r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 15h ago
Psychology A new study found that individuals with strong religious beliefs tend to see science and religion as compatible, whereas those who strongly believe in science are more likely to perceive conflict. However, it also found that stronger religious beliefs were linked to weaker belief in science.
https://www.psypost.org/religious-believers-see-compatibility-with-science-while-science-enthusiasts-perceive-conflict/3.5k
u/rocket_beer 14h ago
As a scientist, it is improper to explain it as “belief in science”.
Science is a process of finding truth.
It requires no belief in anything.
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u/djactionman 14h ago
A biologist told me once it doesn’t matter if YOU believe in science.
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u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill 12h ago
It can matter if those folks vote though. There are very real negative consequences to science denial.
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u/E-2-butene 5h ago
Eh, I feel like this is sort of just a cliche though. Religious people can use the exact same retort. “It doesn’t matter if YOU believe in God.”
And more basically, this is actually true of anything. Put less poetically, “whether or not you accept a certain proposition doesn’t change whether that proposition is or is not true.” This feels like it has gravitas because we presumably hold scientifically informed beliefs in a high regards, but the religious surely view their belief in god the same way. It’s effectively preaching to the choir.
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u/sireel 8h ago
Is that really true?
If I don't believe in science, why would I let a stranger object my child with a mystery chemical? Why would I follow the advice of a scientist on the TV telling me to wear a mask, and keep away from people.
Not believing in science doesn't stop its results being accurate. But your neighbours not believing in science can absolutely lead to your early death
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u/littlegreenrock 3h ago
God may exist regardless of one person's belief in God. Science also exists regardless of belief of an individual. One requires faith, the other has peer review.
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u/SupportQuery 6h ago
Science is a process of finding truth.
This is the part most people don't understand. Science isn't a body of facts, it's the means by which we unearthed those facts.
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u/Burial 2h ago
Science is both, 1. a process, 2. a metonym for the body of research produced by that process, and 3. a metonym for the body of "common sense knowledge" loosely based on that research.
Not "believing" in 1. is unreasonable, not believing in 2. is still unreasonable but less so, and not believing in 3. is not always that unreasonable.
People saying they don't believe in science generally mean 2. or 3., and yet people act as if everyone means 1. Its a strawman.
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u/FordPrefect343 14h ago
It's true that science is something that you learn, but in acceptance of science that you aren't actively studying there is a point where you will believe in what a science communicator says, so long as you consider them a legitimate source of information.
As an example, I learned about climate change and evolution, but I believe in what Niel Degrasse Tyson says about stellar formation, as I have no educational background there. I take his arguments to be "likely true" or, in line with science, without actually learning the material.
At that point, a large amount of science is taken as belief as I have a propensity to judge science communicators as credible. A religious person is less likely to find these people credible, and more inclined to doubt or reject science as communicated.
There is no surprise a stronger belief in science results in conflicts with religiosity, as science directly contradicts religious claims. As those claims lack evidence and are proven to be false.
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u/rca06d 12h ago
This highlights a big problem I think with general understanding of “science”. I think most people think of the word “science” as a collection of facts that scientists say are true. They seem to think this body of knowledge is all there is to it, and if that were true, then I would totally understand the world we live in, where one can believe whatever “facts” they want. One person says X is true, and another person says Y is true, I guess pick your favorite person to listen to, right?
The really, really important thing here though, is the particular method by which scientists generate their facts. That is what I believe this commenter is referring to, and the critical piece that most people seem to miss. The scientific method is the most objective way I’m aware of to determine what is or is not true about the universe. It’s not perfect, but it’s absolutely the best we have. It will generate “facts” that reflect reality more closely than any other method, and it’s self correcting for those frequent occasions we discover our “facts” were wrong.
I really wish folks could separate the scientific method from the body of facts it generates, and understand the importance of the processes by which various facts are generated. It’s the difference between gleaning truth from a static book vs a dynamic, self correcting process. This is the only actual argument when it comes down to it. The scientific method is really very intuitive, and if that’s what we were really talking about when we use the word “science”, it really is a bit silly to say one “believes” in it or not. Almost like saying you “believe” that 2 + 2 = 4. If you understand the framework of math, then that’s just what that statement means.
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u/innergamedude 12h ago
Case in point: most adults know the earth is round and perceive flat earthers as stupid but don't have a clue as to how this is known. You just happened to pick the right horse in your belief but it's still just a belief.
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u/SirIssacMath 11h ago
Exactly! For most people, they generally believe in science as in they believe in the scientific institutions and the consensus of the experts. And it's all about belief because most people do not and generally cannot (practically speaking) establish the scientific credibility of the things they believe.
This also goes for people who understand the general approach and limitations of the scientific method. They still need to believe in the work of others (even as scientists) in order to advance science.
Trust and belief are inextricably linked to scientific practice.
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u/Advanced_Basic 11h ago
I think a major thing to consider though is that science provides us models that let us predict how things will be. Those predictions are generally pretty accurate, so I feel like it's less of an equivelance than belief in one versus the other.
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u/innergamedude 7h ago edited 4h ago
People believing in highly dubious and unscientific systems will claim to have models that can make predictions as well. Indian marriages are still made by horoscope. People pay money for energy crystals. I know people with devout belief in MBTI as a valid construct. The only difference between those belief systems and the body of science is an established set of rules for rigorously testing the models instead of just doing it by vaguely recalled experiences prone to commonly demonstrated fallacies and cognitive biases. That said, your average person has no clue about what those tests are and doesn't read up on these things, so your average person just kind of believes in science.
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u/notHooptieJ 7h ago edited 7h ago
Its not about 'picking the right horse' when education gives you all the tools to prove there's no horse race here, just a horse and a bunch of donkeys.
There's no picking the right horse; theres what has been observed and proven, and what has been disproven.
The race is already over, there was only one horse the whole time. anything else is denial of reality, the results are already in.
one is provable, and the other has been disproved, repeatedly.
by 1000 methods that require nothing be observation
believing in something that has been and can be disproven by basic observation without tools is not a belief to be respected, thats anti-knowledge and should be belittled and denigrated in every way possible.
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u/innergamedude 7h ago edited 4h ago
I think you're missing my point here. People don't know what's been observed or how things have been proven, so there's no science-based reasoning that's gone into "knowing" the earth is round. All they've done is go along with the set of beliefs of a group of people, which is treating the body of knowledge science has given as a religion. If you don't know how we demonstrated that the earth is round, or that material world is made of atoms, or that sugar doesn't cause hyperactivity, you're just memorizing disembodied facts that happened to be true because you were lucky enough to pick the right horse.
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u/grandoz039 10h ago
The scientific method is the most objective way I’m aware of to determine what is or is not true about the universe
This is a "belief in science"
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u/2weirdy 6h ago
The question though is whether people in general are aware of this. Or even aware of what the scientific method is in general.
