Edav Nomad

My parents went to that university back when it was called Howard College which is how I found out about it.

Science and Religion Major | Samford University | Birmingham, Alabama

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Aliselia Aeon

Sounds kind of interesting, actually-as long as it doesn't turn out to be the typical "Science=evil" thing. I'm not Christian (by any stretch) but it sound like interesting discussions could result.

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Jahar Aabye

Sounds like a rather complicated way of talking about ethical concepts in science, which would fallunder philosophy, and just using one specific philosophy (unless they're studying how many different religious traditions have viewed scientific discoveries).

It does bother me a bit that they refer to science and religin as a false dichotomy. It's not really a false dichotomy. You can study religious traditions from a scientific perspective as an issue for sociology or comparative theology or from a historical perspective, and you can study the way that religious traditions affect cultural mores and laws in political science, but the religious beliefs themselves, unless they make testable empirical claims (ie "the world is 10,000 years old), are not something that can be studied scientifically. Similarly, religious beliefs should not play a role in determining the outcome of a scientific investigation, nor in shaping its conclusions. The scientific method is designed specifically to avoid that sort of observer bias.

So my concern is that this idea of "integrating" science and religion could become, whether intentionally or not, a bit of a trojan horse in terms of the acceptance of allowing religious beliefs to inform scientific investigation, or in the idea that the outcome of scoentific investigation should somehow be altered if it interferes with religious beliefs.

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Eunoli Rain

I think this is the cover of their brochure:



(It seems to me that these shouldn't be in a course together unless its a modern anthropology class and is looking at the way people find comfort in forcing facts to "fit" what feels the least challenging to them)

Amber Guity

Samford is part of the Alabama Baptist Convention, which is part of the Southern Baptist Convention. 'nuff said.

Barry Winterwolf

I'm working on the redefinition of gravity and the discovery of a new particle, the goddiditron

Edav Nomad

Which to me makes it all the more surprising that it's offered in the first place.

Void

I'm not bothered by the idea of religion and science being a false dichotomy... taken as basic concepts, they don't need to be opposed.... the problem comes with context. specific religions and/or tenets/practices ARE opposed to science; Absolutism being the worst offender.

trying to combine an absolutist religious position with a scientific one is disaster in the making... it's less than useless, because science is not absolute, it is process of refinement; and without that it ceases to be science, so is incompatible with any absolutist position.

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Jahar Aabye

It has nothing to do with absolutism. There are areas of Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or any of a number of other religions' theological schools of thought that are not absolutist. There are plenty of new-age (or faux-traditional) religious beliefs that people try to apply to medicine that are often as non-absolutist as you can get (vague allusions to "energy fields" and "qi", for example, with constantly shifting explanations) that are also not scientific.

Science is a method of studying the world through observation and empirical testing. Scientific experiments often can lead to absolute (or near-certainty to an asymptotic probability) positions. This is because the scientific method involves empirically testable hypotheses, which requires that those hypotheses must be falsifiable. Religion is a subset of philosophy. There are aspects of religion, ususally related to culture and society, that absolutely can be studied scientifically within the social sciences. There are even specific aspects like carbon dating religious artifacts that fall under the physical sciences.

But religion itself is ultimately a very different concept, one that is inherently not scientific and not compatible with the scientific method. When religious groups make claims that are empirically testable, like the age of the Earth or solar system, or about the fossil record and evolutionary history, those claims can be investigated scientifically. But most religious beliefs are not compatible with science, they are not empirically testable and they are not falsifiable (there is no way to empirically test for the presence of an omnipotent and omniscient deity).

This means that religion does not inherently conflict with science, but it also means that religion os not and never will be compatible with science because they are inherently different.

Alazarin

And for my thesis this year: how prayer shifts reaction equilibria and speeds up the rates of reaction better than any known catalyst. Followed by my proposal for Dow Chemical to hire tens of thousands of fundamental christians to stand and pray at strategic locations around their chemical works.

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Eboni Khan

What is the big deal? How is this different from any other ethics class/major at a public university. The only difference is they are using religion as a basis for ethics instead of humanism.

I sat through a lecture this semester on the morality of harming avatars, it doesn't get more ridiculous than that.

Jahar Aabye

You could probably get a grant from NCCAM* to fund it.

Sadly, I'd typed that as a joke, and then realized that it is in fact very likely...

Especially if you add in a few more nonsense words, and then claim that it is a "traditional form of healing that has been used for thousands of years." You'll get bonus points if you claim that it's connected to Native American or East Asian traditions, though, since these are somehow not really faith healing through some explanation involving "noble savage" racist stereotypes. Otherwise you might need to claim that it's "quantum" in some way...but not in the actual way that the word is used by actual physicists. Either way, you'll want to really emphasize "energies", preferably several different types each with its own special name. When the patients fail to improve, claim that the treatment wasn't "individualized" for each patient, and repeat until you've made up a completely different kind of "energy" for each patient.

Then when it still fails, make up something about toxins (just throw a dart at the Periodic Table and choose whichever element it hits), and come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory involving Big Pharma, emphasize that They Don't Want You To Know, and get HuffPo to print it along with an ad for your 30C Holy Supplement.

*pronounced N-Scam, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the branch of the National Institutes of Health that congress forced NIH to create to fund studies of re-branded folk medicine and faith healing

Alazarin

Just wait until we have to start dipping our prayer-mongers into polymerisation tanks in order to produce enough plastics for their clothes, toys, etc. "That's OK, Bubba, you don't need any protection from the heat / pressure / toxins, just keep prayin' real hard."

Void

I think we'll have to disagree on this point.... the way I see it, if a religion is amenable to correction/refinement on matters that are testable, then it's compatible... which is not the same thing as saying in harmony. Science also presents some untestable questions, the main difference being that science also immediately follows up with "so how do we test this?", whereas religion (in general) goes "looks good, ship it!"