The research and testing is done to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. This research is used to make a prediction and a theory as to why something happened is developed. Dr. E. Stanley Jones states “Prior to the age of science, truth was determined philosophically, by debate. But the scientific method has brought the search for truth out of the lecture hall and into the laboratory.” (Christianity.com 2013). However, the scientific method is only a way of seeking the truth.
Is Religion and Theology Scientific? Religion and Theology are two terms that are often confused when it comes to their study. Religion is based on faiths and beliefs when it comes to the acceptance of superhuman powers in the form of God or gods. On the other hand theology is the study of God thought. This is especially true of Christianity.
Catholic people think that if you believe in God miracles seem more obvious to you and if you deny and test the existence of God then it will be harder to see the miracles happen. If God really is behind all of the natural laws, he is not restricted by them therefore He is allowed to violate them from time to time. This also contradicts the fact that God is omnibenevolant and defeats the saying that ‘all humans are equal’. There are a lot of problems with using miracles to prove Gods existence, some say that one person’s miracle is not one to another person, we have some sort of scientific explanations to miracles that happened in the bible, so in the future we could have explanations to miracles that
Swinburne would argue that St. Theresa’s character would not lie about a supposed religious experience due to her deep faith in God and morals suggesting that her visions must have been from an external agent. On the other hand, it could be heavily argued that scientific advances could prove otherwise and expose the visions of Christ as an act of the mind ‘playing tricks’. Science has shown that the temporal lobe when stimulated through seizures can produce an altered perception such as religious experiences of this variety. St. Theresa had these visions in the 1500’s when science was in its earliest stages and religion was an answer for everything; these factors appear to support Richard Swinburne’s defence of certain types of characters not lying in support of
This demonstrates that faith serves as basis for our knowledge so that we may continue to construct and expand our knowledge i.e. the second-hand knowledge using other Ways of Knowing, namely reason and perception. In this essay, I will evaluate to what extent faith is a justifiable basis for knowledge, in religion and another Area of Knowledge – natural science. In my opinion, I believe that faith is a justifiable, legitimate basis for knowledge not only in religion but also in natural science. Let knowledge be a cosmic and complex structure, faith is the base for this structure for it provides fundamental assumptions and without these assumptions, the structure of knowledge will disintegrate.
McCloskey contended against the three mystical verifications, which are the cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument. He called attention to the presence of evil on the planet that God made. He likewise called attention to that it is irrational to live by trust or faith. As indicated by McCloskey, confirmations do not essentially assume a fundamental part in the conviction of God. Page 62 of the article expresses that "most theists do not come to have faith in God as a premise for religious conviction, however come to religion as a consequence of different reasons and variables."
As the great scientist pursued their work exalting God, more were questioning the religious truths and values? Who had rules of reasoning to discover nature’s law? Who said every person was born with a blank mind or “tabula Rasa,” and believed we gain knowledge from reason, not faith? Who recognized the center of leaders of the enlightenment,
This principle declares that in order for a hypothesis to be scientific, a basic requirement is that it is falsifiable. If it cannot be refuted, it is not a scientific claim. According to Popper, by discarding falsified knowledge claims, it allows the scientific understanding of the world to grow as scientific knowledge is cumulative; it enables scientists to build on the achievements of previous scientists that will develop a greater understanding of the world. However, even though previous achievements of scientists have been approved by the scientific community, there is always another scientist who will disprove previous theories e.g. the Catholic Church led people to believe that the Sun revolved around the Earth until Copernicus disproved this.
Before talking about the incompatibility of science and religion, it is necessary to answer questions such as what is science and what is religion? The science is a tool by means of which it is possible to receive true knowledge of the world. How there was a Universe or how life has appeared? Very deep and difficult question. While none of these issues have precise answers, but there is a scientific methodology, which is the best of what people can approach to them.
What does Paul Feyerabend’s notion of “Epistemological Anarchism” mean? Evaluate this in relation to his critique of Kuhn’s Paradigms. While Emphasizing the subjective side of science, Kuhn claimed that operating within science means existing within the restrictive confines of the dominant paradigm, which attempts to limit particular questions that can be asked, how these are asked, and how their answers are formulated into viable scientific facts that are accepted by fellow scientists. This paradigm, in turn may actually obstruct the progress of science by nature of being untranslatable to other paradigms and impede rational argument. Kuhn states that a scientist’s switch between one paradigm to the next is similar to a “gestalt switch” where neural programming is required rather than argument and persuasion.