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The influence of religion on science
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The influence of religion on science
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God’s Undertaker: Has science buried God? endeavours to answer one of the most prolific existential questions of our time; is science replacing religion? Is atheism taking over? John Lennox doesn’t believe so. God’s Undertaker is a challenging and poignant page turner, a rare accomplishment for scholarly material. Lennox has managed to intertwine twelve captivating chapters that contest arguments made by influential atheists like Peter Atkins and Richard Darwkin’s with a balanced and insightful response that uses modern science to interpret the universe from a religious prerogative. This revaluation of science versus God creates an illuminating look into one of the world’s most controversial and daunting debates.
John Lennox is a multilingual philosopher, mathmatition and some will claim, devout Christian. Lennox has written extensively on the relationship between science and religion, including Gunning for God and Seven Days that Divide the World. He is renowned for his reasoned and academic response to his opponents, such as Dawkins, who he has publically debated numerous times. Almost all of his works are a telling riposte that give away his inclination toward atheist scientist’s both past and present. He finds through his exhaustive research that “The rational intelligibility of the universe, for instance, points to the existence of a Mind that was responsible both for the universe and for our minds.”(p. 207) He is a firm believer in the compatibility of a scientific worldview and religion.
Lennox is a Christian apologist and vehemently believes that religion and science are not mutually exclusive. “God is the ground of all explanation…it is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scient...
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...surmountable to his contemporary’s opinions, which are inflamed with bias and arrogant personal appropriations. Chris Paraskeva, a professor at the University of Bristol, sums up this piece well; “Gods Undertaker is an important and topical contribution to the debate and questions about the origin of the universe and its physical laws, the origin of complex biological design and the purpose (if any) of humankind”.
God’s Undertaker is ultimately an enjoyable book with a fascinating thesis. It is an accessible, calm and carefully reasoned, and balanced work that Lennox has produced. One that combines a great ‘basis for discussion’ and offers a captivating riposte to atheistic scientist’s like Peter Atkins and Richard Darwkin’s. His rational retelling of the timeless debate between the sciences and religion provides the reader with a new and enlightened perspective.
In 1936 a sixth-grade student by the name of Phyllis Wright wondered if scientists pray, and if so, what for. She decided to ask one of the greatest scientists of all time, Albert Einstein. A while later he wrote a letter back to Phyllis with his response. Understanding the context and purpose of his response assist in analyzing its effectiveness. After receiving a letter from such a young student, Einstein aimed to provide Phyllis with a comprehensible answer. He intended for his response not to sway her in one way or another, but to explain science and religion do not necessarily contradict each other completely. By using appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, Einstein achieved his purpose by articulating a response suitable for a sixth grade
Science and faith are generally viewed as two topics that do not intermingle. However, Andy Crouch’s work, Delight in Creation, suggests that there is an approach to both faith and science that allows support of scientists in the church community. There is an approach that can regard science as a career that can reflect the nature of God.
The controversial topic involving the existence of God has been the pinnacle of endless discourse surrounding the concept of religion in the field of philosophy. However, two arguments proclaim themselves to be the “better” way of justifying the existence of God: The Cosmological Argument and the Mystical Argument. While both arguments attempt to enforce strict modus operandi of solidified reasoning, neither prove to be a better way of explaining the existence of God. The downfall of both these arguments rests on commitment of fallacies and lack of sufficient evidence, as a result sabotaging their validity in the field of philosophy and faith.
Krauss, Lawrence Maxwell, and Richard Dawkins. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. New York, NY: Free, 2012. 7-8. Print.
The claims of rationality and the so-called scientific approach of the atheists and agnostics have been debunked. In the coming pages we shall see that both in the creation of the universe, in things created within the universe and in the creation of living beings, an intelligently designed process is going on, and we shall demonstrate that the objections of agnostics and skeptics to this assertion are merely delusions.
David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion provide conflicting arguments about the nature of the universe, what humans can know about it, and how their knowledge can affect their religious beliefs. The most compelling situation relates to philosophical skepticism and religion; the empiricist character, Cleanthes, strongly defends his position that skepticism is beneficial to religious belief. Under fire from an agnostic skeptic and a rationalist, the empiricist view on skepticism and religion is strongest in it’s defense. This debate is a fundamental part of the study of philosophy: readers must choose their basic understanding of the universe and it’s creator, upon which all other assumptions about the universe will be made. In this three-sided debate, Hume’s depiction of an empiricist is clearly the winner.
