Essay talk:The false dichotomy of accommodationism and antitheism

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Very interesting. Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 01:47, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

My take[edit]

Science= speculation based on observations of the natural world

religion and philosophy= speculation not necessarily based on observations of the natural world
Ergo, totally compatible. Unless I'm not making any sense wahtsoever (it happens :( )--User:Brxbrx/sig 02:37, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Philosophy deals with facts that necessarily had to be true. Mathematics is a branch of philosophy in many respects, and illustrates the concept well by pointing out that adding two to two makes four and only four. It could not have been five, for example. Science deals with determining facts that did not necessarily have to be true. The speed of light is 299 792 458 meters per second, but it did not have to be, it could have been 235 543 556 meters per second. In this respect they can be separate and co-existing. However, religion does make statements about reality when, for example, it ascribes certain events to miracles or states that prayers will be answered. In this sense religion is certainly not compatible with science unless it is willing to accept that it is not necessary, from the point of view of reality, for its predictions to be true. Otherwise no matter how obscure a religion attempts to make an assertion or how far it tries to distance its predictions from reality it will eventually find its statements of fact coming into conflict with the facts as determined by the scientific method - be it life after death, the origin of life or the origin of the universe. Valjean (talk) 02:48, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
*cough* creationism *cough* ТyTalk. 02:50, 14 June 2011 (UTC)