• Question: Being a scientist, do you not think there may be a religious answer to how the earth was creeated

    Asked by 425spaa38 to Julian, Jane, Hugh, Helen, Heather on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Personally I don’t, but I know scientists who believe there was a religious component to the birth of the universe and to humans.
      Even the Pope seems to believe in the big bang and evolution these days!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Good question! Well, we have a lot of evidence now through our observations, using different telescopes and satellites, that the Universe began with the Big Bang… but what you believe about who or what came before that, and why we are here, is up to you. Some scientists are religious and some aren’t.

    • Photo: Jane MacArthur

      Jane MacArthur answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      One of my pet hatreds is the way the media love to portray “Religion vs science”, as if they are in direct competition and there can be only one answer. To me they are two totally different systems. Science explores testable questions (“hypotheses”), and gathers evidence to test whether the question is right, wrong, or whether a modification can lead to it being more accurate. Science gives the best answers that fit the current known information to date, and they are constantly being refined.

      Religions are belief systems, with many varying different bases and different definitions from different cultures and countries. Religion offers a variety of answers as to how the Earth was created but these are not testable.

      The “Occam’s razor” principle says “the simplest answer is most often correct”, and most scientists try to form the simplest models and theories which can fit the information (although, these get ever more complex as additional information is gathered). This is why I personally find religion difficult, as it seems unlikely that the complex narratives of religious texts offer the simplest solution to fit the known facts.

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