Tuesday, February 28, 2017


For you personally, how does science fit into your belief system? Does it have any influence on your beliefs, or are they two completely separate entities?

I am a firm believer in both science and religion. They both explain our origin in two different ways. Science explains our origin of existence to be The Big Bang Theory… the physical world. Religion deals with the other end of the spectra… the spiritual world. Many people try to separate the two, like they could not possibly have anything to do with each other. I don’t think it’s that simple to have a black or white answer to the question. I do think that it is quite above our understanding, and that maybe we are trying to be a part of something that is beyond our capabilities and capacities to even consider thinking about in depth.

The human body, itself is a complex machine. It is constantly adapting and changing to fit the needs of our environment. How can something so incredibly complex develop from something so simple without the help of a divine being. Even the furthest back that we can trace of a single celled life form again lends back to the idea above of where did this come from? How could it just appear from nothing?

 There is also the argument that God could not have created the world in just a few days. This excerpt enumerates this idea:

In examining the scientific oppositions of religious creation theories, the most prominent idea regarded by scientists to be ludicrous in religious concepts is that it is impossibly against all laws of science for the universe to have been created in the matter of days that are suggested by most religious creation theories. For instance, in Christianity, it is believed that universal existence came to be over a process of six days, a theory which is disregarded by scientists globally to be physically impossible (George, 2007). However, if one was to take into account the context in which days is used, the scientific improbability is without substance as the days set out in religious contexts may not refer to the value of time which we give to a 'day' in modern times.


 
I believe everything comes from something and that everything happens for a reason. No matter if that reason is the universe, fate, or whatever you want to call it, I think there must be a divine creator.
 



“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of lightyears and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

3 comments:

  1. http://www.researchomatic.com/Big-Bang-Vs-Genesis-90810.html link to the resource I used for the passage

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  2. Galileo, known as the father of modern science, segregated his science from his religious belief. He believed that neglecting reason and evidence signals laziness, whether spiritual or intellectual. Ignorance should drive a search for knowledge. The importance he placed on science, understood through mathematics--which played an important role in the bridging of ratio and revelation at the start of the modern period of philosophy--is best expressed in his quote:

    "Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes--I mean the universe--but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth."

    Certainly, the notion of wonder inspired by the beautiful complexity of the world is what unites science and spirituality. Both spiritualists and scientists observe the world in awe, but what is knowable may lack certainty. Although science best expands what we know about the world, there may always be a realm of the unknown. We give our own meaning to that realm.

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  3. Interesting links:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/science-and-spirituality_1_b_1466600.html
    http://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/class/110/6-renaissance.htm
    https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/15/galileo-letter-to-duchess-of-tuscany/

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