Can someone have faith in a personal god and still lead a scientific life?

[Matty]

Or must a scientifically-minded person not have ANY beliefs that are not backed by evidence and observation?

[Mr. Smith]

Given that Darwin, Newton, Faraday, Galileo, and those of Abassad Caliphate were all great scientists, I'll go with yes.

[tik 🪀✨]

I don't think your topic's question and your post's alternative question are the opposites. But I know what you meant, I think, so I'll not be toooo picky.

A scientifically-minded person should have beliefs based on what there is evidence for and what observations lead him/her to believe, and this should be subject to change when given new evidence. Outside of this, I don't see how it necessarily opposes science to believe in things it is impossible to provide evidence for/against or things it is impossible to oberserve or infer. It doesn't matter at that point.

Really a "scientifically-minded" person you reference can believe in a personal god, because a religious belief need not comply with science. What is a "personal god?" If someone says they cannot believe in a "personal god" because they are "scientifically-minded" they are entirely nothing more than up themselves. If you are looking for religion to prove itself, you're missing the point.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What, exactly, is a 'scientific life' and what, exactly, is a 'scientifically minded person'? If you mean 'is it possible to be an actual scientist and also be religious' then the answer is a clear yes; I personally know/knew quite a few people who meet that description and there are also numerous high profile examples (and not all from the distant past!) as well.

If you are talking, instead, about 'scientism' then the answer is an equally clear no. That particularly worldview is not compatible with religious belief. Of course many of the more vocal proponents of the latter (whether they use the word - rare - or not) are not themselves scientists and often have a humanities background.

[°Leprechaun]

I don't get "faith". What is a good reason to believe in god or goddess in the first place?
Do you want to live forever? Would you live forever in this life, if you could?
People can believe what they want, but why isn't this simply an example of
the "wishful thinking" fallacy.
What not simply believe what is true, no matter how much you don't want to?
I am not a mind reader, so I can't say why people believe as they do, but
I don't see why I should believe something without evidence.
The disciple Thomas wouldn't believe in anything that he couldn't see with
the eyes of his body, according to the tradition.
He had his own gospel, but it was considered to heretical to be in the Bible.
If we can do good on our own, and if we have a free will we certainly can,
although the concept of free will is also open to debate, then why the need for a supreme being  to help us?
To answer the question is yes you can believe in god and science, and it would certainly be a dangerous thing not to believe in the latter, because it could
get you killed.

[DemPGH]

Polls done on this consistently show that belief in a personal God amongst scientists is way lower than the general population, and even lower amongst academic scientists. Basic scientific literacy and a bit of critical thinking would probably erode faith amongst all educated groups, but scientists or people who think in rational, scientific terms can and do believe in a personal God. It's also very true that there's more to belief in a personal God than faith: There are cultural and social aspects in play.

[The Mikado]

Science is a profession, not a lifestyle. I don't understand what a scientific life is but it sounds dreadful.

[Beet]

Science is a profession, not a lifestyle. I don't understand what a scientific life is but it sounds dreadful.

I don't know, but it brings to mind walking around with a monitoring device inserted up your rectum 24/7 for the benefit of these guys:

[afleitch]

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Andrew...  Andrew...  Andrew...  Words almost failed me because frankly I fail to see how that cartoon is at all relevant to the topic of this thread or even any side topics the discussion had wandered into.  Just because the topic touches upon religion is no excuse for you to engage in a broad spectrum attack upon the concept of religion in general.

Or perhaps you meant to post that cartoon in another thread?  As a comment for that thread it certainly would be on topic and pertinent.  Hyperbolic, but This Modern World always is.

[Cassius]

Well, to believe in scientific fact requires a certain degree of faith. I have never seen evolution in action, I have never seen any planets other than the Earth, yet I believe in them both because I hold in good faith what I have been told of them.

To put it another way, to believe in anything requires an act of faith. Sure, some things are a little more believable than others, but at the end of the day they still require faith to be believed in. God and, say, heliocentrism, are no different from one another in the sense the belief in both requires a certain amount of faith, even if the... leap, of faith is perhaps greater in the case of the latter than the former.

