John Burdon Sanderson Haldane Quotes

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.

Conflict between science and religion a dangerous foe.

All too often, the word 'religion' has become identified with those promoting a frankly anti-scientific view of nature and of our place in the natural world.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.

A scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

Comparing science and religion isn't like comparing apples and oranges - it's more like apples and sewing machines.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

Truth is truth, whether labeled 'science' or 'religion.'

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover.

You can believe what you want religiously. Religion is one thing, but science, provable science, is something else.

Whether or not evolution is compatible with faith, science and religion represent two extremely different worldviews, which, if they coexist at all, do so most uncomfortably.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.

It is unfortunate for Christianity that it was founded on the book of Genesis. A scientific fact is higher authority today than a religious fable. Science has found so many facts that contradict the stories of Genesis that to accept these stories as divine truth is to make falsehood the word of God.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

In my own life, my science and my religion are separate.

Religion believes in miracles, but these aren't compatible with science.

Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion.

Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.