• Question: do you think you can have faith in an god and faith in science at the same time, and if so what do you believe in? and do you think that both explanitions go hand in hand in explaining how we come about being

    Asked by kala93 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I think it would be very easy to have faith in god and in science. Although you tend not to have faith in science so much as you need to have evidence to back up ideas and theories. I personally do not believe in a God, but if I did there is so much beauty in the world and in science that I could think a God could have made.

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I believe you can, because I believe in God and science. I am a Christian, although that doesn’t mean I believe the earth is a few thousand years like some Christians.

      I wouldn’t say that the explanations for how humans came along go hand in hand though. It seems to be irrational to reject scientific explanations like evolution when there is so much evidence in its favour. But you have to have faith to believe religious explanations, because there often isn’t much scientific evidence.

    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Many people believe in both God and science. Indeed, both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have said things in support of the theory of evolution. It’s only a few really extreme religious people who want to deny it.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      I think to reconcile science and religion you must be willing to stretch the degree to which you literally believe what is written in the book about your god (but you do that anyway – hardly anyone will nowadays condone the selling of daughters into slavery, as suggested in Leviticus). It is often also a matter of interpreting the text. The bible it says something like “A day is like a thousand years to the Lord” (I only know the German version of this, sorry). You can interpret this as evidence that the incredibly long time scales it took for life to evolve are not a problem for believing that god created the earth in what may have seemed a short time for him.

    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I also think you can be religious and also have a scientific mind. I personally am not religious but I have friends that studied Chemistry with me at University who were reilgious and attended church and bible class.

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