Originally Posted by Jonathan Fisher

I have often wondered why there is so much animosity between the “mainstream fringe” religious groups and science? It seems that a great deal of religious folks reject the theory of evolution as false immediately, thinking that it, for some reason, precludes the idea of a created world. What I don’t understand is why the religious people are so incendiary about their approach—those that I have met tend to be extreme in their approach: “Evolution is the most un-christian idea ever proposed.” They seem to view those that “believe” in evolution are deluded and hate God.

What I don’t understand is why this is. To me it seems that one has nothing to do with the other! I view the theory of evolution as extrapolation. You will have to pardon my use of mathematical ideas here, since I am an engineering major and tend to like the maths…. Basically how I see it is that scientists have been studying fossils and the like for many years and have stood back to take a look at them. They have lined them up according to when they were living forms and have found a definite trend. They did not and do not do this with the preconceived notion of “proving god wrong” or anything of the sort – religion doesn’t enter into this process at all. They merely organize the data and step back and look at what they have. They see that there is a definite trend through the years—from generation to generation to generation (ad nauseam) there are slight changes. This is not just true of humans, but true of all forms of creatures.

Then scientists begin to extrapolate. They look to explain things that are outside of the data set. It was with this same manner that absolute zero was determined—no scientist has ever been able to directly experience absolute zero, but we know precisely where it lies because there is a definite linear pattern in the data that we have. We are able to use the information that we have to draw a line to accurately model the information that we have and to predict that which we cannot yet test. The same is true of the evolutionary chain—scientists don’t just dream up what may have happened millions of years ago. They attempt to model (based on the information that we do have) what may have been many years ago.

Part of the beauty of science is that it is self-correcting. If a model is shown to be wrong, the theories are changed to be more accurate. For instance, for many years people thought that the acceleration due to gravity was a constant, 9.81 m/s^2 or thereabouts. As measurements became more accurate, it was shown that that was not true. Therefore scientists did more investigation and came up with a fairly complicated formula for determining the acceleration due to gravity (and a much more general formula, at that). As such, as more fossils are discovered and whatnot, the model will either be confirmed or change to fit the data. The more data we gather, the more accurate the model can be. And ultimately that is what science is about in my opinion—creating models that are based on reality. Many many moons ago people may have believed that the earth was flat. When they drew the earth, maybe it was drawn as being a flat surface. However, as more data was received, people began to realize that, hey, the earth was curved!

How religion can be (it isn’t always this way) is this: it attempts to draw the line and to make all the data fit it. That who tend to be incredibly zealous with their religion view science as an attack on their belief system and that is precisely what I don’t understand. Nowhere does science (more precisely, the theory of evolution) say that there is or isn’t a god. Science is about gathering data and attempting to model it. It states nothing about where life started, whether a creator did it or not. Science merely tries to follow the trail of evidence to wherever it may lead us—scientists don’t have preconceived notions of where it came from. If, for some, it leads to a Creator, great! But I don’t see why they feel that science (in particular, evolution) is evil and anti-Christian.

Then I ask why there is such a conflict between the teachings of creationism vs. the teachings of evolution. Evolution is scientific in the sense that it shows the data (fossils and whatnot) and shows the current theory for our model. Creationism, as I have found, is much the opposite. It shows what it proposes to be the absolute truth—no questions allowed. Creationists tend to want to prove that evolution is false, whereas evolution does not want to prove that creationism is false. There is no overlap from evolution to creationism and that is why I question why there is a perceived attack on Christianity.

Yes, it is long. Hopefully it isn’t too attacking. I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s beliefs or to say that one person’s beliefs aren’t any more or less valid than anyone else’s.

Originally Posted by IanC

Religion teaches one way is correct and nothing else is, and the other ways are therefore evil.

Originally Posted by IanC

The problem is that while science is self correcting, religion is not. Religion teaches one way is correct and nothing else is, and the other ways are therefore evil.

Originally Posted by Izmir Stinger

Better to say that religious thinking is built on a doctrine based knowledge system, which unlike an empirically based knowledge system, has no built in mechanism for review or revision. So change comes slowly, if at all. This is especially true of those doctrines which purport to be revealed, where inquiry and questioning can be taken as blasphemous against the supernatural entity which did the revealing.

You can make the same point without compromising your argument on the basis of an over-generalised strawman premise.

Originally Posted by sbaii

The only reasons I can see why people in the 21st century still hold to a literalist interpretation of the Bible is fear of eternal punishment and ignorance .
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Originally Posted by Jukia

My vote would be ignorance along with a total lack of any intellectual curiosity. Thinking for oneself is, after all, hard work.

Originally Posted by IanC

Science, in a way, can be viewed similarly. Theories rise and fall in acceptance, based on evidence, but there is an important difference. This is that all theories have built into their very definition the possibility that they are wrong. They are descriptions that are based on current evidence and accept that new evidence can prove them wrong. Since all theories are like this, there is no problem, and change can happen quickly.

Perhaps if all religions had this same principle, then there would be fewer problems.