Christianity: Friend or foe to science?

[Unknown Soldier]

How does one harm science? What or who is being harmed?

I don't know why there would be any question over the possibility of science being harmed. A notorious example of such harm done to science is that of Lysenkoism. From Wikipedia:

More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.

As the old saying goes: Those who don't know the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.

I get the gist of what you're getting at, but framing science/religion as being in opposition sets science up as being ideological, or purposeful. There is no intent to undermine religion by scientists, or achieve a particular goal. Undermining religion just happens by coincidence when we methodically investigate reality.

I'm asking if Christianity is a friend or foe to science. Feel free to answer any way you see it.

So framing the problem as you're doing is problematic because it reinforces the idea that science has some form of agency, and is actually aiming to do something. This can't be the case because science is a methodology, not an institution.

Just understand science as the work of people to understand nature. Again, I see no reason for confusion.

Scientists have an aim in mind when they perform science, science itself can't have an aim. So religion can't harm science...

If people are persecuted for their making discoveries that upset the apple cart of politically powerful religions, then religion can do a lot of harm to science. In fact, it has happened.

...but it can impede someone from trying to perform science that it doesn't like.

Which is doing harm to science.

On the other hand, religion can encourage science that it does like. So is it harming or helping science?

I'm asking the questions. Can you please answer them?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Anyway, my main point in this discussion is that Christian apologists often misrepresent atheists claiming they deny any kind of harmony between science and religion. I don't know of any atheist who argues that there is no such harmony.

See P. Z. Myers and Jerry Coyne, among others. Coyne even wrote a book on the subject.

Do they claim there is no harmony at all between science and religion? If so, then I must disagree with them.

 

[rousseau]

How does one harm science? What or who is being harmed?

I don't know why there would be any question over the possibility of science being harmed. A notorious example of such harm done to science is that of Lysenkoism. From Wikipedia:

More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Soviet Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had been Lysenko's mentor, but later denounced him, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.

As the old saying goes: Those who don't know the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.

I get the gist of what you're getting at, but framing science/religion as being in opposition sets science up as being ideological, or purposeful. There is no intent to undermine religion by scientists, or achieve a particular goal. Undermining religion just happens by coincidence when we methodically investigate reality.

I'm asking if Christianity is a friend or foe to science. Feel free to answer any way you see it.

So framing the problem as you're doing is problematic because it reinforces the idea that science has some form of agency, and is actually aiming to do something. This can't be the case because science is a methodology, not an institution.

Just understand science as the work of people to understand nature. Again, I see no reason for confusion.

Scientists have an aim in mind when they perform science, science itself can't have an aim. So religion can't harm science...

If people are persecuted for their making discoveries that upset the apple cart of politically powerful religions, then religion can do a lot of harm to science. In fact, it has happened.

...but it can impede someone from trying to perform science that it doesn't like.

Which is doing harm to science.

On the other hand, religion can encourage science that it does like. So is it harming or helping science?

I'm asking the questions. Can you please answer them?

You haven't really addressed anything in my post, which highlights a fundamental problem with how you're framing the question. If you want me to answer your question then you're going to have to address it's inconsistencies first

 

[rousseau]

Just understand science as the work of people to understand nature. Again, I see no reason for confusion.

I'll try to put my point in different terms, and maybe that'll make it a little more comprehensible.

If you want to ask something like - 'Is Christianity the foe of people who want to understand nature' - then sure, maybe it is. But the scope of what science has done throughout history is a lot broader than that.

If you want to anthropomorphize science as being a purposeful force for good, then you need to grapple with scientific ideas and investigation leading to World War II, the Holocaust, the Atom Bomb (aka the ongoing threat of Nuclear War), and even arguably Global Warming (Pakistan under water, severe drought across Africa, no big deal really). I could tack on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on geo-politics, but I think I've made my point.

So is Christianity the foe of people who are interested in understanding nature, and living their life in accordance with that understanding? Sure. But asking if Christianity is the foe of Science is a much different, much more complicated, and also very important question.

And the above is an important distinction because we seem to be in an era where science is wrongfully revered, rather than understood for what it is.

 

[Learner]

...

The quick dismissal was simply because the neurologist was also a Christian.

No, it was because he has a history of allowing his religious beliefs to bias his scientific research.

In my opinion, I think your opinions (plural) of this particular individual has an undertone of atheist bias.