[afleitch]

Andrew...  Andrew...  Andrew...  Words almost failed me because frankly I fail to see how that cartoon is at all relevant to the topic of this thread or even any side topics the discussion had wandered into.  Just because the topic touches upon religion is no excuse for you to engage in a broad spectrum attack upon the concept of religion in general.

Or perhaps you meant to post that cartoon in another thread?  As a comment for that thread it certainly would be on topic and pertinent.  Hyperbolic, but This Modern World always is.

Oh Ernest, Ernest, Ernest you contrary ars-hole.

See the post above mine? Just scroll up a teensy bit, the picture of the scientists under the headline 'Female Orgasm Discovered'. Did you see it? Good. Well I thought the post was funny and it reminded me of that cartoon, so I thought, well it would be nice, given that it's been raised and we're having a lovely chat about god, science etc that I would post it. And I thought you know, it's sort of funny how very 'human' things often have to be confirmed by rather sterile studies in order to override preconceptions. Historic views on the female orgasm are in themselves quite interesting.

[7,052,770]

Well, to believe in scientific fact requires a certain degree of faith. I have never seen evolution in action, I have never seen any planets other than the Earth, yet I believe in them both because I hold in good faith what I have been told of them.

What? You've never seen a planet in the sky?

Around sunset, when the sky is dark blue and you can't see any stars yet, but there's a bright "star" in the sky all by itself, that's Venus (or another planet, if it's less bright).

[tik 🪀✨]

Well, to believe in scientific fact requires a certain degree of faith. I have never seen evolution in action, I have never seen any planets other than the Earth, yet I believe in them both because I hold in good faith what I have been told of them.

To put it another way, to believe in anything requires an act of faith. Sure, some things are a little more believable than others, but at the end of the day they still require faith to be believed in. God and, say, heliocentrism, are no different from one another in the sense the belief in both requires a certain amount of faith, even if the... leap, of faith is perhaps greater in the case of the latter than the former.

I don't think it requires a leap of faith to believe in something that can be proven through repeated experimentation to be true. Facts remain true despite whether or not you believe in them. If I literally take a leap of faith off my roof and into the air expecting to fly, I will come crashing down 100% of the time.

You probably meant things we are told about that we haven't directly tested ourselves, but these things are still achievable in being directly tested by you. You can buy a microscope or a telescope, you can learn the maths of special and general relativity and test its predictions, you can isolate chemicals and predict the effects of combining them with other chemicals. The fact that these things have been done by humanity and are all freely available for scrutiny and invalidation means that belief in them does not require any special effort once we are aware of them because they just are.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Andrew...  Andrew...  Andrew...  Words almost failed me because frankly I fail to see how that cartoon is at all relevant to the topic of this thread or even any side topics the discussion had wandered into.  Just because the topic touches upon religion is no excuse for you to engage in a broad spectrum attack upon the concept of religion in general.

Or perhaps you meant to post that cartoon in another thread?  As a comment for that thread it certainly would be on topic and pertinent.  Hyperbolic, but This Modern World always is.

Oh Ernest, Ernest, Ernest you contrary ars-hole.

See the post above mine? Just scroll up a teensy bit, the picture of the scientists under the headline 'Female Orgasm Discovered'. Did you see it? Good. Well I thought the post was funny and it reminded me of that cartoon, so I thought, well it would be nice, given that it's been raised and we're having a lovely chat about god, science etc that I would post it. And I thought you know, it's sort of funny how very 'human' things often have to be confirmed by rather sterile studies in order to override preconceptions. Historic views on the female orgasm are in themselves quite interesting.

Yeah.  I'll admit I missed the connection.  Probably because I need no additional evidence for the existence of female orgasms, tho I don't mind doing additional non-scientific study.

[RFayette]

The short answer is absolutely "yes."

Throughout history, there were many Christians in science such as Galileo and Linnaeus.  Evolution and quantum mechanics seem to have taken their toll on scientists' religion faith, and most scientists are now secular according to surveys.  However, there are still some Christian (and even YECers, though usually in a different field) scientists and a ton of Christian engineers/doctors, which I would consider a "scientific life" even though it's technically not a doctorate degree.

[DemPGH]

lol, thread wreck alert with the female orgasm post. But that funny and true Modern World cartoon wins it, thankfully.

