Second Annual Evolution Sunday -- 11 February 2007
Desertphile
From: Michael Zimmerman
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:10:23 -0500
Dear Members and Friends of The Clergy Letter Project,
I am writing to update you on The Clergy Letter Project, an endeavor
designed to demonstrate that religion and modern science can
comfortably coexist. As you know, The Clergy Letter itself has amassed
more than 10,000 signatures of Christian clergy members and, in so
doing, has gained a fair bit of national and international attention. I
think it is fair to say that the very presence of The Letter has helped
elevate the nature of the debate and has demonstrated to millions that
religion and science are compatible.
As you also know, the first annual Evolution Sunday was celebrated on
12 February 2006. On (or near) that day, almost 500 congregations
sponsored some event designed to improve the understanding between
religion and science. Reports on various events from that day were
broadly and positively published by media outlets around the world and
many Clergy Letter Project members reported that attendance was up on
Evolution Sunday.
Now I am pleased to announce the date of the SECOND ANNUAL EVOLUTION
SUNDAY -- 11 FEBRUARY 2007. I hope that many of you will opt to hold
some event on (or near) that day to help further the dialogue that we
have begun. What you opt to do is completely up to each local
congregation. Some clergy delivered sermons addressing the topic (and
you can read more than 50 of those sermons on our resources page -
http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/rel_resources.htm), some had adult
education courses or seminars, some had lunch discussions, etc. I hope
you consider participating in some way in this international event. If
you do plan to participate, please drop me a note so I can add your
congregation to our list of participants.
Additionally, although we reached our goal of acquiring 10,000
signatures on The Clergy Letter, we are still delighted to sign up
additional members of the clergy. If you know of someone who might like
to join, please pass our web address along (www.evolutionsunday.org).
Finally, at the end of this week, I will be moving from the University
of Wisconsin Oshkosh to Butler University in Indianapolis. My new
e-mail address will be m...@butler.edu. Because of this move, over the
next several weeks I will likely be slower in responding to e-mails
than is usually the case. I appreciate you patience.
Thanks so very much for your past support and for anything you can do
to make the SECOND ANNUAL EVOLUTION SUNDAY -- 11 FEBRUARY 2007 a huge
success.
Michael
Visit The Clergy Letter Project on the Web at www.evolutionsunday.org
Michael Zimmerman
Office of the Dean
College of Letters and Science
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901
dysfunction
While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
Wakboth
> While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
> hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
> the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
who self-identify as religious?
-- Wakboth
Larry Moran
Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
There aren't many scientists who try to explain why their religion is
compatible with their science. Most of them just proclaim that science
and religion occupy completely different magisteria. Presumably atheists
are missing a lot of very important things in this other magisterium but
nobody can tell me what these things are.
Larry Moran
Desertphile
> dysfunction kirjoitti:
> > While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
> > hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
> > the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
dysfunction and Professor Zimmerman are correct, but I suspect for the
wrong reasons. Religious beliefs are usually impervious to reason and
can therefore "co-exist" among reason. I suspect religion is a
right-brain concept and science and the scientific method are
left-brain concepts; learning how to use the left brain to filter the
right brain is an aquired ability that takes effort.
> How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
> who self-identify as religious?
Compartmentalized ideation. It happens in every human being's head to
some degree. People really can, and often do, accept two or more
mutually contradictory convictions and/or beliefs. Congition is a
creative act.
> -- Wakboth
Gordon Hill
Larry Moran wrote:
> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > dysfunction kirjoitti:
> >
> >> While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
> >> hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
> >> the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
> >
> > How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
> > who self-identify as religious?
>
> Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
If by cognitive dissonance you mean "the discrepancy between what a
person believes, knows and values, and persuasive information that
calls these into question" that is a temporary condition because
religious belief and scientific knowledge are both dynamic. As one
expands their scientific understanding, beliefs change to fit. Why do
the unscientific religious have so much trouble with this? They have
no trouble changing their views on adultry, divorce, killing (death
penalty) and other scriptural prohibitions they readily ignore.
Religious or not, beliefs change with the expansion of knowledge. The
healthy person, scientific or not, keeps their facts and beliefs
aligned.
Gordon Hill
Desertphile wrote:
> Wakboth wrote:
>
> > dysfunction kirjoitti:
>
> > > While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
> > > hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
> > > the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
> dysfunction and Professor Zimmerman are correct, but I suspect for the
> wrong reasons. Religious beliefs are usually impervious to reason and
> can therefore "co-exist" among reason. I suspect religion is a
> right-brain concept and science and the scientific method are
> left-brain concepts; learning how to use the left brain to filter the
> right brain is an aquired ability that takes effort.
Is it a case of co-existence or integration? It depends on what one
means about religion as well. A church education director recently
asked me if a particular workshop was "Christian". When I asked, what
criterion would one use to make that determination they were
nonresponsive.
If a church education director can not define the basis of their
religion, who can?
A Google search of "define:Christian" yields fifteen sites with a wide
variety of definitions. None of them is identified as the defining
authority.
Oh, well. Whether someone can reconsile their knowledge and beliefs is
a good point I guess, but my opinion is that the healthy person has and
continues to do so.
However, there are many in my Christian Church would decree I am not a
Christian. Fortunately, that's not theirs to decide.
> > How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
> > who self-identify as religious?
> Compartmentalized ideation. It happens in every human being's head to
> some degree. People really can, and often do, accept two or more
> mutually contradictory convictions and/or beliefs. Congition is a
> creative act.
There is no need for scientific fact and religious belief to be
contradictory.
>
> > -- Wakboth
John Wilkins
> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > dysfunction kirjoitti:
> >
> >> While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
> >> hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
> >> the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
> >
> > How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
> > who self-identify as religious?
>
> Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
"Cognitive dissonance" is a feeling one has when one holds a belief one
knows is false on other grounds. It is not the compartmentalisation of
beliefs, which is what you are referring to here. I know people use it
that way, but it's wrong.
>
> There aren't many scientists who try to explain why their religion is
> compatible with their science. Most of them just proclaim that science
> and religion occupy completely different magisteria. Presumably atheists
> are missing a lot of very important things in this other magisterium but
> nobody can tell me what these things are.
Well I think that religious magisterians (hey, we needed athat noun,
didn't we?) have a valid view, given that they *already* hold to the
authority of theological doctrines. If they do this, the only rational
view to take subsequently, is to isolate theological claims from
scientific arenas.
The conflict arises when science and theology contend for the same
grounds, which happens often enough (vide abortion debate,
contraception, archeology/akeology). In this case each will try to elbow
the other over and claim the territory for their own.
An *atheist* magisterian is one who thinks that science and religion
have their own magisteria, but that the religious one is the null set.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
Larry Moran
John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
> Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
[snip]
>> Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
>
> "Cognitive dissonance" is a feeling one has when one holds a belief
> one knows is false on other grounds. It is not the compartmentalisation
> of beliefs, which is what you are referring to here. I know people use
> it that way, but it's wrong.
Thank-you. You are correct, as usual.
I'll try to make this distinction in the future.
What I meant to say was that religious scientists compartmentalize
their science and their religion in order to prevent conflict. (Church
on Sunday, lab on Monday.) This compartmentalization doesn't work very
well in a scientific environment and cognitive dissonance is the result.
All religious scientists have this problem. I don't know of any
exceptions. The reason they have this problem is that they know deep
down that there's something wrong with their religious beliefs. It's
a myth that science and religion don't conflict. It's a myth that you
can be a scientist and yet be comfortable in one of the major religions.
That only happens when you are completely ignorant of science.
Larry Moran
John Wilkins
A couple of observations.
1. It is my experience that all scientists, theists or not, have
unconnected compartments in their thinking. There is nothing much
privileged about religion in this regard. It is a fact of human
cognition that we can't ramify our beliefs in a coherent and consistent
manner because we simply have neither the time nor the cognitive
capacity to do so. It is a tu quoque response - if everybody does it,
then there is nothing particularly wrong with intelligent theists doing
it. Why, some people, otherwise intelligent and educated, even think
Linux is a good OS. Or worse, Windows.
2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe. For example,
it seems perfectly clear to me that the form/substance doctrine on which
Catholic teachings about the Eucharist are based are simply false. But
they do not find this problematic. It is not cognitive dissonance to
think that what authoritative teachers tell you is true in a way you
can't appreciate. It might be wishful thinking, but again, we are all
guilty of that peccadillo. Likewise, they apparently think that it is
equally compartmentalised of me to have moral values in the absence of a
divine mandate for values. We laugh at each other and pour another
Scotch. Neother of us feel much cognitive dissoance.
I wonder if your... assertive... value system about science leads you to
be unable to appreciate the fact that all humans are to a first
approximation equally irrational in some respects. Or, to put it another
way, tradition binds us all in some way or another. Or maybe that's not
true in North America, including that little nation you hail from.
Gadflyingly yours...
Larry Moran
John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
[snip]
> 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
> do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
Isn't it interesting that all the religious scientists go strangely
silent whenever this topic comes up?
Larry Moran
Larry Moran
[snip]
>> What I meant to say was that religious scientists compartmentalize
>> their science and their religion in order to prevent conflict. (Church
>> on Sunday, lab on Monday.) This compartmentalization doesn't work very
>> well in a scientific environment and cognitive dissonance is the result.
>>
>> All religious scientists have this problem. I don't know of any
>> exceptions. The reason they have this problem is that they know deep
>> down that there's something wrong with their religious beliefs. It's
>> a myth that science and religion don't conflict. It's a myth that you
>> can be a scientist and yet be comfortable in one of the major religions.
>> That only happens when you are completely ignorant of science.
>
> A couple of observations.
>
> 1. It is my experience that all scientists, theists or not, have
> unconnected compartments in their thinking. There is nothing much
> privileged about religion in this regard. It is a fact of human
> cognition that we can't ramify our beliefs in a coherent and consistent
> manner because we simply have neither the time nor the cognitive
> capacity to do so. It is a tu quoque response - if everybody does it,
> then there is nothing particularly wrong with intelligent theists doing
> it. Why, some people, otherwise intelligent and educated, even think
> Linux is a good OS. Or worse, Windows.
I don't disagree. Many of us just don't spend enough time thinking
about our beliefs so we avoid cognitive dissonance.
I suppose this could be true of religious beliefs as well. Some
scientists might be wishy-washy deists of some sort who don't bother
to address the conflict between their "religion" and what they do in
the laboratory.
Those scientists are religious in name only but perhaps I should have
made this clear. What I meant was that scientists who are serious about
their religion have a problem.
> 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
> do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
Really? What do you mean by "good scientist?"
> For example,
> it seems perfectly clear to me that the form/substance doctrine on which
> Catholic teachings about the Eucharist are based are simply false. But
> they do not find this problematic. It is not cognitive dissonance to
> think that what authoritative teachers tell you is true in a way you
> can't appreciate. It might be wishful thinking, but again, we are all
> guilty of that peccadillo. Likewise, they apparently think that it is
> equally compartmentalised of me to have moral values in the absence of a
> divine mandate for values. We laugh at each other and pour another
> Scotch. Neother of us feel much cognitive dissoance.
>
> I wonder if your... assertive... value system about science leads you to
> be unable to appreciate the fact that all humans are to a first
> approximation equally irrational in some respects.
But one of the goals of scientists is to be rational. We may not all
succeed but we have to be bothered by major failures or we can't be
called scientists. Surely there's no way to avoid the most obvious
conflict of all, namely the belief in supernatural beings? You'd have
to be oblivious to everything arond you not to recognize that there's
a conflict between religion and science.
> Or, to put it another way, tradition binds us all in some way or
> another. Or maybe that's not true in North America, including that
> little nation you hail from.
There's nothing special about my little nation. Even in Australia
scientists must try to free themselves from being bound by tradition.
Do you think it's possible to be a religious scientist in the antipodes
and never encounter anyone who challenges your belief?
Larry Moran
Steve Schaffner
Not particularly. All you have offered is a repeated assertion
that all theist scientists are irrational. What's to respond to?
"Am not" doesn't seem like a very useful reply; nor does "So are you".
--
Steve Schaffner s...@broad.mit.edu
Immediate assurance is an excellent sign of probable lack of
insight into the topic. Josiah Royce
Michael Siemon
lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) wrote:
...
> All religious scientists have this problem. I don't know of any
> exceptions. The reason they have this problem is that they know deep
> down that there's something wrong with their religious beliefs. It's
> a myth that science and religion don't conflict. It's a myth that you
> can be a scientist and yet be comfortable in one of the major religions.
> That only happens when you are completely ignorant of science.
Umm, Larry -- it probably makes no difference to you or your position,
but most deeply religious people in my experience have conflicts
purely within their religious commitments, understanding and practice.
Independently of any inputs to that from science. Those conflicts are
part of what a "spiritual life" is about. "God" is a kind of focus
for the resolution of such conflicts. Sometimes, the resulting
resolution is ugly (e.g., dogmatism, fanaticism, ...) -- and again
independent of any inputs from science, that kind of "expression of
religion" may be an important source of conflicts a "spiritually-
minded" person must face.
I will grant that biology might conceivably import more sources of
conflict than other sciences, at least for those with a heavily
myth-based religion and no sense of the history and context of myth.
Gordon Hill
Steve Schaffner wrote:
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
>
> > On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:04:51 +1000,
> > John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> > > 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
> > > do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
> >
> > Isn't it interesting that all the religious scientists go strangely
> > silent whenever this topic comes up?
>
> Not particularly. All you have offered is a repeated assertion
> that all theist scientists are irrational. What's to respond to?
> "Am not" doesn't seem like a very useful reply; nor does "So are you".
Nicely done, Steve. The term "spiritual" might be better than
"religious" in this thread. Since there is such a wide range of
spiritual belief within each religion and the term "religion" may be
read as suggesting a fundamentalist belief, the discussion could be off
putting to the more thoughtful religious scientists among us.
The idea of cognitive dissonance suggests a partition between religious
belief and scientific knowledge. I know no religious scientist who
compartmentalizes the two, rather those (few) I know well do precisely
the opposite and include everything within one conscious universe,
marvelling at both, adjusting their religious beliefs as they expand
their scientific knowledge.
Alexander
I think this is key. Dissonance, as a product of supposed
contradictions is only apparent if you stop to consider it. However,
dissonance can still be dispelled through what many here would consider
'irrational' rationalising. The extreme case in point being the YEC
stance (i.e. all science must be a hideous lie designed to confound and
test the true believer). It's one of the reasons I believe that most
YEC will actively avoid challenges to their belief structure because of
the near constant exposure to the possibility of dissonance.
>
> I suppose this could be true of religious beliefs as well. Some
> scientists might be wishy-washy deists of some sort who don't bother
> to address the conflict between their "religion" and what they do in
> the laboratory.
>
> Those scientists are religious in name only but perhaps I should have
> made this clear. What I meant was that scientists who are serious about
> their religion have a problem.
We're stuck with definition of what you consider 'serious' about their
religion. I suppose Dobzhansky is a good example of this, or Mendel,
or Miller for that matter. All are/were 'serious' about their faith
and the manner of its expression. Hopefully all of the signatories of
the Clergy Letter supporting evolution are actual Christians otherwise
it's a fairly futile expression of support for science. I think we
have to be a bit careful here as one of the things that came
immediately out of the Dover trial from the ID crew were instant asides
about how Miller and Jones were somehow suspect in their Christianity.
As an ideological framework there is no real objection to a scientist
having religious views. It's a reason I'm a Humanist rather than
religious because I can't personally see the difference in believing in
a 'god' and maintaining a fairly liberal world view about being nice to
people and so on - and not believing in god and having those same
attitudes. However, as far as being able to reconcile your personal
beliefs to your a spiritual framework it's no harder than justifying
your political or ethical stance in general terms.
>
> > 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
> > do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
>
> Really? What do you mean by "good scientist?"
See above for examples. Hopefully Ken Miller qualifies.
>
> > For example,
> > it seems perfectly clear to me that the form/substance doctrine on which
> > Catholic teachings about the Eucharist are based are simply false. But
> > they do not find this problematic. It is not cognitive dissonance to
> > think that what authoritative teachers tell you is true in a way you
> > can't appreciate. It might be wishful thinking, but again, we are all
> > guilty of that peccadillo. Likewise, they apparently think that it is
> > equally compartmentalised of me to have moral values in the absence of a
> > divine mandate for values. We laugh at each other and pour another
> > Scotch. Neother of us feel much cognitive dissoance.
> >
> > I wonder if your... assertive... value system about science leads you to
> > be unable to appreciate the fact that all humans are to a first
> > approximation equally irrational in some respects.
>
> But one of the goals of scientists is to be rational. We may not all
> succeed but we have to be bothered by major failures or we can't be
> called scientists.
Well ok - how rational was Newton being when he insisted that the
universe must have been designed? It might seem absurd now but the
call of the Enlightenment was one still principally founded on
religious beliefs and structures. It seems that religious expression
is no obstacle to actual science as long as those involved are
disicplined enough to recognise science as the process it is. Most
contemporary scientists who are also religious in some fashion will
(and I apologise for the shorthand but this is what it boils down to)
will conform to some process of seeing the 'god of the gaps'. This is
essentially what Newton and many other scientists from the 17th through
to the 20th century have done. The belief in a phsyical deity that
resembles man and makes pronouncements from on high may have dissipated
but that doesn't prevent the sense of the spiritual that drives many
people.
Surely there's no way to avoid the most obvious
> conflict of all, namely the belief in supernatural beings? You'd have
> to be oblivious to everything arond you not to recognize that there's
> a conflict between religion and science.
A conflict yes, but it need not be a divisive one.
Mark Isaak
I am curious how many scientists you have discussed religious views in
depth with.
One of the first things I learned, when I left my church and began
actually learing about religion, is that religious beliefs are incredibly
diverse, even among people who grew up going to the same church all their
lives. Many religious beliefs are, of course, incomatible with science;
we seem them all the time here. Others, though, are quite different in
their nature.
For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
scientists who hold it?
Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
a scientist from getting any science done.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
John Wilkins
And they wrestle with it, some overtly and daily (there are many who
just go along to get along, of course). Some end up as philosophers...
>
> > 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
> > do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
>
> Really? What do you mean by "good scientist?"
Good track record, good results, occasionally a fine hypothesis, run
labs, that sort of thing.
>
> > For example,
> > it seems perfectly clear to me that the form/substance doctrine on which
> > Catholic teachings about the Eucharist are based are simply false. But
> > they do not find this problematic. It is not cognitive dissonance to
> > think that what authoritative teachers tell you is true in a way you
> > can't appreciate. It might be wishful thinking, but again, we are all
> > guilty of that peccadillo. Likewise, they apparently think that it is
> > equally compartmentalised of me to have moral values in the absence of a
> > divine mandate for values. We laugh at each other and pour another
> > Scotch. Neother of us feel much cognitive dissoance.
> >
> > I wonder if your... assertive... value system about science leads you to
> > be unable to appreciate the fact that all humans are to a first
> > approximation equally irrational in some respects.
>
> But one of the goals of scientists is to be rational. We may not all
> succeed but we have to be bothered by major failures or we can't be
> called scientists. Surely there's no way to avoid the most obvious
> conflict of all, namely the belief in supernatural beings? You'd have
> to be oblivious to everything arond you not to recognize that there's
> a conflict between religion and science.
Many religious scientists have an almost deist account of God, one who
does not interfere in the rules of the universe. For them religion is a
moral and personal fideist matter. There is, I believe (!) no conflict
between a normative and attitudinal belief and any factual claim
(subject to the Humean restriction that "ought" implies "can", but there
are secondary adjustments one can make to deal with physically
impossible ought-requirements).
The fact is that belief structures are, like evolutionary traits,
pastiches, jury-rigged, satisficing, and occasionally stylistically
coherent (enough). This is true for all.
>
> > Or, to put it another way, tradition binds us all in some way or
> > another. Or maybe that's not true in North America, including that
> > little nation you hail from.
>
> There's nothing special about my little nation. Even in Australia
> scientists must try to free themselves from being bound by tradition.
> Do you think it's possible to be a religious scientist in the antipodes
> and never encounter anyone who challenges your belief?
It's possible I suppose. We tend to leave religion in the background,
unless the religius person is knocking at your door at 8 am on a Sunday.
[What do you get if you cross a Hell's Angel with a Jehovah's Witness?
A: someone who knocks on your door and tells *you* to fuck off.]
Larry Moran
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:04:51 +1000,
>> John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> > 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
>> > do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
>>
>> Isn't it interesting that all the religious scientists go strangely
>> silent whenever this topic comes up?
>
> Not particularly. All you have offered is a repeated assertion
> that all theist scientists are irrational. What's to respond to?
> "Am not" doesn't seem like a very useful reply; nor does "So are you".
What I'm looking for is a religious scientist who's willing to discuss
their religious beliefs and explain why there's no conflict with
science. I'd like to ask such a person if they believe in a God who
plays an active role in the universe and, if so, whether there is any
scientific evidence of this activity.
I read Ken Miller's book. Miller believes in miracles. I'd like to
discuss this with a religious scientist. I'm wondering if the belief
in miracles is in conflict with science and, if not, why do they
think that. Miller also believes in intelligent design. I'd like to
know if other religious scientists also believe in a God who designed
the universe. If they don't beleive in intelligent design then I'd like
to understand just what kind of god they worship.
From my perspective it does seem difficult to accept the ways of
science while believing in supernatural beings. I assume that
religious scientists do not see this as irrational. I'd like some
of them to explain why.
Larry Moran
Larry Moran
I wish one of those religious scientists would post to this thread so
I can learn more about their beliefs. You and Steve seem to know such
people. Perhaps you can get them to speak up?
Larry Moran
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
>
>> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> dysfunction kirjoitti:
>>>
>>>> While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
>>>> hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
>>>> the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
>>>
>>> How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
>>> who self-identify as religious?
>>
>> Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
>>
>> There aren't many scientists who try to explain why their religion is
>> compatible with their science. Most of them just proclaim that science
>> and religion occupy completely different magisteria. Presumably atheists
>> are missing a lot of very important things in this other magisterium but
>> nobody can tell me what these things are.
>
> I am curious how many scientists you have discussed religious views in
> depth with.
At least a dozen. I even attended some fellowship meetings. I've read
quite a few books by religious scientists but I end up with more questions
than answers. For example, I have trouble seeing the difference between
Michael Behe, Michael Denton, Simon Conway Morris, and Ken Miller. They
all believe in intelligent design.
> One of the first things I learned, when I left my church and began
> actually learing about religion, is that religious beliefs are incredibly
> diverse, even among people who grew up going to the same church all their
> lives. Many religious beliefs are, of course, incomatible with science;
> we seem them all the time here. Others, though, are quite different in
> their nature.
>
> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
> forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
> mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
> just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
> approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
> scientists who hold it?
I'm not sure I understand this religion. Does it require a supernatural
being who watches over you and then "forgives" you when you do something
wrong? Does this supernatural being cause most people to suffer when
they make mistakes? Why does it do that? Is there any evidence of this
suffering that would be observable to a third party? Can scientists
investigate this supernatural being to see if it exists?
> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
My food preferences are a product of me and my experiences. They are
entirely compatible with science. Similarly, my mental thought processes
do not require anything that is outside of my knowledge of science. I'm
pretty sure my ethical values have been shaped by my upbringing and
my ability to think. If that's all there is to religion then I agree
that it is compatible with science.
> Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
> anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
> driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
> time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
> he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
> imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
> a scientist from getting any science done.
My undestanding of compartmentalization is that it's a way of avoiding
a conflict. It allows you to hold mutually contradictory concepts. In
that sense it's a bad thing. It would be much better to maintain a
worldview that was not internally contradictory, don't you think?
Larry Moran
John Wilkins
Ask Wes. He doesn't post here much these days, but I'm sure he'd talk to
you, you heathen.
Michael Siemon
> I wish one of those religious scientists would post to this thread so
> I can learn more about their beliefs. You and Steve seem to know such
> people. Perhaps you can get them to speak up?
Ummm, unless there has been a recent change, Steve _is_ one. I am not,
since I am a mathematician by training, not a scientist (by either
training or actual career).
David Ewan Kahana
> On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:31:59 GMT,
> Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> > On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
> >
> >> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>> dysfunction kirjoitti:
> >>>
[snip]
> > Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
> > anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
> > driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
> > time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
> > he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
> > imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
> > a scientist from getting any science done.
>
> My undestanding of compartmentalization is that it's a way of avoiding
> a conflict. It allows you to hold mutually contradictory concepts. In
> that sense it's a bad thing. It would be much better to maintain a
> worldview that was not internally contradictory, don't you think?
>
It's an excellent question. I would like to answer
yes, for the common good, it would be better.
I think that there is a conflict between religion and
science, and I think that I have never heard it very
convincingly resolved by any of the religious
scientists I have known and talked to, which is
admittedly not a very large sample.
Still, I do wonder whether it is indeed generally a
bad thing to be able to hold mutually contradictory
concepts, depending upon the social situation, or
whether the ability to do so, and possibly more
importantly: to present the appearance that one
does so, may provide a certain advantage for an
individual.
There do certainly seem to be those who choose
to live the unexamined life.
Do such people live less successfully as a rule?
On the other hand, the gadfly did marry Xanthippe.
But it's reported that she was very hard to get along
with ...
David
Steve Schaffner
I'm a religious scientist, so you can ask me. You might find my
answers a little frustrating, since I consider almost all religious
statements to be highly speculative, and "I don't know" is my default
position on almost everything. Perhaps you could start by explaining
why you think accepting science and believing in a supernatural being
is irrational.
As for miracles, I am in practice skeptical about any particular claim
of the miraculous, but don't rule them out in principle. Is there a
reason that I should? I'm not sure what "intelligent design" means, so
I don't know if I believe it or not.
