The Myth of the 'War' Between Science and Religion

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

This will be a long read. I'll break it down into several posts........​

There has always been a sense in which the natural sciences are opposed to authoritarianism of any kind. As Freeman Dyson points out in his important essay "The Scientist as Rebel," a common element of most visions of science is that of "rebellion against the restrictions imposed by the local prevailing culture." Science is thus a subversive activity, almost by definition—a point famously stated in a lecture delivered to the Society of Heretics at Cambridge by the biologist J.B.S. Haldane in February 1923. For the Arab mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam, science was a rebellion against the intellectual constraints of Islam; for nineteenth-century Japanese scientists, science was a rebellion against the lingering feudalism of their culture; for the great Indian physicists of the twentieth century, their discipline was a powerful intellectual force directed against the fatalistic ethic of Hinduism (not to mention British imperialism, which was then dominant in the region). And in Western Europe, scientific advance inevitably involved confrontation with the culture of the day—including its political, social, and religious elements. Inasmuch as the West has been dominated by Christianity, it is unsurprising that the tension between science and Western culture could be seen specifically as a confrontation between science and Christianity.

Most historians regard religion as having had a generally benign and constructive relationship with the natural sciences in the West. There were periods of tension and conflict, such as the Galileo controversy. Yet on closer examination, these often turn out to have had more to do with papal politics, ecclesiastical power struggles, and personality issues than with any fundamental tensions between faith and science. As leading historians of science regularly point out, the interaction of science and religion is determined primarily by historical circumstances and only secondarily by the irrespective subject matters. There is no universal paradigm for the relation of science and religion, either theoretically or historically. The case of Christian attitudes to evolutionary theory in the late nineteenth century makes this point particularly evident. As the Irish scientist and historian David Livingstone makes clear in a groundbreaking study of the reception of Darwinism in two very different contexts—Belfast and Princeton—local issues and personalities were often of decisive importance in determining the outcome.

In the eighteenth century, a remarkable synergy developed between religion and the sciences in England. Newton's "celestial mechanics" was widely regarded as at worst consistent with, and at best a glorious confirmation of, the Christian view of God as creator of a harmonious universe. Many members of the Royal Society of London—founded to advance scientific understanding and research—were strongly religious in their outlook, and saw this as enhancing their commitment to scientific advancement.

Yet all this changed in the second half of the nineteenth century. The general tone of the late-nineteenth-century encounter between religion (especially Christianity) and the natural sciences was set by two works: John William Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science(1874) and Andrew dikkson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1876). Both works reflect a strongly positivist view of history and a determination to settle old scores with organized religion. This contrasts sharply with the much more positive and settled relationship between the two typical in both North America and Great Britain up to around 1830, reflected in works such as William Paley's Natural Theology.

For John William Draper, the natural sciences were Promethean liberators of humanity from the oppression of traditional religious thought and structures, particularly Roman Catholicism. "The history of science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other." Draper was particularly offended by developments within the Roman Catholic church, which he regarded as pretentious, oppressive, and tyrannical. The rise of science (and especially Darwinian theory) was, for Draper, the most significant means of "endangering her position," and was thus to be encouraged by all means available. Like many polemical works, History of the Conflict is notable more for the stridency of its assertions than for the substance of its arguments; nevertheless, the general tone of its approach would help create a mind-set.

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

The origins of Andrew dikkson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom lie in the heated debates surrounding the foundation of Cornell University. Many denominational schools felt threatened by the establishment of the new university, and encouraged attacks on the fledgling school and White, its first president, accusing both of atheism. Angered by this unfair treatment, White decided to launch an offensive against his critics in a lecture delivered in New York on December 18, 1869, entitled "The Battle Fields of Science." Once more science was portrayed as a liberator in the quest for academic freedom. The lecture was gradually expanded until it was published in 1876 as The Warfare of Science. This book was supplemented by a further series of "New Chapters in the Warfare of Science," published as articles in the Popular Science Monthly over the period 1885-92 . The two-volume book of 1896 basically consists of the material found in the 1876 book, to which this additional material was appended.

White himself declared that the "most mistaken of mistaken ideas " was that "religion and science are enemies." Nevertheless, this was precisely the impression created by his work, whether he himself intended it or not. The crystallization of the warfare metaphor in the popular mind was unquestionably catalyzed by White's vigorously polemical writing. The widespread late-nineteenth-century interpretation of the Darwinian theory in terms of "the survival of the fittest" also lent weight to the imagery of conflict; was this not how nature itself determined matters? Was not nature itself a spectacular battlefield, on which the war of biological survival was fought? Was it not therefore to be expected that the same battle for survival might take place between religious and scientific worldviews, with the victor sweeping the vanquished from existence, the latter never to appear again in the relentless evolutionary development of human thought and knowledge?

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

The idea that science and religion are in perpetual conflict is no longer taken seriously by any major historian of science, despite its popularity in the late nineteenth century. One of the last remaining bastions of atheism survives only at the popular level—namely, the myth that an atheistic, fact-based science is permanently at war with a faith-based religion. Not only is this caricature clearly untrue in the present day, but historical scholarship has now determined it to be misleading and inaccurate in the past. Yet the myth still lives on in popular atheist writings, undisturbed by the findings of scholars. At least in the minds of some atheist propagandists, science is the supreme champion of atheism.

