I fear this thread may go toxic almost immediately, so if that happens would a mod close it or delete it as they think fit?


I went to a seminar yesterday entitled 'Science versus Religion?' on the relationship between them. It was a highly educated audience - I could guess 90% at least one degree, 50% with more - and a mixture of disciplines, though, based on conversation, primarily maths & physics on both sides. I would guess slightly more people had a religious background, but there were very many who had not.

Brian Cox was the keynote speaker.

What made the event especially enjoyable was how these people profoundly disagreed with each other, yet could still see some merits in other opinions and hence treated everyone with respect whatever their stance. I would summarise most people's approach as "I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,/But here I am to speak what I do know". Brian, for example, was one of several people referencing the Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaitre, who also cropped up when discussing the 19c 'conflict theory' between science and religion, pointing out that things are far from as neat as that theory would suggest (Georges is by no means the only example of people active in both the religious and scientific domains.)

Other topics included what problems would arise for religion if we encountered intelligent extra terrestrial life (probably via radio signal thousand or millions of years old!), ethical considerations of AI, how our growing understanding of evolutionary psychology affects our understanding of the term 'free will' - which is a secular question as well as a religious one, medicine and extending life, and a number of others I could not attend because workshops ran concurrently.

The audience was self selecting, but it shows for a subgroup of people who are religiously inclined, religion is not so much about providing an answer to be accepted and left at that, but an on-going questioning of what that means in practice, and whether 'my' understanding is adequate to the demands placed upon it.

But overall, a very useful set of talks, and an exemplar of how to disagree by presenting your case rather attempting to attacking your opponent.