Steve Schaffner
> Larry Moran wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:31:59 GMT,
> > Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> > > On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
> > >
> > >> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >>> dysfunction kirjoitti:
> > >>>
>
> [snip]
>
> > > Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
> > > anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
> > > driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
> > > time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
> > > he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
> > > imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
> > > a scientist from getting any science done.
> >
> > My undestanding of compartmentalization is that it's a way of avoiding
> > a conflict. It allows you to hold mutually contradictory concepts. In
> > that sense it's a bad thing. It would be much better to maintain a
> > worldview that was not internally contradictory, don't you think?
> >
>
> It's an excellent question. I would like to answer
> yes, for the common good, it would be better.
Since I very much doubt that a fully consistent worldview is possible,
the question seems to me to be of little practical signficance. In
order to function at all, one has to make use of locally valid models,
even while knowing that they are imperfect and sometimes
inconsistent. Do you refrain from using GR and QM because you know
they're not consistent descriptions of the universe?
This is not to suggest that one should not be troubled by obvious
contradictions, or try for greater consistency in one's beliefs, but
being human means functioning with inaccurate and incomplete
descriptions of reality.
Larry Moran
Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
[snip]
> I'm a religious scientist, so you can ask me. You might find my
> answers a little frustrating, since I consider almost all religious
> statements to be highly speculative, and "I don't know" is my default
> position on almost everything.
Thanks for the offer. Are you an adherant of any of the organized religions
or do you have your own personal religious beliefs? I'm not familiar
with religious people who are less than certain of any religious
statements. Can you tell me which religous statements are *not* highly
speculative?
> Perhaps you could start by explaining why you think accepting science
> and believing in a supernatural being is irrational.
One of the hallmarks of science, in my opinion, is not believing in
anything unless there is evidence to support it. The default position
for scientists is "I don't know." Since there is no credible scientific
evidence for supernatural beings, it seems irrational to believe in them.
This is especially true if that belief alters your lifestyle. In other
words, it seems irrational if you behave as though there was a god
even though you claim to be agnostic. Why worship something that may
not exist? Do you pray?
> As for miracles, I am in practice skeptical about any particular claim
> of the miraculous, but don't rule them out in principle. Is there a
> reason that I should?
Miracles are, by definition, extraordianry events. If they exist it
would have profound implications. They would be proof of the existence
of supernatural beings. As a scientist you must have a pretty good
understanding of the natural world and how it works. Wouldn't miracles
require extraordinary evidence?
We can't prove a negative so philosphers will tell us that we must
always consider the possibility of miracles. However, at some point we
have to act as though miracles are, at the very least, rare events.
There's not much difference between your position and mine. We both
go about our daily business as though miracles didn't exist. Right?
> I'm not sure what "intelligent design" means, so I don't know if I
> believe it or not.
The broadest definition includes a supernatural being who created the
universe but then left it to develop on its own. More serious versions
have gods who meddle in the development to a greater or lesser extent.
Do you believe in a supernatural being who created the universe?
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak
> On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:31:59 GMT,
> Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
>> On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
>>
>>> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> dysfunction kirjoitti:
>>>>
>>>>> While religion can coexist with scientific fact, provided it does not
>>>>> hold too dearly to specific tenets, it absolutely cannot coexist with
>>>>> the scientific mentality. That is my opinion.
>>>>
>>>> How do you explain the scientists (and science-interested laypeople)
>>>> who self-identify as religious?
>>>
>>> Cognitive dissonance is the default explanation.
>>>
>>> There aren't many scientists who try to explain why their religion is
>>> compatible with their science. Most of them just proclaim that science
>>> and religion occupy completely different magisteria. Presumably atheists
>>> are missing a lot of very important things in this other magisterium but
>>> nobody can tell me what these things are.
>>
>>[snip]
>> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
>> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
>> forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
>> mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
>> just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
>> approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
>> scientists who hold it?
>
> I'm not sure I understand this religion. Does it require a supernatural
> being who watches over you and then "forgives" you when you do something
> wrong? Does this supernatural being cause most people to suffer when
> they make mistakes? Why does it do that? Is there any evidence of this
> suffering that would be observable to a third party? Can scientists
> investigate this supernatural being to see if it exists?
By "supernatural," I suspect you mean magical. In that case, the answer
is no, people who follow such an approach do not believe in magic. (At
least, they need not. Magical thoughts can arise quite easily even to
people who consciously avoid them. I think our brains are arranged to let
them in.)
I think Taoism exemplifies this approach pretty well. Making mistakes
causes people to suffer when they make mistakes. One avoids making
mistakes by following the Way, and the Way is as natural as nature gets.
>> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
>> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
>> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
>> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
>> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
>
> My food preferences are a product of me and my experiences. They are
> entirely compatible with science. Similarly, my mental thought processes
> do not require anything that is outside of my knowledge of science. I'm
> pretty sure my ethical values have been shaped by my upbringing and
> my ability to think. If that's all there is to religion then I agree
> that it is compatible with science.
Some people (well, at least one scientist that I know) would reject a
supernatural being but accept a "supreme being." When asked for details
about the supreme being, he would probably say, "I don't know, and it
doesn't matter. It is enough that it is there." The supreme being is
very roughly equivalent to the Tao, but more personal. The person prays
to it but does not expect anything in return except comfort, strength to
do what is right (in the form of will power, not physical force), and
perhaps occasional inspiration. He recognizes that the comfort, strength,
and inspiration may very well be a result of his belief alone, without
needing any involvement from the object of the belief (and practicing
meditation surely contributes, too), but he would again say, "Does it
matter? It is enough for me that it works for me."
Again, such an approach is obviously unscientific, but is it incompatible
with science? I don't see how.
>> Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
>> anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
>> driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
>> time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
>> he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
>> imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
>> a scientist from getting any science done.
>
> My undestanding of compartmentalization is that it's a way of avoiding
> a conflict. It allows you to hold mutually contradictory concepts. In
> that sense it's a bad thing. It would be much better to maintain a
> worldview that was not internally contradictory, don't you think?
Good question. I think the answer is that it is often better to maintain
a consistent worldview, but not always. Sometimes it is better to avoid
conflict. For many people, perhaps most of them, religion is more of a
social activity than a worldview. The social aspect is no small part; it
probably explains why religious people are generally healthier than
non-religious. If compartmentalization allows a scientist to go to church
with his family without feeling like a hypocrite, maybe it is a good
thing. If one needs to switch between compartments more often than once
or twice a week, maybe not.
Steve Schaffner
> On 20 Jun 2006 09:28:57 -0400,
> Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > I'm a religious scientist, so you can ask me. You might find my
> > answers a little frustrating, since I consider almost all religious
> > statements to be highly speculative, and "I don't know" is my default
> > position on almost everything.
>
> Thanks for the offer. Are you an adherant of any of the organized religions
> or do you have your own personal religious beliefs?
Um, yes. I practice a Protestant form of Christianity, and I have my
own personal religious beliefs.
> I'm not familiar
> with religious people who are less than certain of any religious
> statements. Can you tell me which religous statements are *not* highly
> speculative?
"Humans are sinful" (for some suitably flexible definition of
"sinful"). "We see through a glass darkly."
> > Perhaps you could start by explaining why you think accepting science
> > and believing in a supernatural being is irrational.
>
> One of the hallmarks of science, in my opinion, is not believing in
> anything unless there is evidence to support it. The default position
> for scientists is "I don't know." Since there is no credible scientific
> evidence for supernatural beings, it seems irrational to believe in them.
We're in danger of conflating different meanings of "believe" here. In
a religious context, for me it means something closer to "trust in"
than "be convinced is true".
I also think you have adopted an unrealistic model of how science is
done. Scientists accept statements as reflecting reality if they are
well supported by empirical evidence, sure. They often believe such
statements based on only fragmentary evidence, however, and devote
great energy to further study of them. I don't know if you've ever
pursued an idea that felt right but was not well suported, but many
other scientists have.
On a more fundatmental level, all scientists are motivated by
beliefs that cannot be supported by evidence. For example, I do not
seriously consider the possibility that I'm actually suffering from a
psychotic break and am confined in a locked ward somewhere, under the
delusion that I am a geneticist. (Given my background, the idea that I
actually am a geneticist is a bit preposterous, now that I think about
it.) I tend to blithely assume that I am more or less rational and
that my senses report more or less what is going outside me, even
though I can't think of any evidence that would enable me to confirm
that supposition.
> Why worship something that may not exist?
Why pursue a hypothesis that may be wrong? Why do science even though
you may be a brain in a vat?
> Do you pray?
Yes.
> > As for miracles, I am in practice skeptical about any particular claim
> > of the miraculous, but don't rule them out in principle. Is there a
> > reason that I should?
>
> Miracles are, by definition, extraordianry events. If they exist it
> would have profound implications. They would be proof of the existence
> of supernatural beings. As a scientist you must have a pretty good
> understanding of the natural world and how it works. Wouldn't miracles
> require extraordinary evidence?
I don't see that miracles would be proof for the existence of
"beings", just proof that the patterns we recognize in physical
phenomena are not universal. I have a strong prior against that
possibility, based on experience and prejudice as a scientist, but
a prior is only a prior, not a conclusion.
> We can't prove a negative so philosphers will tell us that we must
> always consider the possibility of miracles. However, at some point we
> have to act as though miracles are, at the very least, rare events.
> There's not much difference between your position and mine. We both
> go about our daily business as though miracles didn't exist. Right?
Yes, I think so, although I've never examined my daily business in
great depth.
>
> > I'm not sure what "intelligent design" means, so I don't know if I
> > believe it or not.
>
> The broadest definition includes a supernatural being who created the
> universe but then left it to develop on its own. More serious versions
> have gods who meddle in the development to a greater or lesser extent.
>
> Do you believe in a supernatural being who created the universe?
Casting the discussion in terms of "a supernatural being" immediately
sets the wrong frame, in my view. I tend to think of it more like
this: at the lowest level, the nature of reality is utterly mysterious
to us, whether scientists or not. We can describe how things behave,
but what it means for things to exist and why their behavior follows
patterns, and why these particular patterns, is opaque to us. For me,
the question is, is there anything in that opacity that is remotely
analogous to purpose or mind? I don't know, but I am open to the
possibility.
David Ewan Kahana
> "David Ewan Kahana" <d...@bnl.gov> writes:
>
> > Larry Moran wrote:
> > > On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:31:59 GMT,
> > > Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:56 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> On 18 Jun 2006 13:51:25 -0700, Wakboth <Wakbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > >>> dysfunction kirjoitti:
> > > >>>
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > > Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
> > > > anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
> > > > driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
> > > > time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
> > > > he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
> > > > imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
> > > > a scientist from getting any science done.
> > >
> > > My undestanding of compartmentalization is that it's a way of avoiding
> > > a conflict. It allows you to hold mutually contradictory concepts. In
> > > that sense it's a bad thing. It would be much better to maintain a
> > > worldview that was not internally contradictory, don't you think?
> > >
> >
> > It's an excellent question. I would like to answer
> > yes, for the common good, it would be better.
>
> Since I very much doubt that a fully consistent worldview is possible,
> the question seems to me to be of little practical signficance.
I thought that the question was not about having a
fully consistent world view, which I think it is
known to be impossible to demonstrate even
exists, supposing that a world view is sufficiently
complex, and could be expressed as a logical system.
Granting Larry's premise, for the sake of argument, I
thought that the question was about holding a world
view, actually holding two world views, that are known
to be mutually contradictory, thus internally contradictory
when held by the same person, internally being used
in the sense that the systems are internal to one
person.
> In
> order to function at all, one has to make use of locally valid models,
> even while knowing that they are imperfect and sometimes
> inconsistent. Do you refrain from using GR and QM because you know
> they're not consistent descriptions of the universe?
>
I don't think that QM is known to be internally
contradictory considered as a mathematical
system.
GR is also not known to be an internally
contradictory system either, I think, if it were
axiomatized in an appropriate way.
GR does have a serious problem, as do all classical
physical theories, with the short range stability of
matter. QM of course, simply doesn't address long
range gravitational phenomena.
Neither theory is complete, and I don't know how to
join them together.
But I'm not sure at all that they are mutually
contradictory.
I hold them both to be tentatively correct
in their respective realms of applicability.
I hope there is an underlying theory from
which both derive, and I would love to
live to see that theory established.
My understanding is that many religious beliefs
are supposed to be held to be absolutely true,
and beyond question. It seems to have become
commonplace for religions to present at the core
of their systems of thought, deep mysteries which
are said to be beyond human ability even to describe
in language, but which mysteries adherents of
religions are supposed to believe nevertheless.
This kind of mysterianism is, as it seems to
me, in contradiction with a scientific world
view.
If there are such contradictions with a scientific
worldview in the particular religious views that
a scientist holds, then I think the question may
well have practical implications.
At a minimum there is some effort and energy that
must be involved in making the switch between
the two.
Now I'm not saying, mind you, that one can't
be a mysterian and a scientist both. It might be
that it's better to be both. I can certainly think
of very great scientists who embraced mysterianism
in important ways.
But at least, I think that there is a real question
there to be considered.
> This is not to suggest that one should not be troubled by obvious
> contradictions, or try for greater consistency in one's beliefs, but
> being human means functioning with inaccurate and incomplete
> descriptions of reality.
>
Agreed.
David
Steve Schaffner
I don't think the question has been clearly defined. Hence the need
for further discussion.
> Granting Larry's premise, for the sake of argument, I
> thought that the question was about holding a world
> view, actually holding two world views, that are known
> to be mutually contradictory, thus internally contradictory
> when held by the same person, internally being used
> in the sense that the systems are internal to one
> person.
Based on Larry's follow-up questions, it's not clear to me what he
means by world views being contradictory. I can understand how
propositions can be contradictory, but I haven't seen anyone propose
any contradictory propositions entailed by combining theism and
science. I can understand how one can be inconsistent in how one
thinks, e.g. "I only believe in things that I can directly observe", and
"I believe what the pizza delivery guy tells me" are quite different
approaches to epistemology. Combining them ("I believe in things that I
can directly observe and anything that the pizza delivery man says")
is not very consistent, but I don't see that it involves a logical
contradiction.
I think we wouuld agree that it is good to avoid logical
contradictions, when possible, but it's not obvious to me that
consistency in mode of thinking is even a virtue, let alone a
necessity for doing science.
> > In
> > order to function at all, one has to make use of locally valid models,
> > even while knowing that they are imperfect and sometimes
> > inconsistent. Do you refrain from using GR and QM because you know
> > they're not consistent descriptions of the universe?
> >
>
[...]
> I hold them both to be tentatively correct
> in their respective realms of applicability.
> I hope there is an underlying theory from
> which both derive, and I would love to
> live to see that theory established.
That's my understanding of the situation as well (which is of course
much less well informed than yours). It's also a fair description of
how I think about religious and scientific matters.
> My understanding is that many religious beliefs
> are supposed to be held to be absolutely true,
> and beyond question.
Possibly, but I don't seem to have any religious beliefs of that type.
> It seems to have become
> commonplace for religions to present at the core
> of their systems of thought, deep mysteries which
> are said to be beyond human ability even to describe
> in language, but which mysteries adherents of
> religions are supposed to believe nevertheless.
>
> This kind of mysterianism is, as it seems to
> me, in contradiction with a scientific world
> view.
What, precisely, do you mean by "contradiction" and "scientific world
view" here? For me, the core of a scientific worldview is the idea
that there are patterns to physical phenomena, and that we can detect
and describe many of these patterns by studying them. You seem to
mean rather more by the term.
> If there are such contradictions with a scientific
> worldview in the particular religious views that
> a scientist holds, then I think the question may
> well have practical implications.
>
> At a minimum there is some effort and energy that
> must be involved in making the switch between
> the two.
That strikes me as a trivial consequence. As a practical matter, the
modes of thought involved in reading poetry, listening to music, doing
mathematics and doing empirical science are all different, but
switching among them is not a serious burden for those who are
interested in those pursuits.
> Now I'm not saying, mind you, that one can't
> be a mysterian and a scientist both. It might be
> that it's better to be both. I can certainly think
> of very great scientists who embraced mysterianism
> in important ways.
>
> But at least, I think that there is a real question
> there to be considered.
Oh, I agree that there can be real tension (for me, at least)
between habits of thought engrained by scientific practice and
religious thought and experience. But the same is also true of
scientific habits and aesthetic experience.
Larry Moran
Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
[snip]
>> Why worship something that may not exist?
>
> Why pursue a hypothesis that may be wrong?
In order to find out whether it is wrong. Is that why you worship
God? Is it in order to find out whether He exists? How's the
experiment working out so far? :-)
[snip]
>> Do you pray?
>
> Yes.
Do you expect your prayers to be answered? 'Cause if they are answered
and you can prove it to me then I will believe in God. If there's no evidence
that prayers are answered then why keep doing it? It doesn't sound like a
very rational thing to do.
[snip]
>> Do you believe in a supernatural being who created the universe?
>
> Casting the discussion in terms of "a supernatural being" immediately
> sets the wrong frame, in my view. I tend to think of it more like
> this: at the lowest level, the nature of reality is utterly mysterious
> to us, whether scientists or not. We can describe how things behave,
> but what it means for things to exist and why their behavior follows
> patterns, and why these particular patterns, is opaque to us. For me,
> the question is, is there anything in that opacity that is remotely
> analogous to purpose or mind? I don't know, but I am open to the
> possibility.
I don't understand your answer. You seem to be saying that you can't
rule out the existence of some undetectable being. Is that being
the one who is responsbile for the patterns you see in nature? Is it
the being you worship and pray to?
Larry Moran
Steve Schaffner
> On 20 Jun 2006 13:37:30 -0400,
> Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Why worship something that may not exist?
> >
> > Why pursue a hypothesis that may be wrong?
>
> In order to find out whether it is wrong.
But you don't have any evidence for it. I thought people with a
scientific worldview based their beliefs and actions on things they
have evidence for. I'm trying to be difficult; I'm trying to get a
clear statement of what this scientific worldview is that you're
talking about, so I can see if I have it and if it's in conflict with
theism.
> Is that why you worship God? Is it in order to find out whether He
> exists?
No, it's a different example of scientists acting without solid evidence.
> >> Do you pray?
> >
> > Yes.
>
> Do you expect your prayers to be answered?
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
> 'Cause if they are answered
> and you can prove it to me then I will believe in God.
Well, that's nice, but I'm not trying to get you to believe in
God. I'm trying to get you to make a case that my beliefs and my
scientific practice are in conflict.
> If there's no evidence
> that prayers are answered then why keep doing it?
Because praying certainly has an effect on me.
> [snip]
>
> >> Do you believe in a supernatural being who created the universe?
> >
> > Casting the discussion in terms of "a supernatural being" immediately
> > sets the wrong frame, in my view. I tend to think of it more like
> > this: at the lowest level, the nature of reality is utterly mysterious
> > to us, whether scientists or not. We can describe how things behave,
> > but what it means for things to exist and why their behavior follows
> > patterns, and why these particular patterns, is opaque to us. For me,
> > the question is, is there anything in that opacity that is remotely
> > analogous to purpose or mind? I don't know, but I am open to the
> > possibility.
>
> I don't understand your answer. You seem to be saying that you can't
> rule out the existence of some undetectable being. Is that being
> the one who is responsbile for the patterns you see in nature? Is it
> the being you worship and pray to?
Yes and no. Mostly, I'm saying that "being" is the wrong word to be
using. It suggests an object that shares a way of existing with the
physical objects in the universe, when what we're talking about is the
source of existence (as we know it). I'm trying to get you away from
thinking of a creator as one more object that scientists can
scrutinize, since the scientists themselves, and their attempted act
of scrutiny, are themselves creations, and not independent of the
creator. To use a standard analogy, it would be futile for characters
in a novel to attempt to detect the existence of the novelist, or to
conclude that the novelist doesn't exist because they have no way of
detecting her.
With that stated, then yes, I'm saying that I can't rule out the
existence of some undetectable being -- since the being is undectable
in principle. (Which is not to say that creatures can't be aware of
their creator, but they can't *detect* him.) The reason I find the
idea worth taking seriously is that it fits with my own sense that I
encounter (in prayer, among other ways) a presence not unlike
personality, and that I find structure and meaning in the shape of my
own life that doesn't reduce to a scientific description of it. These
feelings could be illusion, but they are real experiences for me,
and part of what I have to integrate in trying to come up with a
coherent view of the world.
I don't pretend to be a deep thinker, and the way I think about these
things might seem quite silly to a philosopher -- but I haven't found
atheist scientists to be particularly deep thinkers as a group either.
Mostly, scientists do what they're good at, and aren't very good at
understanding what it all means.
Larry Moran
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
>
>> On 20 Jun 2006 13:37:30 -0400,
>> Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
>> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >> Why worship something that may not exist?
>> >
>> > Why pursue a hypothesis that may be wrong?
>>
>> In order to find out whether it is wrong.
>
> But you don't have any evidence for it. I thought people with a
> scientific worldview based their beliefs and actions on things they
> have evidence for. I'm trying to be difficult; I'm trying to get a
> clear statement of what this scientific worldview is that you're
> talking about, so I can see if I have it and if it's in conflict with
> theism.
Indeed, you *are* trying to be difficult. :-)
It's quite appropriate to investigate things you don't know. During
the investigation you may explore various possibilites (hypotheses).
Your approach will be to see if there's any evidence in favor of one
explanation or another. Hypotheses are tentative, not something you
believe in and stop questioning.
What you mustn't do is have "faith" that one and only one explanation is
correct in the absence of evidence.
I don't have a simple sound bite explanation of the scientific worldview.
It includes healthy doses of skepticism and the ability to think critically
about one's own conclusions.
>> Is that why you worship God? Is it in order to find out whether He
>> exists?
>
> No, it's a different example of scientists acting without solid evidence.
I don't see how you can say that. Religious people don't seem to be in
the stage of investigating whether God exists. They act like they already
know the answer.
>> >> Do you pray?
>> >
>> > Yes.
>>
>> Do you expect your prayers to be answered?
>
> Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
Can you explain to me why you might feel that your prayers could be
answered? Is there scientific evidence that prayers have been answered?
>> 'Cause if they are answered
>> and you can prove it to me then I will believe in God.
>
> Well, that's nice, but I'm not trying to get you to believe in
> God. I'm trying to get you to make a case that my beliefs and my
> scientific practice are in conflict.
Do you sometime pray that your experiments will work? Are your experiments
more successful than mine because of your prayers? :-)
Seriously, I don't see how you can believe in a supernatural being who
answers your prayers and not see that this conflicts with the view of
the natural world gained through science.
>> If there's no evidence
>> that prayers are answered then why keep doing it?
>
> Because praying certainly has an effect on me.
Have you considered the possiblity that your explanation of this effect
may be an illusion? Surely, as a good scientist, you must be aware of the
fact that there are many possible explanations other than the fact that
God exists and listens to your prayers?
On what basis do you eliminate these other explanations and adopt the
one that is the most extraordinary? Do you behave like this in the
laboratory? Do you go with the hypothesis that makes you feel good? :-)
Sometimes I do that, by the way, but every now and then there's a
reality check that brings me back to the real world! It's a real
downer when your favorite feel-good hypothesis turns out to be wrong.
(Wilkins has more experience with this than I.)
[snip]
I think I understand. You agree that we can't postulate a detectable God
because that makes Him accessible to science. You are advocating the
concept of a personal spriritual God who resides within you and makes you
feel good. I assume this rules out Jesus Christ as a real detectable person?
Does it also rule out any of the other figures in the Bible?
Are you a Christian? If so, why? Did the concept of Jesus as your
Saviour come from personal revelation? Would you have become a Christian
if you had been born and raised in Laos? I suspect there's much more
external influence than you're willing to admit. And all of that
external influence is subject to scientific investigation.
(I'm looking forward to your response to the "illusion" question.)
> I don't pretend to be a deep thinker, and the way I think about these
> things might seem quite silly to a philosopher -- but I haven't found
> atheist scientists to be particularly deep thinkers as a group either.
> Mostly, scientists do what they're good at, and aren't very good at
> understanding what it all means.
I've been thinking about these questions for more than 50 years. I try
very hard to work my way through the most important question of all;
namely, is there a God? I can't imagine a more important question for
atheists. It's even more important for theists, don't you think?
Scientists are suposed to think, ponder, reason, question, argue, and
explain. I don't stop doing those things when I leave the university
in the evening and I don't restrict those activities to just one part
of my existence. Religious scientists seem to do this and I want to
know why.
Larry Moran
Steve Schaffner
> On 21 Jun 2006 15:16:22 -0400,
> Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
> >
> >> On 20 Jun 2006 13:37:30 -0400,
> >> Steve Schaffner <s...@phosphorus.broad.mit.edu> wrote:
> >> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> >> Why worship something that may not exist?
> >> >
> >> > Why pursue a hypothesis that may be wrong?
> >>
> >> In order to find out whether it is wrong.
> >
> > But you don't have any evidence for it. I thought people with a
> > scientific worldview based their beliefs and actions on things they
> > have evidence for. I'm trying to be difficult; I'm trying to get a
> > clear statement of what this scientific worldview is that you're
> > talking about, so I can see if I have it and if it's in conflict with
> > theism.
>
> Indeed, you *are* trying to be difficult. :-)
>
> It's quite appropriate to investigate things you don't know.
Why? Devote a chunk of your life, probably at less than great pay, to
investigating something that may well turn out to be wrong?
> During
> the investigation you may explore various possibilites (hypotheses).
> Your approach will be to see if there's any evidence in favor of one
> explanation or another. Hypotheses are tentative, not something you
> believe in and stop questioning.
>
> What you mustn't do is have "faith" that one and only one explanation is
> correct in the absence of evidence.
