Science and religion: Opposing viewpoints (Opposing viewpoints series)

Must there be a conflict between science and religion? Well, that depends on the religion. If a religion insists on stating falsehoods or dubious propositions as facts, there is going to be a problem. If it challenges the entire idea of seeking truth, there will be a problem. Not just with science, but with scholarship in general. And that will extend to every aspect of human endeavor. Still, I would argue that religions do not always challenge science or dispute known facts. Nor do they need to. Well, what do the articles in this book have to say about it? Norman and Lucia Hall point out that many religious people accept some scientific findings for their practical value but are suspicious of the scientific method. Delos McKown points out that Christianity in particular is simply fraudulent. Bertrand Russell, surely no defender of Christianity, feels that religions can avoid challenging scholarship on matters of fact, and that they can also cure themselves of the desire to persecute (which is one of the reasons for challenging scholarship in the first place). There is an article by Albert Einstein, which I won't comment on. And then we get into a section on how the universe originated. I do think that there is some overlap between science and philosophy here. Anyway, there is an article by Howard Slusher, who argues in favor of a young universe (several thousand years old). It is pure nonsense. I'm outraged that anyone would make such claims. To back up his "argument," Slusher looks for disagreements among those who realize that the universe is much older. In any case, the truth is that we know that the universe used to be much denser and hotter. When was it truly hot? Somewhere between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago. We know this from the Hubble expansion, from the 2.7 Kelvin blackbody radiation, and most impressively, from the Helium content everywhere corresponding to Big Bang nucleosynthesis. I think if a religion wants to take sides on this issue, it had better take the side of truth, not falsehood. Now, was the universe created by accident or design? Victor Stenger makes a powerful argument that the universe was never created. It probably came about by chance. Once we postulate that the universe was "created," we're already on the wrong side of Occam's Razor. I'm not sure I'm completely convinced, but it is a strong argument. Holmes Ralston III argues for creation by design, but this has a couple of big problems. First, who created the creator? And second, why ought it surprise us that we are in a universe which happens to support life? Whether the universe was designed or not, that needs to be the case. Robert Jastrow and Isaac Asimov have articles about whether the universe could have been created by God. Jastrow's article implies that scientists used to believe that the universe had no beginning, but the Bible turned out to be right: the universe did have a beginning, and scientists are now unhappy