• Question: Do you think religion is a important part of science?

    Asked by francisthemad to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Suzanne Harvey

      Suzanne Harvey answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I think this is a really interesting point, and studying evolution I find it comes up a lot. It’s a very personal thing really – I’m not religious, but I don’t feel that being religious would stop me from doing this kind of work. Evolution is by definition a process – it doesn’t try to explain how life began, just how it has changed since then, so in that sense it is compatible with a whole range of beliefs.

      The philosophical point here also really interests me – having thought about this a lot during my research it seems to me that science and religion are both trying to get at the same question of human origins, why we behave the way we do, how we came to be this way etc. So my answer to your question would be yes, religion is an important part of science because it is so interlinked, but everyone will have their own opinion on this 🙂

    • Photo: Renata Medeiros

      Renata Medeiros answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I am religious and for me religion is an important part of my life but I wouldn’t say that religion is an important part of science in the sense that it gives scientific answers. I believe religion gives answers about who we are and what meaning to give our lives but it doesn’t tell us scientific facts (such as how does our body work or how old is the universe), which is what we look for in science. I think it is wrong to look in religious books for scientific answers! In the same way, I think there is a limit to how much science can tell us about ourselves – for instance, we can see images of a brain working and we can know the chemicals involved in each of our emotions but we can’t actually see the thoughts or the emotions through science!
      I agree with Suzanne that science and religion are interlinked in the sense that we can use both to understand more about ourselves and the world we live in but I think they do so in different ways, so I believe they complement each other.

    • Photo: Joanna Bryson

      Joanna Bryson answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Absolutely not. You can study religion scientifically, and you can have religious beliefs about science. But religion is ultimately about faith, and science is ultimately about evidence, so they are not the same.

    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Hiya,

      I think scientists and relgious scholars actually have a lot more in common than people tend to think…they are both people who look at the stars, inside themselves, and at the world around them and ask questions about why we exist, what the point of life is, where the universie came from…

      Historically, some of the best science was done by religious scholars ( e.g. Lots of discoveries in maths, physics and astronomy were made by Islamic scholars over a thousand years ago….e.g. did you know ‘algebra’ is an arabic word).

      All the religions I know about place a great emphasis on the importantof doing science and seeking out new knowledge – many describe it as a spiritual exercise in itself…I agree. Unfortunately, I think as the pace of scientific discovery has increased so fast, many religious scholars have been unable to keep-pace with the discoveries. If they cannot understand them, they cannot reflect on how that increases their appreciation of our place in the world, and they cannot look at their relgious texts with the persective a better understanding of the world provides….this means therefore a gap has emerged between science and religion, and religous scholars are not up to datewith science. Understandably, many people who love science see reglious teaching as incompatible, especially when relgious leaders say things which scientists know are inaccurate (like evolution did not happen, or the world is a few thousand ears old).

      I reckon some of the most naturally spiritual people are scientists (in the sense that they are deep people who think about big questions the most and care about making the world a better place).

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