Good. I'm in agreement with everything you say, and (as far as I can
tell), it applies to both my scientific work and my spiritual life. If
you have read anything that I've written, you will have gathered that
my religious beliefs are tentative and subject to questioning (and in
fact have changed quite a lot over the years). So I am at a loss to
understand why you think you are pointing out some kind of
contradiction in my views here.
> >> Is that why you worship God? Is it in order to find out whether He
> >> exists?
> >
> > No, it's a different example of scientists acting without solid evidence.
>
> I don't see how you can say that. Religious people don't seem to be in
> the stage of investigating whether God exists. They act like they already
> know the answer.
Since I have already told you that I don't know the answer, and I'm a
religious person, I don't know what to make of this. You say you want
to hear a religious scientist's explanation of his beliefs, but you
have consistently ignored everything I've said.
> >> >> Do you pray?
> >> >
> >> > Yes.
> >>
> >> Do you expect your prayers to be answered?
> >
> > Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
>
> Can you explain to me why you might feel that your prayers could be
> answered?
Because I don't know enough about the way the universe works to know
for sure.
> Is there scientific evidence that prayers have been answered?
None that I know of.
> Do you sometime pray that your experiments will work? Are your experiments
> more successful than mine because of your prayers? :-)
No, if you've observed that effect you'll have to look for more
mundane explanations. (I never use smilies, by the way.)
> Seriously, I don't see how you can believe in a supernatural being who
> answers your prayers and not see that this conflicts with the view of
> the natural world gained through science.
Since I haven't said that I believe in prayers being answered, your
statement is rather tendentious. In any case, perhaps you would care
to offer an argument about why the two conflict, rather than merely
treating it as a given.
> >> If there's no evidence
> >> that prayers are answered then why keep doing it?
> >
> > Because praying certainly has an effect on me.
>
> Have you considered the possiblity that your explanation of this effect
> may be an illusion?
Uh, what explanation? I haven't offered one, and I didn't have one in
mind. I like the effect it has, so I do it. No explanation is
required. I also don't know why singing nonsense songs makes me happy,
or why cursing while playing soccer relieves stress. I keep doing
those too. Does that strike you as irrational?
> On what basis do you eliminate these other explanations and adopt the
> one that is the most extraordinary? Do you behave like this in the
> laboratory? Do you go with the hypothesis that makes you feel good? :-)
Do you, as a teacher, often behave like this and just make up answers
for your students on their tests?
No, that is utterly wrong. I now have a tentative explanation for why
you have never been able to get a satisfactory account from religious
scientists: you ignore what they tell you. If you want to engage me on
this subject, please do me the courtesy of responding to what I
actually write. You aren't so stupid as to think that was an accurate
summary of what I said.
> I assume this rules out Jesus Christ as a real detectable person?
In this exchange, you would do well to take anything that seems
obvious to you about what I believe and negate it, because both your
assumptions and your conclusions have a strong inverse correlation
with reality.
> Are you a Christian? If so, why? Did the concept of Jesus as your
> Saviour come from personal revelation? Would you have become a Christian
> if you had been born and raised in Laos?
Meaningless question -- I wouldn't have been me if I had been born in
Laos. I would have been someone else, someone quite likely not a
Christian. Also, of course, someone likely not a scientist, and
without a scientific viewpoint.
> I suspect there's much more
> external influence than you're willing to admit. And all of that
> external influence is subject to scientific investigation.
Of course our beliefs are largely the product of external
influence. You are aware that that applies to belief in science,
aren't you?
> (I'm looking forward to your response to the "illusion" question.)
What illusion question?
> > I don't pretend to be a deep thinker, and the way I think about these
> > things might seem quite silly to a philosopher -- but I haven't found
> > atheist scientists to be particularly deep thinkers as a group either.
> > Mostly, scientists do what they're good at, and aren't very good at
> > understanding what it all means.
>
> I've been thinking about these questions for more than 50 years. I try
> very hard to work my way through the most important question of all;
> namely, is there a God? I can't imagine a more important question for
> atheists. It's even more important for theists, don't you think?
>
> Scientists are suposed to think, ponder, reason, question, argue, and
> explain. I don't stop doing those things when I leave the university
> in the evening and I don't restrict those activities to just one part
> of my existence. Religious scientists seem to do this and I want to
> know why.
I didn't say scientists (atheist or religious) didn't make an effort
to understand what it all means. I said they weren't very good at
it. Now I want to know something: what gives you the impression that
I restrict my questioning to one part of my existence?
Larry Moran
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) writes:
[snip]
> Since I have already told you that I don't know the answer, and I'm a
> religious person, I don't know what to make of this. You say you want
> to hear a religious scientist's explanation of his beliefs, but you
> have consistently ignored everything I've said.
I'm sorry, Steve. I'm not deliberately ignoring you. I'm trying to figure
out what you mean. It seems to me that you're being rather cryptic about
your beliefs. It's hard for me to understand why you call yourself a
religious person if you don't really believe in anything.
[snip]
>> >> Do you expect your prayers to be answered?
>> >
>> > Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
>>
>> Can you explain to me why you might feel that your prayers could be
>> answered?
>
> Because I don't know enough about the way the universe works to know
> for sure.
>
>> Is there scientific evidence that prayers have been answered?
>
> None that I know of.
>
>> Do you sometime pray that your experiments will work? Are your experiments
>> more successful than mine because of your prayers? :-)
>
> No, if you've observed that effect you'll have to look for more
> mundane explanations. (I never use smilies, by the way.)
>
>> Seriously, I don't see how you can believe in a supernatural being who
>> answers your prayers and not see that this conflicts with the view of
>> the natural world gained through science.
>
> Since I haven't said that I believe in prayers being answered, your
> statement is rather tendentious.
When I asked you whether you expected your prayers to be answered you
said "sometimes I do." I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your response.
(see above)
I think we've gone about as far as we can go with this conversation.
Thanks for sharing some of your thoughts. I can see now that your
religious beliefs are rather tentative. Would you call yourself an
agnostic?
Larry Moran
David Ewan Kahana
Fair enough.
> > Granting Larry's premise, for the sake of argument, I
> > thought that the question was about holding a world
> > view, actually holding two world views, that are known
> > to be mutually contradictory, thus internally contradictory
> > when held by the same person, internally being used
> > in the sense that the systems are internal to one
> > person.
>
> Based on Larry's follow-up questions, it's not clear to me what he
> means by world views being contradictory. I can understand how
> propositions can be contradictory, but I haven't seen anyone propose
> any contradictory propositions entailed by combining theism and
> science.
There was a shift in terms here, but it probably doesn't
matter too much.
The subthread started with a post by Moran expressing his
disbelief in the reality of any putative separation between
scientific and religious `magisteria.' The question he posed
directly above was also in response to someone talking about
religion and science.
But now you are talking about combining theism and
science. I don't think that religion and theism are
necessarily precisely synonymous, though it's for sure that
religion can include theism. I certainly believe that an
individual could be a theist, without belonging to any
organized religion. But I am mostly concerned with the
viewpoint(s) that seem to be espoused by adherents of
organized revealed religions. when I speak of a religious
world view. You do say that you consider yourself to be
such, so this does include you, I think.
But let me just continue using the term that you chose for
the moment.
It's possible that contradictory is not the best word to
use, at least in the sense that it implies that there exists
a direct logical contradiction.
But in my view, science is not strictly speaking a logical
system in the first place. It is a system by which people
attempt to establish propositions that can be objectively
asserted to be true about the world, with certain
limitations on the meaning of true.
I think that despite these admitted limits, the scientific
system has been empirically demonstrated to be an extremely
successful system in doing this, and that empirically, many
of the most general propositions that have been established
by means of the system have proven to be remarkably stable,
even though they must always remain open to possible
revision in the future.
This suggests to me that it is pragmatic to take scientific
assertions about the nature of the world seriously, if one's
goal is to understand what the nature of the world is, and
inversely, it suggests to me that strongly doubting
assertions about the nature of the world that are not
scientific is also the pragmatic stance.
This stance toward propositions about the nature of the
world is part of what I would call a scientific world view,
and this general approach is something which I hold to be
worth defending, in part because I happen to think it has
been of very great practical importance in the development
of civilization, which is something I hold dear.
But also it needs to be defended because I have seen no
other way proposed for learning things about the nature of
the world which can be objectively asserted, and I am in
fact interested not only in what I think I believe about the
nature of the world, but in whether other people agree with
what I think, and whether it can be established by means
that are independent of all of our respective prejudices
that we are right in our opinions.
Now I suppose that one might argue that a theistic world
view is not even strictly speaking a propositional
construct, it's a feeling, or a mystery of some other kind,
and thus try to avoid all conflict or contradiction in that
way.
One could deny, as some religions do, that the `ultimate'
nature of reality is even knowable in principle, that it is
inexpressible. Such a position can't be ruled out a priori,
of course. I consider that to be an anti-scientific stance
though, and I think that there is no objective evidence for
its correctness. Such evidence as there is tends to suggest
to me at least that there has been convergence in physical
theories at least, over time, rather than divergence. And
where exactly does one place the line separating the
ultimate description from all those that are less than
ultimate?
So, since I think one can, and one is forced to some extent
at least, to judge what a person's world view is by looking
at the set of all those propositions about the world which
that person is inclined to assert, as well as any
propositions laying out such requirements as the person may
explicitly impose upon those propositions, before they are
willing to assert them, I am going to simply reject those
two latter possibilities for now, and treat of theism
as if it were simply a different system by which propositions
about the nature of the world can be generated. And as
such, I think that its propositions, once made, are as
open to scientific investigation as any others.
It is certainly the case that science imposes quite definite
limits on the kinds of propositions that may be asserted
about the world. Any proposition can be advanced as
hypothesis. But then there occurs, there must occur in
science, some form of reality testing. So when there exists
no objective evidence for some proposition it can be
advanced as a possibility if and only if there at least
exists a possibility of obtaining objective evidence on the
question. No proposition about the world can be asserted
scientifically in the absence of some objective
evidence.
Those are some of the rules that I think apply in the
scientific language game, and those are some of the rules
that I would expect someone with a scientific world view to
use in deciding which propositions to assert.
It's certainly not within my ability to make a completely
general argument on the question, for all possible
definitions of theism. The meanings of words are certainly
variable, and you certainly have a right to use them as you
wish to.
Supposing that `world view,' which is at least a phrase
in common enough usage, actually does denote something real
about the approach that a person takes to living in the
world and to talking about its nature, it seems to me that
holding a theistic world view does incline people to
construct particular sorts of propositions about the nature
of the world more often than other sorts of propositions
about the world.
And sometimes I certainly do think that some of the
propositions constructed by scientists about the nature of
the world and some of the propositions constructed by
theists about the nature of the world are in direct
contradiction with each other.
When this happens, I think it is incumbent upon a scientist
to point out the contradiction, because there is then a real
scientific question involved, and there is objective
evidence available which can be brought to bear on the
question.
For example: here is a commonplace statement due to
Descartes, which is still made by many theists, and which
seems to have such an appeal that I actually find it
remarkably hard to avoid this way of thinking myself: this
is the statement that mind precedes matter, or equivalently,
the statement that mind is separate from matter, or the
statement that mind is not a material phenomenon.
This a proposition which I think that many theists are still
willing to assert but that, quite probably, relatively few
scientists would be willing to assert these days, at least
in a scientific context.
I consider that such statements of Cartesian dualism are
flatly contradicted by propositions that we can, at least
tentatively, assert on a scientific basis to be true about
physical law. This is hardly an original argument, but I
wish to repeat it here to show how statements that are
bordering at least on theistic or religious can indeed
sometimes be addressed by scientific arguments.
So: everything we observe about the behaviour of matter is
consistent with the proposition that the state of matter can
be influenced only via physical interactions with other
matter.
We know that energy-momentum and various other numbers
having to do with such interactions, which we construct
theoretically, and we can operationally define and measure,
actually remain conserved to high precision in all cases
where such measurements are possible.
The technique of asserting that the conservation laws hold
locally and in all cases of physical interactions of matter
has in fact been used to predict the existence of new,
extremely weakly interacting forms of matter that no one had
previously guessed at, in experiments where the conservation
laws at first sight appeared to be violated.
So, I can say that there is good objective and empirical
evidence that conservation laws are validly asserted by
scientists.
But since Cartesian dualists assert there is a distinction
between mind and matter, while ceding that mind, whatever it
may consist of, must interact in some way with matter and
thus cause changes in its state, the truth of the
conservation laws then leads to an unresolvable problem, a
contradiction of physical law in fact, if mind is not a
material phenomenon.
As I said, this is hardly an original or a new argument. But
I want to repeat it here, because it seems to me to be an
argument with some force behind it.
Now some people may wish to quibble that there may be ways
out of this problem, and there are people who certainly have
quibbled, they assert desperately that maybe the
conservation laws are only temporarily violated in the case
where a mind is acting, when we are not looking, or maybe,
and I regard this as just as desperate a ploy, the
uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics opens up a crack
through which some non-material stuff of which mind is made
might be able to influence matter. But these are exceedingly
weak arguments in my view. There is simply no objective
support for any of these notions.
The basic problem here, as I see it, is actually not that a
violation of conservation of energy is implied. It's that
an assertion has been made that there is some stuff called
mind which is not material and which has the presumably
exceedingly complex property of being the seat of
consciousness, but that this stuff of which mind is made can
at the same time influence matter, so that the dualistic
hypothesis is simply hopelessly incomplete: there is already
a possible internal inconsistency in the discussion, since
if something is not matter, then we must ask how it may be
distinguished from matter, and then we must ask further how
whatever it is said to be might influence the motion of
other matter? Without a precise specification of the way in
which this happens the argument, though it appears very
clever and appeals to the intellect, simply doesn't get off
of the ground.
But note that I think it is essential if one has a
scientific world view not to reject the hypothesis of
Cartesian dualism out of hand. If this were found to be an
objectively supportable hypothesis in some modified form or
other then that would have tremendous significance. I can't
imagine any scientist in the world who would not be stunned
if evidence were found supporting the idea.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect that all forms of this
dualist hypothesis will turn out to violate the most general
physical laws that are known. If this were shown to actually
happen, and happen in a way that pointed to the action of an
intelligent agent then I would be strongly inclined to
accept the idea that supernatural beings may exist and that
miracles may occur, miracles by a common definition being
violations of basic physical laws.
For me, if this and other similar cases of contradictory
propositions are asserted by theists and scientists
sufficiently often, then that is the signal that the world
views in question are contradictory, or at least that they
are in very severe conflict, since I certainly do hold that
scientific truths are all to be asserted tentatively.
But since I am willing to cede the right of the scientist
to assert any proposition absolutely, I think it is fair
that I also deny that right to the theist.
I think that `theism' generally does denote a positive
belief in the existence of a god or god(s), at least as I
understand the word.
And it seems to me that you've asserted that you regard all
religious propositions as tentative. You've also stated, I
think, that you believe in god.
I will say right away that yours seems to be a new brand of
theism to me, supposing that I don't make an error in
substituting theistic for religious in your earlier
statement. So, for example, you would only tentatively
assert the existence of a god.
Possibly I might call this view weak theism?
And it seems to me to follow that your belief in god is no
*stronger*, at least, than your belief in any scientific
proposition.
But is your belief in god not weaker than your belief in a
scientific proposition?
Your belief in god is distinguished from a scientific
proposition only, I suppose, by the fact that you are
willing to assert it while admitting that there is no
objective evidence. Possibly you might say that some
objective evidence may eventually arise so you are not
strictly speaking making an untestable assertion ... but
still, you admit that there is no objective evidence for
now?
If so, of course, a problem does seem to arise, in that many
people can and do make many different and quite
contradictory assertions about god(s) with equal
justification to your own, and there will be, by the very
rules of the game you have set up, no way of determining
which, if any, of those assertions is true.
So it seems to me that you have defined a conversational
game in which the only likely settlement in this life is
that you and everyone else who talks about god(s) will be,
objectively speaking equally right or equally wrong in
whatever you all wish to say about god(s).
For someone who claims that a scientific world view is
consistent with a theistic world view, I think that there is
a real problem there, if not a contradiction. In science the
whole point is that we try to test whether what we assert
about the world can be said to be true. But in theism it
seems we are allowed to completely omit the step of testing.
On the other hand, it seems to me that there are certainly
classes of scientific proposition that are far more strongly
assertable than others, on the basis of the evidence that
can be currently arrayed in their favour.
I gave an example of one that I think is particularly well
supported, the conservation of energy-momentum.
Here's an example of a common proposition in physics which
I think is correct in a certain sense, but which is far
less general and less directly supported than the statements
we can make about energy-momentum conservation. I apologize
that this example is a bit lengthy and technical:
`A nucleon is made up of three quarks.'
The support for this claim is all indirect.
It doesn't come from detecting the quarks themselves. No
one has ever managed to knock a quark out of a nucleon, and
no one has ever found a quark just lying around, though it's
for sure that people have looked (actually I seem to recall
that one claim was made for the detection of a small plastic
bead which had a 2/3 charge, but that this bead was later
lost when it rolled into a crack in the floor!).
It is thought, in fact, that it is in principle impossible
to isolate quarks except possibly in a weak sense, on
extremely short time scales, and there are very good
theoretical reasons for believing that proposition to be
true, and so far there is no experimental reason for
believing it to be false.
We can certainly make up constituent quark models of the
nucleon in which the nucleon is made of three quarks, and a
systematization of various particles which appear to be
strongly related to the nucleon is thus attained, as well as
an explanation of all of their quantum numbers, and this
possibly is the simplest argument one can make in favour of
the proposition. But it isn't yet completely conclusive.
The most convincing evidence for the statement comes from
experiments on what's called deep inelastic scattering of
electrons on nucleons, from which, by a quite complicated
process involving the theory of the parton model, people can
extract the so-called structure functions of the nucleon as
well as what is called the scaling behaviour of those
structure functions.
The parton model itself, however, does not assume that the
constituents of the nucleon are quarks. The partons are in
fact just considered to be any number and any type of
pointlike objects of which the nucleon is assumed to be
made, and off of which electrons may scatter. The same
scaling behaviour results. So the scaling behaviour
itself is only evidence for pointlike constituents inside
the nucleon.
In fact, what allows us to make the assertion above about a
nucleon being made up of three quarks is that the way in
which the scaling behaviour of the structure functions of
the nucleon is *violated* in the deep inelastic scattering
experiments is very impressively predicted by the theory of
perturbative QCD using only one free parameter, even though
an ability to calculate the structure functions themselves
using the theory of QCD does not exist at the current
time. The computation is simply still too hard and defeats
all direct efforts to date.
This tells us that QCD appears to be the right theory in the
range of energies under consideration in the experiments,
and in QCD, we can make the positive assertion that the
total quark number is three for a nucleon. Now there can
also be lots of antiquarks in there as long as they are
cancelled out by an equal number of quarks, and gluons are
possible too. But sum up -1 for each antiquark and +1 for
each quark in the nucleon, and the total thereof is 3.
So, it is quite a long chain of argument to get to the point
of making the statement above about nucleons.
And as a result, on the whole, I tend to say that such
propositions fall into a different class than propositions
one can make about very general conservation laws. They are
far more special, and I would not be terribly disturbed
should they be very greatly revised by future discoveries.
They are not propositions on which I would feel tempted to
base an argument that the scientific worldview suggests that
mind must be composed of matter.
Leaving for the time being your own brand of theism to the
side, the fact is that many people who call themselves
theists or religious people do in fact construct and assert
a great many specific propositions involving god(s).
These propositions can become very formalized and they are
organized into quite specific systems by the major organized
religions that base themselves on revealed truth, which is
usually written down in the form of some set of scriptures.
For example, a relatively common claim of organized theists
that I have encountered might be summarized in the following
two propositions:
(1) There exists an invisible person or persons called
god(s) who care(s) about certain aspects of human existence
and behaviour.
(2) These invisible person(s) on occasion take an active
part and intervene in human affairs.
In some cases this concern on the part of the god(s) is then
also extended to other animals (eg. there are some organized
groups of theists who claim to believe in metempsychosis and
reincarnation, such as Hindus, Sikhs and Jains).
There are even some Christians who also happen to be
scientists, such as John Polkinghorne, who have argued,
apparently seriously, about such things as precisely which
animals will be let into heaven.
So the belief that the god(s) care about animals other than
humans is apparently not dependent on the belief in
metempsychosis.
But the possible concern of the god(s) about certain animals
other than humans is as it seems to me, simply a natural
extension of the notion that the god(s) care about things
that we humans think and care about.
Many people, if they consider the question for a while,
might agree with me, I suppose, that they do behave in
regards to some animals as if they are in some way
intelligent actors having a will of their own.
Now what I imagine is meant by this concern the god(s) have
about human affairs is basically that the god(s) take an
interest in and react to what humans think to themselves,
that they are aware of all of the secret plans and desires
we have, as well as what we actually do, and that they also
react to these things in an essentially human way. Many
human roles are additionally attributed to such god(s):
parent, child, warrior, hunter, lover, judge, blacksmith,
messenger, poet, architect, and so on.
But how can one possibly rank such religious propositions
relative to one another? Are we simply to say that they are
all equally general and equally possible?
For me, to assert these initial propositions about the
existence of this invisible person or persons in the first
place, if not actually in contradiction with a scientific
world view, involves a definite suspension of something that
the scientific world view entails: a stance of strong doubt
towards objectively untestable propositions. So asserting
them to be true is inconsistent with a scientific world
view.
These propositions amount to a repackaging of Cartesian
dualism, as I see them. They say that mind exists
independently of matter.
Still, to assert only the possibility of the existence of
such things is, I think, quite another matter from asserting
their existence without objective evidence.
> I can understand how one can be inconsistent in how one
> thinks, e.g. "I only believe in things that I can directly observe", and
> "I believe what the pizza delivery guy tells me" are quite different
> approaches to epistemology. Combining them ("I believe in things that I
> can directly observe and anything that the pizza delivery man says")
> is not very consistent, but I don't see that it involves a logical
> contradiction.
>
> I think we wouuld agree that it is good to avoid logical
> contradictions, when possible, but it's not obvious to me that
> consistency in mode of thinking is even a virtue, let alone a
> necessity for doing science.
>
Yes, we certainly agree on all of that. Potential scientific
propositions can be generated in all sorts of ways. Someone
can be thinking about poetry or religion if they like when
they make up hypotheses. It makes no odds at all how they
are arrived at.
But it is a necessity for doing science that one wishes
eventually to be able to establish objectively whether the
assertions that one makes are in fact true.
> > > In
> > > order to function at all, one has to make use of locally valid models,
> > > even while knowing that they are imperfect and sometimes
> > > inconsistent. Do you refrain from using GR and QM because you know
> > > they're not consistent descriptions of the universe?
> > >
> >
> [...]
> > I hold them both to be tentatively correct
> > in their respective realms of applicability.
>
> > I hope there is an underlying theory from
> > which both derive, and I would love to
> > live to see that theory established.
>
> That's my understanding of the situation as well (which is of course
> much less well informed than yours). It's also a fair description of
> how I think about religious and scientific matters.
>
> > My understanding is that many religious beliefs
> > are supposed to be held to be absolutely true,
> > and beyond question.
>
> Possibly, but I don't seem to have any religious beliefs of that type.
>
I'm not completely sure that your beliefs really qualify as
beliefs that I would call religious in that case.
If someone says to me: `Well _maybe_ the Christian god
exists, and I tentatively believe the religion to be true,
and _maybe_ miracles can occur, but I agree that no
objective evidence for them exists, and I may well be wrong
about all of it,' then I probably would tend to place that
person somewhere on a spectrum between agnosticism and
theism if such were possible.
I realize that you may not be saying that exactly.
Still, you do not reject a theistic position, it's true, and
you do say that you are part of a well-established organized
religion and take part in its prescribed rituals. I
certainly accept all of that, although your motivations for
doing so are not completely transparent to me.
Not that I'm complaining about that. I certainly don't
insist that you have to make plain all of your motivations
if you don't want to.
But if a lot of people actually make claims like you seem to
do, and they nevertheless choose to take part in organized
religions, then I think that this fact in itself poses a
scientific question which is one that it is incumbent upon
scientists to investigate objectively.
Such a position might be also acceptable in many forms of
rabbinical Judaism I think, since many of the rules that the
commentators have formulated about expressions of belief are
negative in form. One is not to openly deny certain things
according to Maimonides, and he gives a specific short
list. He also gives a very long list of the other
commandments one is supposed to try to follow. Trying to
follow the commandments then becomes the important issue,
not statements of belief as such.
But it's my understanding that organized religions often
have demanded something much stronger of the participants,
and it's also true I think that other adherents of organized
religions express a far stronger form of belief than you do.
So there is a real problem as I see it, in understanding
what any person means when they say that they believe in
god(s).
This is a signal that is passed between religious people all
of the time, and I think it would serve us all well to try
to understand much better and if possible more objectively
what it signifies when religious people do that.
> > It seems to have become
> > commonplace for religions to present at the core
> > of their systems of thought, deep mysteries which
> > are said to be beyond human ability even to describe
> > in language, but which mysteries adherents of
> > religions are supposed to believe nevertheless.
> >
> > This kind of mysterianism is, as it seems to
> > me, in contradiction with a scientific world
> > view.
>
> What, precisely, do you mean by "contradiction" and "scientific world
> view" here? For me, the core of a scientific worldview is the idea
> that there are patterns to physical phenomena, and that we can detect
> and describe many of these patterns by studying them. You seem to
> mean rather more by the term.
>
I hope that I have clarified that above, somewhat at least.
It's not only that we can detect and describe patterns, in
physical phenomena, but that we can formulate surprisingly
simple unifying principles which are capable of describing
many seemingly diverse phenomena in one fell swoop.
That is the amazing part, I think, that it is objectively
true that it is even possible to make up such principles.