As a generation of historians has now pointed out, the notion of an endemic conflict between science and religion, so persuasively set out by White and Draper, is itself a social construction, created in the lengthening shadows of hostility toward individual clergy and church institutions. The interaction of science and religion is determined far more by their social circumstances than their specific ideas. The Victorian period itself gave rise to the social pressures and tensions that engendered the myth of permanent warfare between science and religion, and especially the Roman Catholic church as the "damnable perverter of mankind"(ThomasHuxley).

 

[Slangtonomo]

I've been preaching this of late.

A cac told me that the two only pretended to be enemies, while those high enough know they're on the same team.

That cac taught me that all the answers are now available online.

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

A significant social shift can be discerned behind the emergence of this conflict model. From a sociological perspective, scientific knowledge was advocated by particular social groups to advance their own specific goals and interests. There was growing competition between two specific groups within British society in the nineteenth century: the clergy and the scientific professionals. The clergy were widely regarded as an elite at the beginning of the century, with the "scientific parson" a well-established social stereotype. Among these we may number Gilbert White (1720-93) , author of the classic Natural History of Selborne(1789) .

With the appearance o f the professional scientist, however, a struggle for supremacy began, to determine who would gain the cultural ascendancy within British culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. The conflict model has its origins in the specific conditions of the Victorian era, in which an emerging professional intellectual group sought to displace a group that had hitherto occupied the place of honor. The rise of Darwinian theory appeared to give added scientific justification to this model: it was a struggle for the survival of the intellectually fittest. In the early nineteenth century, the British Association (a professional organization devoted to the advancement of science) had many members who were clergy; by the end of the century, the clergy tended to be portrayed as the enemies of science—and hence of social and intellectual progress. As a result, there was much sympathy for a model of the interaction of the sciences and religion that portrayed religion and its representatives in uncomplimentary and disparaging terms .

The conflict model of science and religion thus came to prominence at a time when professional scientists wished to distance themselves from their amateur colleagues, and when changing patterns in academic culture necessitated demonstrating its independence from the church and other bastions of the establishment. Academic freedom demanded a break with the church; to achieve this break it became expedient to depict the church as the opponent of learning and scientific advance and the natural sciences as their strongest advocates.The golden age of atheism witnessed the relentless advance of the sciences and the equally relentless retreat of faith from the public to the private domain. The cultural space within which religion was permitted to operate was gradually whittled down to private beliefs, which had no relevance to public policy.

Today, this stereotype of the warfare of science and religion lingers on in the backwaters of Western culture. Yet it has largely lost its credibility. The surging interest in the spiritual aspects of the natural sciences has been complemented by a new interest in the positive interaction of science and religion, evident in course titles such as "Science and the Spiritual Quest." The growing realization that even many scientists who are Nobel laureates are interested in issues of faith has severely dented the case for a necessary link between science and atheism, or for the outdated stereotype of the perpetual war of science and faith. The simple fact is that there is no necessary connection between them: some scientists are religious and some are not.

 

[FAH1223]

Religion and science are not incompatible. And the claim that we need to eliminate religion to know everything is another logical fallacy and sign of arrogance that humans always have all the answers when in reality we probably never will because the universe is so vast.

The legacy of colonialism and importing European thought to the rest of the world has conditioned people to think in this matter. Even these terrorist groups like da3esh, Al Shabaab, etc think like this. You'll see them wanting to seperate worldly studies relative to religious instruction when all the great Alims were trained in a science or profession in addition to their knowledge of religion

People in the past did not find a conflict between secular and religious, the west did and they dealt with the problems of Christianity and modernity by rejecting religion and limiting the power of the church. Once they did that they progressed. They then conquered our lands and then our minds and exported their reasoning and thinking to us.

For example, Al Khawarizmi was studying the science of maths, he was also a Hafith Qur'an (one who memorizes the entire Quran and recite it all) like all Muslims scholars and men of science and he also studied hadith and tafsir.. The concept of secular knowledge and religious knowledge did not exist in Islam it is a totally alien product.

In other words, we're all Westernized even those who may seem at odds with values of the West because their frame of thinking of knowledge is the same.

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

In other words, we're all Westernized even those who may seem at odds with values of the West because their frame of thinking of knowledge is the same.

There's a reason for that........​

One of the most important scientific writers of the nineteenth century was William Kingdon Clifford (1845-79), who was appointed professor of mathematics at University College, London, in 1871. A year earlier, an expedition to observe a solar eclipse came close to costing him his life, when his ship sank off the coast of Sicily. Although a very devout and fastidious Anglo-Catholic in his youth, Clifford's perilous experience at sea appears to have convinced him of the improbability and immorality of Christian belief. From 1871 onward, he appears to have become obsessed with the idea that human progress could only be achieved through the systematic elimination of religious belief. He reserved a particular contempt for Christianity, especially in its Anglo Catholic forms, which he regarded as no better than the pagan abominations he read about in his Old Testament.