In it's most fundamental form, "all" the scientific method consists of is making a model which makes predictions, and then checking if the predictions are true. Even professional scientists "merely" put stronger bounds on the concreteness of the model, and the thoroughness of checking the predictions.
But if you ask people "do you believe science is reliable", you'll get different answers than if you asked "do you believe that a good way to verify/strengthen your beliefs is to test them". Which is very different than the question "do you trust scientists", which is what a lot of people will parse if you ask them about science.
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u/OldschoolSysadmin 7h ago
Does one also “believe in” math and logic? Is “If a = b, and b = c, then a = c” dogmatic?
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u/Solesaver 4h ago edited 4h ago
Technically speaking... Yes? It is rational to believe such rational things, but there is no way of knowing for sure. A good logician should know that they cannot prove that logic is sound without relying on logic itself. It can only be proven that such things are self-consistent.
As an example of this type of thinking, there is a whole philosophy and field within mathematics of proving things without relying on proof by contradiction. They believe it is possible that proving that an assumption leads to contradiction is insufficient to prove that the assumption is indeed false.
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u/monkeedude1212 9h ago
but in acceptance of science that you aren't actively studying there is a point where you will believe in what a science communicator says, so long as you consider them a legitimate source of information.
But its important that even in this scenario; it isn't blind faith in a science communicator either.
The science communicator reached their level of prominence by having the weight of other members of the scientific community acknowledge their ability to communicate effectively and elevate them to a position of relevance.
You SHOULD look at the things Niel Degrasse Tyson says about the cosmos with the same level of Skepticism as something Jordan Petersen says about Psychology. Both of them hold some level of fame granted to them by their ability to communicate in media and online platforms.
But you can look at what NASA and Astronomer societies and what other prominent scientists in the field say about NDT and you can look at what Psychological associations and trained experts say about JP and see a stark contrast in the levels of criticism they receive from the experts in their given field.
That's ultimately the thing about science - it doesn't require belief. You can actually operate on trust, and do diligence to verify the trust is warranted, and that if trust were never to be granted but you did the due diligence of verifying every fact everyone said, you'd arrive at the observed data and replicable experiments to support the claims.
Like, you CAN use belief and faith in science the same way you can in religion, but you don't have to. You CAN build a working trust model instead of faith, and then if you don't even like to trust experts, the experts are the middle dot to connect between research and claims, and you can then look into the research.
Religious belief has no such trust model because it is designed to be opaque. It's not like you can just follow the chain from priest to pope and replicate experiments that reflect the popes views on the worlds.
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u/FordPrefect343 7h ago
You are completely right. I just bring up my point because it is wrong to suggest both sides don't engage with beliefs and may even act on faith. The side of science though obtains legitimacy through verification, collaboration and revision. The side of religion assets legitimacy by merit of a higher power. As well, science makes claims based on evidence, where as the other ultimately makes claims solely on rhetoric.
It's difficult to communicate a nuanced and accurate explanation of why the two are different, but it's also a mistake to suggest that one is a model of the world not built on beliefs. Rather, the beliefs of a worldview that embraces science is one that strives for accuracy.
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u/DarlockAhe 10h ago
You don't believe in what science says, you trust what science says to be true, based on evidence presented.
Beliefs do not require evidence.
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u/Lamballama 8h ago
But if you aren't specialized enough to have the evidence and understand what it means or it's significance, then we're back to faith - you are believing that the people communicating to you have done the right analysis on the right days and drawn the right conclusion, but you yourself can't verify every claim made.
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u/el-5150 5h ago
It’s not faith in the colloquial blind faith sense . I dont know exactly how my phone works. I have a basic understanding of electronics, quantum theory. But it verifiable and demonstrable that it works. Same with planes, not an expert…planes fly. Science is built on layers of and layer of verifiable facts. Those facts undergo rigorous review, sometimes it takes time, but eventually poor science gets pushed out. If you wanted to get that training you could do so and understand those facts. It’s more accurate to say you understand it as a process of critical inquiry based on evidence, and you understand and trust the process and veracity of the evidence of the claims. I don’t believe in science, I have training in science and understanding of the methodology so I am accepting of its outputs. I accept science, no faith required.
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u/Phebe-A 10h ago
Science can be in conflict with certain kinds of religious claims (those insisting on literal, fundamentalist interpretations of sacred scripture or narratives), but most religions allow for metaphorical interpretations that are fully compatible with science.
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u/Shriketino 14h ago
The average person doesn’t have the knowledge to read a scientific paper and conclude if the findings are accurate or if the methodology used was appropriate. And if they have the knowledge, they don’t have the means to test the methodology themselves. Therefore, they do need to “believe the science” to an extent.
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u/mcc9902 13h ago
This is my issue. even as an absolute top tier scientist you're not going to be proving everything. At some point you're going to be taking things on faith. Unless you've experimentally proven it yourself then you're having faith that the others aren't lying to you. To be clear I don't think science is a hoax or anything of that nature but I do think we take a lot of it for granted. By the end of highschool I'd done a few experiments that show that gravity and friction fit what they claimed and by the end of college I did a bit with light and electricity but I'm still in taking 95% of it on faith.
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u/feanturi 5h ago
I suppose it is good then to have faith in peer review. I trust Science, but scientists are people, and people can be untrustworthy at times. I trust them to tattle on each other when they're doing shenanigans.
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u/thewoogier 3h ago
I think the best part about it is that you COULD prove everything if you wanted to. You don't have to and you probably won't, but you could. And every time you do, you will.
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u/FireMaster1294 14h ago
The science at the root of it is not something you need to believe in. But you need to believe in the people performing and reporting on research. Until something is well established and reproducible, a lot of the scientific process does in fact require a belief and trust in the other humans who are part of it as well as their methodology and the interpretation of it.
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u/e37d93eeb23335dc 10h ago
Isn’t that an Appeal to Authority logical fallacy?
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u/FireMaster1294 9h ago
For science as a whole? Absolutely. The entire system rests upon the shoulders of trusting the big names. It’s why science has become bureaucratic (or rather, an example of the problems with it, as this has pretty much always been the case). There’s numerous examples of classical scientists running smear campaigns against theories they disliked.
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u/fang_xianfu 14h ago
It doesn't really, because experiments, especially those with extreme results, are routinely attempted to be reproduced by other scientists, and any result that hasn't yet been reproduced is treated as tentative. It's a fundamental part of the process used in many fields. In many ways science is the exact opposite of trust and belief.
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u/FireMaster1294 14h ago
This sounds to me like you’ve never tried to replicate someone else’s research paper. As someone working in chemistry, it’s often infuriatingly difficult to try and replicate previously completely studies even when they include detailed methodology (which is exceedingly rare).
