By Paul ~
7/03/2011
" The general nature of religious worldviews: Why religious believers are not science-friendly.
The debate between science and religion is a complex one, but I don’t want to focus on all the details. I want to explore the underlying reason why many religious believers have difficulty relating to scientific facts and explanations than religious ones. It is not mere stupidity, although many religious believers have displayed ignorance, but something deep. I am not saying that those deep reasons for being uncomfortable with scientific facts are a good reason to reject science (I think it is a bad reason to deny scientific facts), but rather I am trying to provide an insightful explanation to this problem.
Many times, either religious people try to reconcile science with religion or they assert that science and religion are not reconcilable. The problem with this is that it is not really science as a whole that religions are having problem with, but specific theories and descriptions of the world that disturbs them. It is not only evolutionary theory and big bang theory that many religious have problems with, but other scientific understanding of the world such as the fact that neurobiology has no evidence for the “soul” or that the earth is more than 6000 years old. Many other scientific facts and theories contradict religious tenants about the cosmos which brings discomfort to many religious adherents. Despite this, there are many scientists in the United States that are religious, and accept scientific explanations. Other religious believers in Mainline Protestantism also accept scientific explanations since they interpret the bible allegorically.
The relation between science and religion become more complex not only in regards to natural science but also history and other social sciences. History, including modern biblical criticism, has shown that the bible is not necessarily a coherent text but a compilation of books written in different times, which inevitably lead each text to contradict each other. I will not go deep into biblical criticism, but I will say that the results of the scientific method in history and the archeology have not received favorable reception among religious conservatives. Even though the scientific method of history and archeology has successfully found evidence for other historical events, which religious believers are either indifferent to or receptive to, whenever it comes to finding contrary evidence against biblical “accounts” believers react with discomfort and disapproval....." -- Continued: http://goo.gl/vitTZ
Digg: http://goo.gl/na2Az
