Plus, religion and science aren't mutually exclusive. One of the guys who contributed to the Big Bang Theory was a priest. He's the one who theorized that the recession of nebula was due to the universe expanding (which Hubble later observed).

[–] duncan_bayne@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They are, but only if you try to resolve the conflict - that is, if you aim for philosophical consistency.

I could believe that a unicorn magicked my lab into existence, and that elves and fairies make and sell the apparatus, and trolls with huuuge rubber stamps make the reference books I use.

I could believe all that, and still do perfectly good science in my lab! Make novel and correct discoveries, and everything.

But if I aimed scientific method, and modern epistemology, at my religious beliefs it'd become apparent that they're wrong.

So what's required to have both "scientist" and "religious" bits flipped is double-think. Nothing new, and it's not surprising that scientists are as prone to it as any other demographic.

[–] joostjakob@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There will always be a space for God behind the curtain of what we don't understand. And indeed, if you set to stone what God is, then when you lift the curtain a bit, then you have disproved God. But if you're more flexible about it, then their will always be a space behind the curtain we do not understand. And even if we would ever understand the whole mechanism of how the universe came to be, then we can still imagine there to be a meaning behind that whole mechanism. Add to that: science is about what we can observe. But if you believe there are things you can perceive that are not vested in observable phenomena, you have something that can never be disproved by science.

[–] duncan_bayne@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Modern epistemology tells us that things that are not vested in observable phenomena literally may as well not exist. They are nothing.

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

"God of the Gaps" is one of the dumbest arguments for there being a god

It's an ostrich with its head in the sand