Is Christianity alone in this?

[Tcg]

This is certainly not true of all Christians, but there is a subset that rejects the findings of science because they perceive that in some cases these findings conflict with a literal reading of scripture. The age of the earth is a good example. Some claim it is around 6,000 years old. Scientific calculations place it at around 4.5 billion. Evolution is another scientific finding that often gets rejected because it seemingly conflicts with the Genesis story of creation.

Are there other religions that have a subset of its followers who reject scientific findings or is Christianity alone in this?


Tcg

[Eloi]

Jesus Christ did not believe in evolution. He considered Adam and Eve to be real people created directly by God.

Mat. 19:4 In reply he said: “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female 5 and said: ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? 6 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together, let no man put apart.”

The person who believes in that doctrine (evolution) does not believe in the same thing that Jesus believed.

[POI]

Jesus Christ did not believe in evolution. He considered Adam and Eve to be real people created directly by God.

I would gather Jesus had no idea what the topic of evolution even was. And well, if He actually did believe in an actual Adam and Eve, then I guess he was misinformed there too.

[TRANSPONDER]

Scientists themselves often do not agree with each other.

You mean to tell me not all evolutionary biologists accept speciation?

You can call species whatever you want. Changing definitions doesn't change a thing in the reality, just how you want to perceive it.

An ordinary person, such as a peasant/countryman, would know which animals can breed with each other and which cannot. The ones that cannot be crossed are obviously different species. That is not changed by any kind of definition of "speciation". Nature commands, not vocabulary.

You did not answer my question. I will post it again at the bottom.

Furthermore, I'm no evolutionary biologist. And by the looks of your response, you aren't either. But I'm willing to wager that evolutionary biologists all accept 'speciation'.

Do you know what he topic of speciation is?

Now to the original post:

(You) Scientists themselves often do not agree with each other.

(Me) You mean to tell me not all evolutionary biologists accept speciation?

I'm sure they do all accept speciation. They may differ on the mechanism, but I'm sure they all agree on the fact.

Conservative Judaism embraces science as a way to learn about the world,[citation needed] and, like Modern Orthodox and Reform Judaism, has not found the theory of evolution a challenge to traditional Jewish theology.

Right, denial of evolution is not a view you'll find expressed among Conservative or Reformed Jews. It appears to be held among some Orthodox Jews, however. The article I linked to in my previous reply provides some info on that.

Thank you. Yes, I don't doubt that some persons in various religions may doubt evolution. I was in fact rather surprised to find out how many religious bodies do accept it.

[We_Are_VENOM]

This is certainly not true of all Christians, but there is a subset that rejects the findings of science because they perceive that in some cases these findings conflict with a literal reading of scripture. The age of the earth is a good example. Some claim it is around 6,000 years old. Scientific calculations place it at around 4.5 billion. Evolution is another scientific finding that often gets rejected because it seemingly conflicts with the Genesis story of creation.

Are there other religions that have a subset of its followers who reject scientific findings or is Christianity alone in this?
Tcg

More accurate question; are there other religions that find so called "scientific findings" inaccurate and/or unscientific as Christianity does?

[Goat]

Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the biblical account of creation. We believe that the creative days did not last only 24 hours each, but were 6 stages that may have lasted thousands of years each, because the word "day" in Hebrew can mean "age".

The Bible specifies that when God created each animal, he made it "according to its kind," and that implies that although there may be adaptive changes in species, no species becomes another over time. The facts show that this is the reality.

As for the entire Universe, the Bible does not say when it was created. It only says that when the earth began to be transformed there were already other celestial bodies as well as other types of living spirit beings that rejoiced in this type of creation on the planet. Creative days only talk about the time the planet was transformed and life placed on it, not about the origin of the entire universe.

So we do not have to deny what science discovers about the time of existence of the entire Universe. We cannot be dogmatic about what the Bible does not reveal, nor do we have to believe everything science says either as if everything they say were absolute truth, because they tend to change over time, and there are usually contemporary theories that are completely contradictory. Scientists themselves often do not agree with each other.

You are incorrect about how the Hebrew is being used. The term 'Yom' means on day. It also can be used as a period of time yes, but not how was used in the book of Genesis. Yom can be an indeterminate when being used as a past.. such as 'in those day' .. or 'in the days of Moses', or 'In the days of Washington'. When you look at how Yom is used in Genesis, it is precisely defined. 'It was day and it was night, and it was the xxx day'. This is precisely defining the day 'yom' as a 24 hour period.


You can perfectly believe in an indistinct period, but when you try to make it 'creative days lasting thousand of years', that is not what the book of Genesis says.

[Goat]

Jesus Christ did not believe in evolution. He considered Adam and Eve to be real people created directly by God.

Mat. 19:4 In reply he said: “Have you not read that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female 5 and said: ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? 6 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together, let no man put apart.”

The person who believes in that doctrine (evolution) does not believe in the same thing that Jesus believed.

Of course Jesus didn't. The concept of biological evolution did many hundreds of years later. However, the bible is not a science book.

[Miles]

Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the biblical account of creation. We believe that the creative days did not last only 24 hours each, but were 6 stages that may have lasted thousands of years each, because the word "day" in Hebrew can mean "age".

The Bible specifies that when God created each animal, he made it "according to its kind," and that implies that although there may be adaptive changes in species, no species becomes another over time. The facts show that this is the reality.

