Question: How much is science linked to religion?

Iain Bethune answered on 24 Jun 2015:

Historically, they are absolutely linked – many of the great early scientists were strongly religious (e.g. Muslim scholars from the middle ages), and many scientists today are motivated to study the world because of their religion.

However, science and religion take fundamentally different approaches to determining truth (or even different meanings for the word). Scientific truth is established based on evidence – so that the way we understand the world to ‘truly be’ is based on the best available evidence at the time, and if evidence arises that does not fit out current understanding, we must modify our theories to meet the available evidence. This ’empirical’ world-view takes as a starting point the world as we experience it and works back from there to understand and explain it.

Religion on the other hand tends to make statements of truth which are held to be self-evident or from divine inspiration i.e. they are true in and of themselves, irrespective of any evidence or lack thereof.

Both are ways of understanding the world, sometimes they are complementary, somethings they totally disagree. For me, I prefer knowledge to be based on evidence.