What would modern Buddhist do if the teachings of the Buddha contradicts with Science?

Answer 1

Buddhism

Buddhism is a far for fluid and forgiving doctrine than the rather dogmatic religions that we are familiar with in the west, so how a particular Buddhist would react probably depends mostly on his own and his schools interpretation of the world and the scriptures.

Buddhism as a philosophy also depends far less upon what we would call 'natural law' than does Catholicism and makes far less efforts to evangelize. Buddhist scriptures also make far fewer claims that can be directly proven false by The Bible (as opposed to Christian creation stories and so on).

All of this makes what science has to say on the subject far less relevant to the Buddhist than the Christian.

But if a direct conflict presented itself, the Buddhist would probably react in a way similar to the Christian and reinterpret the scripture as allegorical to accommodate both the science and the philosophy while abandoning the literal meaning.

Interestingly, most scientific research on the subject of Buddhism has curiously supported Buddhist teachings. Not that this validates the religion by any means, but it makes an interesting parallel to your question.

"Buddhism is not so much a religion, but a 'science of the mind' or an 'inner science' ... there is much benefit to learning from [scientists'] findings,"

"My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."