Bilby Is correct about my response while you mischaracterized it. Also, Michael Egnor is a raving loon.

Well, you are bound to be in agreement here, but as I previously thought in my previous post - it's 'you'... who's been doing the mischaracterisation - evident in the statement I quoted of yours in the above, describing Michael Egnor.

 

[excreationist]

What some creationists say about this:

Do Creationists Reject Science?

Anyone familiar with the creation/evolution debate should know that anti-creationists love to lob the accusation that creationists are “anti-science” or that they “reject science.”

answersingenesis.org

Also causing confusion is the simple distinction some try to make between “faith” and “science.” Answers in Genesis believes this dichotomy is in error, because some form of faith (in a religion) is required to believe in creation or evolution. Both creation and evolution make claims about an unrepeatable past that was not observed by humans. Thus both creation and evolution fall under the category of historical science. This is distinctly different from operational (observational) science, which is a methodological system governing directly observed, repeatable results (such as laboratory experiments).

Ken Ham also talked about this in his debate with Bill Nye.

 

[DBT]

Christianity represents special creation. Science has found no evidence for special creation. There is a conflict between special creation and natural evolution.

 

[steve_bank]

Well, playing devil's advocate.

If an all powerful god created the univrese maybe he, she, or it intetainally left no direct evidence.

 

[Learner]

Christianity represents special creation. Science has found no evidence for special creation. There is a conflict between special creation and natural evolution.

In physics, and all that's associated through 'theories', - we have as much evidence (or the lack of..), by the 'same inability' to produce realtime tests, like for example : not being able to "reproduce" abiogenesis from dead matter in the lab etc..

Funny enough, there are believers who believe evolution is a designed process, branching off slightly into a different conceptual conversation (ideologies may be similar among individuals of a group, but not necessarily quite the same).

 

[steve_bank]

Experiments have produced amino acids. Abiogenesis has not been expermentaly demonstrated, but so far there is no science that precludes it. There is evidence that points to it.

That thearth was created by the Abrahamic god is a subjective conslusion.

Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Miller–Urey experiment[1] (or Miller experiment[2]) is a famous chemistry experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time (1952) to be present in the atmosphere of the early, prebiotic Earth, in order to test the hypothesis of the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and an electric arc (the latter simulating hypothesized lightning).

At the time, it supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that the hypothesized conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors. One of the most famous experiments of all time, it is considered to be groundbreaking, and to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis. It was performed in 1953 by Stanley Miller, supervised by Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, and published the following year.[3][4][5]

After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in the genetic code.[6] More recent evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a composition different from the gas used in the Miller experiment, but prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of simple-to-complex compounds—such as cyanide—under varying conditions.[7]

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

No one has used any W words yet. Christianity is at its foundation nothing but woo and woo worship, at least generally speaking. Perhaps there are christians who don't hold to all the woo and see their gospel protagonist as just an example of how to live. They would certainly be in the christian minority and I've never met any. So whether christians are or are not anti-science depends on the flavor of christianity. Fundamentally, however, woo and science do not mix and there is no worship involved in science. Science and christianity, if the superstitious nonsensical claims made by religious christianity are included, would constitute an immiscible amalgam.

 

[bilby]

Well, playing devil's advocate.

If an all powerful god created the univrese maybe he, she, or it intetainally left no direct evidence.

If so, religion is bunk - a bunch of unevidenced guesswork that has almost zero chance of bearing the slightest resemblance to reality. If you believe that god left no evidence of its existence, then that's the end of your reasonable beliefs; Anything else you believe about god(s) is by definition baseless.

If there's no evidence, then all dogma must be pulled from someone's arse. If there is evidence, then the people who have it need to show it to us.

Mostly the various Abrahamic sects resolve this by declaring their scriptures to be not just evidence, but all the evidence anyone could ever need. Though some sects discard bits, and some sects add bits on, and almost none of it is universally agreed upon as to either words or meanings, which rather undermines that position.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Both science and Christianity are broad terms. Christianity is a spectrum of beliefs and practices across denominations and cult institutions. More fundamentalist denominations reject many scientific conclusions and teach, sometimes extort, their followers into doing the same. In the past this has included doing things thru dictators, local dictators, and more recently legal frameworks, but less so as more liberal and secular people gain in population as more pluralism is present as well. To the extent that religion blocks people from scientific inquiry and scientific experiment and practice, scientific progress is also blocked because those religionists being blocked in theory could utilize that time to add to progress whilst standing on the shoulders of giants. The loss of people and time is a loss of potential.

