Question: do you beleive that science and religion are compatible or do you think one will outweigh the other in the end

Michael Taggart answered on 16 Jun 2011:

I’ve kind of answered this in other replies but as the question keeps coming up I keep thinking about it some more! I honestly think that as a scientist you shouldn’t propose theories that can’t be tested – or at least if you do, you know it is an imaginary situation. I’m sure we often think about something important and maybe out of our reach or understanding with “I wonder what if it’s like that …..?” and know that we can’t really get to an answer at that moment. I think that’s fine. But to take such an imaginary situation – something that you cannot test – and call it something much much stronger like faith or belief, then that’s when I feel it becomes incompatible with scientific thought. In that spirit, I can’t test if there is a god or if there is not so I am an agnostic.
However, we are human and we have our insecurities. If people, even scentists, say “I feel more secure surrounding myself with the rituals of x, y or z religion” then that’s fine I guess (I was brought up in a very religious environment so can recognise the social good that can come of it in some respects). It’s just I don’t see that as a scientist that gets extended to a ‘belief’ or a ‘faith’. “How do you know?” “I just do” is a common type of conversation. Well, if you apply that thinking to a scientific experiment ……. erm. If instead the response to “How do you know” is “I don’t but I feel more secure with the notion that there is something more to explain all this” then that is a slightly different nuance.