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Asked by Beth Ingham to Koi, Claire, Franco, Linda, Mark on 16 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by 768parf33.
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Arporn Wangwiwatsin answered on 16 Jun 2016:
Hi Beth Ingham,
I’m buddhist by nurture; my parents are buddhist so they raised me as one. But these days the most buddhist things I do is meditate, I don’t do much of the rituals anymore.I think people might have their own concept and form of god, and the extend of power to which one think god have. To me, I don’t quite believe in god, as I cannot really imagine how anything could govern our life apart from our own actions and attitudes. I had thought of… what about the uncertainty and things that seem to just happened by chance, but it turned out that statistic and maths can often explain those quite well! I’d say though, when it come to religions, that people have their right to choose what to believe in as long as they do not enforce their believe on other people 🙂
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Franco Falcone answered on 18 Jun 2016:
@Beth Ingham
The question of the existence of God is outside the scientific discourse, it is not an issue that can be assessed or answered by Science. By definition the question of the existence or experience of God pertains to the realm of the Supernatural, while Biology deals with the natural world in all its aspects and glory. Had your question been: “is there a God?” My answer would have been: “I don’t know, and I don’t know whether we’ll ever know”. But you asked us about our personal beliefs, so I’ll give you my personal answer. Do I believe in God? No. Am I part of any religion? No. And I would keep the questions of God on one side, and Religion (as a man-made activity and institution) very, very separate.But I do believe in freedom of choice and that anyone should be able to choose what to believe or what not to believe, as long as no belief systems are forced upon others, and no one is discriminated for his or her beliefs.
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Mark Booth answered on 18 Jun 2016:
Hi Beth
I am a humanist – I take a lot from the moral underpinnings of several religions but I don’t ascribe the origin of those memes to a deity. I am personally satisfied that we have evolved moral codes and that our behaviours can be explained by chemistry and biology.
But if you were to ask me how you move from electro-chemical signals amongst organic molecules to the first-person perspective of the conscious self then I haven’t any answer. But neither does anyone else. Whether you are religious or not, there has to be a mechanism.
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Claire Bourke answered on 20 Jun 2016:
Hi Beth,
I think that faith (in a God) and religion are a work in progress; they change over time and part of life is to explore and question yourself and the world around you, so that you can find (or try to find) an answer that feels right for you – that’s definitely the case for me. I do have faith in something more than myself, but for me ‘God’ is a word that can mean many things and for that reason I don’t feel like what I believe fully lines up with a formal religion. By nature ‘faith’ means a belief in something that can’t be proved or disproved, so it is not something that can be rigorously tested in the way that a scientific theory can. Lots of people think that Science and Religion are impossible to combine and a constant source of argument, but I don’t find that to be the case for me – I see science as asking questions where you can find an answer (or get close to it), whereas faith (for me) is asking questions even though you know that there will be no clear answer.I totally agree with the other scientists, it’s a personal choice and a really interesting question 🙂
Comments
Franco commented on :
I fully and wholeheartedly agree with Koi’s comments and in particular the last one – which also includes the right to choose not to believe! To which extent Science and Religion are compatible with each other, or can happily coexist next to each other, or are just two facets of our reality, is a very interesting topic, on which people have very different opinions!