Some of you might be interested in extracts from a theological presentation--of a Russian Orthodox priest--that I just posted at: pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/sysoev.html Comments will be appreciated, Ludwik
It was interesting. I've always gravitated to the question of the lines between religion and science. Those that embrace science and dismiss religion are just as bad as those that embrace religion and dismiss science. Sysoev's article is spot on about the limitations of science. The problem is he promotes that religion is infallible, and worse that science should be subservient to religion. We've learned what happens when science is subservient to religion with the likes of Copernicus and Galileo.
I don't see how it's 'just as bad' to dismiss religion as it is to dismiss science. They are very different from one another, ranging from mutually unrelated to polar opposites, and a big part of this is that science is a proven methodology for getting at the truth as best as we can. What does religion do? Affects how people relate to the universe and does other personal and societal things that largely don't matter to science, unless perhaps we're talking about scientific disciplines that study human psychology and are otherwise human-centered. There science can in fact study the role that religious belief plays, the ways and reasons that humans practice religion, and even religious beliefs and systems themselves..
They are not that different from one another. They both try to explain the unknown. There are some things that science will probably never explain, and things that religion can't explain. It's clear that some ideas based on religion were blatantly wrong, but so were many things in science (luminiferous ether, miasma model, Rutherford model, Bohr model, classical elements, just to name a few). It's interesting that you define what religion "does" as opposed to science, but then caveat that with scientific disciplines that do exactly what religion does. Again they're not so much different, and to dismiss one is just as bad as dismissing the other. Science should be open to all form of opposition until proven otherwise. The problem with religion is it hasn't been as open to changes as science is, but it seems like "science" has been putting on blinders lately too.