Clifford clearly saw himself as being in the vanguard of a great advance in the fortunes of humanity, which, guided by reason and science, would rise above and finally transcend every previous achievement of civilization. Religion and its evidentially deficient allies of magic and superstition would simply fade away, overwhelmed by the new knowledge of the world:

The dim and shadowy outlines of the super human deity fade slowly
away from us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive
with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and
nobler figure—of Him who made all Gods and shall unmake them.
From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every
soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of
eternal youth in his eyes, and says, "Before Jehovah was, I am."
​

But how could religious belief be eliminated? In his highly influential Ethics of Belief (1871) , Clifford developed a line of argument that has had a deep and lasting impact on discussions of the relation of science and religion: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." A refusal to engage in a critical evaluation of every belief, however daunting and distressing this may be, is an unforgiveable sin: "If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterward, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it—the life of that man is one long sin against mankind."

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

What ever the belief maybe—whether scientific, religious, or moral—we are under an absolute obligation to believe only what may be rigorously demonstrated by the strictest criteria of truth. Clifford opens his discussion of these questions with an analogy that presumably evoked some painful memories—a shipwreck:

A ship owner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not sea worthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart,and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

The fundamental point is as moral as it is intellectual: beliefs must be warranted. The ship owner was a scoundrel. His belief may have been sincere, but it was utterly immoral to entertain such a belief when he had failed to investigate it thoroughly. "He did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts."

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

Clifford had no doubt that this rigorously evidential approach would undermine the claims of Christianity, especially its claims to supernatural knowledge of God through revelation and miraculous events. Nature was uniform; how could any one legitimately believe such clear violations of the natural order:

No evidence, therefore, can justify us in believing the truth of a statement which is contrary to, or outside of, the uniformity of nature. If our experience is such that it cannot be filled up consistently with uniformity, all we have a right to conclude is that there is something wrong somewhere; but the possibility of inference is taken away; we must rest in our experience, and not go beyond it at all. If an event really happened which was not apart of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all.

This relentless and persistent demand for verification of all beliefs anticipates some themes that came to prominence in the great debate over logical positivism in the 1950s, and is prone to many of the same difficulties. Yet the force of Clifford's point was perceived as moral rather than intellectual. An absolute moral demand is placed on all human beings to prove what they believe. It was not long before religion was, once more, in head long retreat. It was simply incapable of providing the evidential basis of belief that Clifford and others demanded.

Yet paradoxically, so was atheism. To conform to Clifford's demands for evidential rigor, atheism must be demonstrated to be more than intellectually plausible, conceptually economical, or culturally attractive—it must be demonstrated to be true. Clifford had turned "Lockean caution about the nature of propositions into a straitjacket" (A.N.Wilson). Clifford's legacy has been the provision of an ideal of rational justification that it has proved impossible to attain. A means of investigating reality had become the determinant of what was actually real in the first place.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

This will be a long read. I'll break it down into several posts........​

There is myth. Its real. Empiricism is all that matters. Take your magic bullshyt elsewhere.

 

[CHL]

Religion and science are not incompatible. And the claim that we need to eliminate religion to know everything is another logical fallacy and sign of arrogance that humans always have all the answers when in reality we probably never will because the universe is so vast.

The legacy of colonialism and importing European thought to the rest of the world has conditioned people to think in this matter. Even these terrorist groups like da3esh, Al Shabaab, etc think like this. You'll see them wanting to seperate worldly studies relative to religious instruction when all the great Alims were trained in a science or profession in addition to their knowledge of religion

People in the past did not find a conflict between secular and religious, the west did and they dealt with the problems of Christianity and modernity by rejecting religion and limiting the power of the church. Once they did that they progressed. They then conquered our lands and then our minds and exported their reasoning and thinking to us.

For example, Al Khawarizmi was studying the science of maths, he was also a Hafith Qur'an (one who memorizes the entire Quran and recite it all) like all Muslims scholars and men of science and he also studied hadith and tafsir.. The concept of secular knowledge and religious knowledge did not exist in Islam it is a totally alien product.

In other words, we're all Westernized even those who may seem at odds with values of the West because their frame of thinking of knowledge is the same.

Doesn't this show that religion does need to go? Don't they all claim to have the answers?

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

Empiricism is all that matters.

Can you prove that statement is true, empirically?

​

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

Doesn't this show that religion does need to go? Don't they all claim to have the answers?

Neither science nor religion claim to have 'all the answers'. That is a myth like the 'war' between science and religion.

​

 

[CHL]

Can you prove that statement is true, empirically?

​

Can you define 'define'? Can you logically prove that logic is logical?

 

[Type Username Here]

Religion and science are compatible up until the point where science "undermines" religious beliefs.

When we reach that point, there are several outcomes:

First is usually anger or dismissal. Second is acceptance, usually in the way of the religious person bending their interpretation of religious text to say the text knew it all along. It's disingenuous.

There is no war. Only the constant battle between right and wrong. And science always wins that eventually.