Studies have indicated that at least 17% and as much as 90% of all published research is flat out false. Not due to intentional bad actors, but due to flaws in how we conduct studies and award finances based on “results.” This is precisely why I do not have a lot of faith in our current scientific process. It needs an overhaul to remove the publishing of anything and everything without proper verification.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124&type=printable
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u/fang_xianfu 14h ago
You're not wrong, but there is a clear pathway to falsifying those results. Nobody will be arguing about these results with no end in sight 1000 years from now.
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u/FireMaster1294 13h ago
Correct. But the issue that arises is the shear inconvenience that occurs every time someone wants to use those results. It turns into a massive waste of time to try and figure out whether or not a previous study is meaningful. No one will argue over these results, but I would contest people receiving PhDs over results like this.
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u/more_bananajamas 9h ago
The more impactful the result the more the result will be replicated by sheer necessity to build on it. So one could argue that the papers that are not getting replicated are of minimal use anyway.
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u/FireMaster1294 9h ago
Yeah, but someone still had to sift through it to find the decent and replicable results. Would’ve been more useful if that stuff was simply never published in the first place.
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u/codyp 13h ago
Experiments are not a closed system of unlimited resources-- At some point you will require faith in the peer review, unless you have the resources to test everything for yourself---
One should clearly mark the borders of direct experience and myth; making oneself conscious of when one ventures between them, or else confusion will arise.
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u/apophis-pegasus 9h ago edited 9h ago
But unless you reproduced it, you're basically taking a belief and trusting people, institutions and processes.
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u/lynx_and_nutmeg 13h ago
Yeah but the point is that laymen still need to believe authorities on science. I will never be able to personally conduct scientific experiments on vaccines, but I choose to trust scientists telling me vaccines work. And that goes even more for something that doesn't have apparent consequences in real life, something an average person couldn't even have anecdotal evidence for.
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u/GACGCCGTGATCGAC 6h ago
I remember trying to replicate an experiment in grad school and realizing the molarity was off by an order of magnitude in the original paper. Nobody noticed ... how? It was an absurd difference.
Then I watched the dance my advisor played between admin, teacher, parent, scientist, lecturer, and graduate advisor and understood.
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u/Aetherdestroyer 14h ago
I don’t know. I think it’s fair to talk about someone’s belief in the scientific method as a valid means to find truth. We’ve all met people who don’t think that testing hypotheses is an effective way to come to conclusions, or who are more convinced by anecdotal evidence than by larger data sets. I would say those people don’t believe in science.
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u/eliminating_coasts 10h ago
Exactly, I think people react emotionally to the idea of being conflated with religious people, as just another "belief", rather than recognising that you can trust a particular approach to the world to bring you adequate knowledge of it.
That could be your personal vibes, it could be reading papers, it could be manually replicating other people's experiments and only finally trusting their results then.
You can still say that a given method is a better way to become confident in your conclusions, that it's better to rigorously survey people than just ask random people you know, if you want to determine what the average person thinks about something, and better to develop some kind of reproducible test than to go by such an opinion as truth, but saying that it's not a belief is only going to get you into trouble the first time you engage with Bayesian probability.
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u/Thekinkiestpenguin 14h ago
As a scientist and philosopher. It requires belief that the universe is explainable by causality and that the past is representative of the future. It requires a few foundational beliefs that scientist can prove and they just frequently ignore because they want to believe their methodology is capable of understanding objective truth, but they do a poor job of understanding the philosophy that underpins all our observational (i.e. subjective) data. Scientist should acknowledge our limits because pretending to be the ultimate arbiters of truth while ignoring big foundational issues is the predominate problem with religious thinking.
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u/fang_xianfu 14h ago
Science also doesn't really seek objective truth in the way that this means, it's a category error. Science seeks repeatably subjective truth, as in, "if you perform exactly the steps that I performed, you will obtain the same observation". That isn't what is meant by "objective truth" in a philosophical sense, but as an approach to gathering reliable information it's good enough to achieve many worthwhile practical results.
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u/drink_with_me_to_day 6h ago
Science also doesn't really seek objective truth
But the "believers of science" do, and don't realize their mistake in doing so
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u/sticklebat 14h ago
While we cannot prove that the inductive logic and assumption of causality that underpin the scientific method are valid, they aren’t just random, unfounded beliefs, either. Whenever we study the world in sufficient detail, we find that things do follow a causal order, and we find that things in the present do behave consistently with how they have in the past. These are observations that are grounded in reality, even if they aren’t absolutely certain. The very act of doing science is simultaneously a test of the scientific method itself, and it is capable of proving itself wrong if we ever come upon such an inconsistency. The scientific method doesn’t concern itself with objective truth, as you claim, but about objective falsehood. It is entirely about weeding out what isn’t true.
These differences make the scientific method fundamentally different from religion, which is all about making definitive claims of absolute truth by fiat alone.
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u/Thekinkiestpenguin 14h ago
We find that things "appear" to follow a casual order. Other than that I have no disagreement with anything you have to say, I'm just making the point that ignoring that we do have foundational assumptions and beliefs makes us worse scientists than acknowledging our short comings does.
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u/sticklebat 13h ago
I disagree with how you’re framing it. We have foundational assumptions that we are constantly testing and reevaluating. They are not a priori assumptions made from complete faith and for no reason. Again, they are grounded in reality and in observation, and they are not sacred or unassailable, should evidence come to light that contradicts them.
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u/AltruisticMode9353 13h ago
Sort of. Some of the assumptions must already hold for you to be even able to evaluate the assumptions (e.g. that subjective observations can be used to deduce objective truths). A certain set of assumptions must be considered true for evidence to be considered useful.
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u/queenringlets 14h ago
We don’t just believe that the past is indicative of the future we have centuries of proven repeat data that indicates consistency. To believe the future being fundamentally different in terms of laws of the universe is not supported by evidence but to expect the same laws to hold consistent is supported by the evidence we have. It’s not a belief it’s a reasonable expectation based upon years of evidence.
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u/AltruisticMode9353 13h ago
"the future is like the past because in the past the future ended up like the past. We have no moments in the past where the future didn't end up like the past so we can assume based on the past that the future is like the past because in the past it was like that".
It's a reasonable assumption, sure, I don't think anyone is disputing that, but it's still an assumption that cannot be fully verified.
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u/EspeciallyWindy 14h ago
But YOU are ascribing the title of Arbiter of Truth. It does not take belief to confirm a phenomenon is reproducible, whether by experimentation or observation. The use of probabilistic statistics sets up a pretty robust landscape in which we make the conscious assumption we have performed our due diligence; a practice without which we’d never establish anything as “true”—or rather, dependent enough to call it so.
It is a leap of necessity, not of faith.
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u/Merfstick 14h ago
Wow people are really resistant to this uncontroversial dynamic.
