Can a religious person be a good scientist?

[Sky lord]

Atheism is the lack of belief in god(or any other deities)...All logical agnostics have to be atheists as it would be stupid to have belief in something whose existence you are unsure about...Most logical atheists(true hardcore atheists like myself) are agnostics...we do not know if there is a god...due to lack of evidence we do not believe in the existence of one...the flag bearers of modern day atheism ie Hitchens,Dawkins,Harris all claim to be agnostics..they do not say there is not god or it is impossible that god exists. Atheism and Agnosticism are answers to different questions.

On the OP topic I think it would be difficult for a religious person to be a good scientist since both are contradictory claim to reality...besides how does a person believe in something with ZERO evidence and still be in a profession that not only requires you to accept things only based on evidence but also reject stuff that have no evidence backing it up...the person has to have serious internal conflicts if he both a scientist and religious....However when it comes to applied sciences I can see it working...A biologist or a theoretical physicist shouldn't be religious.

Yah thats what I was getting at (quite long windedly). Whats the intersection and thus inherent logical conflict etc.

In the end it boils down to what you define as religious and what you define as scientist.

How then do you explain religious experiences?

They are much more common than you think.

People who have profound experiences that can only be explained in religious terms. People who can describe what happened in another room while they were under anasthesia in an OT. People who know suddenly when someone close to them is in real trouble or pain. People who can describe past lives in great detail.


These are not crazy people. And There are a lot of them.

 

[Nilgiri]

People who have profound experiences that can only be explained in religious terms.

Read my earlier posts. That comes under the unexplained/unknown/mystery realm. In fact thats how religion itself came into being (for us as a species specifically) over time, past whatever the actual nature/truth of a self-concious omnipresent reality might or might not be.....i.e trying to explain the unexplainable (at the current time).

But our ego is getting ahead of itself now in that we think we know a lot more than we did before (i.e magnitudes more that it is desired to have magnitudes chaos/resetting/shifting of society/morals etc based on that egoistic perception) and that leads to many problems for our society as a whole I feel (its just an opinion).

 

[Anubis]

How then do you explain religious experiences?

They are much more common than you think.

People who have profound experiences that can only be explained in religious terms. People who can describe what happened in another room while they were under anasthesia in an OT. People who know suddenly when someone close to them is in real trouble or pain. People who can describe past lives in great detail.


These are not crazy people. And There are a lot of them.

I am afraid any venture towards the core of your argument would ultimately dissolve in the "god of the gaps" argument...the human mind is complicated...we have not decoded most of it but that does not mean it is evidence for god or soul...Out of Body Experience is a complicated problem but major breakthroughs have been made in inducing it on test subjects(which either means the phenomenon is psychological and can be artificially induced or scientists made the test subject's soul temporarily leave the body...you choose) and trying to figure out how the brain functions at that time. The reincarnation phenomenon is also significantly high among people who come from cultures/belief systems that believe in reincarnation which does point towards selective thinking...there are unexplained cases but they will remain unexplained until one can put forward evidence that PROVE the existence of souls and their reoccupation of new bodies..otherwise the entire reincarnation hypothesis will remain a hypothesis and never be accepted as a plausible theory.

Lastly have you ever noticed that religious experiences of most people stem from their own religions...if god were to exist and lets say he sent his son Jesus to die for us on the cross than the only true religious experience anybody would ever have would only be related to Christian theology and superstition...if you see a hindu deity in any of your experiences in a world where Christianity is the CORRECT religion than either you are mad or god is just messing with you.

 

[Arefin007]

How then do you explain religious experiences?

its hallucination or some form of epilepsy

 

[Avicenna]

The answer to the original question in the thread is of course, yes.

Science is nothing but the study and description of already occuring natural phenomenon.

One would ask the question, as it relates to the existence of a diety, is this naturally occuring phenomenon, a product of chance or an intelligent design?

 

[Divergent]

Yes.

 

[Logicaldude]

Can a Chelsea supporter become a good scientist?

Can a tall person become a good scientist?

Duh!

What is the link even between such things?

 

[Arefin007]

blind faith is the death of reason

 

[Nilgiri]

Yes.

Most concise answer so far. Let's see if anyone can beat it

 

[Zibago]

Depends on the individual and how he tackles things

People believe that a cow is sacred while having no second thought eating it when outside of India.

Can you see the pattern?

 

[Smoking Snakes]

Not possible.

