Why religion is not going away and science will not destroy it

This is the framework where science is made - it is not necessary to believe that it is true (that's called "metaphysical naturalism"), just work by the assumption.

That's why there can be religious scientists. They apply methodological naturalism at work (they explain everything without appealing to the supernatural), but they maybe believe in virgin birth / resurrection / other miracles, so they actually believe that naturalism in the metaphysical sense is false.

The successes of science may provide some confirmation that naturalism may be true in reality but of course can't prove it undoubtedly. But in practice it may work in this way: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

Not sure how much of that is science - we have Dawkins plugging away with his books and the like - and how much is bad press religion has had in recent times. Like the London Bridge stabbings don't exactly make you think wow isn't religion great. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2017_London_Bridge_attack)

I think the CIA and police torture might have had a tiny bit more to do with the collapse of USA-ally dictatorships in Iran, not a failure of science to triumph over religion. This highlights the international level importance of religious groups (as opposed to the belief of religion or the individual believer, its the group that matters). The current system propped up by the CIA sucks, revolution executes the war criminal US ally dictator, giant vacuum exists for an org to step in, what giant org with a chip on its shoulder of knowing the right answer all the time oh how about religion? Better a religious than a corporate takeover, probably...

Likewise on a smaller scale, inside nations, the article seems to miss the point that in the old days it was rather easy to discern if you were attending a fraternal social organization meeting like the freemasons or a religious service like pre-vatican-2 Catholic church. In the modern world both extremes have disappeared and merged into the middle. No amount of "science" can eliminate the traditional religious pre-game activities before the church knitting club meeting or the church singles club meeting or the Jesus themed rock music concert I attended one time at my local prosperity gospel church. I would theorize the collapse of the church in the UK is a mix of UK class separation and its related alienation leading to a lack of need for the church to be a social hub, plus mere individual anecdotal failure.

There are also issues that are pretty much banned topics on this site, like religious fervor being transubstantiated into other forms such as political belief. If you ban a belief, if just means conversations about the topic are going to be ineffective and confused, which is why I have to leave this third issue unresolved, although its obviously a major component of the big picture.

However, it's not clear whether this trend will continue, if there will always be multiple different authorities from this point on, or if humanity will largely again unify under a single overarching authority. Also I believe that many people have inborn tendency to value authority (we typically call this conservative beliefs), and it's not clear if this tendency is going away or staying.

However what that series never seems to really tackle head on, and which I would have expected to be a much more powerful argument, is that although religious philosophers and theologians can always come up with some justification for believing in a universal creator, they never seem to come up with any argument as to what that creator is like. If the universe was created by god, what is that god like and why should I be a Christian rather than a Muslim, or Hindu, or Budhist? If Christian, why a Catholic, say, rather than a Methodist, or Calvinist, etc.

Science, or at least rational philosophy, can strip away much of the cultural detritus of religion. Ultimately though until it can answer why the universe exists, not just how, it can't land a fatal blow.

So to me the argument of science versus religion is kind of secondary. The real question is can't religious people see that they're just projecting arbitrary cultural baggage they happen to have been born into, that keeps changing generation by generation anyway, on a philosophical emperor that inherently has no clothes?

I think this explains the high degree of religion in the US, some schools still want to teach creationism there.

This is a classic case of painting science as a noun; as an inanimate, fixed concept which is used to increase pleasure in human lives (a religious sin), and whose materialism is in direct conflict with "moral" values.

Questioning the scientific process yet accepting its fruits is a logical blunder often committed by religious apologists. Noun-ing science into a "thing" helps hide the incongruity of this idea.

For instance, take the mobile phone, a concrete result of science. There is no question it exists. But it did not originate from a religious process. It was instead based on empirical research, making mistakes and learning from them, all built over centuries of human struggle, all to understand a little bit more of the universe that we live in. That process is science. It is just a process; not an answer or a fixed idea. It doesn't guarantee that we'll discover all the secrets of the universe. All it does is ask questions and try to find answers using logically coherent, structurally consistent, independently reproducible methods.

There is an undeniable conflict between religious belief and the scientific process. Both of them tries to find answers to questions central to human existence - what is this place? why are we here? who made it? who made us?

A thousand years ago, we were asking other questions - what are the twinkling things in the sky? who brings the rain? which god causes the plague? The scientific process has answered them well enough that today's religious beliefs have shrunk in size, and refined themselves to focus on the questions that still remain transcendental.

