• Question: does science and faith interfere with eachother during your works?

    Asked by harvey2k9 to Joel, Kristian, Tim, Venus, Zachary on 15 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      I am assuming that you mean religious faith. For me there’s no problem because I don’t have religious faith. On the other hand I do have faith in the scientific method of asking questions doing experiments and making theories.

    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Nope. I’m personally not religious, but I work alongside some very deeply religious people and we never come into conflict.

      Science only asks one thing of us: that we change our beliefs to reflect reality. Not to try and warp reality to fit with our beliefs (that would just be silly, wouldn’t it? We’re just puny humans living on some rock on the edge of a galaxy: we can’t change the laws of physics, we can only try to understand them and use them to our advantage).

    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Yeah, we have a good spectrum of people represented here among the scientists in this zone, from religious to not caring much to quite anti-religious. I seem to be the one at the anti-religious end of the spectrum. That does not mean I have a problem with religious people. I have some very close friends who are religious. I even did humanitarian aid projects as member of a Christian organization. Of course sometimes faith is a topic for discussion, but always a friendly discussion, and I respect the decision of some people to believe in something even if I disagree with it.

      That said, back to your question:
      I worked in Kansas for a while, a few years back. And Kansas is quite famous for religious groups trying to destroy the science curriculum in schools by introducing stupid faith-based concepts such as creationism or “intelligent design” into the curriculum. This is a very dangerous thing. We must never mix up faith with facts, or we will raise children who are too easily misled into doing bad things. This was not direct interference of faith with my *work*, but with science education in general, thus close enough to turn me into an outspoken critic of religion.

      The other side of the story is that I do think my work interferes with faith, not just the other way round. In my work, and in the rest of life as I know it, it is absolutely essential to check the facts. This particle looks like the Higgs, but is it really one? This politician promises to support science, but has (s)he acted accordingly in previous terms of office? I consider this attitude the very fundament of being a scientist, but at the same time it simply does not work with religion, because religion makes very extraordinary claims without providing the slightest bit of supporting evidence.

      Ah, each time this topic comes up I simply can’t stop talking/writing. Sorry if I annoy everyone, but it is a difficult and important issue. 🙂

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