Science and Religion dialogue has been a bitter-sweet topic for many people over the years. The controversy is not only common between one sole community, but affects a variety. The beliefs held about these topics has the potential to personally effect an individual, whether it be positively or negatively. In the United States, we draw only a fine line between religion and science, often failing to realize that the two benefit each other in copious ways but are not meant to interpreted in the same way. Due to this perspective, people seem to be influenced to pick one or the other, when in reality we should treat both science and religion with the same respect and recognize that they are completely separate from one another, along with having individual purposes. John F. Haught, a distinguished research professor at Georgetown University, published a book titled, “Science & Religion: From Conflict to Conversation”. In it he evaluates each side, persuading the reader that the truth is that both realms may benefit from each other despite the differences emphasized. John F. Haught introduces his audience with four approaches on Science and Religion. Haught’s third approach, contact, is of major significance to aid in the response of: “Does Science Rule out a Personal God?”
There are different viewpoints on the question “what is the universe made of?” I think that both science and religion offer their own explanation to this topic and they sometimes overlap, which creates contradictions. Therefore, I do not agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial, which claims that there is a fine line separating science from religion. That being said, I think the conflict between science and religion is only in the study of evolution. It is possible for a scientist to be religious if he is not studying evolution, because science is very broad and it has various studies. In this essay, I will talk about the conflict between religion and science by comparing the arguments from Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. I argue that science and religion do overlap but only in some area concerning evolution and the cosmic design. Furthermore, when these overlaps are present it means that there are conflicts and one must choose between science and religion.
Barbour, Ian G. Religion in an Age of Science. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. Print. (BL 240.2 .B368 1990)
Religion and science are complementary elements to our society. The notion that religion and science should not be merged together, does not mean neglecting to understand the parallel relation between these two concepts and will result in a better understanding of our surroundings. This will put an end to our scientific research and advancement because we will be relying on answers provided by religious books to answer our questions. If we don’t argue whether these answers are right or wrong, we would never have studied space stars or the universe or even our environment and earthly animals. These studies have always provided us with breakthroughs, inventions and discoveries that made our lives better.
ABSTRACT: Curiously, in the late twentieth century, even agnostic cosmologists like Stephen Hawking—who is often compared with Einstein—pose metascientific questions concerning a Creator and the cosmos, which science per se is unable to answer. Modern science of the brain, e.g. Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind (1994), is only beginning to explore the relationship between the brain and the mind-the physiological and the epistemic. Galileo thought that God's two books-Nature and the Word-cannot be in conflict, since both have a common author: God. This entails, inter alia, that science and faith are to two roads to the Creator-God. David Granby recalls that once upon a time, science and religion were perceived as complementary enterprises, with each scientific advance confirming the grandeur of a Superior Intelligence-God. Are we then at the threshold of a new era of fruitful dialogue between science and religion, one that is mediated by philosophy in the classical sense? In this paper I explore this question in greater detail.
Many atheists have used science as a way to disapprove the existence of God. Science is not an accurate way of disapproving the existence of God(2). Scient...
...eveloped, and especially during the Enlightenment, God and religion were relegated to a lesser role because it was thought that science could explain everything. Now, though, the farther we plunge into science, the more questions we find that can only be answered by religion. When science and Christianity are both studied and well understood, especially in the context of their limitations, it is possible to integrate them, or at least for them to complement each other, in my view of the world.
“God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it?” (2). This quote was said by one of the greatest philosophers to have lived; Friedrich Nietzsche. Although Friedrich Nietzsche is not as well known as some of the philosophers that we’ve discussed in class; such as Plato, Descartes, or Socrates, he and his ideas have influenced the views of modern philosophy today. Friedrich Nietzsche is a german philosopher that was born October 15, 1844 and died at the ago of 55 on August 25th, 1900. Although Friedrich Nietzsche died at a fairly young age it doesn't mean that he didn't leave us with anything to remember him by. A few of his greatest works were; “The Will to Power, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Antichrist and, The Gay Science” (6). The last of which I will be talking about in this essay because it contains Nietzsche’s; “God is Dead” pronouncement, which is what this paper will pertain to.
Up until the Enlightenment, mankind lived under the notion that religion, moreover intelligent design, was most likely the only explanation for the existence of life. However, people’s faith in the church’s ideals and teachings began to wither with the emergence of scientific ideas that were daringly presented to the world by great minds including Galileo and Darwin. The actuality that there was more to how and why we exist, besides just having an all-powerful creator, began to interest the curious minds in society. Thus, science began to emerge as an alternative and/or supplement to religion for some. Science provided a more analytical view of the world we see while religion was based more upon human tradition/faith and the more metaphysical world we don’t necessarily see. Today science may come across as having more solid evidence and grounding than religion because of scientific data that provides a seemingly more detailed overview of life’s complexity. “Einstein once said that the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” (Polkinghorne, 62). Yet, we can still use theories and ideas from both, similar to Ian Barbour’s Dialouge and Integration models, to help us formulate an even more thorough concept of the universe using a human and religious perspective in addition to scientific data.