# Is Religion and Science Compatible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 11, 2014, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519 "2014-06-11T02:06:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/101 "2014-06-12T10:33:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > However, if there were any entities that were genuinely _supernatural_, science would never be able to detect or explain them. Generally, when people use the term “supernatural” they assume a context of this “supernatural” interacting with natural. That is, we aren’t talking about some “other universe” or “dimension outside of the one we live in” and so on. If you are using “supernatural” in the sense of something that interacts with this universe, then your point neatly sums up why religion and science are not compatible. Either natural principles are always at work, or there is no such thing as natural principles. Science is the effort to uncover natural law. Not only would science be unable to detect or explain some sort of violation of natural law; were such a violation to happen, the incompatibility would be at a much deeper level than intermittent and capricious miraculous events. Science itself would be rendered irrelevant as an approach to understanding our universe. A paradigm which posits natural law but allows for the supernatural is self-contradictory. The increasingly accurate understanding of natural law has created a steady erosion of the miraculous, marginalizing religious explanations and shrinking grand miracles such as creation stories down to haphazard tiny and untestable interventions of the putatively supernatural into the natural world. For this reason, we are in the middle of a broader long term trend from religion as a posit of the miraculous to religion as a schema for interacting with one another. Only by redefining “religion” can we make it compatible with science. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/102 "2014-06-12T13:35:49Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Assuming it’s not too late to reply, I of course mean all of them. But of course, since I was raised R.C., I am primarily thinking of the monotheistic ones.🙂 Are the monotheistic religions compatible? If they are not then why shouldn’t they all be beneath the notice of scientists? It appears that science is not compatible with the 9/11 Religion. 😃 psik ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/103 "2014-06-12T14:04:15Z")
I’m wondering if science can disprove the first Noble Truth of Buddhism: roughly, that life is composed of suffering. Or the Golden Rule that was said by Rabbi Hillel to be the summary of Judaism (“all else is commentary”): that the basis of all morality is reciprocity: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Strikes me that science can and will displace any statement made about the composition of the natural world by a religious tradition, but cannot displace the ethical or philosophical cores of many religions. Though naturally one could disagree with the notion that life is basically suffering or that the Golden Rule is the basis of all morality, it appears to me that one cannot prove it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/104 "2014-06-12T14:37:57Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I’m wondering if science can disprove the first Noble Truth of Buddhism: roughly, that life is composed of suffering. > > Or the Golden Rule that was said by Rabbi Hillel to be the summary of Judaism (“all else is commentary”): that the basis of all morality is reciprocity: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. > > Strikes me that science can and will displace any statement made about the composition of the natural world by a religious tradition, but cannot displace the ethical or philosophical cores of many religions. Though naturally one could disagree with the notion that life is basically suffering or that the Golden Rule is the basis of all morality, it appears to me that one cannot prove it. Can any of these “truths” be falsified? If not, then asking if science can be used to disprove them is nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/105 "2014-06-12T14:57:59Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Can any of these “truths” be falsified? If not, then asking if science can be used to disprove them is nonsense. And yet they have an arguable, though non-empirical, human value, and it sounds like **Malthus** at least is not asking empiricism to disprove them. (_You_ might not buy the argument, natch. But it’s there.) . ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/106 "2014-06-12T15:03:29Z")
> [@andros](#): > > And yet they have an arguable, though non-empirical, human value, and it sounds like **Malthus** at least is not asking empiricism to disprove them. > > (_You_ might not buy the argument, natch. But it’s there.) > . But asking if science can disprove these “truths” is _exactly_ what **Malthus** is doing in that post. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/107 "2014-06-12T15:06:56Z")