If it is allowed that there exist deep mysteries which are
beyond the ability of human language to express, then it
seems to me that the scientific enterprise is doomed from
the outset. It will ultimately fail when confronted by the
proposed deep mysteries. And there is a danger, I
think, even if the assertion about the mysteries proves
in the end to be true, that demoralisation may set in
and the task will be given up too soon. It is anti-scientific
to draw a borderline around some unspecified area,
and to say that rational thought may not penetrate there
and objective questions may not be posed about it.
> > If there are such contradictions with a scientific
> > worldview in the particular religious views that
> > a scientist holds, then I think the question may
> > well have practical implications.
> >
> > At a minimum there is some effort and energy that
> > must be involved in making the switch between
> > the two.
>
> That strikes me as a trivial consequence. As a practical matter, the
> modes of thought involved in reading poetry, listening to music, doing
> mathematics and doing empirical science are all different, but
> switching among them is not a serious burden for those who are
> interested in those pursuits.
>
True, but what I said is an existence proof only.
If there is an energy cost to holding both belief systems,
then a practical effect may result.
For example, if it comes to the point where there is a
conflict in some proposition asserted by the religion of the
scientist and the science that he/she holds to be valid, and
a public statement is required on some issue by the
scientist, then there _may_ arise a potential conflict which
has practical consequences for what the scientist says, no?
I'm not implying that such a conflict would be resolved
dishonestly by a religious scientist in such a case.
Everyone, religious or not, faces situations in which the
truth is shaded for reasons of social exigency. There's no
one, I imagine, who doesn't tell white lies every now and
then.
But this is a possibly less trivial example, I think.
Strongly doubting the existence of god(s) however avoids the
possibility of this particular type of conflict arising in
the first place.
Considering the problem of energy expenditure on religious
thinking more generally than just for scientists, I suspect
that a remarkably great deal of energy actually is spent by
people on the process of constructing, considering,
repeating, and renewing propositions about god(s). It is not
something that is simply done arbitrarily.
It appears that not all possible assertions about god(s)
actually work equally well, in the sense of becoming
generally accepted. One could argue that that's because the
propositions that work are the truest ones, but this
certainly seems to be question begging.
Humans have organized, quite literally, armies of specialist
workers who do nothing else but talk about god(s). And we
also have people who consume all of these ideas about
god(s).
I've never tried to do an estimate of the total fraction of
the energy derived from metabolism that is spent by, say,
the US population in the process of thinking about god(s),
praying, attending church services, singing hymns,
performing various rituals, reading scripture, reading
scholarly books about the history of religion, watching
television shows with people talking about how Jesus is
personally active in their lives, speaking in tongues, and
so on.
But I think it might well come out to be a surprisingly high
fraction of the total energy available for all activities,
since one needs to count also the basal metabolic rate for
the entire time devoted to such activities.
In a modern and quite highly religious society like that of
the US, I suspect that the metabolic energy that is devoted
to meeting the food needs of at least some highly religious
individuals is probably less than that devoted to the
maintenance and observance of their religion, taking into
account the fact that food is relatively cheap and only
accounts for a relatively small fraction of one's working
hours once one is at least at the medium income.
> > Now I'm not saying, mind you, that one can't
> > be a mysterian and a scientist both. It might be
> > that it's better to be both. I can certainly think
> > of very great scientists who embraced mysterianism
> > in important ways.
> >
> > But at least, I think that there is a real question
> > there to be considered.
>
> Oh, I agree that there can be real tension (for me, at least)
> between habits of thought engrained by scientific practice and
> religious thought and experience.
So in a way you do agree with Larry that a
comparmentalization does take place. But you
object to the use of the word contradiction.
I also think that it isn't the right word
if construed in a logical sense.
And I think that then there probably is an interesting
answer to the question of why you, and apparently many other
religious scientists want to tolerate, or possibly enjoy,
this tension.
Something in our makeup drives us towards magical thinking I
would say, but I don't know precisely what it is or why it
exists. I know of various fairly standard theories that are
repeatedly proposed, but I don't think the question has even
begun to be investigated.
> But the same is also true of scientific habits and
> aesthetic experience.
Certainly, but at least some religious people seem to me to
claim that religious thought is much more than just
aesthetics.
Some place religious assertions, in fact, above scientific
assertions, and dismiss scientific assertions in favour
of religious ones.
That's a problem for me as a scientist.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to try
to clarify what I said and it simply took some time to do
so. I hope that nothing I've said here will be taken as
insulting. It is not intended in that way.
Best,
David
Steve Schaffner
> Steve Schaffner wrote:
>
> But now you are talking about combining theism and
> science. I don't think that religion and theism are
> necessarily precisely synonymous, though it's for sure that
> religion can include theism. I certainly believe that an
> individual could be a theist, without belonging to any
> organized religion. But I am mostly concerned with the
> viewpoint(s) that seem to be espoused by adherents of
> organized revealed religions. when I speak of a religious
> world view. You do say that you consider yourself to be
> such, so this does include you, I think.
Okey dokey. I dare say it's also possible to be religious
without being theistic. As you can tell, I wandered in late,
and was not sure about the context. But I do practice a
conventional religion, so I should do for the purpose, whatever
the exact purpose was.
> It's possible that contradictory is not the best word to
> use, at least in the sense that it implies that there exists
> a direct logical contradiction.
>
> But in my view, science is not strictly speaking a logical
> system in the first place. It is a system by which people
> attempt to establish propositions that can be objectively
> asserted to be true about the world, with certain
> limitations on the meaning of true.
>
> I think that despite these admitted limits, the scientific
> system has been empirically demonstrated to be an extremely
> successful system in doing this, and that empirically, many
> of the most general propositions that have been established
> by means of the system have proven to be remarkably stable,
> even though they must always remain open to possible
> revision in the future.
I'm more or less on board here, although I worry a little about the
dangers of reification. I am more comfortable describing scientific
results as accurate models for the behavior of the physical world (by
which I mean all the stuff we have yet encountered).
> This suggests to me that it is pragmatic to take scientific
> assertions about the nature of the world seriously, if one's
> goal is to understand what the nature of the world is, and
> inversely, it suggests to me that strongly doubting
> assertions about the nature of the world that are not
> scientific is also the pragmatic stance.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nature of the world" here. I agree that
we should take scientific assertions about the behavior of the world
seriously, and that doubting similar assertions about the behavior of
the world that are not supported by science is a pragmatic stance. If
you mean more than that, I think you first need to establish what you
mean by "nature of the world", and that science conveys accurate
information about it.
[Snip comments about the value of a scientific world view. No
disagreements about the sentiment, although there remains
ambiguity about the object we're talking about.]
> Now I suppose that one might argue that a theistic world
> view is not even strictly speaking a propositional
> construct, it's a feeling, or a mystery of some other kind,
> and thus try to avoid all conflict or contradiction in that
> way.
>
> One could deny, as some religions do, that the `ultimate'
> nature of reality is even knowable in principle, that it is
> inexpressible. Such a position can't be ruled out a priori,
> of course. I consider that to be an anti-scientific stance
> though, and I think that there is no objective evidence for
> its correctness. Such evidence as there is tends to suggest
> to me at least that there has been convergence in physical
> theories at least, over time, rather than divergence. And
> where exactly does one place the line separating the
> ultimate description from all those that are less than
> ultimate?
Here we do disagree. As far as I can tell, scientific explanations are
more limited than you suggest. They always explain the behavior of
entities in terms of unexplained rules, or in terms of more
fundamental entities that themselves have unexplained rules. The best
an explanation can do is push down the level where the unexplained has
to be invoked, but the fundamental reliance on unexplained entities is
always there. Given how scientific explanations operate, I do not see
how it could be otherwise. So I draw the opposite conclusion from the
history of science: an explanation for why there are explanations for
example, why there are patterns, is quite unlikely to emerge from
science.
> So, since I think one can, and one is forced to some extent
> at least, to judge what a person's world view is by looking
> at the set of all those propositions about the world which
> that person is inclined to assert, as well as any
> propositions laying out such requirements as the person may
> explicitly impose upon those propositions, before they are
> willing to assert them, I am going to simply reject those
> two latter possibilities for now, and treat of theism
> as if it were simply a different system by which propositions
> about the nature of the world can be generated. And as
> such, I think that its propositions, once made, are as
> open to scientific investigation as any others.
And here the concerns I had earlier become relevant. If a version of
theism generates propositions about the behavior of the world of
the sort that science tests, then of course they can be tested by
science. If it generates propositions of a different sort, then
I see no grounds for believing that science is a useful tool
for investigating them.
> It is certainly the case that science imposes quite definite
> limits on the kinds of propositions that may be asserted
> about the world.
How could science impose limits on the kinds of propositions that may
be asserted about the world? What it can (and does) impose is limits
on the kinds of *scientific* propositions that may be asserted.
Philosophical and mathematical propositions, for example, are
often unscientific, but some of them (at least) are worth
considering. They are not propositions about the behavior of the
world, of course, but they are propositions about the world in the
broad sense.
> Any proposition can be advanced as
> hypothesis. But then there occurs, there must occur in
> science, some form of reality testing. So when there exists
> no objective evidence for some proposition it can be
> advanced as a possibility if and only if there at least
> exists a possibility of obtaining objective evidence on the
> question. No proposition about the world can be asserted
> scientifically in the absence of some objective
> evidence.
>
> Those are some of the rules that I think apply in the
> scientific language game, and those are some of the rules
> that I would expect someone with a scientific world view to
> use in deciding which propositions to assert.
It's that expectation that causes trouble. I expect someone
with a scientific worldview to use the rules of science to decide
which scientific propositions to assert, but I do not expect him
to do the same when asserting aesthetic, philosphical or moral
propositions. (If I did, my expectations would be disappointed in
the discussion, since some of the propositions you are asserting here
do not seem to me to be physically testable.)
> Supposing that `world view,' which is at least a phrase
> in common enough usage, actually does denote something real
> about the approach that a person takes to living in the
> world and to talking about its nature, it seems to me that
> holding a theistic world view does incline people to
> construct particular sorts of propositions about the nature
> of the world more often than other sorts of propositions
> about the world.
>
> And sometimes I certainly do think that some of the
> propositions constructed by scientists about the nature of
> the world and some of the propositions constructed by
> theists about the nature of the world are in direct
> contradiction with each other.
This is undoubtedly true.
> When this happens, I think it is incumbent upon a scientist
> to point out the contradiction, because there is then a real
> scientific question involved, and there is objective
> evidence available which can be brought to bear on the
> question.
As a matter of interest, do you view the assertion you make here,
about the responsibility of scientists, as one generated by
scientific rules of testability?
[Snip Cartesian dualism. I might quibble a little, since I see
the rejection of dualism as based less on broad physical principles
and more on empirical data about minds and brains, but we have
no fundamental disagreement here.]
> So: everything we observe about the behaviour of matter is
> consistent with the proposition that the state of matter can
> be influenced only via physical interactions with other
> matter.
Say rather that they can be adequately explained in terms of
physical interactions with other matter. (Where "matter"
obviously has a broad physical definition.)
> We know that energy-momentum and various other numbers
> having to do with such interactions, which we construct
> theoretically, and we can operationally define and measure,
> actually remain conserved to high precision in all cases
> where such measurements are possible.
Provided you restrict yourself to conservation laws that hold
strictly (to date) and ignore ones that are only approximate.
Not that I want to invoke violations of conservation laws to
explain mind, but one should note that physicists have been
wrong about conservation laws before. CP invariance is the
obvious case I have in mind.
[snip more Cartesian dualism]
> For me, if this and other similar cases of contradictory
> propositions are asserted by theists and scientists
> sufficiently often, then that is the signal that the world
> views in question are contradictory, or at least that they
> are in very severe conflict, since I certainly do hold that
> scientific truths are all to be asserted tentatively.
Speaking just for myself, I view the potential conflict of science and
the supernatural in slightly different language. My scientific
worldview, coupled with the range of data collected to date, leads me
to assign a very high prior probability that that future observations
will continue to be explainable in terms that don't violate basic
conservation laws. High, but not infinite, because I do take my
distinction between science as model and science as revealer of
"nature" seriously. I will be very surprised to observe an event that
violates the "laws of physics", but I don't consider it
inconceivable, since I don't know why the laws of physics hold in the
first place. Note that this applies equally to the miraculous and to
the merely random violation of known laws.
> I think that `theism' generally does denote a positive
> belief in the existence of a god or god(s), at least as I
> understand the word.
>
> And it seems to me that you've asserted that you regard all
> religious propositions as tentative. You've also stated, I
> think, that you believe in god.
>
> I will say right away that yours seems to be a new brand of
> theism to me, supposing that I don't make an error in
> substituting theistic for religious in your earlier
> statement. So, for example, you would only tentatively
> assert the existence of a god.
My impression is that it's really quite common, especially among
religious adherents who are disposed to think too much about life,
the universe and everything -- but I suspect something similar is
at work in many believers of all types. Lots and lots of people,
at least in the modern world, don't know for certain whether the
core beliefs of their religion are true, but continue to practice it
(and I don't mean just going through the motions) anyway. Unless you
want to spend the rest of your life sitting and sucking your thumb
while you worry about what's true and what you can know, eventually
you have to decide whether to live as if something were true.
> Possibly I might call this view weak theism?
Or perhaps theistic agnosticism. Believing in a god (or something
equivalent) in the sense of trusting and relying on is not synonymous
with being intellectually convinced of its existence. (Obviously
there is a correlation, but the basic religious move is not a
matter of assessing probabilities.)
> And it seems to me to follow that your belief in god is no
> *stronger*, at least, than your belief in any scientific
> proposition.
>
> But is your belief in god not weaker than your belief in a
> scientific proposition?
>
> Your belief in god is distinguished from a scientific
> proposition only, I suppose, by the fact that you are
> willing to assert it while admitting that there is no
> objective evidence. Possibly you might say that some
> objective evidence may eventually arise so you are not
> strictly speaking making an untestable assertion ... but
> still, you admit that there is no objective evidence for
> now?
>
> If so, of course, a problem does seem to arise, in that many
> people can and do make many different and quite
> contradictory assertions about god(s) with equal
> justification to your own, and there will be, by the very
> rules of the game you have set up, no way of determining
> which, if any, of those assertions is true.
>
> So it seems to me that you have defined a conversational
> game in which the only likely settlement in this life is
> that you and everyone else who talks about god(s) will be,
> objectively speaking equally right or equally wrong in
> whatever you all wish to say about god(s).
Hence my comment that I view most religious statements as highly
speculative. And, I would add, likely wrong in their details.
(The unknowability of the divine, and the necessity of speaking
falsely whenever trying to describe it, is a theme in all of the major
western religions, I believe. It coexists uneasily with the dogmatic
statements about the nature of God that are produced by the same religions.)
> For someone who claims that a scientific world view is
> consistent with a theistic world view, I think that there is
> a real problem there, if not a contradiction. In science the
> whole point is that we try to test whether what we assert
> about the world can be said to be true. But in theism it
> seems we are allowed to completely omit the step of testing.
Allowed? No, I would say forced to omit it.
[quote]
> Here's an example of a common proposition in physics which
> I think is correct in a certain sense, but which is far
> less general and less directly supported than the statements
> we can make about energy-momentum conservation. I apologize
> that this example is a bit lengthy and technical:
>
> `A nucleon is made up of three quarks.'
[long snip]
> So, it is quite a long chain of argument to get to the point
> of making the statement above about nucleons.
I'm familiar with the chain: I was a high energy physicist for ten
years, before switchingn to genetics. (I worked at SLAC for a number
of years, in fact, which is obviously a relevant place for deep
inelastic scattering.)
> > > I hold them both to be tentatively correct
> > > in their respective realms of applicability.
> >
> > > I hope there is an underlying theory from
> > > which both derive, and I would love to
> > > live to see that theory established.
> >
> > That's my understanding of the situation as well (which is of course
> > much less well informed than yours). It's also a fair description of
> > how I think about religious and scientific matters.
> >
> > > My understanding is that many religious beliefs
> > > are supposed to be held to be absolutely true,
> > > and beyond question.
> >
> > Possibly, but I don't seem to have any religious beliefs of that type.
> >
>
> I'm not completely sure that your beliefs really qualify as
> beliefs that I would call religious in that case.
Keep in mind you're only seeing one of the two realms I'm talking
about here. I'm religious not because I think it's allowable (but not
supported) by scientific evidence -- that would hardly be a motivation
-- but because it works on its own terms. That is, it makes sense (to
me) of my own experiences and my own life. That's the reality I try to
incorporate into a world view that is also grounded on science.
[...]
>
> It's not only that we can detect and describe patterns, in
> physical phenomena, but that we can formulate surprisingly
> simple unifying principles which are capable of describing
> many seemingly diverse phenomena in one fell swoop.
Those are precisely the patterns I'm referring to. The difference in
our terminology is partly rhetorical, but may also reflect differerent
views of the importance the patterns or principles have.
> That is the amazing part, I think, that it is objectively
> true that it is even possible to make up such principles.
>
> If it is allowed that there exist deep mysteries which are
> beyond the ability of human language to express, then it
> seems to me that the scientific enterprise is doomed from
> the outset.
Hmm. I think the scientific enterprise is doing just fine, regardless
of whether deep mysteries exist or not. I don't want to offend you by
suggesting an equivalence of science and religion (which I'm not
doing), but there is something in the value you place on the
scientific enterprise, and in your willingness to treat its ultimate
success as certain even though you don't know that it is, that is not
wholly dissimilar to my own attitude toward religious matters.
I find at this point that I have run out of time, and that the demands
of real life require me to go to bed. So I'll have to skip a detailed
response to the rest of your post. Thank you for taking the time to
write it; it forced me to do some real thinking. (Allow me to rephrase
that: it forced me to think hard. The reality of my thinking is
subject to debate.) I think we agree that where there is evidence, one
should always follow it, because a primary goal is to align our
understanding with the way things really are. (Why that should be a
primary goal is an interesting question, but I don't intend to think
about it at the moment.)
Steve Schaffner
Sorry, by "expected" I was describing feelings, rather than a reasoned
conclusion. When I get onto an airplane, I sometimes expect it to
crash, but I seldom believe it will.
> I think we've gone about as far as we can go with this conversation.
>
> Thanks for sharing some of your thoughts. I can see now that your
> religious beliefs are rather tentative. Would you call yourself an
> agnostic?
I sometimes call myself an agnostic theist. See my response to David
for more (possibly incoherent) comments on the subject.
(By the way, I toyed with the idea of slipping a line into our Science
review on selection solely to provoke you into curmudgeonly
expostulations about neutral evolution, but all the obvious ones were
also obviously wrong.)
Regards,
Robert Grumbine
Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:04:51 +1000,
>John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
snippage of things unrelated to the new point ...
>I suppose this could be true of religious beliefs as well. Some
>scientists might be wishy-washy deists of some sort who don't bother
>to address the conflict between their "religion" and what they do in
>the laboratory.
>
>Those scientists are religious in name only but perhaps I should have
>made this clear. What I meant was that scientists who are serious about
>their religion have a problem.
>
>> 2. I know, personally, many theists who are good scientists who simply
>> do not have the kind of cognitive dissonance you describe.
>
>Really? What do you mean by "good scientist?"
>
>> For example,
>> it seems perfectly clear to me that the form/substance doctrine on which
>> Catholic teachings about the Eucharist are based are simply false. But
>> they do not find this problematic. It is not cognitive dissonance to
>> think that what authoritative teachers tell you is true in a way you
>> can't appreciate. It might be wishful thinking, but again, we are all
>> guilty of that peccadillo. Likewise, they apparently think that it is
>> equally compartmentalised of me to have moral values in the absence of a
>> divine mandate for values. We laugh at each other and pour another
>> Scotch. Neother of us feel much cognitive dissoance.
>>
>> I wonder if your... assertive... value system about science leads you to
>> be unable to appreciate the fact that all humans are to a first
>> approximation equally irrational in some respects.
>
>But one of the goals of scientists is to be rational. We may not all
>succeed but we have to be bothered by major failures or we can't be
>called scientists. Surely there's no way to avoid the most obvious
>conflict of all, namely the belief in supernatural beings? You'd have
>to be oblivious to everything arond you not to recognize that there's
>a conflict between religion and science.
Is it really a goal of scientists to be rational ... in all things,
all the time?
Can't say from my first hand experience or second hand observation
that this is the case. Scientists I know do participate in religion
and seem to be serious about it. Either this is rational, or it isn't
the goal of scientists (all of us, all the time ) to be rational.
More generally, scientists seem to take interest in art, music,
literature, sports, ... all sorts of cultural traditions that
don't bear much rational scrutiny. Sports 'fan' comes from fanatic,
not a rational tradition and analysis of the events. (Fair
amount of cheering, or distress, at work from fans following
their teams in the world cup now.)
Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
to like it.'
--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
Larry Moran
Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
[snip]
> Is it really a goal of scientists to be rational ... in all things,
> all the time?
It's my goal. I can't speak for anyone else but it seems to be preferable
than any alternative that I can think of. Do you prefer to be irrational
some of the time?
> Can't say from my first hand experience or second hand observation
> that this is the case. Scientists I know do participate in religion
> and seem to be serious about it. Either this is rational, or it isn't
> the goal of scientists (all of us, all the time ) to be rational.
It could be rational. I'm trying to find out.
> More generally, scientists seem to take interest in art, music,
> literature, sports, ... all sorts of cultural traditions that
> don't bear much rational scrutiny. Sports 'fan' comes from fanatic,
> not a rational tradition and analysis of the events. (Fair
> amount of cheering, or distress, at work from fans following
> their teams in the world cup now.)
Don't be silly. There's no conflict between having fun and being rational.
I understand the science behind what makes me happy. It has nothing to
do with irrationality or supernatural beings.
> Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
> Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
> included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
> all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
> be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
> involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
> to like it.'
The reason why you like something has a perfectly rational explanation
as far as I am concerned. Do you believe differently?
Larry Moran
catshark
(Larry Moran) wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:34:47 -0000,
>Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>> Is it really a goal of scientists to be rational ... in all things,
>> all the time?
>
>It's my goal. I can't speak for anyone else but it seems to be preferable
>than any alternative that I can think of. Do you prefer to be irrational
>some of the time?
When you look at a piece of art, do you only rationally assess its color
spectrum or measure its three dimentional form? When you listen to a poem,
do you only consider the grammar?
>
>> Can't say from my first hand experience or second hand observation
>> that this is the case. Scientists I know do participate in religion
>> and seem to be serious about it. Either this is rational, or it isn't
>> the goal of scientists (all of us, all the time ) to be rational.
>
>It could be rational. I'm trying to find out.
>
>> More generally, scientists seem to take interest in art, music,
>> literature, sports, ... all sorts of cultural traditions that
>> don't bear much rational scrutiny. Sports 'fan' comes from fanatic,
>> not a rational tradition and analysis of the events. (Fair
>> amount of cheering, or distress, at work from fans following
>> their teams in the world cup now.)
>
>Don't be silly. There's no conflict between having fun and being rational.
>I understand the science behind what makes me happy. It has nothing to
>do with irrationality or supernatural beings.
The question is whether the science behind what makes me happy is what you
think about all the time or do you let your rational side have a rest now
and then and just have fun?
>
>> Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
>> Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
>> included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
>> all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
>> be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
>> involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
>> to like it.'
>
>The reason why you like something has a perfectly rational explanation
>as far as I am concerned. Do you believe differently?
Then why do you think religious beliefs don't have perfectly rational
explanations?
>
>
>
>Larry Moran
>
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians ...
that it wasn't till Socrates turned seventy that they
broke down and forced him to drink poison.
- Isaac Asimov -
Larry Moran
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:36:21 +0000 (UTC),
> lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) wrote:
>>On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:34:47 -0000,
>>Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>> Is it really a goal of scientists to be rational ... in all things,
>>> all the time?
>>
>>It's my goal. I can't speak for anyone else but it seems to be preferable
>>than any alternative that I can think of. Do you prefer to be irrational
>>some of the time?
>
> When you look at a piece of art, do you only rationally assess its color
> spectrum or measure its three dimentional form? When you listen to a poem,
> do you only consider the grammar?
Nope. I enjoy art, poetry, music etc. I have a prety good idea *why* I
enjoy them and that explanation is rational. I'm talking about a
rational worldview, not a form of behavior that supresses all emotions.
Do you think that rational people can't enjoy life?
[snip]
> The question is whether the science behind what makes me happy is what you
> think about all the time or do you let your rational side have a rest now
> and then and just have fun?
See above.
Being rational in your approach to life does not mean you have to be unhappy.
It doesn't mean you can't have fun. Where did you get such a strange idea?
Do you really believe that the only way to enjoy life is to be irrational?
[snip]
>>> Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
>>> Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
>>> included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
>>> all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
>>> be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
>>> involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
>>> to like it.'
>>
>>The reason why you like something has a perfectly rational explanation
>>as far as I am concerned. Do you believe differently?
>
> Then why do you think religious beliefs don't have perfectly rational
> explanations?
Because nobody has been able to describe any serious religious beliefs
that stand up to rational examination. The best anyone has come up with
is that believing in God makes them feel good.
Well, believing in Santa Claus also made you feel good when you were
a child but does that mean it's rational to say that Santa Claus exists?
I understand why a false belief can make you feel good - that's a
rational explanation for the phenomenon of feeling good. It happens all
the time.
The question isn't about whether emotions have a rational explanation.
That's a given. The question is whether the thing that triggers the
emotion is real or not. This doesn't make much difference if you keep
your beliefs to yourself but it does make a difference if you try to
make other people behave according to your beliefs.
Larry Moran
catshark
Larry Moran wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:41:45 -0400, catshark <cats...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:36:21 +0000 (UTC),
> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) wrote:
> >>On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:34:47 -0000,
> >>Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>[snip]
> >>
> >>> Is it really a goal of scientists to be rational ... in all things,
> >>> all the time?
