Personal Perspective on the Science Versus Religion Debate
In Alfred North Whitehead’s “Religion and Science”, he nullifies the argument between the religious factions and scientists of the world by eliminating all grounds for the argument. Although debated to the “ends of the Earth”, Whitehead points out that these two subjects are actually based upon events that are unrelated. He states “Science is concerned with the general conditions which are observed to regulate phenomenon; whereas religion is wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and aesthetic values”(Whitehead, Religion and Science). Through his definition of both viewpoints, he is able to explain one will never see the other, thus no argument exists.
This topic is quite personal for me at this point in my life. I have always lived as if everything could be explained. I tortured myself with the whole idea of “heaven”. I was scared that not believing would sentence me to eternal death, but my logical side just couldn’t fathom the idea. My religious side was in a “fight to the death” war with my logical side. However, my internal war is now over. The battle is done. And, yes one side did come out waving the proverbial white flag.
To make a long story short, eighteen months ago my husband suffered a broken neck due to a swimming accident. We as a family had been in debate over our family’s relationship with God. As we discovered, ones religion is often decided during the darkest times of our lives. It was at that time we discovered that there was something more to life than money, possessions, or “facts”. The specialists couldn’t explain what had saved Shane’s life. Their science failed them. Luckily, the neurologist was a Christian, and her only explanation was God wasn’t finished with him yet. We realized that for once there was no other answer. Without hesitation, my husband and I both committed our lives to serving the Lord Jesus Christ to the best of our ability.
To get back to the point of this, as a new Christian I thought the Science vs. Religion debate would be completely over for me. It isn’t. I still catch myself trying to explain things that don’t need to be explained. I have spent many restless nights fighting my guilty conscience for doubting my faith.
In conclusion, it is possible for science and religion to overlap. Although Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial claims that creationism doesn’t conflict with evolution, it doesn’t hold with a religion that takes the biblical stories literally. Moreover, I defended my thesis, there is some overlap between science and religion and these overlaps cause conflict that make it necessary to reject either science or religion, by using Dawkins’ and Plantinga’s arguments. I said earlier that I agree with Dawkins that both science and religion provide explanation, consolation, and uplift to society. However, there is only conflict when science and religion attempt to explain human existence. Lastly, I use Plantinga’s argument for exclusivists to show that such conflict means that science and religion are not compatible. It demands a rejection t either science or religion.
...and his reoccurring flashbacks. The brutality of war robs Paul of his friends and his youth. War takes away Paul's humanity causing him to become lonesome and inhumane like a wild animal. He discovers the truth that all men are following the orders of their superiors and have nothing to do with laying the foundation of the war. Remarque reveals war to be a treacherous and blood-thirsty thing that soldiers must deal with. War's calamities are life-changing and hair-raising, causes one to lose hope and become fearful of death. War has an ever-lasting effect on its participants and raises many concerns with everyday society. Remarque displays the horrors of war to modulate his readers into anti-war pacifists. One day, Remarque may get through to leaders and may very well cease any more world wars from happening due to his nefarious novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
The novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque describes the psychological and physical battles of young soldiers such as the main character Paul Baumer who was pressured by the spirit of nationalism and his school master into joining the German army during World War I. In the beginning the young students are glowing with enthusiasm with the honor to be trusted with serving their nation in a time of crisis. The inexperienced soldiers soon loose their innocence and eagerness as they watch the new technological capabilities of the twentieth century painfully kill their comrades one by one and in the end become weary, burnt out, rootless, and hopeless. Over time the young soldiers, through experience, begin to realize their years of schooling are completely useless in a society filled with war. They were taught the basics of the world of work, duty, culture, and progress when the only knowledge they need is how to survive. The author, through his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, attempts to portray the vivid horrors and the raw nature of war and to change the popular belief of war as an idealistic and romantic character. This is evident through the barriers placed between Paul and the relationship with his parents and the rest of society who still view war as glamorous and cherish his war stories as though he were telling them a fairy tale. The novel also attempts to explain the purposes of war and its uselessness in society. The ultimate question that Erich Remarque raises in his novel is what did a whole generation give up their lives and precious innocence to accomplish. All Quiet on the Western Front is a story not of Germans, but of men, who even though “they frequently escape shells, are destroyed by the war”. This novel have could easily been transformed into the tale of a Frenchmen, an Englishmen, or an American fighting in World War I.