Their answers however are in direct conflict with what the scientific process has discovered. They claim the universe was created by an all knowing God, without a definition of what the God is, and stonewalling further enquiry into the topic. Religions do not bring any additional meaning to the discussion, and by its very nature stands in the way of the scientific process.

The closing paragraph of the article is an ominous threat - "If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get". If it led to finding more allies in the religious world for the scientific process, I think it wouldn't hurt for scientific-minded folks to bend their outward convictions a little bit. But if it means getting rid of evolution from our textbooks and teaching kids that a voyeur in the sky is watching them all the time, waiting to subject them to eternal fire, I think it would be a hard bargain to drive.

> A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community.

A lot of things fall under this, even people who wear Oakley glasses or own an iPhone.

That sounds like a boring statement, but it's still true. Science in its core shouldn't be religious. But we are humans. So applying science, working as a scientist, using science (even if just for small talk) is not possible without putting some faith in unchecked results.

To some degree we are all believers. The important part is to accept that and recognize it when you are about to do something which will yield bad results for you and humanity in general.

Dear people in the US, I have unfortunate news for you: No.

Science is a study of the natural world. It doesn't answer philosophical or religious questions. That is not its part to play.

However, saying that, each person will use science according to the base beliefs that person brings with them. It you come in as an atheist, those core beliefs will, generally, colour how you see the world around you. If you come in as a buddhist, this will colour how you see the world about you. if come in as a christian, the same will occur.

Now the results or outcomes discovered can and have changed the underlying base beliefs a person may have started with. So, an atheist may become a christian, a christian may become an atheist, etc, etc, etc.

In my case, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I personally believe that He is not only the creator of all the universe and everything in it, but He is my personal saviour and wants to know me personally.

I was given a good science and engineering education. I had no problems with such ideas as evolution and big bang, etc. Interestingly, it was people like Richard Dawkins and his work in genetics that raised significant questions over the viability of any evolutionary model. As I studied the results obtained from various reported experiments in evolutionary biology, it became obvious that the interpretation of their results and the results themselves were different. So over time, I came to see that evolution as a model of reality was not viable, though very useful for some very good scifi stories.

In turn, looking at other areas, the results seemed to be odds with the theories and models being propagated. This is turn, challenged me to look at the limits of what science could do. I think it is wonderful that we have the ability to systematically study and experiment with the world around. Science is a boon for that. But there are questions it cannot answer. We must look elsewhere for the tools to study those questions.

What has also become obvious over the last few decades, is that Science has become a religion to which it has many adherents. Those who have pushed for this (such as Richard Dawkins et al) have done a great disservice to Science. It is religion neutral. It has no care whether you are atheist, agnostic, moslem, chistian, buddhist, hindu or anything else. It has no care for your political belief, your sexuality, your social status, your ethnicity or anything related to the non-science beliefs you carry.

However, those non-science things will colour how you view the results obtained in your science. It will colour your interpretation and it will colour how you use the results.

Religion and science are not intrinsically incompatible. It is how people used them for or against each other that generates the conflicts.

My God has created an absolutely fascinating universe and His good pleasure is that we can study it to try and understand how it works and in doing so we can get to know Him. Just because we gain some understanding about certain aspects of the world around us, say how planetary motion works, does not mean in any way, that He is no longer in the picture. He is no God of the Gaps as Dr Neil Tyson or Bill Nye would have you believe.

Anyone who falls into the trap of believing that Science will replace or supplant religion has already made Science into religion.

There are no "stupid" questions and there is no problem asking questions about science, religion, philosophy or any other subject.

That's not what religion is, and it's rather upsetting to see supposed 'intellectuals' with such a sad failure to grasp even the basics of metaphysics, let alone spirituality.

There is no 'war' between Science and Religion.

Maybe a 'war' between 'Scientists' and 'Some kinds of religious people who believe some impractical things' ...

But the real debate is between 'Scientific Materialists' and 'Spiritualists' and that's a reasonable debate.

I thought that might account for the low numbers of people identifying themselves as "Atheist" with a capital A, but on following the link it seems it's hard to get a straight answer on that for multiple reasons e.g.

"8% of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in God or a universal spirit. Indeed, 2% say they are “absolutely certain” about the existence of God or a universal spirit."