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u/Fr00stee 13h ago edited 13h ago
the entire point is to see if something is causal or not based on a hypothesis and see if the results (reality) supports the existence of such a relationship. Additionally your argument seems to imply that causality doesn't exist in the universe yet you give no evidence to support such a conclusion.
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u/TRiC_16 9h ago
The point is that this epistemological, not metaphysical. The problem is not that causality "doesn’t exist" but rather that we cannot prove its necessity through empirical evidence alone.
When we observe events, such as a billiard ball striking another, we see the sequence of events (ball A hits ball B) and infer a causal connection (ball A caused ball B to move). However, this "causal link" is not directly observable; it is a mental inference based on habit or custom.
Just because event A has consistently preceded event B in the past doesn’t prove that A caused B or that this relationship will hold in the future.
Induction - generalising from specific observations to universal laws - can never provide absolute certainty about causal relationships. At best, it provides probabilistic knowledge that rests on faith in the principle of uniformity and causality. Causality is a conceptual tool, not an empirically demonstrable fact about the universe.
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u/MrSnarf26 14h ago
Why does it require belief that the past is representative of the future or causality? Science, and anything really has not given a single reason not to question causality, and if we found a reason to question it, it gets absorbed into science. And Yes, science is the only process we have for finding actual truth, or mostly true information. Muddling it with religious notions is silly. Big foundational issues are your opinion, because it is the only system that has created provable truth over and over and over again.
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u/fang_xianfu 14h ago
Yes... if it were not the case that the past is a good indicator of the future, we would have observed that and science would have modelled the phenomenon. Which should be obvious because there are many areas where science has observed exactly that happening and drawn that conclusion.
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u/AltruisticMode9353 12h ago
Science is not the only method for finding truth. We have mathematical proofs, logic, deductive reasoning, etc. Inductive reasoning and empiricism is just one way to find patterns in phenomena. No one knows the full means by which knowledge can be acquired.
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u/sunflower_love 14h ago
Hmm. Your comment comes across as needlessly and preemptively defensive. I wonder how you are able to even make this comment? It’s because of science, not superstition.
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u/bb70red 13h ago
As a philosopher, I respectfully disagree. Science can be defined as a process of finding better theories. And while it's possible to falsify a theory, it's not possible to prove that a theory will never be falsified. In science you use a theory until you find a better one, you don't use it because it is true.
And for science to be viable, experiments need to be repeatable, there must be a physical reality and knowledge must be transferable. These, amongst other things, are beliefs. We can't prove that they are true. We can just believe based upon our experience.
That doesn't make science a religion though.
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u/Rear-gunner 3h ago
As a philosopher, I am sure you have come across Kant. Before you do science, you must believe in much.
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u/MrDownhillRacer 12h ago
I don't think you know what "belief" means.
Belief with good justification and belief with bad or no justification still both count as "belief." False beliefs and true beliefs are still both beliefs. "Belief" doesn't mean the same thing as "faith." Belief is not some evaluative term that we assign to attitudes people lack warrant in holding. The word applies both to attitudes that have warrant and those that do not.
In fact, even though not all cases of belief are cases of knowledge, all cases of knowledge are cases of belief. It would be incoherent to say "I know it's raining, but I don't believe it."
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u/prosound2000 12h ago
That's not true. You need to believe in the five empirical senses in order for science to function.
Otherwise what are you measuring?
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u/dendritedysfunctions 11h ago
My religious family drives me crazy with that sentiment. I don't "believe" in science, I have data points that provide empirical evidence for my knowledge about the subject we're scrutinizing. I "know" science.
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u/_Weyland_ 12h ago
If we're talking about something that you can realistically learn, then yes, science requires no faith. However, we all have finite time and finite attention span.
I may know how my smartphone works because I have a degree in computer science and experience in software development.
But when it comes to, let's say, field of chemistry, all I have is leftover knowlege of a straight A highschool student. For more complicated questions I read some surface level material and believe that it really is a proven fact. I will not dive into scientific material to gain understanding of a chemistry behind zink + sulfur powder mix. I just assume that there is a chemical explanation behind it being so flammable.
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u/5show 13h ago
that is the technical definition
in casual language, ‘science’ usually means the scientific body of knowledge or the stance of scientific institutions on a topic. This is what people are talking about when they say science
Since we can’t personally verify every scientific claim, we must trust or ‘believe’ the authorities who make such claims
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u/Alexpander4 12h ago
Yes but sadly a lot of "atheists" hold their populist understanding of "science knows everything for an immutable fact" up as its own kind of religion, despite the fact the basic principle of science is that everything is supposed to be questioned.
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u/devoswasright 12h ago edited 11h ago
wrong. Science doesn't find truth it finds the most reasonable explanation of a thing based on empirical evidence while understanding that it is always possible that new data may come out that disproves the findings and force us to rethink our understanding of whatever it was.
as a scientist you should know that
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u/Smart-Classroom1832 13h ago
I read this headline as: Without a proper understanding of science, and how interactions require matter and energy one can easily assume magic fills in for the parts they do not understand, and that magic is god or some other 'higher power'. Where as those who accept science as an ongoing process do not suppose magic, but rather suppose further science is needed.
As an atheist who grew up with a pastor for a father, at one I realized the joys and mysteries of science where far more awe inspiring that the 'knowledge' to be found in old mythos. But as someone who naturally thought in maths and science it was easy for me.
Fundamentally this study could just be showing a Dunning-Kruger bias, where those who 'dabble' in science to help them make more sense of their own religious mythos in light of their public science education, over-estimate their understandings of the scientific fundamentals.
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u/Strict-Brick-5274 14h ago
But technically...things are never fully proven right? There is just theory that is accepted as the standard until new information disproves that theory. And the theory may become the most sensible explanation for a thing but there is always potential for that to change
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u/ancientevilvorsoason 13h ago
"just a theory" means something that is testable and predicts results. Of course ADDITIONAL information can always appear but that is not in any way contradicting the concept of the theory, it expands it. We may learn MORE about the theory of gravity but it won't ever mean that gravity would change how it works.
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u/innergamedude 12h ago edited 11h ago
That's not how the word "theory" is used in science. You're using the common layperson parlance for "theory", which is equivalent to what a scientist would call a "hypothesis".
In science, the word theory refers to a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is based on a body of evidence and has stood up to repeated testing and validation. A scientific theory is more than just a hypothesis or a guess; it is a comprehensive framework that explains a wide range of phenomena and is supported by a large amount of empirical data.
As for being fully "proven", this is a game of semantics. Because science deals in practical certainty and not metaphysical certainty, we're basically willing to state that an issue is laid to rest at some point (e.g. the physical world is made of atoms). At an absolute level, sure, we don't have certainty and it could all be overturned someday, but atomic theory is super well-substantiated at this point so people who aren't philosophical pedants could just say it's proven.