> >>
> >>It's my goal. I can't speak for anyone else but it seems to be preferable
> >>than any alternative that I can think of. Do you prefer to be irrational
> >>some of the time?
> >
> > When you look at a piece of art, do you only rationally assess its color
> > spectrum or measure its three dimentional form? When you listen to a poem,
> > do you only consider the grammar?
>
> Nope. I enjoy art, poetry, music etc. I have a prety good idea *why* I
> enjoy them and that explanation is rational.
So you say, though without being explicit about those rational reasons,
including why you enjoy Shakespere's sonnets over e.e. cummings (or
vice versa), for example.
> I'm talking about a
> rational worldview, not a form of behavior that supresses all emotions.
>
> Do you think that rational people can't enjoy life?
I would certainly hope not. The question is whether the enjoyment
rests in the rationale that can be assigned to the enjoyment or in the
act of listening, seeing or doing? Need the painting *be* "rational"
(and perceived as such) in order for it to be enjoyed?
>
> [snip]
>
> > The question is whether the science behind what makes me happy is what you
> > think about all the time or do you let your rational side have a rest now
> > and then and just have fun?
>
> See above.
>
> Being rational in your approach to life does not mean you have to be unhappy.
> It doesn't mean you can't have fun. Where did you get such a strange idea?
> Do you really believe that the only way to enjoy life is to be irrational?
Of course not. But is the opposite true? Is the only way to be
rational to be rational all the time? Or can you enjoy things for no
reason known to you and still be a rational person?
>
> [snip]
>
> >>> Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
> >>> Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
> >>> included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
> >>> all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
> >>> be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
> >>> involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
> >>> to like it.'
> >>
> >>The reason why you like something has a perfectly rational explanation
> >>as far as I am concerned. Do you believe differently?
> >
> > Then why do you think religious beliefs don't have perfectly rational
> > explanations?
>
> Because nobody has been able to describe any serious religious beliefs
> that stand up to rational examination. The best anyone has come up with
> is that believing in God makes them feel good.
What is the rational reason for liking a poem or a picture other than
that it makes you feel good?
I suspect you have shifted your ground here. Would you say that a
determinedly non-"realistic" novel such as Mark Helprin's _Winter's
Tale_ (which I happen to be reading now) cannot be rationally enjoyed
because the things it describes as happening certainly can't stand up
to rational examination? Can a rational person enjoy an irrational
subject matter in art? If so, what difference is there in accepting a
non-rational belief in God for rational reasons? After all. there may
well be rational reasons why some people believe in God (Daniel Dennett
seems to think so, though I haven't read his latest) while belief in
God him/her/itself is not.
>
> Well, believing in Santa Claus also made you feel good when you were
> a child but does that mean it's rational to say that Santa Claus exists?
Paintings of clowns on velvet made me feel good when I was a child.
Does that make it irrational to say that a van Gogh makes me feel good
now that I'm an adult? C'mon Larry, I thought you were above such
attempts at poisoning the well.
> I understand why a false belief can make you feel good - that's a
> rational explanation for the phenomenon of feeling good. It happens all
> the time.
Whoa! That was a pretty quick transition between "non-rational" and
"false". Want to run by me the logic or evidence you used there?
> The question isn't about whether emotions have a rational explanation.
> That's a given. The question is whether the thing that triggers the
> emotion is real or not.
I await with bated breath your demonstration that God is not real.
Conversely, I look forward to your evidence that Peter Lake (the
protagonist of _Winter's Tale) is real and that what he reportedly did
was factual . . . especially drinking the delicious purple clam beer.
> This doesn't make much difference if you keep
> your beliefs to yourself but it does make a difference if you try to
> make other people behave according to your beliefs.
Hmmm . . . I went back and skimmed through the OP and the posts of
Wakboth, Wilkins, Schaffner and Grumbine and I wasn't able to find
anyone trying to make you behave in accordance with their beliefs. I'm
almost positive I didn't either. But if and when you have this
discussion with someone who does that, feel free to tell them I said to
stop it.
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Nunc Id Vides, Nunc Ne Vides
- Unseen University Motto -
Mark Isaak
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:41:45 -0400, catshark <cats...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Then why do you think religious beliefs don't have perfectly rational
>> explanations?
>
> Because nobody has been able to describe any serious religious beliefs
> that stand up to rational examination. The best anyone has come up with
> is that believing in God makes them feel good.
My newsfeed hiccupped in the middle of this topic last time, but I believe
I mentioned the belief, following Joseph Campbell, of God as a metaphor of
the unknown. Surely that is rational; one thing science has taught me is
that learning more about the universe opens up more that is unknown about
it.
And how is irrational to believe in God because it makes you feel good?
You said yourself that appreciating art for the same reason is not
irrational. I would say the belief crosses into irrationality when you
begin to bring in other beliefs, such as rules about eating meat on
Fridays, that have no direct connection to the good feelings.
> The question isn't about whether emotions have a rational explanation.
> That's a given. The question is whether the thing that triggers the
> emotion is real or not.
By some views of God (God = everything, or God = some abstract principle),
God is undeniably real.
> This doesn't make much difference if you keep your
> beliefs to yourself but it does make a difference if you try to make
> other people behave according to your beliefs.
Problem is, when people keep their beliefs to themselves, you never
hear of them.
Gerry Murphy
"catshark" <catsh...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1151517194.2...@b68g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Ugggh! You been eating bait again! Yuck!
Robert Grumbine
Define 'rational'.
Note, too, that being able to rationally explain 'enjoyment' does
not make enjoyment rational.
>[snip]
>
>>>> Being seriously rational is a rather bizarre trait in humans.
>>>> Some folks, some of the time, manage it. But few people, scientists
>>>> included, seem inclined to go whole hog with it and go for it
>>>> all the time in all things. Even when they (say they) do, there seems to
>>>> be a fair amount of 'I like it, therefore it is rational to like it.'
>>>> involved. And, conversely, 'I dislike it, therefore it is irrational
>>>> to like it.'
>>>
>>>The reason why you like something has a perfectly rational explanation
>>>as far as I am concerned. Do you believe differently?
>>
>> Then why do you think religious beliefs don't have perfectly rational
>> explanations?
>
>Because nobody has been able to describe any serious religious beliefs
>that stand up to rational examination. The best anyone has come up with
>is that believing in God makes them feel good.
Demonstrate that a liking for Impressionist painting is rational.
>Well, believing in Santa Claus also made you feel good when you were
>a child but does that mean it's rational to say that Santa Claus exists?
>I understand why a false belief can make you feel good - that's a
>rational explanation for the phenomenon of feeling good. It happens all
>the time.
>
>The question isn't about whether emotions have a rational explanation.
>That's a given. The question is whether the thing that triggers the
>emotion is real or not. This doesn't make much difference if you keep
>your beliefs to yourself but it does make a difference if you try to
>make other people behave according to your beliefs.
Upthread you were contending that scientists, all of us, strive to
be rational at all times. Further, and odder to me, is you contention
that this includes reconciling all thoughts (rationally, of course)
such that no mutual conflicts would exist. (Or at least striving to.)
If your definition, which is rather important since it seems
to be rather fluid at this point, includes something about rigorous
reasoning from a few principles, then you've got some problems.
One is, any logical system sufficiently complex to cover all of
life is almost certainly subject to Goedel's incompleteness theorem.
You can't deduce all the results from that starting set. You _will_
hit points where you have propositions that you have to -- non-rationally
-- assign a truth or preference value for.
A second is that the possibility for mutual conflicts between
different (thought to be) rational beliefs is a combinitorial
explosion. If there are only two beliefs, it's fairly simple to
examine them against each other. When there are thousands, it's
already impossible to examine all pairs. It's even more impossible
to examine all trios, quartets, etc.
One of my lines is "Man is not a rational animal, man is a
rationalizing animal."
Back to art. I mention the Impressionists above because I happen
to like that sort of painting. There are other sorts that I don't
like. Irrespective of which is which, one of my realizations regarding
art is that it lies very much in the zone of how it _mis_represents
reality. Insofar as your complaint vs. religion is about the lack
of correspondance to reality, you must also reject art. If you were
to stand where the painter was (even in those cases where the painter
was painting from life) you would not see exactly and only what
is on the canvas.
Some things are matters of taste, not rationality. One can
rationally realize this. But they remain matters of taste.
wade
Michael Siemon wrote:
> In article <slrne9cvkr....@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca>,> > All religious scientists have this problem. I don't know of any
> > exceptions. The reason they have this problem is that they know deep
> > down that there's something wrong with their religious beliefs. It's
> > a myth that science and religion don't conflict. It's a myth that you
> > can be a scientist and yet be comfortable in one of the major religions.
> > That only happens when you are completely ignorant of science.
>
>
> Umm, Larry -- it probably makes no difference to you or your position,
> but most deeply religious people in my experience have conflicts
> purely within their religious commitments, understanding and practice.
> Independently of any inputs to that from science. Those conflicts are
> part of what a "spiritual life" is about. "God" is a kind of focus
> for the resolution of such conflicts. Sometimes, the resulting
> resolution is ugly (e.g., dogmatism, fanaticism, ...)
And sometimes atheism. "I don't understand you game or its rules
so I'm taking my ball and going home, pttuey." Calvinball is perhaps
the essense of spiritual oneness.
>-- and again
> independent of any inputs from science, that kind of "expression of
> religion" may be an important source of conflicts a "spiritually-
> minded" person must face.
>
> I will grant that biology might conceivably import more sources of
> conflict than other sciences, at least for those with a heavily
> myth-based religion and no sense of the history and context of myth.
I didn't start reading this thread until today. It entertains me.
Observation: The underlying presumption that being a scientist
inculcates one into a philosophy of strict rationalism; or that
being a scientist is subsumed into a philosophy that everything
must be objectively testable and measurable to be true ---
that's just plain bunk.
Science is a game we play. It has nice rules (quite unlike Calvinball).
It also has an odd, irrational, associated machisimo that asserts
the rules must be followed off the pitch or else you're not a TRVE
scientist (or Scottsman). The parallels to religious priesthoods
may just be saying something about how humans are fundamentally
wired.
Larry Moran
Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
> In article <slrnea55ma....@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca>,
> Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
[snip]
>>Being rational in your approach to life does not mean you have to be unhappy.
>>It doesn't mean you can't have fun. Where did you get such a strange idea?
>>Do you really believe that the only way to enjoy life is to be irrational?
>
> Define 'rational'.
I'm not sure I can. It seems to be a good word to describe the kind of thinking
I admire and aspire to but I'm open to other suggestions. I'd hate to get
bogged down in semantics at this point.
> Note, too, that being able to rationally explain 'enjoyment' does
> not make enjoyment rational.
Do you think enjoyment is irrational? Can you define irrational? :-)
In any case, it's not really the point is it? There's a big difference
between enjoying something and believing in supernatural beings who
meddle in the affairs of man.
[snip]
> Upthread you were contending that scientists, all of us, strive to
> be rational at all times. Further, and odder to me, is you contention
> that this includes reconciling all thoughts (rationally, of course)
> such that no mutual conflicts would exist. (Or at least striving to.)
Would "logical" be a better word?
Why do you find it odd that I would try to avoid holding contradictory
ideas? In my day job I try to understand how nature works and I don't
fall back on mysticism whenever I encounter difficulty in the lab. I don't
do this on the weekends in the supermarket either. Do you?
> If your definition, which is rather important since it seems
> to be rather fluid at this point, includes something about rigorous
> reasoning from a few principles, then you've got some problems.
> One is, any logical system sufficiently complex to cover all of
> life is almost certainly subject to Goedel's incompleteness theorem.
> You can't deduce all the results from that starting set. You _will_
> hit points where you have propositions that you have to -- non-rationally
> -- assign a truth or preference value for.
Are you arguing for the existence of God on this basis? Or, are you
simply trying to prove that I am as irrational as those people who
believe in Santa Claus, UFO's, and the tooth fairy?
That's what you seem to be saying. You seem to be arguing that one
can believe any silly thing they want because of Goedel's incompleteness
theorem. If that's not what you mean then perhaps *you* can explain
why you don't believe in the tooth fairy? Does logic and rationality
play a role in your decision? If so, how do you apply logic and
rationality to the decision about God?
The standard argument appears to be that religion is "another way
of knowing." In other words, it is different from the standard ways that
I am familiar with as a scientist. I'm trying to find out more about
this other way of knowing that I have no access to and can't fathom.
What, exactly am I missing? Nobody seems to be able to describe it
to me. The best you've done so far is to explain that lots of things
that we "know" are non-rational therefore it's okay to believe in
supernatural beings who want us to worship them.
> A second is that the possibility for mutual conflicts between
> different (thought to be) rational beliefs is a combinitorial
> explosion. If there are only two beliefs, it's fairly simple to
> examine them against each other. When there are thousands, it's
> already impossible to examine all pairs. It's even more impossible
> to examine all trios, quartets, etc.
>
> One of my lines is "Man is not a rational animal, man is a
> rationalizing animal."
Whatever. It's clear to me that being a scientist and being religious
requires a lot of rationalization. (This is what you're doing.) Since
I'm not religious I don't feel the need to do much rationalization.
A typical Christian scientist has got to rationalize why they are
Christian and not Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu. How do they do this?
I really want to understand this other way of knowing. It looks
fascinating.
> Back to art. I mention the Impressionists above because I happen
> to like that sort of painting. There are other sorts that I don't
> like. Irrespective of which is which, one of my realizations regarding
> art is that it lies very much in the zone of how it _mis_represents
> reality. Insofar as your complaint vs. religion is about the lack
> of correspondance to reality, you must also reject art. If you were
> to stand where the painter was (even in those cases where the painter
> was painting from life) you would not see exactly and only what
> is on the canvas.
Hmmm ... that's an interesting logic. According to you, as long as I
enjoy the Claude Monet posters that are hanging in my office I have to
agree that belief in supernatural beings is okay. Strange.
> Some things are matters of taste, not rationality. One can
> rationally realize this. But they remain matters of taste.
It's not irrational to like some things and dislike others. But it is
irrational to believe that you like Monet because God told you to
worship lily ponds.
Larry Moran
wade
Larry Moran wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:05:48 -0000,
> Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
> > In article <slrnea55ma....@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca>,
> > Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >>Being rational in your approach to life does not mean you have to be unhappy.
> >>It doesn't mean you can't have fun. Where did you get such a strange idea?
> >>Do you really believe that the only way to enjoy life is to be irrational?
> >
> > Define 'rational'.
>
> I'm not sure I can. It seems to be a good word to describe the kind of thinking
> I admire and aspire to but I'm open to other suggestions. I'd hate to get
> bogged down in semantics at this point.
Rational: Based on a logically consistent framework all the way
down to and including the turles. Note: said framework is often
presumed to be conform to one that support empirically
verifiable operation such as scientific investigation. Further note:
Probably not fully realizable in practise.
> > Note, too, that being able to rationally explain 'enjoyment' does
> > not make enjoyment rational.
>
> Do you think enjoyment is irrational? Can you define irrational? :-)
Irrational: Requires a break from rationality (see above) somewhere
before the turtles. Distinct from arational in that an actual
contradiction
exists as opposed to simply a missing link (or links) in the
logical train.
Test point. What level of acceptance of something neither
objectively evidenced nor objectively contraindicated denotes
a shift from rational to arational to irrational?
> In any case, it's not really the point is it? There's a big difference
> between enjoying something and believing in supernatural beings who
> meddle in the affairs of man.
Or believing in luck.
But if enjoying something without analyzing it is OK by whatever
ethos is in opperation, why is it necessary to analyze mystical
beliefs? Is it just the different level of implied significance?
Or is it because of a compelling abundance of observations
associated with religious beliefs that completing the rational
analysis is demanded?
> [snip]
>
> > Upthread you were contending that scientists, all of us, strive to
> > be rational at all times. Further, and odder to me, is you contention
> > that this includes reconciling all thoughts (rationally, of course)
> > such that no mutual conflicts would exist. (Or at least striving to.)
> Would "logical" be a better word?
>
> Why do you find it odd that I would try to avoid holding contradictory
> ideas? In my day job I try to understand how nature works and I don't
> fall back on mysticism whenever I encounter difficulty in the lab. I don't
> do this on the weekends in the supermarket either. Do you?
The question wasn't posed by me but the answer I note shifts from
a question about 'all scientists' necessarily behaviing some way
to it being (or not being) odd Larry Moran chooses to behave some
way. I doubt it bothers people if Larry chooses to apply his
scientific processes to his selection of restarants or what car
to drive. The question is why Larry thinks that others acting
differently
implies that they are lesser scientists or twisted scientists.
> > If your definition, which is rather important since it seems
> > to be rather fluid at this point, includes something about rigorous
> > reasoning from a few principles, then you've got some problems.
> > One is, any logical system sufficiently complex to cover all of
> > life is almost certainly subject to Goedel's incompleteness theorem.
> > You can't deduce all the results from that starting set. You _will_
> > hit points where you have propositions that you have to -- non-rationally
> > -- assign a truth or preference value for.
>
> Are you arguing for the existence of God on this basis? Or, are you
> simply trying to prove that I am as irrational as those people who
> believe in Santa Claus, UFO's, and the tooth fairy?
>
> That's what you seem to be saying. You seem to be arguing that one
> can believe any silly thing they want because of Goedel's incompleteness
> theorem. If that's not what you mean then perhaps *you* can explain
> why you don't believe in the tooth fairy? Does logic and rationality
> play a role in your decision? If so, how do you apply logic and
> rationality to the decision about God?
Doesn't seem to be saying that to me. Perhaps one of us has a
mental block or perhaps something about the implied extrapolation
isn't obvious enough. Maybe you can fill in some. I'm particularly
puzzled how you get to it being an argument for the existance of
some God.
> The standard argument appears to be that religion is "another way
> of knowing." In other words, it is different from the standard ways that
> I am familiar with as a scientist. I'm trying to find out more about
> this other way of knowing that I have no access to and can't fathom.
> What, exactly am I missing?
Being picky, almost nobody but beaurocrats within religious
organizations would say "religion" is a way to knowing.
Religion is more the trappings around a belief or set of beliefs.
And "knowing" is itself problematic in your comment. I expect you
restrict "knowing" to being the result of a process, in your case
a rational scientific process for most things, excepting perhaps
knowing what music you like.
I wonder if someone can "know" that quantum mechanics is
a reasonable model for many atomic interactions if they lack
an ability to follow the math.
> Nobody seems to be able to describe it
> to me. The best you've done so far is to explain that lots of things
> that we "know" are non-rational therefore it's okay to believe in
> supernatural beings who want us to worship them.
Perhaps there's some room between necessarily OK to believe
and necessarily not OK to believe. Seems to me you are pushing
the latter pretty hard and presuming that those who disagree
are advocating the former.
Larry Moran
> I didn't start reading this thread until today. It entertains me.
>
> Observation: The underlying presumption that being a scientist
> inculcates one into a philosophy of strict rationalism; or that
> being a scientist is subsumed into a philosophy that everything
> must be objectively testable and measurable to be true ---
> that's just plain bunk.
>
> Science is a game we play. It has nice rules (quite unlike Calvinball).
> It also has an odd, irrational, associated machisimo that asserts
> the rules must be followed off the pitch or else you're not a TRVE
> scientist (or Scottsman). The parallels to religious priesthoods
> may just be saying something about how humans are fundamentally
> wired.
Scientists tend not to believe in astrology and most of them are
skeptical about homeopathy. As a general rule, they know why you
should wear seatbelts and they don't send money to banks in Nigeria.
Most scientists don't think they've been abducted by aliens and
they are annoyed at Creationists who try to sneak intelligent
design into the classroom. Most of them are atheists.
Why is that? It looks like there's something a bit different about
the way scientists think compared to Jerry Falwell and his flock.
Observation suggests that most scientists *do* follow the same, or
similar, rules off the pitch. I don't think it's because we'll lose
our union card if we're caught in church on Sunday.
I'm not making any extraordinary claim that all scientists have to
follow the rules laid down by the Church of Science. What I'm saying
is that there are many aspects of religion that don't seem to be
compatible with the way most scientists think, most of the time.
I'm tired of hearing that science and religion aren't in conflict.
If that's true then why are so many scientists non-believers,
especially in a society that's overwhelmingly Christian where
there's strong pressure to conform?
Do you have an explanation?
Larry Moran
catshark
[...]
> I'm tired of hearing that science and religion aren't in conflict.
> If that's true then why are so many scientists non-believers,
> especially in a society that's overwhelmingly Christian where
> there's strong pressure to conform?
>
> Do you have an explanation?
First of all, there may be an element of self-selection. The very
people who are drawn to and good at wresting facts from nature may be
those who exercise skepticism toward religion, particularly organized
religion. But just because the people who are good at science might
also tend not to like religion doesn't mean there is a conflict.
Second, religion is a *big* set that Christianity (or all its
sub-flavors) doesn't even come close to exhausting. It includes wildly
different concepts under a very general name. Some religions are in
obvious conflict with science but others are not. And those numbers
about scientists and religion might change significantly if "believers"
were defined so as to include those who lean towards ideas like
Spinoza's god or other spiritual concepts that are not traditionally
theistic.
BTW, PZ Myers is going through much the same stuff now at his blog and
you can see his latest here:
<http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/a_quick_reply_to_some_of_the_a.php>
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible
that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
- Rene Descartes -
wade
Larry Moran wrote:
> On 30 Jun 2006 08:29:36 -0700, wade <wade....@rcn.com> wrote:
>
> > I didn't start reading this thread until today. It entertains me.
> >
> > Observation: The underlying presumption that being a scientist
> > inculcates one into a philosophy of strict rationalism; or that
> > being a scientist is subsumed into a philosophy that everything
> > must be objectively testable and measurable to be true ---
> > that's just plain bunk.
> >
> > Science is a game we play. It has nice rules (quite unlike Calvinball).
> > It also has an odd, irrational, associated machisimo that asserts
> > the rules must be followed off the pitch or else you're not a TRVE
> > scientist (or Scottsman). The parallels to religious priesthoods
> > may just be saying something about how humans are fundamentally
> > wired.
>
> Scientists tend not to believe in astrology and most of them are
> skeptical about homeopathy. As a general rule, they know why you
> should wear seatbelts and they don't send money to banks in Nigeria.
> Most scientists don't think they've been abducted by aliens and
> they are annoyed at Creationists who try to sneak intelligent
> design into the classroom. Most of them are atheists.
Are most bankers skeptical about homeopathy and unbelievers
when it comes to astrology? sub/bankers/computer programmers/
I wonder how things break down respective to a "belief" in luck.
> Why is that? It looks like there's something a bit different about
> the way scientists think compared to Jerry Falwell and his flock.
I wonder if you are actually trying to argue towards a rational
conclusion or if you are preaching one. Using cartoon characters
for counter examples lends me to choose one over the other.
> Observation suggests that most scientists *do* follow the same, or
> similar, rules off the pitch. I don't think it's because we'll lose
> our union card if we're caught in church on Sunday.
Different observation. There's probably a bias toward more
analytical personalities in science that I expect its a matter
of people gravitating toward their innate strengths but I don't
see scientists as a whole being that much more rational
outside of work than average joes. Even in mundane things
like sense in how to manage stock options or retirement
plans, scientists seems to display a broad spectrum of
sensible and insensible behaviors.
> I'm not making any extraordinary claim that all scientists have to
> follow the rules laid down by the Church of Science. What I'm saying
> is that there are many aspects of religion that don't seem to be
> compatible with the way most scientists think, most of the time.
I'm beginning to think you've got a rather unbalanced view of
religious people as well as a rather inflated view of how
rational most scientists behave. Maybe you mean some special
subset of people who work in jobs that can reasonably
called scientists and actively employ the scientific method
for problem solving.
> I'm tired of hearing that science and religion aren't in conflict.
> If that's true then why are so many scientists non-believers,
> especially in a society that's overwhelmingly Christian where
> there's strong pressure to conform?
>
> Do you have an explanation?
I think a personality that wants to figure things out for themselves
and believes in their ability to test and measure the world is
less likely to be a believer simply because they were raised
within a religion or because of this vague sort of peer pressure
you allude to. That sort of personality is probably disproportionately
represented in science.
I also think that there's more nature than nurture to that
sort of personality and that the personality drives any bias
in outcome, not the facthood of working in science.
But I also observe that few people are very consistent and
fewer still effectively apply their various skills to managing
themselves rather than managing things and people around
them. The physician often does not heal himself.
So I'm generally rejecting your line of argumentation that
science and theism are in conflict.
The resolution is presumably that you presume being a
scientist say a great deal more about core values, perspectives
and consistency than I both think and observe to be true.
Larry Moran
> Larry Moran wrote:
[snip]
>> Scientists tend not to believe in astrology and most of them are
>> skeptical about homeopathy. As a general rule, they know why you
>> should wear seatbelts and they don't send money to banks in Nigeria.
>> Most scientists don't think they've been abducted by aliens and
>> they are annoyed at Creationists who try to sneak intelligent
>> design into the classroom. Most of them are atheists.
[snip]
>> Why is that? It looks like there's something a bit different about
>> the way scientists think compared to Jerry Falwell and his flock.
>
> I wonder if you are actually trying to argue towards a rational
> conclusion or if you are preaching one. Using cartoon characters
> for counter examples lends me to choose one over the other.
I'm trying to figure out how to explain an observation, namely that
many scientists end up being non-believers. I just finished reading
Eldredge's book on Charles Darwin and it reminded me of yet another
example.
Now, I freely admit that there are lots of non-scientists who abandon
religion and I freely admit that there are religious scientists.
