophical, and esoteric interpretations of Scripture. Paul's letters show a man well versed in, and in many ways accepting of Greek philosophy, so this is not a stretch. Pagels and others have argued that John is essentially a Gnostics gospel in some ways, Neo-Platonism and what it says about the general reality of all physical events, has been a part of Christianity since the very outset. A Catholic priest who was also a physicists developed the Big Bang Theory.


Fundementalist is a modern movement. Most Christians are not fundementalist. Fundementalists are given outsized weight in perceptions of Christianity in the Anglophone world because they are more common in America, more ostentatious in many ways about their theology, and because they are a much easier punching bag for people who want to attack Christianity or religion in general. Most Christians are not even Protestant, let alone Evangelical Protestants. Even in the US now, Roman Catholic is the largest denomination.

There is definitely plenty of development historically. The God of Hegel and Behemism more generally is extremely different from the God of fundementalism or even mainstream Lutheranism from which Boehme and Hegel emerged. Some theologies speak specifically to this historical progression. Most of the Bible is histories. God is said to demonstrate God's nature through history. This means that the message man needs to hear changes over time and so the faith changes. The rise of rationalism was celebrated by some Christians during the Enlightenment and the triumphs of science (and limitations) extolled by some Christians today (neo-Hegelians for instance).

If history is any guide, religion is sure to keep changing and also to stick around. It's been ubiquitous in every human society, and religious doubts are also at least as old as writing.

Most Christians ignore the teaching of Jesus that disease is the result of demons and sin

Because this isn't in the Bible and you would have to stretch it quite far to say that Jesus teaches this. Hence, it was never a major interpretation of disease, although it certainly did have more truck with people before disease was better understood.

I think it's also important to distinguish here between widely accepted doctrine/theology and the superstitions of the laity. Just because many people misunderstand quantum mechanics or have a naive understanding of science doesn't mean "science says x." Christianity has always had a leadership structure that vets teachings, as did Judaism before it, but that doesn't mean people don't have their own interpretations.

Jesus casts out demons but also heals illnesses. They are described in a distinctly different manner. The Epistles only mentioned healing of diseases, never exorcism. Throughout the Old Testament God is involved in disease, not Satan or demons.

fringe religions — invicta

Yes, those pesky fringe religions:

Do you know what the word fringe means ?

Again, as i said earlier, not all religions have a God. Buddhism, taoism, jainism and many more do not have a Godhead. We must not assume that religion automatically means there is a blindly followed/obeyed God. — Benj96

Buddhism does have a God: Brahmâ

If you do not want to call it as "God" is ok. But I disagree with the fact that they do not follow a divine deity blindly. This is the key of each religion: They understand and follow the morals and ethics of religion as a given. There is not critical thinking among them. Could you imagine a Buddhist questioning the four principles of Siddhartha?

Do you know what the word fringe means ? — invicta

If 15% is "fringe" then black Americans are a fringe race. If 7% is "fringe" then gay people are a fringe population.

They are still around today, same as ever. Same as they were a thousand years ago — Art48

Are they though? Is the slang of today the same as it was 10 years ago? Is the english of today the same as it was in Victorian times, or Shakespearean times, or further back yet still? Is any language static and exactly as it was thousands of years ago, with the same usage of words, the same context, the same culture, the same meaning of words and phrases?

Languages evolve. Exact meanings become corrupted over time.

Scripture is at most interpretative today, at worst completely lost/mis-translated. Every copy of the Bible/Torah/Quran etc is a lesser version of the previous due to human error/misunderstanding and general societal change. Just as when you repeatedly feed something printed back into the printer, the definition, the visibility of the text, is lost to imperfect reproduction. Loss of resolution.

There is need for updating the texts to become current/relevant to the modern day culture and level of knowledge. Luckily, i believe religions spoke of fundamental principles at their time of writing/inception, fundamentals which do not change over time, as they are fundamental/principled. Deep, resonating truths. Thus it is possible to find that truth again, but it relies on sense, on reasoning and logic. Not referring to something outdated and lost to time.

As much as I’d enjoy arguing about the definitions of words on here, do you actually have anything to say about the OP?

Both are minorities, yes, youre correct. And what of it? There are also minority religions/spiritualities. This does not mean they are any less valid, or don't have something insightful to demonstrate, than those which are more common.

It seems that science is in need of religions’ values, ethics, and morals. Might science absorb values, ethics, and morals from religions? From purified religions, of course.

Or might science somehow evolve to address the concerns and questions traditionally addressed by religion? That seems to be on science’s trajectory. — Art48

Science-based explanations might gradually become simple & common enough to replace ancient bed-time stories, of how the world works, for the average Joe. But, as you implied, the material success of Science has been largely due to its focus on "how" facts, instead of "why" questions. Those perpetual philosophical issues are perspectival & interpretational, hence resistant to impersonal pragmatic nailed-down fixed facts.