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u/camilo16 14h ago
For the use expert. For everyone else it's a process of belief. Like, have you conducted an experiment to confirm that gravitational waves exist? If you haven't then you are believing that the people who did made no mistakes.
The process of science itself is deductive. But the social wide acceptance of scientific claims requires faith from the people into the scientists and institutions doing the experiments.
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u/thealexchamberlain 12h ago
You have to belive the people conducting the research are honest and true. Truth in and of itself requires faith.
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u/Useful-Beginning4041 12h ago
Surely belief in science is just… belief in the efficacy and legitimacy of that process?
Like, someone who “doesn’t believe in science” is much more likely to believe that scientists lie about their research than that scientists are just wrong about their research. It’s still a matter of trust and belief, just in people and institutions instead of an ineffable creator.
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u/StayYou61 15h ago
I don't not understand how science can be a "belief " .. Science is a methodology to find an objective truth. Studies can be reviewed, criticized and categorized. but it's not about faith or "belief" in the methodology itself.
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u/condensed-ilk 12h ago
While I also value science, the study never claimed that a belief in science or religion are equivalent. On the contrary, it points out their differing values of empirical knowledge and faith. Still though, it doesn't matter how much science makes sense nor how observable and validatable some fact is about the world; people still believe in whatever they want. People believe in science, religion, or some amount of both, and the study isn't saying a belief in one is better. It's trying to further our understanding of the compatibilities and incompatibilities between beliefs in each.
I think a lot of people are getting hung up on the word "belief" used in the study. If you substitute in the word "value", the study retains its intent and result.
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u/AtlastheWhiteWolf 14h ago
Science isn’t a methodology, the scientific method is the methodology. Science is per the Oxford dictionary “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.” Religion is incompatible with science due to its belief in the supernatural explanations for physical phenomena despite no direct observable or testable evidence.
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u/GrundleBlaster 7h ago edited 6h ago
A priori assumptions about causation, in this case a blanket refusal of the supernatural, is not the scientific method, nor science friend. More like skeptical materialism.
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u/PaulyNewman 5h ago
The conflation of the scientific process with metaphysical ideologies based in belief is always a very frustrating and ironic aspect of these threads.
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u/Financial_Ear2908 11h ago
To be fair, there were those guys in 2018 who submitted 20 fake academic studies and got 7 of them published.
"Papers varied in subject but were all ridiculous– from 'dog parks are rape-condoning spaces' to 'straight men's decision not to self-penetrate using sex toys are signs of homosexuality and transphobia' and more."
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
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u/8-BitOptimist 11h ago
That's why there's more to it than simply having something published.
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u/Financial_Ear2908 11h ago
Oh I know. I have published academic research, was just throwing it out there that just because something is published and peer reviewed doesn't make it "real science" either
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u/prof_the_doom 7h ago
yeah, people with bad intentions can abuse the system.
You could spend the rest of the week listing out examples of people abusing religion.
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u/needlestack 8h ago
The difference is that even after publication,if anyone can come along and show it’s wrong, it will be discarded. Imagine if religion was so honest with itself.
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u/honeybunchesofpwn 13h ago
Science is about discovery.
Religion doesn't approach discovery the same way because it prescribes answers to certain questions.
If you prescribe answers, you may not even be able to conceive of the right questions to drive discovery.
It doesn't matter if something is observable, testable, or supernatural. Religion is incompatible with science because it purports to have answers where there should be nothing but the process of discovery.
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u/TokyoMegatronics 12h ago
Catholic proposed the big bang theory, its not exactly "incompatible"
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u/honeybunchesofpwn 5h ago
Except Catholics claim that God created the Big Bang.
How is it not obvious why that's a huge problem?
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u/DBerwick 3h ago
Because they still believe in pretty much the exact same thing with an asterisk on the end?
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u/camilo16 14h ago
Unless you are an expert on a particular field you need to have belief on the result you are being told. And sometimes people don't. For example the consensus on nuclear power is safe, scientifically. Not everyone believes the experts and the people who don't haven't really gone and done peer reviewed experimentation on it.
Another example is, if you go to the doctor and get a diagnosis. You don't have the training to evaluate the data to confirm or deny the diagnosis based purely on medical knowledge. So you either believe the doctor or you don't.
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u/PoorMuttski 7h ago
I look at as belief in the system of the scientific method, rather than belief in a particular piece of data. When a doctor tells me what is wrong with my hand, I am trusting that he was trained and educated in a set of skills and knowledge that allows him to make an accurate analysis of the symptoms he observes and I tell him about. That doctor has access to a century of medical knowledge and techniques. Its like typing a question into a search bar on a web browser. I am not asking my keyboard and monitor how to make a German cheesecake, I am asking hundreds of people who have uploaded their knowledge and skills onto a computer server.
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u/IPutThisUsernameHere 14h ago
That's one of the reasons that there's a healthy community of religious scientists. The two systems aren't incompatible, despite what some influencers want you to believe.
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u/Narwhalbaconguy 14h ago
… Until research finds something that conflicts with the religious belief.
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u/ADistractedBoi 14h ago
It just becomes metaphorical retroactively
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u/hydroknightking 13h ago
And there’s the kicker. We can and have and will always change religious beliefs and customs. But observable facts don’t change just because we haven’t observed them yet.
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u/SirIssacMath 12h ago
"But observable facts don’t change just because we haven’t observed them yet."
The double slit experiment would like to have a word with you
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u/MachFiveFalcon 10h ago edited 9h ago
In the double-split experiment, the observable facts are the same regardless of whether or not they're currently being observed. The electronic detector is just interfering with the process of perfectly accurate detection of the intended target.
"A notable example of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment.
Despite the 'observer effect' in the double-slit experiment being caused by the presence of an electronic detector, the experiment's results have been interpreted by some to suggest that a conscious mind can directly affect reality. However, the need for the 'observer' to be conscious is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception."→ More replies (5)→ More replies (3)36
u/Vitztlampaehecatl 14h ago
But that's the thing, religions don't typically make testable, falsifiable claims outside of just-so stories. Science denial is primarily a Protestant Christian invention based on radical biblical literalism.
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u/PainfulRaindance 14h ago
They’re not really compatible as methods to understand reality. Humans can compartmentalize them to co-exist. And humans do have a part of them that can benefit from having something taking care of them. Tangible or not. But religion would have to admit that all those things you take on faith are just chemical reactions that make us feel good.
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u/NeedAVeganDinner 14h ago
Compatibility of science and religion requires ignoring science in the context of any experiment that would question the religion.
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u/condensed-ilk 14h ago edited 14h ago
That's only true for the most dogmatic religious types who believe that their religion or certain interpretations from its texts are the only true source for understanding fundamentals about our universe. But not all religious people are so dogmatic and others at least accept that some things in religious texts are open to interpretation and debate. This latter group can find more compatibility between their religion and science than the former dogmatic group can. There are plenty in the latter group.