In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the picture of World War I to the reader. This book is the story of Paul Baumer, who with his classmates recruits in the German Army of World War I. This anti-war novel is an excellent book because through the experiences of Paul Baumer, I am able to actually feel like I'm in the war. It is a very useful piece of literature, which increases the readers' knowledge on how the war affected the people at the time setting. By reading this book, one is drawn into the actual events of the war, and can feel the abyss of death. I believe this piece is very well written. It is entirely simple, lacking any bias remarks, or false patriotism. In this book, Remarque just gives the reader the impression of the war. His great details and way of wording things is incredible. In this book, Remarque is able to portray the nightmare on European battlefields.
Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel set in World War I, centers around the changes brought by the war onto one young German soldier. During his time in the war, Remarque’s protagonist, Paul Baumer, changes from a rather innocent romantic young man to a hardened and somewhat caustic veteran. The story also focuses on the lives of Baumer’s comrades. They all begin by patriotically marching off to join the army. However, their visions of the glories of war are soon swept away with horror as true friends die in the battlefield. The soldiers go in fresh from school, knowing nothing except the environment of hopeful youth. At nineteen and twenty, they come to a premature and distorted maturity with the war...their only home. Throughout the length of the novel, Paul learns of the hardship war brings. He learns the destructiveness of war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a deep, multi-faceted story that, on its face, is nothing more than a tale of war. Examining it closer, however, reveals an in-depth insight into the mind of a soldier, manifested in the character of Paul Baumer. Over the course of the story, Baumer struggles to find himself as his views on the war evolve and mature. He comes to understand that what he once was and could have been, has been crushed by drill and combat. Baumer's change in outlook on the war that it is an evil done on society is manifested in two events: His two weeks of leave and his stabbing of the French soldier. These cement his belief that the war is not heroic but steals the lives of innocent people, not simply through death but, more importantly, emotionally and mentally. These events primarily reinforce his beliefs and feelings on the war.
Throughout history, conflicts between faith and reason took the forms of religion and free thinking. In the times of the Old Regime, people like Copernicus and Galileo were often punished for having views that contradicted the beliefs of the church. The strict control of the church was severely weakened around the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Old Regime ended. As the church's control decreased, science and intellectual thinking seemed to advance. While the people in the world became more educated, the church worked harder to maintain its influential position in society and keep the Christian faith strong. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church's task to keep people's faith strong became much harder, due to theories published by free thinkers like Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, David Friedrich Strauss, and others. These men published controversial theories that hammered away at the foundation on which the Christian church was built. As the nineteenth century progressed, more doubts began to arise about the basic faiths of the Christian church.
There are many ways in which one can convey themselves. Marianne Moore uses her speaker's “dislike”(Line 1) of poetry to bring forth the idea that society has dictated how poetry must follow a certain strict and rigid formation. Poetry has always been written with a basic formula in mind. The poem should rhyme, it should have rhythm, there's a required need to have a certain number of symbols in each line. Moore strays from this (idea) by saying “I,too,dislike” (Line1). Commenting on how society has so much control over what we do. The idea of society not allowing for change is augmented (cemented) with “there are things that are beyond all this fiddle” (Line1) encouraging the writer (reader) to break way, to be different from what's being demanded.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque tells the story of young German soldiers in World War I. Often, war novels tell intentionally exciting tales of triumph or purposefully agonizing accounts of defeat, but Remarque refuses to veil the tragic reality of war in order to make the story more entertaining for the reader. The book is meant to be “least of all an adventure.” Remarque served for the German army during World War I, and he therefore repeatedly encountered death, much like his narrator, Paul, and “death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.” In his novel, Remarque tells a story that explains how home and identity were lost for many young men during the war. Philosophical ideas on the value of war fade
In the book, Why God Wont Go Away, by Andrew Newberg, it seems that we are psychologically built to alleviate the existential fears and comfort us in this confusing and perilous world through invention and myths. From the earliest weapon to the latest technological revolution we are trying to make ourselves more secure in this world. That's one reason why it seems that in Christianities' earlier years it was either science or religion; you could not have both. Not only because they had conflicting goals and views, but also because when you had science, the human mind's ...
