Science and Relgion

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Science and Relgion

Science and religion have not always peacefully coexisted. There have been many issues where scientific discovery and religious belief have clashed. Religion is based on ancient belief passed down through generations. As humans discovered more and more about themselves, they found that many of the things that religion told could not true. This caused an incredible crisis between the pious religious and the scientific world, especially in the Western world where Christianity dominated society, and where these scientific discoveries were being made. It was difficult for people at first to believe in God and at the same time except these new scientific findings that negated many things that religion had told them.

Astonomer Kepler

During the scientific revolution many religious issues were taken up. One was the issue of the earth being the center of the Universe, which the Christian doctrine held up as the truth. Through the work of astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, much was learned about our universe. One thing that was learned was that the earth revolved around the Sun, along with all the other planets of our solar system. Also it was learned that the sun is only one star among hundreds of billions of other stars of different shapes and sizes. This discovery baffled the church. How could we be only a tiny part of something greater? It was believed that God created the Universe to accommodate humankind and that everything in that Universe revolved around this. It now became apparent that this is not true. During the seventeenth century the Catholic Church was quick to reject these findings. Galileo didn’t understand the conflict, and pointed out that scripture is very old and is meant to ...

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... science, and who feel that the bible should be taken literally. On the same hand there are many people in the science community who read the bible literally and announce there could be no God since the facts of the bible are so far removed from what scientific discovery has told us. There will probably never be day when science and religion completely agree, and there are no conflicts between the two sides. It is natural for men to question discovery, and when something tells you that thing you have believed in are wrong, it is natural to reject these things. Still, there have been considerable advancements in the understanding between religion and science.

Links to web pages concerning science and religion:

Http://salon.cma.univie.ac.at/~neum/sciandr.html

http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~carling/main_sci.html

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~newman/sci-faith.html

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