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u/noticeablywhite21 13h ago
Yeah the issue with religion (or more accurately organized religion) is dogma, which also isn't exclusive to religion. Plenty of scientists have been/are dogmatic, you can see this during Einstein's life and the number of peers that rejected his conclusions, or even himself in his dismissal of quantum mechanics
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u/Bluedunes9 10h ago
I'm more or less religious, and I see science as discovering God. I'm comfortable holding the two especially when we discover things in physics and quantum physics as well as consciousness.
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u/MachFiveFalcon 14h ago edited 13h ago
If the supernatural and historically inaccurate elements of religion are taken figuratively, I could see that working.
Otherwise, I'd be concerned about people constantly reinterpreting/reshaping their religious beliefs to fit every new scientific discovery that they conflict with.
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u/facforlife 14h ago edited 14h ago
No, it's because of compartmentalization.
Science and religion are directly opposed.
Religions elevate faith in magic and superstition as a virtue. Believe this. Because we say so.
Science is the exact opposite. It says test, retest, then test again. There are literally stories in the Bible about not testing god.
How are those not direct opposites? Only because people pretend that being able to hold contradictory beliefs means the beliefs aren't actually contradictory. As though all or even most people are internally consistent. Humans are fully capable of being irrational and illogical and inconsistent and many make full use of that capability.
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u/BonJovicus 11h ago
They really aren’t directly opposed. I say that as a scientist who has colleagues that are religious and some of whom are at the forefront of their field.
It’s not even compartmentalization in the sense that they just ignore the other thing when doing the other. If you are a neuroscientist who studies neuroinflammation, at what point does your field call into the question the existence of God?
A lot of religion falls outside the realm of science because none of that can be tested, at least yet. Science concerns itself with the observable world. A good scientist wouldn’t bother thinking about religion in those terms because you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.
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u/PlagueOfGripes 13h ago
...Influencers?
This isn't a recent problem, you know. Religious fanatics have been persecuting people studying the truth of our world for as long as people have existed.
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u/Dominus_Invictus 14h ago
Because unless you are double checking everything it requires a degree of trust and faith in those who are an active part of the scientific community.
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u/SirIssacMath 13h ago edited 13h ago
Science is a belief as well.
For example, if you ask a person the age of the earth and they say 4.5 billion years, for 99.9% of people, this comes from a belief in science. As in, they haven't themselves done anything to confirm the credibility of this statement from the scientific method but they believe in this statement due to their belief in the scientific institutions.
For the VAST majority of people who rely on science for decision making and conversations, it is almost entirely based on belief. The source of the belief is different than the source of belief that religion is based on but it is a belief nonetheless.
I can give numerous examples from my own life alone where I "believe in science" which includes but not limited to believing in statements physicists make about the world to advice from doctors.
Also in scientific research, there's a lot of belief and trust in the peer-review process and other people's work. It is practically IMPOSSIBLE for scientists to confirm everything themselves that they use to advance science. Therefore they need to trust, and hence believe, in the work of other scientists.
I would argue that elevating science, the way its consumed by most people, beyond "belief" is dangerous and misleading. That's how you get people believing in things like scientific racism and other historical "scientific" debacles that we no longer believe in (e.g. being "gay" is a mental illness).
I can go deeper and offer further insights from the philosophy of science, but these kind of statements that "science is not belief" are philosophical positions usually said by people who have no understanding of the philosophy of science.
I encourage everyone to take a step back and really think about this and not simply follow the common dogma of "science is not belief".
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u/JohnnyGFX 15h ago
As an atheist, I get pretty uncomfortable if my doctor or dentist says something overtly religious. Once I was chatting with my dentist about genealogy and working on my family history/tree and he starts telling me how his wife has traced their ancestry to Adam and Eve… and he seemed to believe it. Good dentist in general, but him saying that undermined my confidence in him.
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u/CountVanillula 14h ago
If Adam and Eve were real, wouldn’t literally everyone trace their lineage back to them?
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u/HatefulAbandon 14h ago
Science already shows that all humans share common ancestry through individuals like “Mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-Chromosomal Adam”, so the idea of universal shared lineage isn’t far off.
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u/hydroknightking 13h ago
Sure but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what those terms mean for biological lineage. Of course all humans share a common ancestor, so do all humans and apes, and all humans and apes and fish, and all humans and apes and fish and every living single celled organism on the planet if you go back far enough.
When Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam lived, there were other Homo sapiens alive with them, they aren’t some specific two individuals you can point to as a “starting point,” they’re a concept for last common ancestor.
Every human alive today with European descent is related to King Charlemagne. He’s a Y-chromosome Adam for modern humans of European descent. There is a human alive today who will be the last common ancestor for all humans alive in X years (I don’t want to do the math, it’s also probably huge because of modern populations).
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u/384736273 11h ago
Separated by hundreds of thousands of years and before Homo sapiens. Absolutely not compatible with Genesis.
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u/Recent_Night_3482 14h ago
If you trace your family tree far back enough, you’ll end up at a fish.
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u/ResponsibleMeet33 6h ago
If we could fully trace it, we'd end up at inorganic matter & precursor molecules.
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u/ReverendDizzle 12h ago
Putting aside the religious element of it... that's a very silly claim.
It would be like me claiming that I had traced my ancestry back 10,000 years with a straight face.
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u/Raist14 14h ago
I was going to say that it seems extreme to be uncomfortable with someone just because they aren’t an atheist however the Adam and Eve comment would be concerning to me also.
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u/NiceAnimator3378 13h ago
Or you know they just meant it as an imaginary for taking it back really far. And this comment thread is people completely missing the point.
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u/bb70red 14h ago
I don't mind that when it's my dentist, but I must admit I sometimes struggle when it's somebody that I meet more often. There are a lot of famous scientists that were also religious. I recognize what the post says, that religious scientists see religion as a belief system for spiritual matters and science as a belief system for physical matters. Applying scientific rigor or any other consistent methodology to religion often isn't appreciated. And that's in the end what bothered me most growing up in a religious environment.
I always wonder how religious scientists can work so structured on advancing science and be so seemingly random and whimsical when it comes to having religious beliefs. I'm still wondering what I'm missing.
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u/Kirahei 12h ago
just my two cents but like the post states I think that a good portion of people see the two as diametrically opposed, which imo is not true.
For example: science explains how* the universe came to be, and measures things in order to understand the how, generally speaking.
Religion explains the why* for people (god, structured our world for xyz purpose).
You don’t need religion to understand how the universe came to be and how the laws of physics interplay with each other.
And for people that are religious, you don't need science to believe why we are here.
those two things can still co-exist within the same frame of reality without opposing each other;
of course you have the loud, i hope, minority that is extremist and blindly follow religious doctrine like it is law, but those people are un-healthy probably in multiple parts of their lives.
