• Question: do you think that sometimes science defies religion, like with the dinosaurs, evolution ?

    Asked by jodlington to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 14 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Yes. But I think sometimes religion is just another way of explains things that happened long ago when people did not have the knowledge to fully understand. My usual example is i think that in Genesis, the creation story sums up the Big Bang, then fast forwards a few millennia over the boring bits and puts god in charge of evolution rather than the many millions of years it did take. It is not technically accurate, but at the time it was written it was a good enough version from what they could see. Who knows, with time maybe our holy books will be changed with modern versions.

    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Yes, but one of the wonderful things about religion is that it evolves alongside scientific theory. So religious stories change or adapt or people interpret tgem more or less literally. It’s important to remember that religion isn’t about finding the truth behind the history of the earth, it’s about finding internal truths, and they remain true whatever the scientific truths ofthe universe are.

    • Photo: Nicola Rogers

      Nicola Rogers answered on 15 Mar 2014:

      Not really – the nature of science is that as you discover more, the way that you understand the things you observe changes. Religion is a code of practice and a set of beliefs, whereas science is a set of models that describe the way in which things that we observer operate. Science is just a set of rules and models that we use to describe what we observe – and the more we understand the more we have to revise and update these rules. Religion is just another way of explaining historic observations, and are not meant to be taken too literally.

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