 

[Rusty]

Muslim scientists in early days of Islam when Muslims ruled the world of science were more close to religion than today Muslims

you know, I did a lot of research into this and wanted to know why Muslims were so strong in Science in the early days but now are pathetic.

The traditional narrative was basically this, Muslims were better Muslims back then and now we are not.

However, after watching Neil Degrass Tyson's argument on this subject, I am now convinced that this is not the case.

The real answer is that Muslims were very open to new ideas and ways of doing things in the early days.
Think of it as a mold. The mold of "orthodox Islam" was still wet in the early days and people had a lot of freedom to think and tinker.

However, as time went on, people started to build strong Ideas of what "Islam" was, and once the mold was dry, people stopped thinking for themselves and just said "Only God knows"

This was the death of Islam as an intellectual power house.
And honestly, the future of Islam and Muslims are very bleak until we can break out of this mind set.

Here is the video that really got me thinking this way

 

[Nilgiri]

you know, I did a lot of research into this and wanted to know why Muslims were so strong in Science in the early days but now are pathetic.

The traditional narrative was basically this, Muslims were better Muslims back then and now we are not.

However, after watching Neil Degrass Tyson's argument on this subject, I am now convinced that this is not the case.

The real answer is that Muslims were very open to new ideas and ways of doing things in the early days.
Think of it as a mold. The mold of "orthodox Islam" was still wet in the early days and people had a lot of freedom to think and tinker.

However, as time went on, people started to build strong Ideas of what "Islam" was, and once the mold was dry, people stopped thinking for themselves and just said "Only God knows"

This was the death of Islam as an intellectual power house.
And honestly, the future of Islam and Muslims are very bleak until we can break out of this mind set.

Here is the video that really got me thinking this way

You sir hit the nail smack bang on the head.

I also believe the mold atrophied/hardened even quicker than it would have (or it may have been the real initiator of it) because of the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols. It keeps coming up again and again why the Islamic world stopped/restricted the intellectual engagement within themselves but crucially all other parts of the world....also combining with the vast "strategic" space that was hewn out initially (so no real possibility of chaos-driven, turmoil-driven progress could be harnessed either like say in Europe) to forment the inertia we have today.

 

[Yaseen1]

you know, I did a lot of research into this and wanted to know why Muslims were so strong in Science in the early days but now are pathetic.

The traditional narrative was basically this, Muslims were better Muslims back then and now we are not.

However, after watching Neil Degrass Tyson's argument on this subject, I am now convinced that this is not the case.

The real answer is that Muslims were very open to new ideas and ways of doing things in the early days.
Think of it as a mold. The mold of "orthodox Islam" was still wet in the early days and people had a lot of freedom to think and tinker.

However, as time went on, people started to build strong Ideas of what "Islam" was, and once the mold was dry, people stopped thinking for themselves and just said "Only God knows"

This was the death of Islam as an intellectual power house.
And honestly, the future of Islam and Muslims are very bleak until we can break out of this mind set.

Here is the video that really got me thinking this way

I totally disagree with you.I have experienced this that when I have firm faith in real sense on ALLAH ALMIGHTY and pray to ALLAH ALMIGHTY for help in problems new and easy ideas come to my mind to solve problems .the problem is that most .Islamic scholars nowadays seem to be Islamic but their faith is weak and they use religion for earning money and are corrupt.they donot practice what they say

 

[Rusty]

I totally disagree with you.I have experienced this that when I have firm faith in real sense on ALLAH ALMIGHTY and pray to ALLAH ALMIGHTY for help in problems new and easy ideas come to my mind to solve problems .the problem is that most .Islamic scholars nowadays seem to be Islamic but their faith is weak and they use religion for earning money and are corrupt.they donot practice what they say

And I understand you fully.
I was 100% like you.

Let me tell you a quick story.
When I was 19 I failed a math class and got kicked out of collage. This was a terrible time in my life... What was I going to say to be parents? Oh the bastey..... So I prayed, I prayed hard and what do you know.... My math teacher took pitty on me and raised my mark just enough to pass, but still had to re do the class.

I was saved, faith works!!

Now that I'm older and have a science degree, I understand that good and bad things happen to everyone. Faith or not. Drug dealers have days where they almost hey caught by police but miraculously get saved.... Did they have faith?

Good people go in pilgrimages and die in crowds.... Did they not have enough faith?


Point is, you can use faith to justify anything. The only thing that really matters is outcome.

Outcome is Muslim world is living in Stone age compared to non Muslims, and the reason for that is that Muslim today ignore the world and " read Quran" only.

We need to go back to the original Muslims and question everything, even Quran.