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Are you saying you're religious, yet love science? I'd like to have a discussion with you.

andrewcooke 14y ago
maybe you're just being nice, but this comes across as "how can you be a religious scientist?". and if that's how it was intended, well, many people are both religious and scientific. religion is a social thing - a community with common moral ideas. it can be very useful / rewarding and it certianly doesn't have to mean anti-scientific beliefs.
- zapdrive 14y ago
  > it certianly doesn't have to mean anti-scientific beliefs. Disagree. Name one religion that doesn't have anti-scientific beliefs. The whole concept of religions is based on believing without asking any questions, which is totally opposite from what science is.
  - kajecounterhack 14y ago
    This is too broad an assessment. People who claim to be "Christian" for example have varying degrees of interpretation. There's young earth creationist fundamentalists->people quite a bit less crazy. Sure, faith is central to religion as a whole. But the author of the parent post says it's possible for a religious person to also not hold anti-scientific beliefs. Like Christians who believe in evolution and who are generally pro-scientific.
  - unalone 14y ago
    That is the stupidest goddamn description of religion I've ever heard. "[B]elieving without asking any questions" is literally the exact opposite of the concept of faith, which in every religion I know of requires believers to confront their own beliefs with frequent doubt. Faith is meant to put you in a frequent state of crisis in which you reexamine what you think you believe, in order to find something truer and more real. Some of the brightest scientists I know are Christian, and absolutely they use the same methodology to investigate their faith as they do to investigate their work. It took me a little while to realize that, as an atheist, every criticism of their religion I'd come up with to bother them was a criticism they'd been grappling with for about twice as long. There are fanatics and idiots, sure, but assuming those idiots are at the center of every major religion is giving far too much credits to loudmouthed assholes and their blather.
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    you're taking religion to be this very clearly defined thing. for most religious people it's not like that. they don't sign up to an exact set of rules; they live within a society that shares certain ideas and they make their own personal choices and compromises. so it's impossible to name "a religion" because every person's religion is slightly different. but if you are looking for examples of religions where people are particularly non-prescriptive then the quakers and the unitarians are pretty cool. see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism - a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" sounds pretty compatible with science to me.... [disclaimer: i'm an atheist (and have a PhD in SCIENCE). but i can see the advantages of community and even, at one particularly hard point in my life, talked to a bunch (what's the collective noun? vibrational mode?) of quakers to see if they would accept me. and frankly they would accept anyone (you gotta love em ;o), but it just didn't feel right...]
  - learc83 14y ago
    Most religious people believe that stories from thousands of years ago are basically reliable accounts of what happened. Atheists believe they are not. Both sides have evidence for their beliefs, it depends on which evidence you find most compelling. Science shouldn't be thought of as a noun that you believe in, but as a verb that you do. You don't need to hold a certain belief to be able practice "science" you only need to be able to conduct a repeatable experiment. A person could believe with all his heart that he is 10,000 year old alien, and still be able to form a testable hypothesis and design and conduct a repeatable experiment. You don't have to be a strict empiricist to realize that empiricism is directly useful in day to day life. A theist can use the scientific process even if it means working with models he doesn't believe are wholly correct. Just like you can use Newtonian physics even if you realize it isn't a correct explanation of how things really work--because it is a useful model.
  - lotsofcows 14y ago
    The vast majority of C19 science was created by Christians. Much of what they achieved had already been achieved by Muslim scientists a century earlier. Science does not preclude religion. Religion does not preclude science. Although there have been times and places where questioning the religious hegemony has been a bad idea, that's got nothing to do with religion per se.
drharris 14y ago
Not sure if this leads to trolling, but yes, extremely, on both accounts. I'm both a Christian (even something of a creationist) and manage to love science. I admit it's not a common combination (hence my post), but it does exist. :)
- unalone 14y ago
  I'm curious. What does "something of a creationist" entail? Is this a Deist sort of creationism, or are you closer to biblical literalism?
  - drharris 14y ago
    It means I believe at the very least, a creator was responsible for initial life. I also believe that evolution is either a guided process or that the existing evidence can also point to creation. Do not believe in young earth. Do not believe the creator started it and has not intervened since.
    - unalone 14y ago
      Curious! I can't say I agree with that – at least, not the way you just phrased it; could just be linguistic ambiguity – but it's interesting nonetheless. I have to say, that's a mindset I don't usually expect on Hacker News; now I'm wondering just how diverse the beliefset of this community is.
      - learc83 14y ago
        My personal belief is that the earth was created as if it were much older than it actually is, although their really wouldn't be much of a difference to us. For example, if God created the first tree, just snapped his fingers and poof, there it is full sized. Would that tree have tree rings? I think it would.
        unalone 14y ago
        What would be the point of creating something and then faking its age? Is it a test, for us to ignore empirical evidence and determine that God made it anyway? Or are you suggesting that, perhaps, the world began with us humans, and that the universe pre-humanity was manufactured to seem like it gave rise to is (but it couldn't have, because it started with us)? I'm interested in where such a belief comes from.

