Can the two sides meet?

Dr.Who

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They already have!

Some seem intent on juxtaposing evolution and Christianity; some on both sides. But they just might be wrong.

As it turn out this article sheds a lot of light on that:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/10/27/shelley-emling-fossil-hunter-god-darwin-evolution/

From the article:

Point 1) Religionists are not really that opposed to evolution -

"And what about the clergy? Michael Zimmerman, a biology professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, said his work with the Clergy Letter Project has led him to believe that a vast number of religious leaders of all denominations are fully comfortable with science. He argues that religious fundamentalists are the exception, and that they tend to assert themselves "more aggressively" to maintain their waning influence."

Point 2) Scientists are not really that opposed to religion -

Most telling is that the proportion of Christians among the science faculty in certain departments at Oxford and Cambridge universities — such as the Earth Sciences Department in Cambridge or the Physics Department in Oxford — appears higher than the national average, says Denis Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, an academic research enterprise based at Cambridge.

"There are generally more Christians in the sciences than in the humanities," he said."

Point 3) The rational -

From scientists; "The British professor believes evolution isn’t as accidental or random as one might suspect. In his opinion, if evolution began all over again, human intelligence would develop pretty much in the same way as it has. Conway-Morris emphasizes that developments happen as a result of pre-existing conditions, such as the need for blood cells to have hemoglobin in order to transport oxygen. Evolution, therefore, works only because it plays out within a certain set of rules.

Evolution “is after all only a mechanism, but if evolution is predictive, indeed possesses a logic, then evidently it is being governed by deeper principles,” he recently wrote. “Come to think about it so are all sciences; why should Darwinism be any exception?”

And from religionists; ""Because the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming, we must consider it to be a truth about the natural world — the world which we as people of faith believe was created by God, and the world made understandable by the reason and natural senses given to us by God," he recently wrote. "Denying science is a profoundly unsound theological position. Science and faith are but two ways of searching for the same truths."

For more info see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Conway_Morris

According to both the believing scientists and the religionists the reason many cannot reconcile the two is not because of the theory or the doctrine but because of the subscription to the ideas of materialism and reductionism that take on faith proportions.
 
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I love the comparison of religion and science.They are diamtrically opposed.

Religion expects the world to believe that because science can't say how it all started then there must be god of the bible.
Can you imagine the reaction of christians to a scientist who said 'you can't say where god came from so therefore science is the answer'?

Christians trying to embrace evolution after years of nay-saying and in the face of overwhelming evidence is cringeworthy. Religious people hate science and that is why they work so hard to undemine it. Science debunks the nonesense and superstition of religion and will continue to do so.

Cue the usual rubbish about science being based on inductive reasoning as if that somehow equates it with views like there's a beardy guy in the sky who made everything and favours America.
 
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I love the comparison of religion and science.They are diamtrically opposed.

The founding fathers of the scientific method were all religious and they based the notion of the laws of the universe on the premise that a wise creator would have made a fixed order to things.

Most scientist are religious and see no contradiction. Empiricism is an assumption not all scientists ascribe to and it is the empiricists who have problems with religion.
Religion expects the world to believe that because science can't say how it all started then there must be god of the bible.

There are those who say that. Christianity just says that there is a God and you are left to decide for yourself based on your own experience with the evidence of faith.

Can you imagine the reaction of christians to a scientist who said 'you can't say where god came from so therefore science is the answer'?

There are many people who say that too. Christians say that belief in God is based on faith.

Christians trying to embrace evolution after years of nay-saying and in the face of overwhelming evidence is cringeworthy. Religious people hate science and that is why they work so hard to undemine it. Science debunks the nonesense and superstition of religion and will continue to do so.

There has certainly been a movement within Christianity to nay say evolution. partly because even those who believe in it (like me) know that as a theory it has flaws. Those who oppose it vociferously are a vocal and well known group but not necessarily do they speak for all. The article posted in the OP referenced Mary Anning and said: According to most accounts, Anning remained a deeply religious woman her entire life, one who could often be found praying or reading the Bible and who almost never missed a Sunday service. Apparently she saw the beauty of God's handiwork in the coastline she knew so intimately even while others were using her fossils to raise questions about the biblical account of scientific history."
Cue the usual rubbish about science being based on inductive reasoning as if that somehow equates it with views like there's a beardy guy in the sky who made everything and favours America.

So you are aware that it is based on inductive reasoning. Good, you know more than most. You are also right that they are not the same. Science is comprised of the assumptions about the universe based on men's observations. Religion is based primarily on testimony of men's internal observations assumed to be true by the followers.
 
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