Science vs. Religion (Edexcel A-Level Sociology): Revision Notes

Science vs. Religion

A reason that scientific explanations have overtaken religious ones may be because they are 'based on evidence and reason'

EVIDENCE: Popper/Kuhn

• Scientists unlike priests set out to 'test their hypothesis to destruction, to falsify it', religious beliefs on the other hand according to Popper cannot be falsified ( meaning to be proven or disproven)

• 📝E.g the existence of a God in heaven cannot be tested

• Science is based on evidence whereas religion is essentially based on belief in a higher power that may or may not exist.

• Biologists after the work of Darwin have come to the conclusion that we are the product of millions of years of evolutionary progress from sea creatures to where we are today.

• This is not the same as in religion where fundamentalist Christians for example believe that the world was created in six days and God rested on the seventh.

EVALUATION:

• Kuhn - if anything, science is more like religion than some might imagine.
• He suggests that most of the time science is a closed system where work is carried out within a paradigm (an accepted way of understanding something) and that anything that challenges or goes against this is disregarded. LINK: Despite Kuhn, most people have a 'common-sense' view of the way in which science develops and it might be for this reason – openness to new ideas – that science may have overtaken religion as a key explanatory belief system although it clearly shares similar characteristics with religion in that it presents an ideological worldview, a closed system.