Are Scientific And Religious Explanations Incompatible?

[Warren Stupidity]

This final idea brings us to the second prong of my distinction. Let's move away from scientific and religious explanations, and instead consider explanatory practices in science and religion. For example, what counts as evidence for a scientific explanation versus a religious explanation? What would lead you to revise a scientific explanation versus a religious explanation?

When we shift our focus to the practice of generating, evaluating, endorsing, and revising explanations, then I think the answer is "no" — scientific and religious explanatory practices are not compatible. That's because it's a hallmark of scientific explanations that they're responsive to evidence, and as a result, they can change over time. To the extent that religious explanations aren't similarly responsive to evidence, then there's a very basic incompatibility that won't be easy to reconcile.

This is one reason Dawkins is so hostile to reconciliation. Speaking at a debate in 2007, he warned: "If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment."

Could religious explanatory practice change? That is, could religious explanations become appropriately responsive to evidence?

I think this is possible. But what we'd end up with would look very different from mainstream religion today. In this "defeasible" religion, religious explanations would answer to science, and they would change over time.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/04/13/399309391/are-scientific-and-religious-explanations-incompatible

I started out thinking this was going to be yet another apologetic for why we should all just have a group hug and sing kumbaya around the campfire, but then Tania Lombrozo got all interesting about this well worn subject.