Fortunately, some of us can make room in the same mind for both Hard Facts and Flexible Feelings. Perhaps though, as humans evolve into trans-human cyborgs, those animal emotions may gradually come under the rule of mathematical Logic*1. The ethical implications & evaluations of such an evolutionary leap have been explored in both academic philosophical tomes, and in popular entertainment forms. For example, uber-logical Mr. Spock & Commander Data, still seem to benefit from association with their more emotional & humane Captains. As long as world events are complex enough to hide their mathematical foundation, some problems may be better addressed with get-er-done motivation than with abstract structural analysis.

Since the un-amicable divorce of Pragmatic Science from Aspirational Religion, both seem to be gradually moving toward a fragile reconciliation. What form that accommodation will take remains to be seen, perhaps in the not-too-distant future. :smile:


*1. A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE :
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. ___David Hume

Scripture is at most interpretative today, at worst completely lost/mis-translated. Every copy of the Bible/Torah/Quran etc is a lesser version of the previous due to human error/misunderstanding and general societal change. Just as when you repeatedly feed something printed back into the printer, the definition, the visibility of the text, is lost to imperfect reproduction. Loss of resolution.

But when was this not true? Versus from Numbers carved in silver in proto-Hebraic predate the Hebrew language. The story of Noah, include the phrase "two by two," is on a Sumerian tablet that is among the oldest pieces of writing ever found.

We no longer think many of the books of Prophets were written all by the titular prophet (Ezekiel being a notable exception). Isiah appears to have been a collection of sayings of an Isiah that took final form from other works over centuries. We see differences in OT documents dating from before Jesus' time. I'm not sure if there ever was a one true text. It changes less now, but it still changes with new translations and archeological finds.

We lose some context, for example, none of us speak Greek. But the Greek speakers in the 5th century all thought Paul wrote Hebrews, which changes the context. We now think this is very likely a different author who knew Paul or Paul's teachings, so we may have gained a better reference frame in some sense.

In general the mindset of the atheist — invicta

I've watched Christian/atheist discussions (for example, the 'atheist experience' videos on YouTube) where time and time again the atheist knew more about religion than the Christian, perhaps because many atheists were once believers who bothered to critically investigate their beliefs.

It won't replace religion. It will become a religion. In many ways it already is.

For example, a belief in the big bang isn't much more rational than the belief in a creation myth.

For sure. Scientism is definitely a thing. Now, there is a good argument to be made that scientism isn't science, and that science doesn't deal with key aspects religion does, e.g. ontology. But I think there is also a good argument to be made that this is a No True Scottman fallacy given some of the world's most famous scientists write best sellers in the science category that are substantially or even mostly about ontology, the origins and nature of the world, or make explicit claims about morality and moral realism.

Might science absorb values, ethics, and morals from religions? — Art48

:pray: Let's hope not.
.

Or might science somehow evolve to address the concerns and questions traditionally addressed by religion?

IME, science is to experimental medicines as religion is to ritual placebos/nocebos. The latter tricks many into ignoring their symptoms whereas the former contributes to the health of most. However, philosophy – what we do with (or practice) either of them – often promotes 'proper diet & exercise' as a daily fitness regime – "a way of life" – which cultivates / reinforces flourishing (i.e. well-being).

Science will never eventually replace religion. — Benj96

Just as astronomy has not replaced astrology, planetology has not replaced flat earthism, evolution has not replaced creationism and cognitive neuroscience has not replaced spiritualism (i.e. belief in ghosts/souls), I suspect modern technosciences will never totally replace supernatural religions as such. :eyes: :mask:

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him. — Arthur C. Clarke

I think, however, when technoscience (e.g. "AGI" + nano/bio/neurotech) provides – what every "God" ever worshipped by h. sapiens spectacularly fails to provide – a reliable lifespan-healthspan-brainspan-youthspan extending techniques (e.g. immorbity therapy) for making death a medically elective procedure – that will cause, all things being equal, 'religious observance' as we know it today to shrink by orders of magnitude to barely fringe subcultures without it ever disappearing completely because, as a species, we are congenital 'magical thinkers' (i.e. confabulators). For our immortal descendents, science will be 'the last man standing' compared to religion. My guess is that their (or "AI-human" hybrid's) spirituality will recognizably consist of "Spinoza's God" – acosmism (sub specie aeternitatis) and/or pandeism (sub specie durationis), not "pantheism". :fire:

For example, a belief in the big bang isn't much more rational than the belief in a creation myth. — Tzeentch

Belief in the big bang, a theory supported by solid evidence, for example, the cosmic background radiation,isn't much more rational than the belief in a creation myth, for example, the Genesis stories which include a talking serpent? I have to disagree.

:up:

Considering the fact that scientists are attempting to look 13,800,000,000 years into the past, I'd say they're functionally the same.

My guess is the chance of both being wrong is vastly greater than either being right, so what's the point of believing?