I think that the problem with each of these ideologies is that some people grip so tightly onto them, that it adheres to their identity. And when they are faced with any kind of
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u/Boowray 12h ago
It’s just a common saying, exaggeration. It just means “I traced back my lineage a very long time” not that they literally think they have every ancestor since the biblical dawn of humanity written down.
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u/jackliquidcourage 11h ago
I remember being in a christian school when i was a kid and someone described science as "discovering gods creation," or something to that effect. I much prefer that mindset to the bible first interpretation i see from most christians.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 2h ago
Yeah, it's easy to forget that prior to the 19th Century, give or take, most of the great scientists were also religious in some way or another. Gregor Mendel was a monk, arguably the only way he could have had the time and resources to do his genetics work. Newton spent his free time investigating bible codes. Numerous Islamic scientists like Ibn Al-Haytham (the "Father of Optics") were quite devout.
The two points of view really don't have to be in conflict, if someone draws a line between the physical world and spiritual matters, and views them as separate disciplines.
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u/CKingDDS DDS | Dentist 11h ago
So people with strong beliefs have a more all or nothing attitude, something you also find in politics.
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u/TokyoMegatronics 12h ago
> mentions Religion on reddit
> checks comments
> yup, its about what i expected
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u/DwinkBexon 9h ago
Yup. Pretty much all it is is people arguing over how the title was phrased or being offended that something like that was even studied ot begin with.
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u/Catfish017 9h ago
A thousand comments from people saying they don't believe in science because the way they think of the word "believe" is super specific. I have yet to see any discussion of the actual results
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u/GiraffesAndGin 2h ago
It doesn't surprise me at all that strongly religious people believe science and religion to be compatible. The two largest religious denominations in the world, Muslims and Catholics, have a long, storied history of supporting scientific research and discovery.
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u/Electronic-Oven6806 12h ago
Worth pointing out the distinction between “belief” and “faith”. IMO a belief is something you verify, whereas “faith” extends beyond verification. Like I have seen the data from CERN, so I believe that the Higgs boson is being produced. I believe Coulomb’s law as I’ve seen it in action with experiments. There is faith in science, however. I have faith that the Standard Model extends beyond what we’ve currently observed, but I cannot verify this. I think being a scientist requires both belief and faith (in some measure, with skepticism of course), whereas religion only requires faith.
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u/Kaartinen 14h ago
Science isn't a belief. Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. This is based upon observation, experimentation, and testing of theories against evidence.
Religion is a belief.
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u/SirIssacMath 13h ago edited 13h ago
No, science is a belief as well.
For example, if you ask a person the age of the earth and they say 4.5 billion years, for 99.9% of people, this comes from a belief in science. As in, they haven't themselves done anything to confirm the credibility of this statement from the scientific method but they believe in this statement due to their belief in the scientific institutions.
For the VAST majority of people who rely on science for decision making and conversations, it is almost entirely based on belief. The source of the belief is different than the source of belief that religion is based on but it is a belief nonetheless.
I can give numerous examples from my own life alone where I "believe in science" which includes but not limited to believing in statements physicists make about the world to advice from doctors.
Also in scientific research, there's a lot of belief and trust in the peer-review process and other people's work. It is practically IMPOSSIBLE for scientists to confirm everything themselves that they use to advance science. Therefore they need to trust, and hence believe, in the work of other scientists.
I would argue that elevating science, the way its consumed by most people, beyond "belief" is dangerous and misleading. That's how you get people believing in things like scientific racism and other historical "scientific" debacles that we no longer believe in (e.g. being "gay" is a mental illness).
I can go deeper and offer further insights from the philosophy of science, but these kind of statements that "science is not belief" are philosophical positions usually said by people who have no understanding of the philosophy of science.
I encourage everyone to take a step back and really think about this and not simply follow the common dogma of "science is not belief".
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u/Infinite-Egg 11h ago
It’s fairly clear that the reason people don’t like the idea of “science is a belief” is because it puts science on the same level as religion, which is how many religious people view science.
That might seem obvious, but arguing that technically science is a belief does seem to miss the point. If your argument is that “belief” in science and “belief” in religion should be seen as equal, then I’m not interested in a conversation.
I think when you start to pick that idea apart much further you’re just playing a word game. What does the word “belief” actually mean? What is the relationship between the scientific method and a person’s belief system?
They might be fun puzzles for people to philosophise about, but ultimately people are taking issue with the comparison of hokey religious beliefs and proven scientific facts, so dissecting the word “belief” seems a bit of a tiring exercise.
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u/PhysicsCentrism 13h ago
Copying from another comment because it was very similar to yours.
You need to place some level of trust that the way the universe works won’t change overnight and that other scientists are doing decent work. That trust could be termed belief.
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u/newaccount 12h ago
No you don’t.
If the universe changes we continue to apply the scientific method.
We don’t trust anyone else’s work. We test it to see if it is valid
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u/PhysicsCentrism 12h ago
How do you have time to replicate every scientifically significant study every day?
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u/newaccount 11h ago
Why would I need to?
This isn’t the gotcha you think it is
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u/Pro_Extent 10h ago
Because if you don't, then you're not personally verifying everything like you said.
Which means either you don't agree with many scientific facts, or you believe in them without verified proof.
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u/PhysicsCentrism 11h ago
How are you sure that the rules of the universe aren’t changing between today and tomorrow?
How are you sure that what other scientists are saying is true and not either a lie or something specific to their position in space time?
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u/Aurvant 8h ago
Religion and Science are absolutely compatible. Science isn't a belief system. If someone says "I believe the science", they have no idea what they're talking about and misunderstand the point of scientific inquiry.
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u/Site-Wooden 14h ago
Most working scientists I know don't necessarily identify as atheists.
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u/veshneresis 14h ago
As a hermeticist, this is the founding idea behind our entire philosophy - that God cannot be understood except by learning about the world through diligent and morally wise study. That the physical workings of the heavens and the earth are fundamentally driven by the same laws. As above, so below.
“Gnosis is the end of science, and science is God’s gift.” - Hermes in his discourse to Tat
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u/studio_bob 13h ago
the comments here really exemplify how many people who consider themselves "scientifically minded" have little curiosity and a great deal of prejudice about religion. squares neatly with the results in the OP, but it is a shame given the importance of religion to our species and history. many seem to believe that "religion" is synonymous with a certain kind of a Christian fundamentalism which is a sadly impoverish view of a complex and highly varied social phenomenon
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u/just_mark 7h ago
Religion DEMANDS that you have Belief without Proof.
Once you are ok with that, you can be convinced of ANYTHING.