As for the entire Universe, the Bible does not say when it was created. It only says that when the earth began to be transformed there were already other celestial bodies as well as other types of living spirit beings that rejoiced in this type of creation on the planet. Creative days only talk about the time the planet was transformed and life placed on it, not about the origin of the entire universe.

So we do not have to deny what science discovers about the time of existence of the entire Universe. We cannot be dogmatic about what the Bible does not reveal, nor do we have to believe everything science says either as if everything they say were absolute truth, because they tend to change over time, and there are usually contemporary theories that are completely contradictory. Scientists themselves often do not agree with each other.

What facts are those?

Where are "creative days that talk" in the Bible?
And considering that Genesis 1 says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." why wouldn't the "creative days" include the origin of the universe? After all, the heavens are said to contain celestial bodies including the Sun.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Ge 1:1) Thus the heavens with their celestial bodies, including the sun . . . ."
source

Celestial Body
plural celestial bodies also celestial objects
Definition of celestial body
: an aggregation of matter in the universe (such as a planet, star, or nebula) that can be considered as a single unit (as for astronomical study)

.

[TRANSPONDER]

This is certainly not true of all Christians, but there is a subset that rejects the findings of science because they perceive that in some cases these findings conflict with a literal reading of scripture. The age of the earth is a good example. Some claim it is around 6,000 years old. Scientific calculations place it at around 4.5 billion. Evolution is another scientific finding that often gets rejected because it seemingly conflicts with the Genesis story of creation.

Are there other religions that have a subset of its followers who reject scientific findings or is Christianity alone in this?
Tcg

More accurate question; are there other religions that find so called "scientific findings" inaccurate and/or unscientific as Christianity does?

More pertinent is: "Are there any religions that can address science enough for their opinions on it to be worth hearing?"

Looking at some of the posts form the believers above, there's this odd idea that if the Bible says something that disagrees with science, the science must be wrong. And yet we also see an effort to massage the Bible into the scientific framework.

The old, weary, often refuted stock snarks at science 'It's always changing its' mind' merely show how they do not understand science and do not want to. It is the thing that is wrong with Faith-based thinking as distinct from evidence -based thinking. To have a view that is willing to adapt to the evidence is logically better than dogmatic clinging to a Belief, no matter what the evidence is. And yet we see that some try to adapt the belief to the science while still pretending that the belief is right. Notably pretending that the 'Days' of Genesis can be the age of the universe (14 billion years or so) divided into 7 and call each a day, and never mind that Genesis talks of morning and evening, light and dark and the sun and moon made later to mark them. Do they think atheists don't know how to read?

[Tcg]

[Replying to Tcg in post #1]

I've appreciated reading the many contributions to this topic so far. It is interesting that the only religions identified so far are Abrahamic ones. I was curious about others, specifically Hinduism and Buddhism and found the following quite interesting:

On the Intersection of Science and Religion

The relationship between science and religion is often viewed in a Western context and through a Christian perspective. We turned to Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists for a different view


Hindu interviewees generally took a different tack, describing science and religion as overlapping spheres. Many Hindus maintained that their religion contains elements of science, and that Hinduism long ago identified concepts that were later illuminated by science. Buddhist interviewees generally described religion and science as two separate and unrelated spheres. Several talked about their religion as offering guidance on how to live a moral life while describing science as observable phenomena. Often, they could not name any areas of scientific research that concerned them for religious reasons.

Some members of all three religious groups, however, did express religious concerns when asked to consider specific kinds of biotechnology research, such as gene editing to change a baby’s genetic characteristics and efforts to clone animals. For example, Muslim interviewees said cloning would tamper with the power of God, and some Hindus and Buddhists voiced concern that these scientific developments might interfere with karma or reincarnation.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/arch ... d-religion

So, it seems that Buddhists and Muslims don't see a conflict between scientific findings and their religions, but fear that some scientific technologies might interfere with what they view as specific religious expectations. This is quite surprising to me and not something I expected to be an issue. I wonder if any Christians have similar fears.


Tcg

[We_Are_VENOM]

More pertinent is: "Are there any religions that can address science enough for their opinions on it to be worth hearing?"

Cool. Let me answer that pertinent question; Yeah. Christianity.

Looking at some of the posts form the believers above, there's this odd idea that if the Bible says something that disagrees with science, the science must be wrong. And yet we also see an effort to massage the Bible into the scientific framework.

"There's this idea that if the Bible says something that disagrees with science, the Bible must be wrong".

I can play that game, too.

The old, weary, often refuted stock snarks at science 'It's always changing its' mind' merely show how they do not understand science and do not want to.

"They are stupid. They just dont understand science. Atheists are the only ones who can understand science. We are so smart, and they are so dumb".

That's what I got out of it. As untrue and arrogant as it is.

It is the thing that is wrong with Faith-based thinking as distinct from evidence -based thinking.

Well, when you provide some evidence, I will think about it.

To have a view that is willing to adapt to the evidence is logically better than dogmatic clinging to a Belief, no matter what the evidence is. And yet we see that some try to adapt the belief to the science while still pretending that the belief is right. Notably pretending that the 'Days' of Genesis can be the age of the universe (14 billion years or so) divided into 7 and call each a day, and never mind that Genesis talks of morning and evening, light and dark and the sun and moon made later to mark them. Do they think atheists don't know how to read?

Debate for another day.

All I know is; God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, however many days yall wanna debate that it was created in, I will leave you all to it.