, spivonious wrote

Haven't read all the posts in here, but I'm reminded of a book I read, "Why Religion Matters" by Huston Smith (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Religion-Matters-Spirit-Disbelief/dp/0060671025).

He makes the argument that there are still things that science can't explain (consciousness, emotions, hope, etc.) and therefore a pure science worldview doesn't make sense. Until we can fully explain things, including the reason they happen, then religion has a place in human society. In his view, science cannot be a replacement for religion because it does not answer the "why".

I hate that argument (I had a Muslim friend who used to make it a lot). Just because there's things we can't explain doesn't mean that you can just make up your own explanation, or that a higher power must be involved. It simply means we don't know yet, nothing more, nothing less.

Science and religion are fundamentally different things and are able to coexist perfectly. The problem a lot of religious people with "anti-science" views have is that they treat it as if science involved faith. Scientists don't "believe" in science, because that's not what science is.

Science is a search for truth. It's making observations about the universe, and making hypotheses based on that. If further observation proves a hypothesis false, we simply change it. There's nothing to believe in since whenever new evidence invalidates what we thought we knew, science will simply change. Science mostly works under the assumption that we live in a universe that can be explained by rational rules, but if we discover evidence to the contrary, science will change accordingly.

Faith on the other hand is not a search for truth. Faith starts with saying "I believe this is the truth" and we'll stick with it regardless of what else happens. And that's fine.

The point is: one does not exclude the other.