Faith Vs. Fact The universe is a vast and endless portal of knowledge and experience whose origin and creation is not fully proven. There are two ideologies that the human race has adopted into giving reason for our existence as well as our evolution; this being, religion, and science. Science and religion have been in a conflicting battle against each other in discovering truth about the universe and their main ideas disregard the other making them ultimately incompatible. Throughout history this conflict has been proven through, Galileo’s sentence of house arrest in 1632 over his claim of a sun-centered solar system, to the more recent Scopes “Monkey Trial,” in 1925; that lead to the great debate between Darrow and Jennings Bryan over
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His thesis, “religion and science compete in many ways to describe reality- they both make “existence claims” about what is real-but use different tools to meet their goal. And he argues that the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion- including faith, dogma, and revelation- is unreliable and leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions,”(Coyne, xxii). He is strongly committed to the belief that science is the only aspect of knowledge that has an accurate depiction on explaining outcomes as it has evidence to prove itself, whereas religion lacks the aspect of being able to prove something, as it is a branch of “superstition,” (Coyne, xii). Religion is practiced all over the world, and there are many people that associate with an aspect of religious belief in one way or another. Coyne describes that because science has factual credibility it triumphs over religion, and science has been given a bad reputation of being cold and emotionless; leaving religion with being a popular representation and a dominant trend of followers to spread morals, community, or ways of life, oppose to facts,”(Coyne,43). He further describes in his book, the different definitions that separate religion and science, as well as why accomodationism …show more content…
Coyne said, “All I lack is faith. One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human- except for the assurance that you’ll find life after death-without the superstitions of religion,”(Coyne, xxi). Horgan in his argument seemed very contradictory, as he stated that he was not an atheist, but further continued to provide a list of objections to religion, and where religion shows faults. Like Coyne, he stated that the sequence of events of our human history would have been a lot different if religion had not been a dominant ideology that resulted in wars and division of mankind. “ Mr. Coyne’s critique of free will, far from being based on scientific “fact,” betrays how his hostility toward religion distorts his judgment. Evidence against free will, he says, “kicks the props out from under much theology, including the doctrine of salvation,”(Coyne, 81). Horgan uses Coyne’s understanding that religious belief in free will is an illusion, when Coyne was trying to state that there are certain reasons and outcomes for why ‘evils’ occur. The existence of tumours in children is not due to God lashing out or inflicting suffering amongst people, but it is an outcome due to mutations and chemical imbalances. Horgan overall takes the position of an accomdationist, with his belief that science and religion are in one way
His thesis, “religion and science compete in many ways to describe reality- they both make “existence claims” about what is real-but use different tools to meet their goal. And he argues that the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion- including faith, dogma, and revelation- is unreliable and leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions,”(Coyne, xxii). He is strongly committed to the belief that science is the only aspect of knowledge that has an accurate depiction on explaining outcomes as it has evidence to prove itself, whereas religion lacks the aspect of being able to prove something, as it is a branch of “superstition,” (Coyne, xii). Religion is practiced all over the world, and there are many people that associate with an aspect of religious belief in one way or another. Coyne describes that because science has factual credibility it triumphs over religion, and science has been given a bad reputation of being cold and emotionless; leaving religion with being a popular representation and a dominant trend of followers to spread morals, community, or ways of life, oppose to facts,”(Coyne,43). He further describes in his book, the different definitions that separate religion and science, as well as why accomodationism …show more content…
Coyne said, “All I lack is faith. One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human- except for the assurance that you’ll find life after death-without the superstitions of religion,”(Coyne, xxi). Horgan in his argument seemed very contradictory, as he stated that he was not an atheist, but further continued to provide a list of objections to religion, and where religion shows faults. Like Coyne, he stated that the sequence of events of our human history would have been a lot different if religion had not been a dominant ideology that resulted in wars and division of mankind. “ Mr. Coyne’s critique of free will, far from being based on scientific “fact,” betrays how his hostility toward religion distorts his judgment. Evidence against free will, he says, “kicks the props out from under much theology, including the doctrine of salvation,”(Coyne, 81). Horgan uses Coyne’s understanding that religious belief in free will is an illusion, when Coyne was trying to state that there are certain reasons and outcomes for why ‘evils’ occur. The existence of tumours in children is not due to God lashing out or inflicting suffering amongst people, but it is an outcome due to mutations and chemical imbalances. Horgan overall takes the position of an accomdationist, with his belief that science and religion are in one way