• Question: do you think religion and science can ever relate

    Asked by naaance to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by ipwnnoobz1905.
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I think it’s quite possible to relate science and religion, if you want to. You may need to be willing to accept that some stories told in religious texts may be allegorical rather than literal tales of events, but I think it’s possible.

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think so that they can ever relate coz religion is very rigid based on some story sort of thing however, science is based on evidences. Under this umbrella they can’t relate wid each other!

    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      I think they are very different mind-sets although there are many scientists who are religious. They are in essence two very different ways of looking at the world and explaining what you see. Religion has always stood in wonder at what they believe god created while scientists are equally in awe of the natural world but they have a different way of explaining how it all came about.

      There is a great quote from one of my hero’s, Dr Richard Feynman:

      “I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty. […] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

      Same goes for religion, just because science can explain how things came about doesn’t make them less wonderous or fascinating, in fact it makes them even more so, knowing that the natural world could come up with something so amazingly complex and beautiful.

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