I can tell you honestly that there's nothing about being religious
that makes sense to *me* and I think it's because I'm thinking like a
scientist. It isn't a surprise to me that so many scientists are
atheists because it sure looks to me like religion and science
conflict.
Wade, are you religious? If not, can you at least identify some
important tenant of religion that doesn't conflict with science or
a scientific way of thinking?
>> Observation suggests that most scientists *do* follow the same, or
>> similar, rules off the pitch. I don't think it's because we'll lose
>> our union card if we're caught in church on Sunday.
>
> Different observation. There's probably a bias toward more
> analytical personalities in science that I expect its a matter
> of people gravitating toward their innate strengths but I don't
> see scientists as a whole being that much more rational
> outside of work than average joes. Even in mundane things
> like sense in how to manage stock options or retirement
> plans, scientists seems to display a broad spectrum of
> sensible and insensible behaviors.
Point taken. Nevertheless, there's that troubling observation that
scientists tend to be non-religious. I guess you just don't like
the idea that it might be because scientists are more rational than
the average joe. Is that it?
Do you have another explanation, one that avoids the nasty "rational"
word that seems to upset you so much? Is "analytical" the word you
would prefer to use? How about "skeptical"?
>> I'm not making any extraordinary claim that all scientists have to
>> follow the rules laid down by the Church of Science. What I'm saying
>> is that there are many aspects of religion that don't seem to be
>> compatible with the way most scientists think, most of the time.
>
> I'm beginning to think you've got a rather unbalanced view of
> religious people as well as a rather inflated view of how
> rational most scientists behave. Maybe you mean some special
> subset of people who work in jobs that can reasonably
> called scientists and actively employ the scientific method
> for problem solving.
I'm well aware of your bias against university Professors. I hope
it isn't getting in the way of our discussion.
It's quite possible that I have an unbalanced view of religious
people. That's why I jumped into this thread and asked some
religious scientists to explain their religious beliefs and why
they don't conflict with science. So far, the response hasn't
been very enlightening. What I mostly see is attacks against
people who dare to raise the issue of conflict but very little
in the way of explaining why there is no conflict.
>> I'm tired of hearing that science and religion aren't in conflict.
>> If that's true then why are so many scientists non-believers,
>> especially in a society that's overwhelmingly Christian where
>> there's strong pressure to conform?
>>
>> Do you have an explanation?
>
> I think a personality that wants to figure things out for themselves
> and believes in their ability to test and measure the world is
> less likely to be a believer simply because they were raised
> within a religion or because of this vague sort of peer pressure
> you allude to. That sort of personality is probably disproportionately
> represented in science.
Now we're making a bit of progress. At the risk of putting words in
your mouth, would you say that one of the characteristics of a (good)
scientist is the desire to test and measure the world? Is this
procedure likely to be applied to religious beliefs or do scientists
try really hard to leave it in the laboratory when they go home
at night? Can most religious beliefs survive the assault of "testing
and measuring"?
> I also think that there's more nature than nurture to that
> sort of personality and that the personality drives any bias
> in outcome, not the facthood of working in science.
Let's not quibble over whether the ability to think like a scientist
is innate or learned. It's not important to our discussion. What's
important is that this characteristic (thinking like a scientist)
doesn't seem to be very compatible with religion. There's an
obvious conflict in the minds of most scientists.
> But I also observe that few people are very consistent and
> fewer still effectively apply their various skills to managing
> themselves rather than managing things and people around
> them. The physician often does not heal himself.
> So I'm generally rejecting your line of argumentation that
> science and theism are in conflict.
How do you explain the fact that most scientists disagree with
you? Are they just being ornery?
We aren't going to get much further in this discussion until
you reveal your personal beliefs. You may have mentioned it
before but I don't recall. Are you an atheist? I hope so because
then your arguments are more interesting.
> The resolution is presumably that you presume being a
> scientist say a great deal more about core values, perspectives
> and consistency than I both think and observe to be true.
Hmmm ... my observations differ fron yours and from the results
on the religious beliefs of scientists published in Nature.
I also observe that a very small percentage of scientists are
Creationists while the percentage among the general public is
much higher. To me that suggests a measurable difference in
core values but for some reason you don't see it that way.
I find this very strange.
Larry Moran
Earle Jones
"wade" <wade....@rcn.com> wrote:
> Michael Siemon wrote:
> > In article <slrne9cvkr....@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca>,
> > lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca (Larry Moran) wrote:
> > ...
> > > All religious scientists have this problem. I don't know of any
> > > exceptions. The reason they have this problem is that they know deep
> > > down that there's something wrong with their religious beliefs. It's
> > > a myth that science and religion don't conflict. It's a myth that you
> > > can be a scientist and yet be comfortable in one of the major religions.
> > > That only happens when you are completely ignorant of science.
> >
> >
> > Umm, Larry -- it probably makes no difference to you or your position,
> > but most deeply religious people in my experience have conflicts
> > purely within their religious commitments, understanding and practice.
> > Independently of any inputs to that from science. Those conflicts are
> > part of what a "spiritual life" is about. "God" is a kind of focus
> > for the resolution of such conflicts....
*
Ridiculous idea! "God is a kind of focus for the resolution of such
conflicts [between science and religion]."
Take away your "God" and all the bloody baggage that came with it,
and there would not be a conflict.
Your "God" is the conflict.
earle
*
"...we need only ask ourselves *why* Muslim terrorists do what
they do. Why would someone as conspicuously devoid of personal
grievances or psychological dysfunction as Osama bin Laden -- who is
neither poor, uneducated, delusional, nor a prior victim of Western
agression -- devote himself to cave-dwelling machinations with the
intention of killing innumerable men, women, and children he has
never met?...The answer is that men like bin Laden *actually*
believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal
truth of the Koran."
Sam Harris, "The End of Faith" 2004
For more on this important book: http://www.samharris.org/
Robert Grumbine
Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:05:48 -0000,
>Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
>> In article <slrnea55ma....@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca>,
>> Larry Moran <lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>>Being rational in your approach to life does not mean you have to be unhappy.
>>>It doesn't mean you can't have fun. Where did you get such a strange idea?
>>>Do you really believe that the only way to enjoy life is to be irrational?
>>
>> Define 'rational'.
>
>I'm not sure I can. It seems to be a good word to describe the kind of thinking
>I admire and aspire to but I'm open to other suggestions. I'd hate to get
>bogged down in semantics at this point.
Hard to discuss something when you refuse to say what it is.
I changed the subject line specifically because I thought your
declaration about all scientists being (or at least trying to be)
rational at all times in all things was rather remarkable.
Since then, you have neither presented a definition, nor
listed off anything under irrational other than being a theist.
Leaves little for discussion.
If you mean nothing more than the humpty dumpty definition
that is so far apparant, fess up and have done with it. If you
mean something more,
>> Note, too, that being able to rationally explain 'enjoyment' does
>> not make enjoyment rational.
>
>Do you think enjoyment is irrational? Can you define irrational? :-)
>
>In any case, it's not really the point is it? There's a big difference
>between enjoying something and believing in supernatural beings who
>meddle in the affairs of man.
Not my point anyhow, and the reason for subject change. But,
insofar as you have no definition of rational, you have nothing
to distinguish between enjoying things and believing in supernatural
beings (nor do you show how it is one cannot enjoy, if enjoyment
is somehow rational by your definition, belief in supernatural beings).
Supernatural beings who meddle in the affairs of man is a further
subset, even farther afield from my point.
>[snip]
>
>> Upthread you were contending that scientists, all of us, strive to
>> be rational at all times. Further, and odder to me, is you contention
>> that this includes reconciling all thoughts (rationally, of course)
>> such that no mutual conflicts would exist. (Or at least striving to.)
>
>Would "logical" be a better word?
>
>Why do you find it odd that I would try to avoid holding contradictory
>ideas? In my day job I try to understand how nature works and I don't
>fall back on mysticism whenever I encounter difficulty in the lab. I don't
>do this on the weekends in the supermarket either. Do you?
Is mysticism the only form of non-rationality in your definition?
Anyhow, your failure to reconcile your rational ideas regarding
art and regarding grocery shopping is counterexample to your earlier
claim about all scientists all the time. The fact that I don't
bother with it either, except as might arise as a problem, was
one of my reasons for objection.
[snip]
>> A second is that the possibility for mutual conflicts between
>> different (thought to be) rational beliefs is a combinitorial
>> explosion. If there are only two beliefs, it's fairly simple to
>> examine them against each other. When there are thousands, it's
>> already impossible to examine all pairs. It's even more impossible
>> to examine all trios, quartets, etc.
>>
>> One of my lines is "Man is not a rational animal, man is a
>> rationalizing animal."
>
>Whatever. It's clear to me that being a scientist and being religious
>requires a lot of rationalization. (This is what you're doing.
Really? I'm not talking about religion, nor about being religious.
My examples have been from art and the like. You're either invoking
your psychic powers (and hitting someone else's mind), or projecting.
... and, of course, rationalizing the times in which you are
not being rational as ok, while times in which others are not
rational (as you see it) as not being ok.
Further, as your statement about all scientists all the time is
an observation of nature, it is (should be) scientific itself.
Insofar as it is, it is in error. You are yourself a counterexample,
per your above-mentioned failure in the supermarket.
So, rationally, certainly scientifically, you should be abandoning
that demonstrably false assertion.
[snip]
Michael Siemon
bo...@radix.net (Robert Grumbine) wrote:
...
> Further, as your statement about all scientists all the time is
> an observation of nature, it is (should be) scientific itself.
> Insofar as it is, it is in error. You are yourself a counterexample,
> per your above-mentioned failure in the supermarket.
>
> So, rationally, certainly scientifically, you should be abandoning
> that demonstrably false assertion.
>
He can't -- it is a matter of dogma :-)
wade
Larry Moran wrote:
> On 30 Jun 2006 14:33:58 -0700, wade <wade....@rcn.com> wrote:
> > Larry Moran wrote:
> [snip]
I'll simplify as I can.
Larry's assertion is that scientists are significantly more rational
people than some more general sampling of humanity and that
scientists are in general more inclined to atheism than this
general sampling and that the two indicate that being a science
is incompatible with religion. Larry will hopefully correct and
clarify.
My objections are multiple. I don't see that scientists are all
that much more rational beings in their general life. Whatever
success they have at work as "good" scientists has unestablished
correlation to rational or otherwise virtuous behavior in their
marriage, with their families, managing other people, their finances
or the quality of interactions with their associates.
At the same time, I agree that there is a bias in scientists
toward more analytical people including those who are more
likely to challenge conventional wisdom, though I'm not
sure how widely such challenges are typically applied outside
of specific domains of expertise.
I doubt most biologists give quarks and leptons much thought.
Few physicists seem to challenge much of molecular biology
and when they do, they often don't seem that rational in their
approach, at least from my perspective. Instead, they seem to
take some broad leaps based on inductive reasoning.
Most of my conversations with scientists about religion follow
the same model. Some few observations quickly generalized
and applied in accord with comfortable biases and some
range of introspection. There is little I would consider very
consistent or compelling about their "scientific" position on
the matter of theology and further, not much that qualifies
as scientific.
At the same time, I believe Larry has advanced his own
"scientific" reasoning that the lack of objectively verifiable
evidence for some particular variant of a fatherly character
from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel makes a compelling
case for atheism. I could look up a quote here but by leaving
this as a crude cartoon of thought, Larry can provide a clearer
explanation which no extracted quote would likely have
captured. There was something about it not being rational
to believe in something he couldn't observe. There seemed
to be a continuation to then actively disbelieve. I welcome
clarification.
The pre-emptive attack on such a position is that childish
cartoons of flaming bushes and thunderbolt weilding old
men are as appropriate a basis upon which to judge all
of theology as is your average creationist strawman a
basis for judging evolutionary biology.
I offer you no argument in favor of belief. I actively doubt that
such an argument could be made for the only variations of
a God I'm left willing to entertain and I've no actual belief
in them. But the transition to active disbelief in any sort of
God looks to require as much a leap of faith as any belief
would. There doesn't appear to be a rational default that
isn't based on what is ultimately an arbitrarily selected
dogma that is generally selected, as far as I can tell,
by whatever "feels" right to an individual. Transforming
skepticism to disbelief is just such a dogma and is not,
to my ability, any more rationally defensible. The absense
of evidence is still not evidence of absense.
Larry Moran
> Larry Moran wrote:
>> On 30 Jun 2006 14:33:58 -0700, wade <wade....@rcn.com> wrote:
>> > Larry Moran wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
> I'll simplify as I can.
> Larry's assertion is that scientists are significantly more rational
> people than some more general sampling of humanity and that
> scientists are in general more inclined to atheism than this
> general sampling and that the two indicate that being a science
> is incompatible with religion. Larry will hopefully correct and
> clarify.
That's pretty accurate. I would not have claimed that scientists are
more rational but that's a minor quibble.
For the record, here' what I think. Scientist are supposed to practice
methodological naturalism in order to qualify as scientists. The term
has many meanings but here's the essence ...
"The methodoligical naturalist is the person who assumes
that the world runs according to unbroken law; that humans
can understand the world in terms of this law; and that
science involves just such understanding without any
reference to extra or supernatural forces like God."
Michael Ruse "Methodological Naturalism Under Attack" in
INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND ITS CRITICS, Robert T. Pennock ed.
MIT Press (2002) p.365.
Scientists aren't perfect so they don't always do a good job of sticking
to methodological naturalism and/or rationality. However, when we stray
we can count on other scientists to set us straight. So, collectively,
scientists as a group have lots of experience thinking this way.
Most (>70%) scientists are not religious. This includes scientists who are
members of the American Academy of Scientists. This proportion is much higher
than the proportion of non-believers in American society. This is in spite of
the fact that scientists are immersed in a religious culture. I think there's
significance to this correlation. I think that being a scientist tends to
be inconsistent with being religious. I think that's because religion and
science conflict. Scientists recognize this even if non-scientists don't.
> My objections are multiple. I don't see that scientists are all
> that much more rational beings in their general life. Whatever
> success they have at work as "good" scientists has unestablished
> correlation to rational or otherwise virtuous behavior in their
> marriage, with their families, managing other people, their finances
> or the quality of interactions with their associates.
Okay, for the sake of argument I'll agree with you. We will assume that
scientists are very good at thinking rationally for 40+ hours per week
but once they get out in the real world they are no better than anyone
else. Let's see were you're going with this.
> At the same time, I agree that there is a bias in scientists
> toward more analytical people including those who are more
> likely to challenge conventional wisdom, though I'm not
> sure how widely such challenges are typically applied outside
> of specific domains of expertise.
>
> I doubt most biologists give quarks and leptons much thought.
> Few physicists seem to challenge much of molecular biology
> and when they do, they often don't seem that rational in their
> approach, at least from my perspective. Instead, they seem to
> take some broad leaps based on inductive reasoning.
Nobody claims that being a scientist means you understand every discipline.
However, it's very unlikely that a physicist would be thinking that
molecular biology requires supernatural beings and vice versa.
> Most of my conversations with scientists about religion follow
> the same model. Some few observations quickly generalized
> and applied in accord with comfortable biases and some
> range of introspection. There is little I would consider very
> consistent or compelling about their "scientific" position on
> the matter of theology and further, not much that qualifies
> as scientific.
Most of my scientist friends are atheists. They really don't care much about
theology because they don't believe in supernatural beings. They don't know
much about astrology, psychics, UFO's, homeopathy, or Creationism either.
What's your point?
> At the same time, I believe Larry has advanced his own
> "scientific" reasoning that the lack of objectively verifiable
> evidence for some particular variant of a fatherly character
> from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel makes a compelling
> case for atheism. I could look up a quote here but by leaving
> this as a crude cartoon of thought, Larry can provide a clearer
> explanation which no extracted quote would likely have
> captured. There was something about it not being rational
> to believe in something he couldn't observe. There seemed
> to be a continuation to then actively disbelieve. I welcome
> clarification.
It may be crude, but it's accurate. I need to have some compelling
reason to believe in the God of Michelangelo. Absent such reason,
I choose not to believe. (Something about extraordinary claims comes
to mind here.) I don't think my position is very much different than yours.
There are about 1000 different Gods and you don't believe in them either.
What's the problem?
> The pre-emptive attack on such a position is that childish
> cartoons of flaming bushes and thunderbolt weilding old
> men are as appropriate a basis upon which to judge all
> of theology as is your average creationist strawman a
> basis for judging evolutionary biology.
Agreed. People who believe in those things are childish. (Given the
vehemence of your attack on me I'm a bit surprised that you would use
such a word to describe a religious person.)
By the way, I'm not judging all of theology based on a painting in
Rome. I know, just as you do, that Hindus, the Maoris, and the Inuit
don't give a damn about the Sistine Chapel. I don't believe in their
Gods either. Do you?
> I offer you no argument in favor of belief. I actively doubt that
> such an argument could be made for the only variations of
> a God I'm left willing to entertain and I've no actual belief
> in them.
Would you like to describe your belief so we can see if it's consistent
with science?
> But the transition to active disbelief in any sort of God looks to
> require as much a leap of faith as any belief would.
Oh dear. This is not the sort of argument I expected from you Wade.
I thought you were smarter than that.
I don't believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Is that another
example of "active disbelief"? If so, I plead guilty. If not, then
I assure you that my lack of belief in the 1000 Gods is not any different
than my lack of belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
You seem to be confused about the issues. I claim there's a conflict
between science and religion in spite of what some religious people would
like to believe. You've tried to deflect this by claiming that I am making
a religion out of atheism. Wrong. That's a strawman and, with all due respect,
a rather childish one to boot.
> There doesn't appear to be a rational default that isn't based on
> what is ultimately an arbitrarily selected dogma that is generally
> selected, as far as I can tell, by whatever "feels" right to an
> individual.
But that's not true. There are clearly some religious beliefs that are
just plain silly by any rational standard (the deluge, reincarnation,
40 virgins, modern day miracles, rain dances). Theres an obvious rational
default in such cases. The argument of religious people is that it's
okay to believe in these things because there are other ways of knowing
that are just as valid as science.
This is just another way of saying that science and religion conflict,
but when they do conflict religion should trump science. My point was that
there's a confict.
On the other hand, there may be some religious beliefs that do not conflict
with the practice of methodogical naturalism. If so, that would disprove my
claim. The only ones that have been offered so far are highly personal thoughts
("it makes me feel good"). They don't count.
> Transforming skepticism to disbelief is just such a dogma and is not,
> to my ability, any more rationally defensible. The absense of evidence
> is still not evidence of absense.
Hmmm ... do you believe in Santa Claus? How about the tooth fairy?
I suspect you don't. You would be a fool if you adjusted your daily affairs
in order to take into account the possible existence of every mythical
being that had ever been proposed. You conduct your life as though none of
these things existed. Is that what you mean by disbelief? What's the problem?
Larry Moran
wade
There is the obvious distinction to be made between methodological
naturalism and philisophical naturalism. It appears that you gently
slide from one to the other with zero effort and actively disdain any
who don't follow. The bit about "humans can understand" has variable
meanings but the assertion that a truly full understanding can be
had is dogma and not something a rational being would conclude
from observation, not as an over arching truth.
> > My objections are multiple. I don't see that scientists are all
> > that much more rational beings in their general life. Whatever
> > success they have at work as "good" scientists has unestablished
> > correlation to rational or otherwise virtuous behavior in their
> > marriage, with their families, managing other people, their finances
> > or the quality of interactions with their associates.
>
> Okay, for the sake of argument I'll agree with you. We will assume that
> scientists are very good at thinking rationally for 40+ hours per week
> but once they get out in the real world they are no better than anyone
> else. Let's see were you're going with this.
More like when they leave the foundations of their education than
when the leave the building.
> > At the same time, I agree that there is a bias in scientists
> > toward more analytical people including those who are more
> > likely to challenge conventional wisdom, though I'm not
> > sure how widely such challenges are typically applied outside
> > of specific domains of expertise.
> >
> > I doubt most biologists give quarks and leptons much thought.
> > Few physicists seem to challenge much of molecular biology
> > and when they do, they often don't seem that rational in their
> > approach, at least from my perspective. Instead, they seem to
> > take some broad leaps based on inductive reasoning.
>
> Nobody claims that being a scientist means you understand every discipline.
> However, it's very unlikely that a physicist would be thinking that
> molecular biology requires supernatural beings and vice versa.
You're getting silly and missing the point. Physicists opinions about
molecular biology or moleculear biologists opinions about physics
are perhaps more informed than either of their opinions about any
deities. They often have such opinions anyway.
> > Most of my conversations with scientists about religion follow
> > the same model. Some few observations quickly generalized
> > and applied in accord with comfortable biases and some
> > range of introspection. There is little I would consider very
> > consistent or compelling about their "scientific" position on
> > the matter of theology and further, not much that qualifies
> > as scientific.
> Most of my scientist friends are atheists. They really don't care much about
> theology because they don't believe in supernatural beings. They don't know
> much about astrology, psychics, UFO's, homeopathy, or Creationism either.
> What's your point?
Perhaps you're making a new one for me. Based on their nice
training in methodological naturalism they have comfortably
slipped into philosophical naturalism without much thought.
But my point is that their skills as practitioners of methodological
naturalism are not necessarily the skills for evaluating
theological claims, just as training in genetics is a poor
foundation for evaluating GR, quantum gravity or the color
of quarks.
I'm unaware of any vehement attack on you.
> By the way, I'm not judging all of theology based on a painting in
> Rome. I know, just as you do, that Hindus, the Maoris, and the Inuit
> don't give a damn about the Sistine Chapel. I don't believe in their
> Gods either. Do you?
Not to the extent that I understand any of these.
> > I offer you no argument in favor of belief. I actively doubt that
> > such an argument could be made for the only variations of
> > a God I'm left willing to entertain and I've no actual belief
> > in them.
> Would you like to describe your belief so we can see if it's consistent
> with science?
Why should it be?
> > But the transition to active disbelief in any sort of God looks to
> > require as much a leap of faith as any belief would.
> Oh dear. This is not the sort of argument I expected from you Wade.
> I thought you were smarter than that.
Well then look who's mistaken now!
> I don't believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Is that another
> example of "active disbelief"? If so, I plead guilty. If not, then
> I assure you that my lack of belief in the 1000 Gods is not any different
> than my lack of belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
Active disbelief in Santa Claus is fairly straightforward. There are
a set of simple claims and they can be knocked down one at a
time. Disbelief in BigFoot isn't much harder. There are probabilities
to be associated with evidence for BigFoots and Yetis and
chupacabra. I don't see that similar arguments can be made
for expectations of divine spoor.
> You seem to be confused about the issues. I claim there's a conflict
> between science and religion in spite of what some religious people would
> like to believe. You've tried to deflect this by claiming that I am making
> a religion out of atheism. Wrong. That's a strawman and, with all due respect,
> a rather childish one to boot.
Well you get me when you equate anything other than atheism to
believing in Santa Claus. That is essentially a religious statement.
Early in your post you define methodological naturalism with a
quote that itself moves beyond strictly methodological. Your
claim is one of philosophical naturalism. Basically, you are
asserting that "real scientists" go beyond the requirements of
method for scientific work and embrace philosophical naturalism.
My objection is then twofold. One that this leap is in some way
essential to being a TRVE scientist and not just some technician.
The other is that there's a serious element of conclusion of a
scientific process rather than asserted dogma.
> > There doesn't appear to be a rational default that isn't based on
> > what is ultimately an arbitrarily selected dogma that is generally
> > selected, as far as I can tell, by whatever "feels" right to an
> > individual.
> But that's not true. There are clearly some religious beliefs that are
> just plain silly by any rational standard (the deluge, reincarnation,
> 40 virgins, modern day miracles, rain dances).
Knocking down Baal or Zeus or Santa matters how?
>Theres an obvious rational
> default in such cases. The argument of religious people is that it's
> okay to believe in these things because there are other ways of knowing
> that are just as valid as science.
I expect some give such shallow answers. Somehow your style
here makes me doubt anybody will bother to give you more thoughtful
ones.
> This is just another way of saying that science and religion conflict,
> but when they do conflict religion should trump science. My point was that
> there's a confict.
That argument is with some people in another room who
have apparently made some specific claims. I trust you can
address them in their specifics to people who care. Your challenge
here, however, is to address the general and that's not done by
proving somebody's ark was too small.
> On the other hand, there may be some religious beliefs that do not conflict
> with the practice of methodogical naturalism. If so, that would disprove my
> claim. The only ones that have been offered so far are highly personal thoughts
> ("it makes me feel good"). They don't count.
Your use of methodological naturalism up there appears mistaken.
Perhaps
you can consult a philosopher to clairify things. For methodological
naturalism to work, you need nice predictable behavior for what you
are measuring without pixies, elves, brownies or gods messing with
your results. Your yeast have to conserve mass and energy: it
says nothing about what may have happened at some far flung
wedding.
> > Transforming skepticism to disbelief is just such a dogma and is not,
> > to my ability, any more rationally defensible. The absense of evidence
> > is still not evidence of absense.
> Hmmm ... do you believe in Santa Claus? How about the tooth fairy?
> I suspect you don't. You would be a fool if you adjusted your daily affairs
> in order to take into account the possible existence of every mythical
> being that had ever been proposed. You conduct your life as though none of
> these things existed. Is that what you mean by disbelief? What's the problem?
Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature
and thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic
skepticism and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating
any religious beliefs to Santa Claus. Smells too much like a kid who
is still sore at having been lied to. I might have been willing to
offer
up something about such beliefs but as I don't have them, it would
be a waste of time. I might have them if I wasn't still probably
smarting
from having been lied to as a kid though I expect I'm over it.
Larry Moran
> Larry Moran wrote:
[snip]
>> For the record, here' what I think. Scientist are supposed to practice
>> methodological naturalism in order to qualify as scientists. The term
>> has many meanings but here's the essence ...
