{"id":7646,"date":"2023-12-08T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T19:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/?p=7646"},"modified":"2025-06-07T10:58:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T17:58:30","slug":"uu-and-scientific-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/news\/blog\/uu-and-scientific-discoveries\/","title":{"rendered":"UU and Scientific Discoveries [#81]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When generally accepted scientific research findings and the doctrine of a religious tradition are inconsistent, many faiths urge congregants to believe their scripture.<\/p>\n<p>Not at the Sedona Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.\u00a0 Several congregants are retired scientists who would make the opposite choice.\u00a0 This orientation goes back centuries.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Priestley was both a renowned scientist, who discovered oxygen in 1774, and a Unitarian clergyman.\u00a0 He saw his intellectual and spiritual commitments as quite compatible.<\/p>\n<p>It was only after Charles Darwin, also a Unitarian, published\u00a0<em>On the Origin of Species <\/em>that the perception of science and religion to be at odds grew widespread.\u00a0\u00a0Many traditional Christians, including some Unitarians and Universalists, were initially dismayed by the theory of evolution.<\/p>\n<p>However, it didn\u2019t take long for leaders and theologians in the UU community to fully embrace Darwin\u2019s theory, and, along with it, the value of reason and the scientific method in examining even the most cherished religious beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>In the twentieth-century, Unitarians and Universalists began to explicitly view scientific discoveries as religious \u201ctexts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a01985, the general convention of the\u00a0Unitarian Universalist Association recommended to their congregants six\u00a0sources of wisdom for guiding understanding of the world we live in.\u00a0 Three of them are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wisdom from the world&#8217;s religions to inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life;<\/li>\n<li>Jewish and Christian teachings which remind us to love our neighbors as ourselves;<\/li>\n<li>Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Therefore, most Unitarian Universalists today consider scientific discoveries to be an essential tool in their search for truth and meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When generally accepted scientific research findings and the doctrine of a religious tradition are inconsistent, many faiths urge congregants to believe their scripture. Not at the Sedona Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.\u00a0 Several congregants are retired scientists who would make the opposite choice.\u00a0 This orientation goes back centuries. Joseph Priestley was both a renowned scientist, who discovered &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/news\/blog\/uu-and-scientific-discoveries\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">UU and Scientific Discoveries [#81]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7646"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8881,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions\/8881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}