maybe you're just being nice, but this comes across as "how can you be a religious scientist?". and if that's how it was intended, well, many people are both religious and scientific. religion is a social thing - a community with common moral ideas. it can be very useful / rewarding and it certianly doesn't have to mean anti-scientific beliefs.

zapdrive 14y ago
> it certianly doesn't have to mean anti-scientific beliefs. Disagree. Name one religion that doesn't have anti-scientific beliefs. The whole concept of religions is based on believing without asking any questions, which is totally opposite from what science is.
- kajecounterhack 14y ago
  This is too broad an assessment. People who claim to be "Christian" for example have varying degrees of interpretation. There's young earth creationist fundamentalists->people quite a bit less crazy. Sure, faith is central to religion as a whole. But the author of the parent post says it's possible for a religious person to also not hold anti-scientific beliefs. Like Christians who believe in evolution and who are generally pro-scientific.
- unalone 14y ago
  That is the stupidest goddamn description of religion I've ever heard. "[B]elieving without asking any questions" is literally the exact opposite of the concept of faith, which in every religion I know of requires believers to confront their own beliefs with frequent doubt. Faith is meant to put you in a frequent state of crisis in which you reexamine what you think you believe, in order to find something truer and more real. Some of the brightest scientists I know are Christian, and absolutely they use the same methodology to investigate their faith as they do to investigate their work. It took me a little while to realize that, as an atheist, every criticism of their religion I'd come up with to bother them was a criticism they'd been grappling with for about twice as long. There are fanatics and idiots, sure, but assuming those idiots are at the center of every major religion is giving far too much credits to loudmouthed assholes and their blather.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  you're taking religion to be this very clearly defined thing. for most religious people it's not like that. they don't sign up to an exact set of rules; they live within a society that shares certain ideas and they make their own personal choices and compromises. so it's impossible to name "a religion" because every person's religion is slightly different. but if you are looking for examples of religions where people are particularly non-prescriptive then the quakers and the unitarians are pretty cool. see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism - a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" sounds pretty compatible with science to me.... [disclaimer: i'm an atheist (and have a PhD in SCIENCE). but i can see the advantages of community and even, at one particularly hard point in my life, talked to a bunch (what's the collective noun? vibrational mode?) of quakers to see if they would accept me. and frankly they would accept anyone (you gotta love em ;o), but it just didn't feel right...]
- learc83 14y ago
  Most religious people believe that stories from thousands of years ago are basically reliable accounts of what happened. Atheists believe they are not. Both sides have evidence for their beliefs, it depends on which evidence you find most compelling. Science shouldn't be thought of as a noun that you believe in, but as a verb that you do. You don't need to hold a certain belief to be able practice "science" you only need to be able to conduct a repeatable experiment. A person could believe with all his heart that he is 10,000 year old alien, and still be able to form a testable hypothesis and design and conduct a repeatable experiment. You don't have to be a strict empiricist to realize that empiricism is directly useful in day to day life. A theist can use the scientific process even if it means working with models he doesn't believe are wholly correct. Just like you can use Newtonian physics even if you realize it isn't a correct explanation of how things really work--because it is a useful model.
- lotsofcows 14y ago
  The vast majority of C19 science was created by Christians. Much of what they achieved had already been achieved by Muslim scientists a century earlier. Science does not preclude religion. Religion does not preclude science. Although there have been times and places where questioning the religious hegemony has been a bad idea, that's got nothing to do with religion per se.

drharris 14y ago

Not sure if this leads to trolling, but yes, extremely, on both accounts. I'm both a Christian (even something of a creationist) and manage to love science. I admit it's not a common combination (hence my post), but it does exist. :)

unalone 14y ago
I'm curious. What does "something of a creationist" entail? Is this a Deist sort of creationism, or are you closer to biblical literalism?
- drharris 14y ago
  It means I believe at the very least, a creator was responsible for initial life. I also believe that evolution is either a guided process or that the existing evidence can also point to creation. Do not believe in young earth. Do not believe the creator started it and has not intervened since.
  - unalone 14y ago
    Curious! I can't say I agree with that – at least, not the way you just phrased it; could just be linguistic ambiguity – but it's interesting nonetheless. I have to say, that's a mindset I don't usually expect on Hacker News; now I'm wondering just how diverse the beliefset of this community is.
    - learc83 14y ago
      My personal belief is that the earth was created as if it were much older than it actually is, although their really wouldn't be much of a difference to us. For example, if God created the first tree, just snapped his fingers and poof, there it is full sized. Would that tree have tree rings? I think it would.
      - unalone 14y ago
        What would be the point of creating something and then faking its age? Is it a test, for us to ignore empirical evidence and determine that God made it anyway? Or are you suggesting that, perhaps, the world began with us humans, and that the universe pre-humanity was manufactured to seem like it gave rise to is (but it couldn't have, because it started with us)? I'm interested in where such a belief comes from.