:shrug: Maybe so. I read it as his arguing that science is orthogonal to those questions. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/108 "2014-06-12T15:42:42Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Can any of these “truths” be falsified? If not, then asking if science can be used to disprove them is nonsense. Exactly so. Meaning that they are not “incompatible” with science. They are not subject to proof or disproof. I can be a scientist, deeply respect the fundamental value of the scientific method, and at the very same time believe that “life is suffering” and/or that “the foundation of morality is the Golden Rule”. Another scientist, with equal respect for the scientific method, could easily not believe that “life is suffering” or that the foundation of morality is the Golden Rule (preferring, say, some variety of utilitarianism). They could disagree on these things, and science, as a method of inquiry, cannot decide who is right and who is wrong. Ergo, science and religion are not “incompatible”. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/109 "2014-06-12T15:43:57Z")
> [@andros](#): > > :shrug: Maybe so. I read it as his arguing that science is orthogonal to those questions. Yup. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/110 "2014-06-12T16:02:38Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Generally, when people use the term “supernatural” they assume a context of this “supernatural” interacting with natural. And if anybody’s trying to make a claim for empirical evidence of such an alleged interaction, their claim should indeed be empirically investigated and falsified (or verified, except it’s always going to be falsified). My point is just that we shouldn’t thoughtlessly overstate the epistemological scope of rational empiricism. No epistemological framework can provide any information about anything outside itself. (That’s not to imply that there necessarily **is** anything outside rational empiricism, just that if there **were** , rational empiricism could not be used to detect it.) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/111 "2014-06-12T16:04:04Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Exactly so. Meaning that they are not “incompatible” with science. They are not subject to proof or disproof. > > I can be a scientist, deeply respect the fundamental value of the scientific method, and at the very same time believe that “life is suffering”… What does that even mean? I’m alive at this moment, and I don’t think I’m suffering right now. There are millions of ants within a few blocks of my home and they are alive-how many of them do you think are suffering? It’s not so much that statements like these are subject to proof or disproof-it’s that they seem to have the philosophical depth of a bumper sticker, ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/112 "2014-06-12T16:07:25Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Does logic exist? Does the number two exist? The number minus one? Do rights exist? Does dignity exist? They are concepts, and no, I would say that they don’t exist in the sense that we’re using that word. Remember, the subject is religion and claims of a god’s existence. If you’re wanting to use the sense of “exist” that includes concepts, then sure, I’m happy to say that the concept of a god exists. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > While this doesn’t answer your main question, I notice you refer to “reality” where **Kimstu** referred to the natural world. It is question-begging to treat “reality” and “the natural world” as synonymous. Fair enough, I’ll rephrase it: If something never manifests in the natural world, in what way does it “exist”? Talking about something that, even in principle, cannot possibly be detected, is a good subject to talk about after a few beers, along with the idea that we’re all living in the matrix, and that I’m the only conscious entity in the universe and everyone else is just a robot. > [@Kimstu](#): > > When you speak of “what we see of how the universe works” and what “our senses can detect”, you’re inherently assuming that scientific empirical rationality is the only way to know any sort of reality. And while that assumption is a perfectly reasonable one, it’s not provable. But scientific empirical rationality _is_ the only way to know any sort of reality - that itself is a tautology. And while this doesn’t prove that there is no other reality that we don’t have access to, that’s a separate question. The only way to _have knowledge_ is through the tools of science. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/113 "2014-06-12T16:41:28Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What does that even mean? I’m alive at this moment, and I don’t think I’m suffering right now. […] > > It’s not so much that statements like these are subject to proof or disproof-it’s that they seem to have the philosophical depth of a bumper sticker, Well, it’s true that superficial **interpretations** of such statements lack depth. Anybody who thinks that the principle “life is suffering” implies nothing more than a naive claim that “everybody alive is consciously experiencing suffering all the time”, and therefore saying “Hey, I’m alive and I feel okay at the moment” somehow refutes that principle, is definitely splashing in the shallow end of the philosophical pool. The principle “life is suffering” is about the inevitability of negative emotions and habituation to positive emotions. There are a lot of experiences we naturally don’t want in life, first and foremost among them generally being death, and it’s statistically inevitable that we’re going to encounter a lot of them. The fact that we also encounter many experiences we **do** want is not enough to overcome our natural tendencies to dread/unhappiness/frustration/boredom/irritation/misery about experiences we **don’t** want. > [@CurtC](#): > > But scientific empirical rationality is the only way to know any sort of reality - that itself is a tautology. Indeed it is, if we’re using “know” in the sense of scientific knowledge. And, of course, there’s no other sense we **can** use it that is scientifically meaningful. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/114 "2014-06-12T16:59:45Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, it’s true that superficial **interpretations** of such statements lack depth. Anybody who thinks that the principle “life is suffering” implies nothing more than a naive claim that “everybody alive is consciously experiencing suffering all the time”, and therefore saying “Hey, I’m alive and I feel okay at the moment” somehow refutes that principle, is definitely splashing in the shallow end of the philosophical pool. > > The principle “life is suffering” is about the inevitability of negative emotions and habituation to positive emotions. There are a lot of experiences we naturally don’t want in life, first and foremost among them generally being death, and it’s statistically inevitable that we’re going to encounter a lot of them. The fact that we also encounter many experiences we **do** want is not enough to overcome our natural tendencies to dread/unhappiness/frustration/boredom/irritation/misery about experiences we **don’t** want. What you have shown is that “Life is suffering” is a very bad way of imparting the information contained within the latter paragraph, and that by shoving such a concept into such an awkwardly open-ended and vague statement as “Life is suffering” you have created that same shallow pool that you force the scientific process to wade in when you ask it to disprove that selfsame vague statement. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/115 "2014-06-12T17:08:53Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Indeed it is, if we’re using “know” in the sense of scientific knowledge. And, of course, there’s no other sense we **can** use it that is scientifically meaningful. But my complaint is that “scientifically” here is a weasel word. There’s no other sense that it’s meaningful _at all_. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/116 "2014-06-12T17:15:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What you have shown is that “Life is suffering” is a very bad way of imparting the information contained within the latter paragraph Well, you know, imparting information contained in a 70±word paragraph in a three-word statement is intrinsically kind of difficult. Because, of course, the terse statement “Life is suffering” was never intended to be completely self-explanatory in Buddhist philosophy. As with most major philosophical principles, it’s essentially a shorthand reference to a very involved analysis of a quite complicated system of concepts developed over a long period of time. This, I think, is quite well known, which is why most people with some familiarity with philosophy wouldn’t try to interpret such a statement on its superficial face value. If you naively imagined you could meaningfully refute or contradict a famous philosophical principle on a face-value interpretation alone, without even bothering to do a little internet research to inform yourself of the more profound ways in which it’s usually interpreted, it’s not my fault (or the Buddha’s, for that matter). Sorry about your suffering, though. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/117 "2014-06-12T17:28:06Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > But my complaint is that “scientifically” here is a weasel word. There’s no other sense that it’s meaningful _at all_. You’re absolutely right, if “meaningful” connotes rational comprehensibility and consistency in our rational-materialist perspective. And in that perspective, that’s the only thing it can possibly connote. Don’t you see, the tautology is built in. You _cannot_ apply the vocabulary of rational-materialist empiricism to anything that is (allegedly) outside rational-materialist empirical epistemology. You simply end up saying something about that epistemology itself, not about anything outside it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/118 "2014-06-12T17:29:59Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > **Exactly** my point! If empirical detectability is the criterion of existence, then existence is indeed what the supernatural has been defined right out of. > Absolutely true. Although fundamentally circular. When you speak of “what we see of how the universe works” and what “our senses can detect”, you’re inherently assuming that scientific empirical rationality is the only way to know any sort of reality. And while that assumption is a perfectly reasonable one, it’s not provable. > > To say “Science has never detected in the universe anything that isn’t detectable by science” isn’t a discovery so much as a tautology. To attempt to infer from that “There can be nothing in the universe that isn’t detectable by science” is a logical error. Of course we can’t prove