 

[DBT]

Christianity represents special creation. Science has found no evidence for special creation. There is a conflict between special creation and natural evolution.

In physics, and all that's associated through 'theories', - we have as much evidence (or the lack of..), by the 'same inability' to produce realtime tests, like for example : not being able to "reproduce" abiogenesis from dead matter in the lab etc..

Funny enough, there are believers who believe evolution is a designed process, branching off slightly into a different conceptual conversation (ideologies may be similar among individuals of a group, but not necessarily quite the same).

Yet there is evidence for star formation from clouds of gas, there is evidence that planets form, that they are not a special creation, and there is evidence that life has emerged and evolved on Earth, that stars and planets, animals and plants are not a special creation but a part of natural processes.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

To the extent that religion blocks people from scientific inquiry and scientific experiment and practice, scientific progress is also blocked because those religionists being blocked in theory could utilize that time to add to progress whilst standing on the shoulders of giants. The loss of people and time is a loss of potential.

This is a gigantic difference, again generally speaking, between the two institutions of religion and science. Christians spend oodles of time masturbating about their souls and how they are going to live out eternity with their magic maker. Is that a wholesome vision of the human future or is that the epitome of selfishness? Some christians obviously think about the human future and care to direct their behavior accordingly but fundamentally it doesn't matter. When they check out and go live with their master it's game over because the most important thing is having gained a heavenly reward. Quite childish.

 

[excreationist]

Experiments have produced amino acids.

From a creationist-

Origin of life: the chirality problem

The chirality of the chemical building blocks of life is a huge problem for origin of life scenarios as only optically pure forms such as left-handed amino acid

creation.com

All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’.

But those experiments would make a mixture of both….

 

[bilby]

Experiments have produced amino acids.

From a creationist-

Origin of life: the chirality problem

The chirality of the chemical building blocks of life is a huge problem for origin of life scenarios as only optically pure forms such as left-handed amino acid

creation.com

All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’.

But those experiments would make a mixture of both….

I was planning to build a house out of bricks, but unfortunately the local brickworks also manufactures concrete blocks, so I wasn't able to...

 

[Learner]

Experiments have produced amino acids. Abiogenesis has not been expermentaly demonstrated, but so far there is no science that precludes it. There is evidence that points to it.

Yes, that seems to be how it works, i.e. All theoretical ideas, evidently points to the aim of an initial quest, even when it 'hasn't' been experimentally demonstrated. You could include, where you mentioned on another thread, 'the Big Bang is a mathematical philosophy, which can never be 'experimentally tested''.

That thearth was created by the Abrahamic god is a subjective conslusion.

People don't usually become Christians (if at all) just because of some physics idea, although... having said that, there have been a few people converting into Christianity, while they're already working in their respected fields of science disciplines - testing the 'tangible' things I assume, directly observing and being able to experiment repeatedly.

A crucial element of understanding regarding the biblical belief, is the emotional psyche of humans. Contrary to what some of our atheist friends have often used to argue with for years i.e. 'putting down' the importance of emotions, which they have instead, portrayed the false impression, that believers hang on to "feely good emotions" fantasy while "inhibiting' the intellectual reasoning ability, stepping outside reality.

To be brief - the emotions and all the psychological aspects that comes under it (compassion and fear), also how someone, who makes a testimony, expresses himself or herself (as in the bible) - this is imo a crucial element - how we can understand and recognise truth; by the psychological expression and consequences, as they're witnessing and testfying etc..

 

[excreationist]

Experiments have produced amino acids.

From a creationist-

Origin of life: the chirality problem

The chirality of the chemical building blocks of life is a huge problem for origin of life scenarios as only optically pure forms such as left-handed amino acid

creation.com

All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’.

But those experiments would make a mixture of both….

I was planning to build a house out of bricks, but unfortunately the local brickworks also manufactures concrete blocks, so I wasn't able to...

It's about a somewhat random process.... either the amino acids (or whatever) came from a pool of left-handed molecules - or they were lucky with a "racemic" mixture.

 

[bilby]

You could include, where you mentioned on another thread, 'the Big Bang is a mathematical philosophy, which can never be 'experimentally tested''.

The big bang is an ongoing phenomenon that we can directly observe today.