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Re: Science and Religion
Read, Dwight ANTHRO (Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU)
Sun, 8 Oct 1995 00:43:00 PDT
Tomaso writes:
"I stand more-or-less with Jay and Dwight on this one. There is, in science
and religion, something called faith which has to do with believing received
knowledge without personally testing it. For example, most scientists
believe in the laws of thermodynamics, but have never consciously tested
them. "
Tomaso is half right. Most of us accept the laws of thermodynamics on a kind
of faith--the faith that someone HAS tested it and found it consistent with
empirical observation. Religion, by its very nature, is based upon faith
that is NOT subjected to test and accepted only when it is found to be in
acordance with empirical observation. Christians take it on faith that Jesus
was the Son of God and was resurrected; they do NOT assume that at some point
early on in the development of Christianity someone actually tested this
hypothesis and demonstrated that it is consistent with empirical observation,
fits in with theories about how the universe is structered via structuring
properties that are themselves part of the universe and observable, etc.
Trying ot find supeficial similarities between relition and science is, as
Jay comments, not very insightful (except from the perspetive of how
conceptual systems are constructed, adhered to, etc.).
D. Read
READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU
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