>>
>> "The methodoligical naturalist is the person who assumes
>> that the world runs according to unbroken law; that humans
>> can understand the world in terms of this law; and that
>> science involves just such understanding without any
>> reference to extra or supernatural forces like God."
>>
>> Michael Ruse "Methodological Naturalism Under Attack" in
>> INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND ITS CRITICS, Robert T. Pennock ed.
>> MIT Press (2002) p.365.
[snip]
> There is the obvious distinction to be made between methodological
> naturalism and philisophical naturalism. It appears that you gently
> slide from one to the other with zero effort and actively disdain any
> who don't follow. The bit about "humans can understand" has variable
> meanings but the assertion that a truly full understanding can be
> had is dogma and not something a rational being would conclude
> from observation, not as an over arching truth.
Yes, there's a distinction. No, there's no gentle sliding. I am a
philosophical naturalist as well as a methodological naturalist. I'm told
that it's possible to be a methodological naturalist and a theist. I'm
trying to discover how that works.
Please don't interpret my questions as "disdain." Of course I have
a point of view and naturally I think my point of view is correct.
If you think I'm wrong then tell me why. So far you just seem to
be upset that I'm questioning religion. That's what everyone says
whenever atheists ask embarrassing questions and I'm getting a little
tired of it.
[snip]
>> Nobody claims that being a scientist means you understand every discipline.
>> However, it's very unlikely that a physicist would be thinking that
>> molecular biology requires supernatural beings and vice versa.
>
> You're getting silly and missing the point. Physicists opinions about
> molecular biology or moleculear biologists opinions about physics
> are perhaps more informed than either of their opinions about any
> deities. They often have such opinions anyway.
Now who's being silly? What kind of opinions do you expect atheists to
have about deities? They don't exist. What else would you like to know?
Would you like a detailed description of every single god that doesn't
exist?
[snip]
>> Most of my scientist friends are atheists. They really don't care much
>> about theology because they don't believe in supernatural beings. They
>> don't know much about astrology, psychics, UFO's, homeopathy, or
>> Creationism either. What's your point?
>
> Perhaps you're making a new one for me. Based on their nice
> training in methodological naturalism they have comfortably
> slipped into philosophical naturalism without much thought.
Hardly. Most atheist scientists I know have given it some thought.
> But my point is that their skills as practitioners of methodological
> naturalism are not necessarily the skills for evaluating theological
> claims, just as training in genetics is a poor foundation for evaluating
> GR, quantum gravity or the color of quarks.
At last we seem to be making some progress! What kind of skills are
required for evaluating theological claims? If the claims don't stand up
to methodological naturalism then what other methods should we use? And
why can't those methods work for science?
You can't just make blanket statements like that and expect me to give
up. It's obvious that you possess some important skill that I don't have.
A skill that allows you to perceive supernatural beings. How can I get
those skills? Can you at least describe them?
[snip]
> Early in your post you define methodological naturalism with a
> quote that itself moves beyond strictly methodological. Your
> claim is one of philosophical naturalism. Basically, you are
> asserting that "real scientists" go beyond the requirements of
> method for scientific work and embrace philosophical naturalism.
That is correct. Scientists, who are experienced in the ways of methodological
naturalism, tend to become philosophical naturalists (atheists). This isn't
much of a surprise to me but it seems to be a major shock to lots of other
people. The question is why are most scientists non-believers?
You've started to give an answer. It's because there really is a conflict
between religion and science. Some people (you?) avoid the conflict by
shifting to another way of knowing whenever you think about theological
claims. I guess scientists aren't very skilled at doing this but that's
not really the point. The point is that there's a conflict.
Now I'd like to learn about this new skill that scientists seem to lack.
> My objection is then twofold. One that this leap is in some way
> essential to being a TRVE scientist and not just some technician.
> The other is that there's a serious element of conclusion of a
> scientific process rather than asserted dogma.
All I know is that there's a powerful correlation. I offered an explanation
but so far you have refused to offer a counter-explanation beyond the
assertion that all these atheist scientists must be dogmatic. Is that
the best you can do? All those atheist scientists became atheists because
they abandoned reason and just randomly decided to become atheists because
it seemed like a neat thing to do?
[snip]
>> Theres an obvious rational default in such cases. The argument of
>> religious people is that it's okay to believe in these things because
>> there are other ways of knowing that are just as valid as science.
>
> I expect some give such shallow answers. Somehow your style
> here makes me doubt anybody will bother to give you more thoughtful
> ones.
It's a sensitive topic and I can understand why many religious people don't
want to discuss their personal beliefs in a public forum. I just wish
they'd stop telling me that science and religion are compatible.
We'll never know if this is true if we can't discuss it.
[snip]
>> Hmmm ... do you believe in Santa Claus? How about the tooth fairy?
>> I suspect you don't. You would be a fool if you adjusted your daily
>> affairs in order to take into account the possible existence of every
>> mythical being that had ever been proposed. You conduct your life as
>> though none of these things existed. Is that what you mean by disbelief?
>> What's the problem?
>
> Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature
> and thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic
> skepticism and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating
> any religious beliefs to Santa Claus. Smells too much like a kid who
> is still sore at having been lied to. I might have been willing to
> offer up something about such beliefs but as I don't have them, it would
> be a waste of time. I might have them if I wasn't still probably
> smarting from having been lied to as a kid though I expect I'm over it.
I think you missed the point. You said that "the absence of evidence is
still not evidence of absence." I think you meant this as a criticism of
"active disbelief." My point was that you can't prove that Santa Claus
and the tooth fairy don't exist but nobody seems to be upset about that.
When you have decided that gods don't exist then you live your life as though
there were no gods. If that's what you call "active disbelief" then I'm
guilty. But why is that a problem?
I know lots of theists and they live their lives as though 999 different
kinds of gods don't exist. They have an "active disbelief" in the vast
majority of gods. I don't see you criticizing them but you seem to think
it's a really big deal if you add one more god to the list. I just don't
get it.
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak
> [snip a bunch]
> Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature and
> thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic skepticism
> and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating any religious
> beliefs to Santa Claus.
Actually, the parallels between Santa Claus and religion are rather close,
even nothwithstanding the people who expect God to punish them or bring
them gifts depending on their being naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is sacred. People do not think of him as sacred, but try
suggesting that he be prohibited and see how people howl. Many parents
go ballistic even if you suggest that they tell their kids that Santa is a
fairy tale. Read the "Yes, Virginia" letter
(www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/), and see if you can honestly say that that
is not a sacred writing.
And he is sacred even though people know full well that Santa Claus does
not exist as a flesh-and-blood person, or even as a supernatural being.
That, I think, is the point Larry is missing. A god does not have to
exist to be real in ways that matter.
wade
> On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 15:58:34 -0700, wade wrote:
>
> > [snip a bunch]
> > Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature and
> > thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic skepticism
> > and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating any religious
> > beliefs to Santa Claus.
>
> Actually, the parallels between Santa Claus and religion are rather close,
> even nothwithstanding the people who expect God to punish them or bring
> them gifts depending on their being naughty or nice.
While you've phrased that to indicate you want to discount
the connection, I can't help but think that by referencing
presents for good little boys and girls you're invoking it.
At a purely intellectual level, one can certainly draw the
parallels you indicate but let's be clear. The comment is
meant to ridicule. It has as much chance of being taken
as an intellectual argument as allusions to a certain
notorious mustachioed German dictator.
> Santa Claus is sacred. People do not think of him as sacred, but try
> suggesting that he be prohibited and see how people howl. Many parents
> go ballistic even if you suggest that they tell their kids that Santa is a
> fairy tale. Read the "Yes, Virginia" letter
> (www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/), and see if you can honestly say that that
> is not a sacred writing.
> And he is sacred even though people know full well that Santa Claus does
> not exist as a flesh-and-blood person, or even as a supernatural being.
> That, I think, is the point Larry is missing. A god does not have to
> exist to be real in ways that matter.
I don't see that point being made but Larry is free to confirm
your interpretation. I don't see how it would matter to his
line of argument one way or the other.
Instead I see a consistent portrayal of all religious beliefs in
terms of childrens stories. I've not met many adults who hold
such beliefs. Larry has referenced Miller's beliefs in very
general terms but I don't see how they fit to these references
to the tooth fairy or santa. Perhaps it isn't a deliberate
attempt to hoist a strawman but I'm inclined to give
Larry more credit for awaremess in his chosen arguments.
wade
I suspect you of being coy here.
> Please don't interpret my questions as "disdain." Of course I have
> a point of view and naturally I think my point of view is correct.
> If you think I'm wrong then tell me why. So far you just seem to
> be upset that I'm questioning religion. That's what everyone says
> whenever atheists ask embarrassing questions and I'm getting a little
> tired of it.
The objection has not been to you questioning religion but
to your apparent argument that good scientists should be
atheists, not tend to be but should be.
> [snip]
>
> >> Nobody claims that being a scientist means you understand every discipline.
> >> However, it's very unlikely that a physicist would be thinking that
> >> molecular biology requires supernatural beings and vice versa.
> >
> > You're getting silly and missing the point. Physicists opinions about
> > molecular biology or moleculear biologists opinions about physics
> > are perhaps more informed than either of their opinions about any
> > deities. They often have such opinions anyway.
> Now who's being silly? What kind of opinions do you expect atheists to
> have about deities? They don't exist. What else would you like to know?
You've apparently lept to begging the question The referent was the
opinions scientists have about the existence of deities, not what
opinions atheists have. The reference was quite clear and I
have trouble believing you made that shift by accident.
For clarity, scientists ought to be able to apply their skills
within their domain of expertise. This doesn't mean ecologists
know how to evaluate string theory.It also doesn't follow
that being a scientist has trained one to evaluate
theological questions such as the existence of a
transendental deity. Nothing about being a scientist
disqualifies one from examining such question either
I assert, being a scientist is simply orthoganal here.
> Would you like a detailed description of every single god that doesn't
> exist?
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Most of my scientist friends are atheists. They really don't care much
> >> about theology because they don't believe in supernatural beings. They
> >> don't know much about astrology, psychics, UFO's, homeopathy, or
> >> Creationism either. What's your point?
> >
> > Perhaps you're making a new one for me. Based on their nice
> > training in methodological naturalism they have comfortably
> > slipped into philosophical naturalism without much thought.
>
> Hardly. Most atheist scientists I know have given it some thought.
As I believe you are arguing that evolving from methodological
naturalism to philosophical naturalism is not simply a trend but
is part of being a good scientist. Perhaps you can take the
lead and explain, purely from precepts of methodological
naturalism, why the transition is required. I think it requires
added premises that are independent of being a scientist.
> > But my point is that their skills as practitioners of methodological
> > naturalism are not necessarily the skills for evaluating theological
> > claims, just as training in genetics is a poor foundation for evaluating
> > GR, quantum gravity or the color of quarks.
>
> At last we seem to be making some progress! What kind of skills are
> required for evaluating theological claims? If the claims don't stand up
> to methodological naturalism then what other methods should we use? And
> why can't those methods work for science?
Why don't we routinely use oscilloscopes to measure pH?
Less glibly, you invoked a definition of methodological
naturalism that "the world runs according to unbroken law;
that humans can understand the world in terms of this law"
If that's a flawed premise respective to understanding
or comprehending a deity it wouldn't mean it is a flawed
premise for use with chemistry or biology. It would
make applying it to understanding a deity rather silly.
And would not being able to "know" according to the
standard you feel comfortable with in science mean
there can't be truth there or just perhaps that it isn't
a sort of truth that you want to spend any time on.
> You can't just make blanket statements like that and expect me to give
> up. It's obvious that you possess some important skill that I don't have.
> A skill that allows you to perceive supernatural beings. How can I get
> those skills? Can you at least describe them?
Stink bait.
> [snip]
>
> > Early in your post you define methodological naturalism with a
> > quote that itself moves beyond strictly methodological. Your
> > claim is one of philosophical naturalism. Basically, you are
> > asserting that "real scientists" go beyond the requirements of
> > method for scientific work and embrace philosophical naturalism.
>
> That is correct. Scientists, who are experienced in the ways of methodological
> naturalism, tend to become philosophical naturalists (atheists). This isn't
> much of a surprise to me but it seems to be a major shock to lots of other
> people. The question is why are most scientists non-believers?
>
> You've started to give an answer. It's because there really is a conflict
> between religion and science. Some people (you?) avoid the conflict by
> shifting to another way of knowing whenever you think about theological
> claims. I guess scientists aren't very skilled at doing this but that's
> not really the point. The point is that there's a conflict.
>
> Now I'd like to learn about this new skill that scientists seem to lack.
I wonder if the aggression is actually unintended. I'll
simply note that you've gone well beyond what you can
support above. If it's what you want, keep the same style
and I'll go away and you can claim some brand of victory.
> > My objection is then twofold. One that this leap is in some way
> > essential to being a TRVE scientist and not just some technician.
> > The other is that there's a serious element of conclusion of a
> > scientific process rather than asserted dogma.
>
> All I know is that there's a powerful correlation. I offered an explanation
> but so far you have refused to offer a counter-explanation beyond the
> assertion that all these atheist scientists must be dogmatic. Is that
> the best you can do? All those atheist scientists became atheists because
> they abandoned reason and just randomly decided to become atheists because
> it seemed like a neat thing to do?
Rather dicotomous workings that. I'm not attacking anyone for
reaching a conclusion of atheism but I am attacking the
argument that atheism in THE scientific stance. I'm not claiming
that I or anyone has some alternative means of "knowing"
and offering it up to be weighed and measured against
scientific means of knowing. I do argue that reaching a
conclusion of atheism requires more than just science but
I haven't said that the more is good or bad.
<snip>
> >> Hmmm ... do you believe in Santa Claus? How about the tooth fairy?
> >> I suspect you don't. You would be a fool if you adjusted your daily
> >> affairs in order to take into account the possible existence of every
> >> mythical being that had ever been proposed. You conduct your life as
> >> though none of these things existed. Is that what you mean by disbelief?
> >> What's the problem?
> >
> > Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature
> > and thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic
> > skepticism and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating
> > any religious beliefs to Santa Claus. Smells too much like a kid who
> > is still sore at having been lied to. I might have been willing to
> > offer up something about such beliefs but as I don't have them, it would
> > be a waste of time. I might have them if I wasn't still probably
> > smarting from having been lied to as a kid though I expect I'm over it.
> I think you missed the point. You said that "the absence of evidence is
> still not evidence of absence." I think you meant this as a criticism of
> "active disbelief."
Not as such. I'm not criticizing any individual who looks at the
lack of evidence for any deities under their consideration and
concludes that not only don't any of those gods exist, but
further they don't think any god or gods exist. What I am
objecting to is the assertion that this conclusion is a
necessary biproduct of being a good scientist. And I'm
fairly convinced you've been arguing the latter.
> My point was that you can't prove that Santa Claus
> and the tooth fairy don't exist but nobody seems to be upset about that.
> When you have decided that gods don't exist then you live your life as though
> there were no gods. If that's what you call "active disbelief" then I'm
> guilty. But why is that a problem?
>
> I know lots of theists and they live their lives as though 999 different
> kinds of gods don't exist. They have an "active disbelief" in the vast
> majority of gods. I don't see you criticizing them but you seem to think
> it's a really big deal if you add one more god to the list. I just don't
> get it.
Really? You can add a million more specific big or little gods
and then think up as many again to rule out. I can work up
a great number of abiogenesis scenarios for you to correctly
rule out as well but that would hardly be a basis for saying
there's no route for abiogenesis. There's an excellent chance
that I'm not a good enough chemist to distinguish a viable
model from an unviable one. There are certainly better
chemists but perhaps none are good enough. There's likewise
an argument to be had that you and I and the rest of humanity
may be incapable of imagining the nature of a hypothetical
deity that created our little universe. And before you go
off with televangilist style religions, note that I've said nothing
there about any obligations to genuflect, praise or otherwise
march to whatever beat this hypothetical drummer may drum.
A strict utilitarian might look at such a deity and dismiss the
notion because it doesn't appear to have any identifiable
consequence yet. I sympathize with such a view but don't
see how it maps to being a scientist. In fact, I don't
see how anything essential to being a scientist would
direct one to believe or disbelieve in such a god.
Ockam may be invoked but is hardly mandated.
Larry Moran
Hmmm ... I suppose "coy" is apt but behind the coyness is a very serious
question. Lately I've been hearing a great deal about the compatibility of
science and religion. I've been hearing that people like Richard Dawkins and
Carl Sagan are hurting the cause by attacking the fundamental logic of
religious beliefs.
I'm told that there's is no real conflict between science and religion.
To me, there's a conflict. I'm not familiar with any fundamental religious
belief that does *not* conflict with a scientific view of the universe.
Why is it proving to be so difficult to get a religious person to describe
their religious beliefs and explain why they are compatible with a
scientific worldview?
I'm really serious about my questions. If there's are supernatural beings
them my whole life will change. People keep telling me that my atheism
is based on faith and not rationality. People keep telling me that there's
another way of knowing. A way I have never experienced. It's this "other
way" that reveals the existence of supernatural beings. I'm told that
science and religion are compatible because this other way doesn't ever
overlap with the scientific worldview. If any of this is true then I'm
in big trouble. I'm in great danger of losing Pascal's wager.
Why can't someone step up to the plate and describe this other way of knowing
that's outside of science? I've read quite a bit of the apologetic literature
so I'm not completely ignorant of the main arguments. In that sense I'm
being "coy", or "baiting" as you call it. But surely you recognize that
in spite of the voluminous apologetic literature the issue still hasn't
been settled? It might be appropriate to say something like ...
Many religious people believe there's no conflict between
science and religion but the issue has not been resolved even
after several thousand years of debate.
Don't you think this is a more accurate statement than the dogmatic statement
that there is no conflict? Don't you see that the dogmatic statement begs the
question?
Let's talk.
>> Please don't interpret my questions as "disdain." Of course I have
>> a point of view and naturally I think my point of view is correct.
>> If you think I'm wrong then tell me why. So far you just seem to
>> be upset that I'm questioning religion. That's what everyone says
>> whenever atheists ask embarrassing questions and I'm getting a little
>> tired of it.
>
> The objection has not been to you questioning religion but to your apparent
> argument that good scientists should be atheists, not tend to be but should be.
I understand that this is your objection. I understand that when you put it
this way it offends all religious scientists. I don't intend to imply that
you can't be a good scientist if you believe in God. That's why I described
some of my religious science friends in an earlier posting. They are good
scientists. Their theology is excluded from the laboratory.
But, and this is an important "but", I do find it difficult to understand how
they resolve what I see as a conflict between science and religion. All of
the ones I have known recognize that there's a conflict and they have grappled
with it in different ways. They are all quite adept at explaining how faith
can trump methodological naturalism. I'm not convinced, and I'd like to continue
the discussion with some of the people who insist that science and religion
are compatible. I believe that anyone who makes that statement should be as
prepared to defend it as I am prepared to defend the statement that science
and religion are not compatible. In order to have the debate we need examples.
>> [snip]
>>
>> >> Nobody claims that being a scientist means you understand every discipline.
>> >> However, it's very unlikely that a physicist would be thinking that
>> >> molecular biology requires supernatural beings and vice versa.
>> >
>> > You're getting silly and missing the point. Physicists opinions about
>> > molecular biology or moleculear biologists opinions about physics
>> > are perhaps more informed than either of their opinions about any
>> > deities. They often have such opinions anyway.
>
>> Now who's being silly? What kind of opinions do you expect atheists to
>> have about deities? They don't exist. What else would you like to know?
>
> You've apparently lept to begging the question The referent was the
> opinions scientists have about the existence of deities, not what
> opinions atheists have. The reference was quite clear and I
> have trouble believing you made that shift by accident.
I see your point. It wasn't a deliberate shift. I misunderstood what
you were trying to say.
> For clarity, scientists ought to be able to apply their skills
> within their domain of expertise. This doesn't mean ecologists
> know how to evaluate string theory. It also doesn't follow
> that being a scientist has trained one to evaluate
> theological questions such as the existence of a
> transendental deity. Nothing about being a scientist
> disqualifies one from examining such question either
> I assert, being a scientist is simply orthoganal here.
Here's my response. Science is a way of knowing. It involves a lot of
complicated mental exercises and it's hard to wrap it all up into some
neat package. For the sake of argument let's call it "methodological
naturalism" and leave the details 'till later. The important point
is that science isn't just knowing about string theory or diversity
in tropical forests. Science not just skills at the computer or in
the jungle and it isn't just facts and scientific theories. It's
how you learn those facts and what you do with them that counts.
I think this is where you and I part company. I align myself with the
consensus here. Almost everyone agrees that science is a way of knowing
and not the skill set that you seem to be referring to. I suppose we
could have a debate about this but I'm not really interested in that
debate.
Here's an interesting point of view from Eugenie Scott ...
It's posted on the NCSE website. Note that Scott is making the argument that
you should be making. Namely that there's no connection between methodological
naturalism and philosophical naturalism. But that's not the point. The point
is that this debate is framed as a debate about different ways of knowing
and that's the part that you seem to be missing.
Now, if we accept that science is a way of knowing and that good scientists
must practise methodological naturalism, then we agree that scientist are
adept at excluding supernatural beings from consideration when they develop
explanations of the natural world. You claim that being a scientist has
nothing to do with evaluating theological questions and that scientists
should be no better at this than chiropractors, engineers, medical doctors,
plumbers, politicians, movie stars, school board trustees, or soccer moms.
I disagree. I think that experience in methodological naturalism gives one
a huge advantage when it comes to evaluating religious claims. That's why
leading scientists are less likely to become creationists and it's also why
they are less likely to become members of any organized religion.
You know what I find ironic? We celebrate the fact that good scientists
reject Intelligent Design Creationism. We even make a mockery of Scientific
Creationism with our list of Steves. The point, which are only too willing
to make at every opportunity, is that scientists are way too smart for
that kind of foolishness. I agree with that point.
But wait a minute. Turns out that >90% of good American scientists reject the
notion of a personal God. Is this an example of the intelligence of scientists
as well? Apparently not. It seems that scientists are really smart when they
reject Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells but perhaps they're not so smart
when they reject Ken Miller and Simon Conway Morris. Isn't that strange?
>> Would you like a detailed description of every single god that doesn't
>> exist?
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >> Most of my scientist friends are atheists. They really don't care much
>> >> about theology because they don't believe in supernatural beings. They
>> >> don't know much about astrology, psychics, UFO's, homeopathy, or
>> >> Creationism either. What's your point?
>> >
>> > Perhaps you're making a new one for me. Based on their nice
>> > training in methodological naturalism they have comfortably
>> > slipped into philosophical naturalism without much thought.
>>
>> Hardly. Most atheist scientists I know have given it some thought.
>
> As I believe you are arguing that evolving from methodological
> naturalism to philosophical naturalism is not simply a trend but
> is part of being a good scientist. Perhaps you can take the
> lead and explain, purely from precepts of methodological
> naturalism, why the transition is required. I think it requires
> added premises that are independent of being a scientist.
My working hypothesis is that there's a connection between the practise of
methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. I'm not sure which
is cause and which is effect. In my own case I stopped believing in Gods
before I became a scientist. (As a matter of fact, I'm not really sure
I ever believed in Gods.) Maybe that's true of most scientists? Maybe
I was practising methodological naturalism without a license when I was
a teenager and later on realized that science was my calling because I
think like a scientist? I dunno.
Let's talk about people who start life as theists, then are attracted to
skepticism, rational thinking, and methodological naturalism as they
become adults. Is this going to lead inevitably to philosophical naturalism?
No, of course not. Is there a *high probability* that people who practise
methodological naturalism on a daily basis will eventually become philosophical
naturalist? Yes, that's what the data seems to show. The transition makes
sense to me but it doesn't to you.
Let's not forget that there are large numbers of people who never started
life as theists so they never experienced the "transition." This group includes
my children and most of their friends. It also includes millions of people
in Europe and other countries. This group has only experienced one way
of thinking - the way that doesn't include supernatural explanations.
I wonder how many of them have converted to theism because at some point
in their lives they realized that methodological naturalism wasn't working
for them? That's the flip side of your question. Do born methodological
naturalists find something missing in their lives?
To return to your question. I don't claim that if you are a theist who
practises methodological naturalism you *must* transit to philosophical
naturalism. All I claim is that it seems probable that this will happen.
And I think it seems reasonable.
You claim that the transition to atheism requires "added premises that
are independent of being a scientist." What are those added premises?
To me the transition to non-theism only requires *abandoning* certain premises.
Is that what you mean?
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak
> Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 15:58:34 -0700, wade wrote:
>>
>> > [snip a bunch]
>> > Among other problems, I'd suggest you're not going to get a mature
>> > and thoughtful response from someone who has transcended basic
>> > skepticism and found a deity to believe in when you keep equating any
>> > religious beliefs to Santa Claus.
>>
>> Actually, the parallels between Santa Claus and religion are rather
>> close, even nothwithstanding the people who expect God to punish them
>> or bring them gifts depending on their being naughty or nice.
>
> While you've phrased that to indicate you want to discount the
> connection, I can't help but think that by referencing presents for good
> little boys and girls you're invoking it.
>
> At a purely intellectual level, one can certainly draw the parallels you
> indicate but let's be clear. The comment is meant to ridicule. It has as
> much chance of being taken as an intellectual argument as allusions to a
> certain notorious mustachioed German dictator.
I know you meant to ridicule. I just wanted to point out that your
ridiculous situation has a serious side, too.
>> Santa Claus is sacred. People do not think of him as sacred, but try
>> suggesting that he be prohibited and see how people howl. Many parents
>> go ballistic even if you suggest that they tell their kids that Santa
>> is a fairy tale. Read the "Yes, Virginia" letter
>> (www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/), and see if you can honestly say that
>> that is not a sacred writing.
