Question: Can science and religion coexist?
George Church:I think that while science and religion . . .
Science has very definite faith components, and most religions don’t stick to faith. They venture out into making predictions about our physical world. They don’t just say there’s something that is completely unconnected to us. They say actually it affects a lot. And when they do that they merge.
We know that there is a connection between our feelings and our brain. Our brain is something that we can study scientifically. So I think they can and should coexist.
There’s a lot of faith expressed by scientists about science. It’s kind of an act of faith that science is a good thing. We don’t know that for sure. We may not know that millions of years from now. And by good things, even phrasing goodness in a scientific context like survival of the species would be something that probably scientists would agree is a good thing. We won’t know whether science is a good thing for the survival of species rather than having entirely faith-based. So I think these things are fair. They are solvable. They are addressable. We can bring them together, but it requires less extreme views, or what would benefit from less extreme views.
Recorded on: July 6, 2007
Discuss
John Zawacki on January 20, 2008, 7:02 AM
Education is the key to solving most problems. But religion should be taught as religion not science. In my opinion widely agreed upon scientific hypotheses should be taught when considering unanswered questions, not folk story based religious concepts. But science is strong enough to handle competition from religious ideas about the formation of the Universe. These folk stories can be discussed just as briefly as the scientific hypotheses are, in any general science course. Does anyone teach a Big Bang Class anyway?
John Zawacki on January 20, 2008, 12:02 PM
Education is the key to solving most problems. But religion should be taught as religion not science. In my opinion widely agreed upon scientific hypotheses should be taught when considering unanswered questions, not folk story based religious concepts. But science is strong enough to handle competition from religious ideas about the formation of the Universe. These folk stories can be discussed just as briefly as the scientific hypotheses are, in any general science course. Does anyone teach a Big Bang Class anyway?
Mark Szlazak on July 27, 2009, 2:03 AM
It’s not a good dynamic in the U.S. at all and most of what Church says is silly, uninformed and reinforces superstition. Church says that if we can’t rule out an intelligent designer then we should teach that in science classes! He’s smoking something. Dude, you can’t rule out that aliens from K-Pax didn’t design us either so you want that talk about in science classes as well. How about beliefs that a celestial teapot circles the sun. Maybe that’s another one for Church’s science class. Now when you go over to god then you move into the supernatural and by definition you don’t get an explanation because miracles can’t be explained that’s why they are called miracles.
Lee Bob Black on August 18, 2009, 10:26 AM
Steven Pinker and and George Church on a NOVA scienceNOW segment, Public Genomes; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0406/01.html
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