week 2 discussion post #1

On the topic of Doing Science & Doing Theology


Reading through everybody's comments, and some of the longer posts on the discussion board, makes me wish I had more of a religious background or wealth of knowledge about religion to make use of in this discussion. As it stands, I'm fairly ignorant about both science and religion (imho), so its really enjoyable to read everybody's perspectives on the topics raised.

Anyways, as this subject is about questioning not only others', but your own beliefs, this post does not necessarily reflect my own personal beliefs, but is more of a "What happens if I take this attitude?" kind of post.

On Larissa's comment:
"Sociologists describe science as a 'human activity.' For some, science is nothing more than what scientists do. What do you think about this idea?"

If science can be defined as a human activity, so can religion. If humans didn't exist, would religion exist? Or even science for that matter?

Science and religion, like "gravity", are merely terms for an idea or system of ideas that we have come to develop or learn about, aren't they? This week's lecture suggests to me that the two approach both categories in a similar manner - they believe something exists, then go about trying to prove that it exists, so they can 'educate' or inspire others to believe as well.

So maybe religion is just a branch of science. A branch that has developed so far into itself that it's now its own tree. Like the first audio clip mentions "When you're at the cutting edge [of science], you don't know which facts are the good ones.." - and that's true. If you've only just discovered something, you play around with many theories in your head, and you stick with what appears to make the most sense.

The foundation of all this is that people will believe in because it makes sense to them.

Atheists don't have faith in God because they can't believe that there's a higher power out there. Christians don't accept the beliefs of (for e.g.) Hindus because they can't believe that there can be more than one all-powerful God (which, as far as I'm aware, is not Hinduism - there's one God but He appears in many many forms, yes? Somebody to confirm pls? :) )

Maybe that's what happened thousands of years ago with religious beliefs. People experienced strange phenomena - or perhaps it wasn't *strange*, it was just *new* experiences - and then they began to hypothesise. Somebody came up with a theory that made sense to the majority, so they ran with it, and now it's spread all over the world, albeit in a variety of forms.

And a small repsonse to Ariella's last post, about how:

"new paradigms can be added to the old ones, so that religion can still be something ancient and passed down, but can also be something which is rendered meaningful in today’s world of modernity."

Maybe our problem is that we view religion as an 'ancient' object, just because it hasn't changed much over time - or rather, our concept of 'ancient' and 'modern'. I mean, when I was 12, the 1990's were 'modern'. Now at 19, the 2000's are my current 'modern'.

I'll end my post with a question(s) that may or may not make sense - but if the world viewed both Religion and Science as 'modern' belief systems, do you think there would be less conflict between the two? Is it even possible to think of religion as a 'modern' concept?