Heath, I think either I completely misunderstood what you were arguing before, or you've altered your position a bit with this post. What I understood you to be saying before was that anything that is objectively true or false isn't "religion," in your view, so science could never contradict it. Now you seem to be saying only that
portions or religions can't be proven or disproven, which I could certainly agree with.
Back in post 714 you said:
Heath:
People may hold to certain facts, true or not (the earth was made in 7 days, the Flood covered the whole earth, etc.), but those are not religion. They are mythology.
...
So there is no conflict between "science" and "faith" any more than there is conflict between math and art. They are two completely different things that can work in harmony but cannot be at odds by their very definition.
[emphasis added by Tycho]
To me this sounds quite different to what you said in this more recent post:
Heath:
Much of religion can actually be objectively proven. What I said was that religion also incorporates elements that HAVE NOT YET been proven true or false, thus requiring FAITH. (I do not think many religious people would disagree with that.) Or, more to the point I was making, they are subject to INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION.
[emphasis added by Tycho]
Heath:
But the point is that people have personal interpretations of scripture and religion. Every individual is at least a little different in interpreting it than someone else.
Certainly agree with you there.
Heath:
Therefore, every individual (except maybe one person) is necessarily wrong on some points of religious interpretation. Because of this, there can be no one definition of "religion" or any particular religion.
Okay...but do you see how that might seem to be in conflict with some of the stuff you said earlier?
Heath:
Rather, there are a myriad interpretations of the same body of scripture or beliefs.
Yep, again, agree with you on that.
Heath:
Therefore, to use the proof of evolution or any scientific discovery as some sort of "proof" against religion would border on asinine. All it can do is disprove certain individuals' personal interpretations.
Yeah, I'm happy with that. But, from what you had said earlier, it sort of sounded like you felt that this was impossible--anything an individual might believe, which could be proven or disproven, wouldn't actually be "religion." It'd mythology or whatever else. If all you're saying is that we can't disproven every single religious belief that anyone anywhere, at any time might hold, then yes, I'll certainly agree with that. But that really wasn't the message I picked up reading your earlier posts.
I'm still pretty convinced that scientific findings can conflict with people's religious beliefs. We can call them "their own interpretation of religion" instead of "religious beliefs," but to me that just seems like a labeling issue, not a statement about what actually can or cannot happen.