scientific empirical rationality - but we can test it, and we do billions of times a day. Lowest p ever! Since detectable in principle means detectable by science - since we can study even internal brain states which we can’t look at under a microscope, your “There can be nothing in the universe that isn’t detectable by science” can be reduced to “There can be nothing in the universe that isn’t detectable” which is unfalsifiable. > [@](#): > > Not odd at all. The supernatural has no place whatsoever in what our rational-materialist epistemology understands existence to be. > > Some people try to force supernatural concepts into a scientific worldview and insist that science should give way to accommodate them. Others just like to drag feeble caricatures of the supernatural into a rational-materialist framework in order to take them apart, like cats bringing half-killed mice indoors to spin out their hunting in comfort. Both of them, IMO, are missing the point. Just like religionists in the early 1800s flocking to science to help them prove that God exists (and getting way disappointed) the spiritualists of 100 years ago tried to use science to show that their stuff existed - and got equally disappointed. They mostly went to explanations for things they didn’t show existed to be explained. The reason that the supernatural has no place in our worldview is that there is nothing there to have a place. This depends a bit on what you mean by a scientific explanation. I think of one that applies to all things under its purview - the laws of motion applies to cannon balls and feathers. And it applies over all time. What I don’t consider a scientific explanation is one where you just write down what you see. Though this is still scientific. Naturalists collected samples of plants and animals, but didn’t explain them - Darwin did that. Now, if we found that F=ma except on Thursdays in Sheboygan where F = ma/2 we’d have a problem. I sense that you think that there would inevitably be a law explaining this. I’d think that a list of towns and dates where the laws of physics change is not much of an explanation. So I’d define the supernatural as exceptions to laws. None exist of course, as far as we know, and we have lots of data. Here is a programming example. I can write a spacewars game where the ships are controlled by code simulating Newton’s laws. But I can write in a hack for myself which gives me special powers. (It’s been done.) In terms of the game, my ship is supernatural. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/119 "2014-06-12T17:37:35Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What you have shown is that “Life is suffering” is a very bad way of imparting the information contained within the latter paragraph, and that by shoving such a concept into such an awkwardly open-ended and vague statement as “Life is suffering” you have created that same shallow pool that you force the scientific process to wade in when you ask it to disprove that selfsame vague statement. To examine it we’d have to split the concept into scientific and philosophical pieces. They’d have to define life and then define suffering. If they do that we can scientifically examine the scientific part. What is likely to happen is that anecdotes of suffering will be used to “prove” the statement. Kind of like “God is love” being proven by happy believers, while ignoring the unhappy ones. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519/120 "2014-06-12T17:38:55Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, you know, imparting information contained in a 70±word paragraph in a three-word statement is intrinsically kind of difficult. > > Because, of course, the terse statement “Life is suffering” was never intended to be completely self-explanatory in Buddhist philosophy. As with most major philosophical principles, it’s essentially a shorthand reference to a very involved analysis of a quite complicated system of concepts developed over a long period of time. > > This, I think, is quite well known, which is why most people with some familiarity with philosophy wouldn’t try to interpret such a statement on its superficial face value. If you naively imagined you could meaningfully refute or contradict a famous philosophical principle on a face-value interpretation alone, without even bothering to do a little internet research to inform yourself of the more profound ways in which it’s usually interpreted, it’s not my fault (or the Buddha’s, for that matter). Sorry about your suffering, though. Perhaps I think that shoving multi-page philosophies into 3 word bumper stickers can only lead to confusion when the bumper sticker is presented to an outsider instead of the philosophy itself, especially when all three words of said statement are open to _very_ wide interpretation by anyone not already well versed in Buddhist philosophy. I understand the underlying philosophy those three words are _supposed_ to represent, and I think they represent that philosophy very poorly…but I do not already subscribe to that philosophy. You, on the other hand, seem to assume that I am ignorant of the philosophy and that if I were well versed in Buddhist philosophy I would find that shortcut statement to be more “profound”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-religion-and-science-compatible/690519.md?page=7)