Science is really just curiosity about how the physical world works, and it doesn't require you to make up fantasy genre trappings, so cool, IMO. What's interesting is that a lot of "amateur astronomers" and so on (meaning they do not have degrees in the subject but have curiosity about the natural world) have made contributions to science. That's the beauty of it.

The short answer is absolutely "yes."

Throughout history, there were many Christians in science such as Galileo and Linnaeus.  Evolution and quantum mechanics seem to have taken their toll on scientists' religion faith, and most scientists are now secular according to surveys.  However, there are still some Christian (and even YECers, though usually in a different field) scientists and a ton of Christian engineers/doctors, which I would consider a "scientific life" even though it's technically not a doctorate degree.

Yeah, and generally see God of the Gaps. I jump at opportunities to share that.

[RFayette]

The short answer is absolutely "yes."

Throughout history, there were many Christians in science such as Galileo and Linnaeus.  Evolution and quantum mechanics seem to have taken their toll on scientists' religion faith, and most scientists are now secular according to surveys.  However, there are still some Christian (and even YECers, though usually in a different field) scientists and a ton of Christian engineers/doctors, which I would consider a "scientific life" even though it's technically not a doctorate degree.

Yeah, and generally see God of the Gaps. I jump at opportunities to share that.

In general, yes......past scientists likely believed in God in part due to scientific gaps in knowledge.  However, at this juncture, the scientists who would be atheists/Christian probably would be no matter how much more knowledge we acquire......abiogenesis seems to be the final frontier and is generally accepted.  

On the other hand, the director of the Human Genome Project switched from atheism to Christianity during his studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins

So, it's a bit more complicated than mere "God of the gaps, eventually no religion"......genetics certainly can suggest a divine role to some, at least.

EDIT:  By the way, over the past week, I've become significantly warmer to Christianity/Evangelicalism than I have been in the past.  Part of it is having visited some universities and seeing the activities going on there, it makes me question secularism being best.

[bgwah]

How many people didn't believe god in those eras? Were scientists allowed not to believe in god?

[RFayette]

How many people didn't believe god in those eras? Were scientists allowed not to believe in god?

Obviously the church had a huge sway in those areas, so religion was more socially necessary.  But I definitely believe Newton was a devout Christian.

[DemPGH]

As late as the middle 18th century David Hume was denied a number of academic posts as a result of his perception as an atheist. And in the Middle Ages it was almost unthinkable to even question Aristotle. Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (Religion of the Doctor) in the 17th c. was condemned, banned, and ridiculed as subversive by the Church. So, disbelieving in God was really not an option for a variety of reasons until maybe the 19th century. That's when human beings started to discover natural mechanisms, laws, etc.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Sure, because science is only concerned with the answer to "how" and not the answer to "why".  I think there are certain religious beliefs that you simply can not have and claim to believe in the findings throughout scientific history.  For example, you simply can not say you trust in the scientific method and also claim that the Earth is a few thousand years old or that humans and dinosaurs shared the planet. 

[DC Al Fine]

As late as the middle 18th century David Hume was denied a number of academic posts as a result of his perception as an atheist. And in the Middle Ages it was almost unthinkable to even question Aristotle. Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (Religion of the Doctor) in the 17th c. was condemned, banned, and ridiculed as subversive by the Church. So, disbelieving in God was really not an option for a variety of reasons until maybe the 19th century. That's when human beings started to discover natural mechanisms, laws, etc.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

I wouldn't really count a book with long passages about astrology, alchemy etc as very good example of a science v religion divide

[RFayette]

While persecution certainly played a role, I definitely think the gulf between scientists and the public on faith was far less before the theories of evolution, quantum mechanics, and relativity.  Those really question a lot of basic assumptions about reality and are all quite abstract and can cause one to question ideas like absolute truth and the necessity of a creator.

Before the development of those three things, faith seemed pretty darn necessary to fit the puzzle pieces of life together.  I would argue there's still a case for faith, but it's more disputable now than it was then.

[RINO Tom]

Duh, as long as you're willing to compromise your faith with what the scientific evidence says.  A majority of scientists are not atheists based on most studies I've seen (that doesn't mean they believe in a personal God, mind you), so it's not only possible, it's quite possibly prevalent.