Knowledge is something that can change day to day, which can be learned through both the natural and human sciences. Knowledge changes in the natural sciences when an experiment is conducted and more data has been gathered. Knowledge changes in human sciences when patterns are recognized in society and further tests have been conducted. Does our knowledge of things in the natural and human sciences change every day? I think that our knowledge grows everyday but does not necessarily change every day. The areas of knowledge that will be discussed in this essay are natural and human sciences. In History we can see that at one point something that was considered knowledge then transformed into different knowledge, especially in the natural sciences. However, in the past, due to lack of technology, it might have been more of a lack of knowledge that then turned into knowledge on the topic.
...wever, in the best interest of advancing education and an enlightened society, science must be pursued outside of the realm of faith and religion. There are obvious faith-based and untestable aspects of religion, but to interfere and cross over into everyday affairs of knowledge should not occur in the informational age. This overbearing aspect of the Church’s influence was put in check with the scientific era, and the Scientific Revolution in a sense established the facet of logic in society, which allows us to not only live more efficiently, but intelligently as well. It should not take away from the faith aspect of religion, but serve to enhance it.
Rape and rape culture have been a longstanding issue in American society. Looking at modern influences such as the media, our nation’s history, and the way our Consider the following: How has rape culture evolved through our history? What role does the media play in rape culture? And most importantly, how has rape become institutionalized in American society?
At first glance, many facets of science and religion seem to be in direct conflict with each other. Because of this, I have generally kept them confined to separate spheres in my life. I have always thought that science is based on reason and cold, hard facts and is, therefore, objective. New ideas have to be proven many times by different people to be accepted by the wider scientific community, data and observations are taken with extreme precision, and through journal publications and papers, scientists are held accountable for the accuracy and integrity of their work. All of these factors contributed to my view of science as objective and completely truthful. Religion, on the other hand, always seems fairly subjective. Each person has their own personal relationship with God, and even though people often worship as a larger community with common core beliefs, it is fine for one person’s understanding of the Bible and God to be different from another’s. Another reason that Christianity seems so subjective is that it is centered around God, but we cannot rationally prove that He actually exists (nor is obtaining this proof of great interest to most Christians). There are also more concrete clashes, such as Genesis versus the big bang theory, evolution versus creationism, and the finality of death versus the Resurrection that led me to separate science and religion in my life. Upon closer examination, though, many of these apparent differences between science and Christianity disappeared or could at least be reconciled. After studying them more in depth, science and Christianity both seem less rigid and inflexible. It is now clear that intertwined with the data, logic, and laws of scien...
First off, it is important to realize that religion and science have to be related in some way, even if it is not the way I mentioned before. If religion and science were completely incompatible, as many people argue, then all combinations between them would be logically excluded. That would mean that no one would be able to take a religious approach to a scientific experiment or vice versa. Not only does that occur, but it occurs rather commonly. Scientists often describe their experiments and writings in religious terms, just as religious believers support combinations of belief and doubt that are “far more reminiscent of what we would generally call a scientific approach to hypotheses and uncertainty.” That just proves that even though they are not the same, religion and science have to be related somehow.