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The Difference Between Science and Religion: How Would You Summarize It?

Wowbagger

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How would you summarize the fundamental difference between science and religion (and other forms of "woo"), using only a few concise sentences?

Here is my own contribution:

In religion, models are built in the mind. In science, models are built independently of anyone's minds.

But, here is another way of saying that, with more verbiage:

What science and religion have in common is that they both attempt to build a consistent model of the universe they live in. However, the difference is where this model exists.
In religion, the model is built in the head, based on personal whims, and any evidence to the contrary will be resolved to fit that model. In other words, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias form the keys to woo.
In science, however, models are built as independently as possible from anyone's own minds. They are rigorously tested in the real world, carefully controlled, verified independently, and possible falsifications are mapped out. Only those models that succeed in helping us understand more precise information about the Universe, through their predictions, are accepted.

Anyone who wants to, can give me their feedback on this, and/or their own way of summarizing the difference.

This thread was inspired by the "Skeptics vs. Woo" debate, that took place during Dragon*Con, this year. I wanted to ask the panel what they thought of this direction, but they ran out of time before I could do so.
 
Wowbagger said:
How would you summarize the fundamental difference between science and religion (and other forms of "woo"), using only a few concise sentences?
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Science is evidence-based and encourages the testing and development of new evidence, including evidence that may change the current understanding of science.
 
Wowbagger said:
In religion, models are built in the mind. In science, models are built independently of anyone's minds.
Click to expand...

drkitten said:
Science is evidence-based and encourages the testing and development of new evidence, including evidence that may change the current understanding of science.
Click to expand...

I like drkitten's definition MUCH better.

I'd add that, in contrast, religion is put forth as revealed truth rather than evidence based. It is only self-correcting some of the time (and that usually only when it HAS to be, and that correction is usually merely a retreat into the gaps of science). Usually religious truths are held dogmatically (unchanging--not held provisionally).
 
I don't really get the point you're making about religion being in the head. All ideas exist in our minds, right? Surely scientific ideas and science are stuff that depends on human minds. The testing is mostly done empirically (there are very valuable thought experiments), but the logic behind the testing (and the scientific method itself) depends on our minds.

Some other differences:

Science deals with falsifiable hypotheses, where religion often deals with propositions that can't be tested.

Where argument is involved, building a logical case for a proposition in science is evidence-driven (your conclusions come from the evidence), whereas with religion you frequently see apologies (arguments that start with a conclusion and attempt to come up with rational justifications for that conclusion).
 
Take into consideration that lots of woos, including religious woos, seriously claim that they do test their ideas. Only pointing out that science is based on testing ideas, is only going to be resolved, in their minds, as: "therefore my religion is scientific".

Conspiracy theorists and folks like that, are notorious for generating a "consistent" model of how the Universe works, and they claim they put their ideas to the test, as well. Their standards don't match those of science, but that matters little to them.

I suspect, though I could be wrong, that pointing out the "location" of the models might be a better approach.

Stictly speaking, all ideas exist in the mind. However, in science, models are verified independently of any one's minds. And, therefore, it could be said that scientific models exist as independently of the whims of anyone's minds as possible.

In religion, the models only remain consistent through mental gymnastics, such as cognitive dissonance resolution, confirmation bias, and apologetics, etc.
 
Wowbagger said:
Take into consideration that lots of woos, including religious woos, seriously claim that they do test their ideas.
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Do they? I've never found that claim to stand up to scrutiny.

Lots of people LIE.

Conspiracy theorists and folks like that, are notorious for generating a "consistent" model of how the Universe works, and they claim they put their ideas to the test, as well.
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Yeah. Lots of people LIE.

The obvious question to ask is "how do you test your ideas, and how did the results of the tests turn out?" If the tests aren't genuine tests, then it's not "science," irrespective of the lies that people tell about it.
 
I would summarize it as the difference between fact and fiction.
 
Science is most likely true.
Religion is most likely not.
 