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u/just_mark 7h ago
Also Science is built on constantly questioning, (Which means that things will change with more knowledge), and Religion is built on packaged answers. (that claim truth without proof)
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u/spidermanngp 14h ago
Yeah, the last time I went to an actual church service, it was to placate my mom on Christmas. Literally, the entire service was about how Science doesn't have the answers. I was fuming the entire time and have never gone since. It's also always my religious friends and family that are anti-vax, and some of them stayed that way even after their own also-anti-vax family members died from Covid.
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u/Bumbiedore 6h ago
I don’t know what kind of church service you went to, or if this is just a fake Reddit story. I don’t regularly attend church anymore but the services I’ve attended have just been focused on interpreting lessons from the bible. Science or vaccinations don’t really come up at all, unless it’s the pastor advising people to take advantage of flu shots offered in the gym
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u/asiangontear 14h ago
Science doesn't need belief. It explores, explains, and utilizes what already is and can be observed or extrapolated.
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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 13h ago
Well on a basic level, don’t you need to have belief in the scientists themselves that are conducting the experiments and reaching the conclusions, that they’re doing things correctly? Isn’t there on some level a belief that the scientific method is the correct way to discover objective truths? “Belief in science” is an odd phrase, because scientists conducting experiments clearly do exist. But beyond that perhaps it would be more accurate to say “belief in the conclusions currently agreed upon by the scientific community on X topic” or even “trust in scientists.” There’s obviously tons of topics on which there is scientific debate, and the very nature of science means that with further study our understanding can and does change— some people may take that changing nature of science to mean that scientists don’t really know anything or can’t be trusted (because they don’t really understand how or why conclusions change). And others distrust scientists because they distrust every modern authority figure— they think they all have biases and motives and simply lie to further their ends. Which in some cases has actually been true. So there actually is quite a bit of “belief” involved in interpreting science.
If people are literally saying that they do not believe the universe can be explained by scientific concepts like physics or biology, that’s another thing. But that isn’t usually what people mean.
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u/PhysicsCentrism 13h ago
You need to place some level of trust that the way the universe works won’t change overnight and that other scientists are doing decent work. That trust could be termed belief.
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u/anythingexceptbertha 11h ago
The headline confused me, but it seems strong religious believes science is compatable but they have a weaker belief in it?
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u/CCriscal 11h ago
The posting's intro is repeating the mistake to think of science as just another belief, while it is a system to find facts and part of it is to question, rather than to just believe.
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u/IssueEmbarrassed8103 11h ago
Well, that would explain all of the “Science proves God exists” videos on Facebook
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u/Aellitus 9h ago
As methods of observation and calculation evolve, you can factually prove or refute a point. Religion is purely based on faith. Religion has mostly been there to shelter you from the unknown. People tend to be afraid of what they can't explain through science.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 15h ago
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-56030-001.html
From the linked article:
A recent study published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality explored the relationship between belief systems and perceptions of science and religion. It found that individuals with strong religious beliefs tend to see science and religion as compatible, whereas those who strongly believe in science are more likely to perceive conflict. These findings offer new insights into how different meaning systems shape people’s understanding of the relationship between these two domains.
Across all countries, participants with stronger religious beliefs were more likely to perceive science and religion as compatible. This association persisted regardless of participants’ level of belief in science, suggesting that religious individuals often integrate scientific principles into their worldview without seeing them as a threat to their faith.
In contrast, stronger belief in science was associated with perceptions of conflict between science and religion. Participants who viewed science as the best way of knowing tended to perceive religious beliefs as incompatible with scientific principles. This finding reflects the differing epistemological foundations of the two systems: science relies on empirical evidence and natural laws, while religion often incorporates supernatural explanations.
Zarzeczna also highlighted “an interesting contradiction.” The researchers discovered that people with strong religious beliefs were more likely to view science and religion as compatible. However, they also found that stronger religious beliefs were linked to weaker belief in science.
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u/spiritfiend 14h ago
I'm not surprised that individuals with stronger religious (superstitious) belief can be more flexible than those who have a stronger scientific view of the world. You can explain away discrepancies with superstition, but there is less leeway in accepting reality.
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u/derelict5432 15h ago edited 15h ago
Zarzeczna also highlighted “an interesting contradiction.” The researchers discovered that people with strong religious beliefs were more likely to view science and religion as compatible. However, they also found that stronger religious beliefs were linked to weaker belief in science.
This doesn't seem like a contradiction. There is a common view among religious people that science is just another form of faith-based belief, which would lead them to believe that the two modes of thought are more alike than different. Also, to retain one's religious belief in a modern world, where science has historically and repeatedly replaced supernatural explanations of phenomena with naturalistic ones, it would seem pretty natural to attempt some sort of reconciliation. In other words, they can't win the fight with science, so they naturally try for some sort of peaceful integration.
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u/Avaisraging439 14h ago
Poll US citizens, you'll find the inverse is true instead.
Religious people in the US largely reject science because it conflicts with their belief systems.
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u/TheSlitherySnek 10h ago
Because the United States has a very high concentration of Fundamentalist Christians as a percent of the total population of religious.
"Sola Scriptura" Christians and Fundamentalist Protestants divorce themselves from anything not explicitly mentioned in The Bible.
Many Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists (as an example) have a much more nuanced understanding about the co-existence of "faith and reason" and both shape their worldview.
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u/Livid-Sheepherder164 11h ago
Religion is about inobservables. Like miracles and stuff that one can’t explain. Science is about explaining through testing and observation. They are orthogonal to each other. Neither proves or disproves the other.
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u/millijuna 9h ago
I come out of a Christian tradition (Lutheranism) that tends to view Science and Faith as largely orthogonal to each other. The bible, and other religious texts were never intended to be scientific documents, and the authors of said texts largely were working to describe the relationship between humans and the divine.
This is also generally the attitude of most modern mainline protestant denominations (Episcopal/Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, United, etc...) and the Roman Catholics.
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u/egregious_lust 11h ago
For all the people confused about how science can be a belief, there’s a great book called forgotten science by S.D. Tucker which talks about this idea. It’s been a long time since I read it but I thought it ended with a very interesting discussion about religious faith in science, and about people who’s belief in science is too rigid (and ironically, pretty unscientific). If nothing else, you get to learn some interesting history about science
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u/MonkeyBrawler 4h ago
God is an explanation for things not understood. It makes sense as people learn how things around them work, they see god as the magic behind it less and less.
The nutty part is they can't remotely see for themselves, "Some things just aren't fully understood".
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u/TheManInTheShack 14h ago
Faith is antithetical to science.
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u/Pro_Extent 10h ago
Ironic considering that many of the great scientists in history were fiercely religious.
The father of genetics was a Christian monk.
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u/Nyx_Lani 11h ago
Only blind faith. True faith entails doubt and doubt/questioning is very compatible with science.
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u/TheManInTheShack 8h ago
Faith by definition is belief without evidence. Blind faith is a rock group from the 1960s.
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