Isn't it a difference between HOW and WHAT? Science tells us how things are accomplished. Religion tells us what we should accomplish.

The grey area is WHY. Science can tell us WHY things work HOW they do. It is difficult for religion to tell us WHY we should do WHAT a religion tells us to do.

The WHY for a religion usually breaks down to a Because-God/Tradition/Taboo/Parent-Says-So type answer that would not be acceptable to science.

But it is difficult for science to provide an answer to WHY we should do WHAT we should do.
 
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Science has the ability to change and adapt and evolve
 
I maybe answered more than what was asked.

Science finds the true answer--whether or not you like the answer.
Religion/Woo finds the answer you like--whether or not the answer is true.
 
Wowbagger said:
What science and religion have in common is that they both attempt to build a consistent model of the universe they live in. However, the difference is where this model exists.
In religion, the model is built in the head, based on personal whims, and any evidence to the contrary will be resolved to fit that model. In other words, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias form the keys to woo.
Click to expand...

I disagree with that.
When people found a religion, they may well base their "truths" on the best understanding of the time.

Take the Genesis account,
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=1&chapter=1&version=31

There are a number of creation events, and the order they are given in is not whimsical. It is based on reasoning and observation, which sometimes comes up with the wrong answer -- just like science. The writers put plants before the animals that eat plants. They fail to take into account that new varieties of plants came about after herbivores were eating the earlier plants. Thus they decided that trees came before all land/sea critters.

For the times the writers lived in, it's not a stupid mistake.

Take a look at Islam's embryology claims:
http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Islam's_Embryology_Claim
which don't seem whimsical to me either. I think they are based on the study of chicken eggs. It was the best understanding available at the time.

The difference between science and religion is not in the formation of the ideas. It is in the authority of the ideas. God is not allowed to be wrong. So, once a prophet has spoken on his behalf, the "truth" is set in stone. It then becomes a matter of either interpreting the words or the evidence so that they remain consistent.

Not all woo is religion, not all religious people are woos. Here's St Augustine:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo

St Augustine said:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. [...]
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So those that make claims which contradict reason and experience cast doubt on Christianity as a whole. What, then, is the difference between science and religion?

Our "high priests" are expected to be fallible.

We don't have to reinterpret what Einstein has said about Quantum Mechanics so that it ties in with the best understanding available today. We just shrug our shoulders and say, "The great man made a mistake." As he himself did on occassion.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
I maybe answered more than what was asked.

Science finds the true answer--whether or not you like the answer.
Religion/Woo finds the answer you like--whether or not the answer is true.
Click to expand...

Newton's ideas were great science. They still describe the real world adequtely enough for most purposes. But they are not true -- not in the absolute sense. We know that for a fact. The lack of absolute truth does not diminish the greatness of the science. Newton was a milestone, and his ideas are still taught today.

If we were religous about it, we'd have to make excuses and say that Newton knew all about Einstein's ideas -- but the time was not right for the world to know. Exhibit A:

DOC said:
You want Genesis to be written for the people of 2008. It wasn't, it was written for primitive desert wanderers (3600 years ago) who probably didn't even have a word for a million much less a billion, who didn't know that the earth went around the sun, didn't know the sun was a star, didn't know the earth existed in space (unless they read Job 26:7), and didn't know where rain came from, etc.
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But scientists are not religious, so we say the great man did the best he could. If only we could all flub like Newton.
 
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DevilsAdvocate said:
Isn't it a difference between HOW and WHAT? Science tells us how things are accomplished. Religion tells us what we should accomplish.
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That's not true--or at least it hasn't always been.

Everything that is now the realm of science was once the realm of religion. Religion did (and sometimes still does) have the role of explaining the natural world.

As I mentioned above, when faced with incontrovertible evidence that its doctrines are wrong, religion has retreated into the gaps of science. Morality or "what we should accomplish" might be an area that science doesn't currently address, but what if in the future it does? At any rate, this "what we should accomplish" is only a tiny subset of the kinds of questions religion purports to answer.
 
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