>
>> And he is sacred even though people know full well that Santa Claus
>> does not exist as a flesh-and-blood person, or even as a supernatural
>> being. That, I think, is the point Larry is missing. A god does not
>> have to exist to be real in ways that matter.
>
> I don't see that point being made but Larry is free to confirm your
> interpretation. I don't see how it would matter to his line of argument
> one way or the other.
The point of Larry's that I was addressing was, "I'm not familiar with any
fundamental religious belief that does *not* conflict with a scientific
view of the universe." (Quote from Larry's latest post in this thread.)
Larry holds this view by pretending that such religious beliefs do not
exist, even after it is pointed out that there are people who have them.
I was hoping that yet another example of religion that does not conflict
with science might change his mind.
wade
I'm convinced you aren't listening or are otherwise arguing with
some ghosts.
"making sense" means what? You aren't suprised by the statistics?
That there are "good" reasons or that there are "scientific" reasons
to move from methodological naturalism to philisophical naturalism?
Does being a scientist provide some privilaged intuition that allows
one to make up extra rules and thereby make the transition from
methodological naturalism and reach philosophical naturalism?
> Let's not forget that there are large numbers of people who never started
> life as theists so they never experienced the "transition." This group includes
> my children and most of their friends. It also includes millions of people
> in Europe and other countries. This group has only experienced one way
> of thinking - the way that doesn't include supernatural explanations.
> I wonder how many of them have converted to theism because at some point
> in their lives they realized that methodological naturalism wasn't working
> for them? That's the flip side of your question. Do born methodological
> naturalists find something missing in their lives?
>
> To return to your question. I don't claim that if you are a theist who
> practises methodological naturalism you *must* transit to philosophical
> naturalism. All I claim is that it seems probable that this will happen.
> And I think it seems reasonable.
How is that statement compatible with the claim that there's a conflict
between science and religion? Do you simply mean that science
is a 'gateway drug' to atheism?
> You claim that the transition to atheism requires "added premises that
> are independent of being a scientist." What are those added premises?
> To me the transition to non-theism only requires *abandoning* certain premises.
> Is that what you mean?
One route from MN to PN is to assert that there would be objective
evidence, perhaps testable - standards could vary-, for any gods that
existed. Then the lack of such evidence is a strong argument for
PN. This assertion does not arise from science or, I would say, from
being a good scientist. In fact, I think it might be as more more
likely to be dogmatically taken in lousy scientists without asserting
that so doing makes one a lousy scientist. There's a certain
arrogance to some scientists associated with their knowing things
and being able to know more things with some effort. Perhaps you've
witnessed a few on talk.origins explaining the value of sexual
reproduction
or how all genes get optimized by NS. In my view, that arrogance
can lead some to think that things they can't know must not
exist. That's a rather loose opinion but you'll be able to get a
bearing
on the perspective even if you don't agree.
As for abandoning it seems you mean that simply not positing a
deity amounts to "believing" there are no gods. No, you must mean
something else.
Perhaps I'll address you "ways of knowing" question when I"m
feeling lucid enough to speak for others.
CreateThis
>... science is a 'gateway drug' to atheism?
No, it's a cure for religion dependency.
CT
David Ewan Kahana
I personally never remember having had any belief in god(s)
or other non-material things to start with, so for my part I
can't say much from personal experience about what goes into
making a transition. Any transition for me would have had to
proceed from materialism to something else. I never found
that any such transition was required by anything in
science, except the neverending transition one hopefully
makes from a state of relative ignorance to one of relative
knowledge.
I abandon the position of philosophical skepticism, though I
can't defeat it.
So I accept that there is an objective reality apart from my
own thoughts.
As it seems to me, the transition from methodological
naturalism to tentative ontological naturalism requires no
special intuition or additional premises beyond the
scientific method. It requires only the observation that
methodological naturalism works and continues to work. This,
in and of itself, seems to be a stunning fact, if indeed
what so many religious people seem to have been telling us
about the world for as long as humans have been able to
write -- that it was made by a god(s) who continue(s) to
interact with it -- turns out to be the case.
In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
demonstrating that anything supernatural exists. In such a
situation, ontological naturalism is the minimal position
that can be adopted consistent with the objective evidence:
adopting it tentatively I think is justifiable
scientifically in much the same way as any other scientific
hypothesis: it seems to be a matter of induction from
experience. It is in any case quite consistent with a
scientific world view. It seems to be the most parsimonious
hypothesis. Still it could be a wrong hypothesis ... the
razor has its exceptional clause.
As Hume pointed out, and I don't think Kant or anyone else
ever answered adequately, induction from experience has its
logical problems, so that all scientific positions should be
held tentatively. But it seems to me that no conversion
experience is necessary in order to make a transition to
tentatively accepting ontological materialism. Someone can
reach such a position solely by means of reason and resort
to such objective evidence as there is.
What can't be reached is an absolutely held position. But
science doesn't claim that in the first place.
It seems to me in fact that you invert the actual situation
by positing that a symmetry exists between science and
religion on this point when in fact, as a rule, none does.
It is organized religion, not science, which explicitly
claims to have access -- or claims that access may be
obtained -- to one or another special intuitions or
revelations. It is religion which makes up additional
intuitions and rules by which people are supposed to be able
to make a transition to a state of belief.
To wit, here are two apologetics from Avery Cardinal Dulles:
Some have imagined that the way to win converts is
to minimize the element of mystery and thereby
make Christianity appear more accessible to reason.
But if God speaks, he might be expected to say things
that would be far beyond the capacity of the human
mind to discover by itself. Preserving the mystery of
the divine, apologetics does not seek to prove the
contents of revelation, except to show that they cannot
be disproved. It does aim to show that Christianity
brings blessings on the world, that we may reasonably
believe it to have been revealed, and that for those
who see the grounds of credibility, it is unreasonable
to withhold assent.
This, it seems to me, is quite a common apologetic for
organized religion in the modern era. God is said to be so
complex, so vast, so utterly transcendent that it is clearly
beyond human capability even to begin to understand what it
is that he says, if indeed he speaks at all. And, on the
basis of this ineffable and enormous, unimaginable mystery
which is said to exist, the Cardinal seeks to show that if
one sees the `grounds of credibility' it is *unreasonable*
to withhold assent (and hence also *reasonable* to
assent). The integrity of religion is said to rest on preserving
the `mystery of the divine' and the `contents of revelation'
it is redundantly claimed, cannot be disproved.
Now I think it is the case that any scientist making
any such claim in public about any scientific
question would be, quite rightly, laughed to scorn.
But in religious thinking it seems that this kind of
`intellectual' argument is perfectly acceptable at
least among some who are presumably experts
on theology.
This is not the kind of argument that I aspire to be
able to make, personally.
I personally can't begin to see how anyone could\
consider such an approach to learning about the
world as is expressed above to be consistent with a
scientific approach to knowing about the world, or how any
one could deny that a serious conflict exists, when there
are religious people who hold such views.
Now I'm *not* saying that this is the only religious view
possible, and I'm not saying that any religious scientists
who have spoken in this thread hold any such view, nor
am I saying that this is the only view possible for a religious
scientist.
But to pretend that there is clearly no conflict simply
beggars the imagination as far as I'm concerned. The
conflict between religion and science appears to have
existed ever since writing was invented. Both organized
religion and science seem to have been with us almost
since the beginning of recorded history (Astronomy
at least appears to have had very deep roots and
to have arisen together with agriculture, and it's with
the first civilizations that we find the rise of organized
religions with written scriptures.)
This is not a conflict that is easily dismissed by a little
bit of linguistic legerdemain, I'm afraid.
Cardinal Dulles avers further:
In a revealed religion such as Christianity, the key
question is how God comes to us and opens up a
world of meaning not accessible to human investigative
powers. The answer I suggest, is testimony ... Personal
testimony calls for an epistemology quite distinct from
the scientific, as commonly understood. The scientist
treats the datum to be investigated as a passive object
to be mastered and brought within the investigator's
intellectual horizons. Interpretations proferred by others
are not accepted on authority but are tested by critical
probing. But when we proceed by testimony, the situation
is very different. The event is an interpersonal encounter,
in which the witness plays an active role, making an impact
on us. Without in any way compelling us to believe,
the witness calls for a free assent that involves personal
respect and trust. To reject the message is to withhold
confidence in the witness. To accept it is a trusting
submission to the witness' authority. To the extent
that we believe, we renounce our autonomy and
willingly depend upon the judgement of others.
(Cardinal Dulles, as quoted in `Breaking the Spell,'
Daniell Dennett, p. 364)
Here we have a common and basic theistic argument presented
very clearly and concisely: information about God -- an
ultimately humanly unknowable entity -- is said to come to
us through `witnesses.'
We are supposed to accept this `witnessing,' although we
supposedly are not compelled to in any way, because: to
reject the `message' that the `witness' has to give us is to
be untrusting of the `witness,' and to be unwilling to
submit to the authority of the `witness.'
Now it may be unfair, but I would put this much more
baldly:
`If you don't accept the `message,' then you are untrusting and
anti-authoritarian.'
One implication I think, is that it is not nice, politic, proper
or moral to be the kind of a person who refuses to submit
and who withholds respect for the revelations of religion.
If you are such a person then you just aren't a team player.
Science on the other hand *demands* such questioning and
probing of its practitioners, especially in the case where
it is the fallible testimony of a human witness which is at
question, never mind if that testimony is said to be about
putative matters which are said to be ultimately humanly
unknowable.
The *legal* process demands questioning and probing of the
always admittedly fallible testimony of eyewitnesses in
court.
I suggest that questioning and probing are not merely a
`part of the epistemology' of science, as commonly
understood.'
They are in fact the sina qua non of a scientific approach
to knowing about the world in the first place.
That, I think, is one source of the conflict.
One must always consider that there may be alternative
explanations, and try to see whether such can be ruled out
or not by testing and probing. But once that testing has
been done, it's perfectly legitimate scientifically to
believe (tentatively) in one or another of the explanations
that may survive.
What I would really like to hear is an explanation of how
Avery Cardinal Dulles apologetic above can be made
consistent with a scientific world view.
Until I hear that, I'm going to hold that there appears to
me to be a very real conflict between science and religion,
at least if the views he expresses are in any way
common. I'ld hold it to be intellectually dishonest to
pretend that there isn't a conflict when dealing with
such religious views as that.
> > Let's not forget that there are large numbers of people who never started
> > life as theists so they never experienced the "transition." This group includes
> > my children and most of their friends. It also includes millions of people
> > in Europe and other countries. This group has only experienced one way
> > of thinking - the way that doesn't include supernatural explanations.
> > I wonder how many of them have converted to theism because at some point
> > in their lives they realized that methodological naturalism wasn't working
> > for them? That's the flip side of your question. Do born methodological
> > naturalists find something missing in their lives?
> >
> > To return to your question. I don't claim that if you are a theist who
> > practises methodological naturalism you *must* transit to philosophical
> > naturalism. All I claim is that it seems probable that this will happen.
> > And I think it seems reasonable.
>
> How is that statement compatible with the claim that there's a conflict
> between science and religion? Do you simply mean that science
> is a 'gateway drug' to atheism?
>
How do you think that the statement is incompatible with the claim?
Do you consider atheism to be an addiction?
Color me addicted, then.
What about theism?
This seems to me to be poisoning the well.
[snipped: a further disquisition on the arrogance of
supposedly lousy scientists who, it's insinuated,
may have sloppily made a transition to philosophical
naturalism]
David
wade
David Ewan Kahana wrote:
> wade wrote:
> > Larry Moran wrote:
> > > On 6 Jul 2006 19:27:14 -0700, wade <wade....@gmail.com> wrote:
Firstly, David thanks for the excellent post. I'll try to respond
separately but need to digest a few of your points. Meanwhile ...
> > > To return to your question. I don't claim that if you are a theist who
> > > practises methodological naturalism you *must* transit to philosophical
> > > naturalism. All I claim is that it seems probable that this will happen.
> > > And I think it seems reasonable.
> > How is that statement compatible with the claim that there's a conflict
> > between science and religion? Do you simply mean that science
> > is a 'gateway drug' to atheism?
> How do you think that the statement is incompatible with the claim?
My reading of incompabible in the claim goes well beyond
trends of outcome. If one simply means that scientists tend
to abandon religious belief one uses words like "tend to".
> Do you consider atheism to be an addiction?
No. I'm also not in line with what I see as the "gateway drug"
concept in the first place. Call it wry humor.
> Color me addicted, then.
>
> What about theism?
>
> This seems to me to be poisoning the well.
It was my turn but I had it pegged differently.
catshark
(Larry Moran) wrote:
[...]
>Let's not forget that there are large numbers of people who never started
>life as theists so they never experienced the "transition." This group includes
>my children and most of their friends. It also includes millions of people
>in Europe and other countries. This group has only experienced one way
>of thinking - the way that doesn't include supernatural explanations.
>I wonder how many of them have converted to theism because at some point
>in their lives they realized that methodological naturalism wasn't working
>for them? That's the flip side of your question. Do born methodological
>naturalists find something missing in their lives?
This may be a case in point:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070600979.html>
THE LANGUAGE OF GOD
A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
By Francis S. Collins
Free Press. 283 pp. $26
Here we are, briefly, under the sun, one species among millions
on a gorgeous planet in the remote provinces of the universe,
our very existence a riddle. Of all the words we use to mask our
ignorance, none has been more abused, none has given rise to more
strife, none has rolled from the tongues of more charlatans than
the name of God. Nor has any word been more often invoked as the
inspiration for creativity, charity or love.
So what are we talking about when we talk about God? The geneticist
Francis S. Collins bravely sets out to answer this question in
light of his scientific knowledge and his Christian faith. Having
found for himself "a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific
and spiritual worldviews," he seeks to persuade others that "belief
in God can be an entirely rational choice, and that the principles
of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science."
According to the review, Collins:
. . . was brought up in a household indifferent to religion; he
became an agnostic in college and an atheist in graduate school,
where he studied chemistry. Only in medical school did he reverse
that trajectory, gradually accepting the existence of God and
embracing evangelical Christianity -- led to belief, like St.
Augustine, less by longing than by reason.
Reason persuaded him that the universe could not have created
itself; that humans possess an intuitive sense of right and wrong,
which he calls, following Immanuel Kant, "the Moral Law"; and that
humans likewise feel a "longing for the sacred." The source of
this longing, the Moral Law and the universe, he came to believe,
was the God described in the Bible, a transcendent Creator,
Companion, Judge and Redeemer. He found additional evidence of a
Creator in the eerie ability of mathematics to map the universe
and in the numerous material properties -- from the slight
imbalance between matter and anti-matter in the Big Bang to the
binding energy within the atomic nucleus -- that seem to have been
exquisitely tuned to fashion a world that would give rise to
complex forms of life.
Now Collins is only one example and probably in a very small minority. But
is this something that validly yields to the "50 million Frenchmen can't be
wrong" argument? And arguments can no doubt be made that his position
isn't really based on "reason" but I suspect that the definition of
"reason" will wind up with an assumption of methodological naturalism,
which might be missing the point.
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici
potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum.
- Cicero, De Divinatione
wade
You last sentence says much. And Larry has repeatedly
queried "ways of knowing". Is scientific testing the only
way of knowing, what are its limitations (granting its many
demonstrated advantages) and depending on what operational
sense of "knowing" one is using, how reasonable is it to
presume that achieving knowledge is itself reasonable.
> I abandon the position of philosophical skepticism, though I
> can't defeat it.
Unclear to me.
> So I accept that there is an objective reality apart from my
> own thoughts.
Readily granted but there remains a question of exclusivity.
How can one "know" that objective reality is all there is.
Science itself seems a poor tool to probe this. That science
doesn't find evidence for a some other "reality" potentially
collapses on definitions of reality and other circularity
problems. Appealing to sufficiency has similar problems.
I "believe" that people who think this far tend to resolve
take their next step based on comfort, not rationality.
The defense of the step to say that objective reality is
all there is, and this is rational because it is the simplest,
and the razor tells me to choose the simplest, and the
razor works so well --- is a rationale. It is a fine rationale
as things go but not quite deserving of the pedestal that
many seem to put it on.
The alternative, more comfortable to some, that there
is more than objective reality, certaintly lacks objective
support but attacking it for that reason again presses
a circularity. Defenses of this alternative based on feeling
and intuition have all the familiar flaws flaws that strong
adherants of methodological naturalism(MN) will note. But
I'm of the opinion that assaulting intuition as a failed
means of knowing something is itself largely based on
the intuition of a sort derived from the success of MN.
It is an argument from the specific to the general that
focuses on cases where intuition was wrong and ignores
those where it was right. More could be and probably
needs to be said here.
> As it seems to me, the transition from methodological
> naturalism to tentative ontological naturalism requires no
> special intuition or additional premises beyond the
> scientific method. It requires only the observation that
> methodological naturalism works and continues to work.
Aren't you in fact arguing for full sufficiency?
> This,
> in and of itself, seems to be a stunning fact, if indeed
> what so many religious people seem to have been telling us
> about the world for as long as humans have been able to
> write -- that it was made by a god(s) who continue(s) to
> interact with it -- turns out to be the case.
I'm less stunned. Perhaps this comes from readily dismissing
the bulk of what many religious authorities have told us,
much of that being mutually contradictory to what other
religious athorities say. But that most conspiracy theories
about who killed Kennedy are mutually contradictory and
flawed doesn't mean it was a lone gunman. Neither does it
seem to mean that there must be something else to spawn
the conspriracy theories beyond a tendency for people to
think that way.
> In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
> demonstrating that anything supernatural exists. In such a
> situation, ontological naturalism is the minimal position
> that can be adopted consistent with the objective evidence:
> adopting it tentatively I think is justifiable
> scientifically in much the same way as any other scientific
> hypothesis: it seems to be a matter of induction from
> experience. It is in any case quite consistent with a
> scientific world view. It seems to be the most parsimonious
> hypothesis. Still it could be a wrong hypothesis ... the
> razor has its exceptional clause.
All well considered and written but there's still a balance
point and "most parsimonious" still depends on what
totality is being balanced. Rejecting from consideration
anything that can't be objectively measured and verified
to reach the philosophical position that everything can
be objectively measured and verified is that same annoying
circularity. What have I missed?
> As Hume pointed out, and I don't think Kant or anyone else
> ever answered adequately, induction from experience has its
> logical problems, so that all scientific positions should be
> held tentatively. But it seems to me that no conversion
> experience is necessary in order to make a transition to
> tentatively accepting ontological materialism. Someone can
> reach such a position solely by means of reason and resort
> to such objective evidence as there is.
>
> What can't be reached is an absolutely held position. But
> science doesn't claim that in the first place.
And so, if speaking with their lab coat on (as opposed to
the standard hat allusion), a theist agrees that there is no
scientific reason to believe in their god but that they believe
for other reasons, where's the conflict with science?
> It seems to me in fact that you invert the actual situation
> by positing that a symmetry exists between science and
> religion on this point when in fact, as a rule, none does.
I'm unclear about what symmetry you mean.
> It is organized religion, not science, which explicitly
> claims to have access -- or claims that access may be
> obtained -- to one or another special intuitions or
> revelations. It is religion which makes up additional
> intuitions and rules by which people are supposed to be able
> to make a transition to a state of belief.
I've made no defense for the creeds of any organized
religions. I generally view them like I view many a
conspiracy theory.
How do you feel about there being a middle ground between
reasonable and unreasonable? I'm stuck rejecting the notion
that it unreasonable to without assent and the notion that it
is unreasonable to give assent. For clarity this is assent to
the notion that there is some (stuck for the right word but
will borrow the inadequate) ineffable god.
> Now I think it is the case that any scientist making
> any such claim in public about any scientific
> question would be, quite rightly, laughed to scorn.
Have they posted the idea to talk.origins? If so, that
and more.
> But in religious thinking it seems that this kind of
> `intellectual' argument is perfectly acceptable at
> least among some who are presumably experts
> on theology.
If that is an example of the best published argument
to be had, and you are saying you reject the best
published arguments, I'm in no mood to argue
different.
> This is not the kind of argument that I aspire to be
> able to make, personally.
>
> I personally can't begin to see how anyone could\
> consider such an approach to learning about the
> world as is expressed above to be consistent with a
> scientific approach to knowing about the world, or how any
> one could deny that a serious conflict exists, when there
> are religious people who hold such views.
And whenever the point drops to specifics of a particular
scientist holding one of many particular religious views
such as the illogic you've quoted or world wide floods,
I've no argument.
> Now I'm *not* saying that this is the only religious view
> possible, and I'm not saying that any religious scientists
> who have spoken in this thread hold any such view, nor
> am I saying that this is the only view possible for a religious
> scientist.
>
> But to pretend that there is clearly no conflict simply
> beggars the imagination as far as I'm concerned. The
> conflict between religion and science appears to have
> existed ever since writing was invented. Both organized
Choose the words with more precision. There is no
necessary conflict between science and religion does
not claim there is no conflict between any specific
claim of a specific religion. And when there are conflicts,
they can entail different levels of gymnastics to get
around.
> religion and science seem to have been with us almost
> since the beginning of recorded history (Astronomy
> at least appears to have had very deep roots and
> to have arisen together with agriculture, and it's with
> the first civilizations that we find the rise of organized
> religions with written scriptures.)
>
> This is not a conflict that is easily dismissed by a little
> bit of linguistic legerdemain, I'm afraid.
>
> Cardinal Dulles avers further:
<further example of apologetics I'd reject too snipped>
> Science on the other hand *demands* such questioning and
> probing of its practitioners, especially in the case where
> it is the fallible testimony of a human witness which is at
> question, never mind if that testimony is said to be about
> putative matters which are said to be ultimately humanly
> unknowable.
>
> The *legal* process demands questioning and probing of the
> always admittedly fallible testimony of eyewitnesses in
> court.
>
> I suggest that questioning and probing are not merely a
> `part of the epistemology' of science, as commonly
> understood.'
>
> They are in fact the sina qua non of a scientific approach
> to knowing about the world in the first place.
>
> That, I think, is one source of the conflict.
Recapping your point, you're objecting to the modality of
religious belief that demands feality to some body of
truths passed on from religious authorities. Here I will
agree that some very core aspects of being a scientist
is certainly going cause conflict with that standard of
indoctrination.
> One must always consider that there may be alternative
> explanations, and try to see whether such can be ruled out
> or not by testing and probing. But once that testing has
> been done, it's perfectly legitimate scientifically to
> believe (tentatively) in one or another of the explanations
> that may survive.
>
> What I would really like to hear is an explanation of how
> Avery Cardinal Dulles apologetic above can be made
> consistent with a scientific world view.
>
> Until I hear that, I'm going to hold that there appears to
> me to be a very real conflict between science and religion,
> at least if the views he expresses are in any way
> common. I'ld hold it to be intellectually dishonest to
> pretend that there isn't a conflict when dealing with
> such religious views as that.
You'll not get an argument from me that Dulles's views
are not in conflict but I don't see why he is the reference
point any more than a more cartoonish character like
Hovind is. And further, my argument has been about
theism as opposed to concordance with specific religious
tenants or apologestics.
And thank you for a very well presented and considered
posting.
pzm...@gmail.com
Mark Isaak wrote:
> One of the first things I learned, when I left my church and began
> actually learing about religion, is that religious beliefs are incredibly
> diverse, even among people who grew up going to the same church all their
> lives. Many religious beliefs are, of course, incomatible with science;
> we seem them all the time here. Others, though, are quite different in
> their nature.
But doesn't that diversity of beliefs suggest that they have to be all
wrong (or at best, all but one is wrong)? I really don't care if the
conclusions of a religion are compatible with the current conclusions
of science; we're comparing processes here, not end results. Religion
is an invalid process. It's a set of stripped gears, spinning wildly,
that accomplishes nothing much -- you don't get to give it credit if it
spits out a correct answer once in a millennium.
>
> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
> forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
> mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
> just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
> approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
> scientists who hold it?
This is picking and choosing. Why not throw out the silly story? As we
know from examples, those arrestingly silly stories grow and grow and
eventually become the whole point of the religion. "Forgive others,"
though, is a good message that even an atheist can accept. It actually
diminishes it a bit if it becomes, "Forgive others because a
supernatural being briefly became humanlike and died temporarily before
becoming ruler of the universe."
>
> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
Ever hear of the word "evangelical"?
Just as the silly fables become the be all and end all of a religion,
so too does the need to proselytize become ever more pressing as the
foundations of their belief become shakier and shakier. In case you
haven't noticed, many of us are living in an industrialized, rich, and
powerful country in which the populace are constantly dunned with
messages from the media and the government that those religious beliefs
are important, and that imply you aren't a good citizen if you don't
worship the right sky daddy.
The message ought to be, "you can believe in any damn fool thing you
want, but beliefs that don't have a sound foundation in evidence and
reason will not be privileged and will not be used as the basis for
policy." We get the opposite.
>
> Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
> anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
> driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
> time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
> he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
> imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
> a scientist from getting any science done.
Compartmentalization is good. I like reading science fiction, for
instance, but as I do, I also criticize the bad science that is often
contained in it. I never, ever make the mistake of thinking this is
something more than entertainment or that we should base our system of
government on Iain Banks "Culture" model or that I should model my life
on that of Lazarus Long. I am aware of the distinction between fiction
and reality.
The majority of the people who call themselves religious in this
country do not make that distinction. The fairy tales in their big book
of superstitious hodge-podge are considered real, genuine, historical
facts. Even Francis Collins is claiming in his book that he is
presenting "evidence" for his beliefs. I don't have a problem with
scientists going to church and accepting the stories they're told as
metaphors and entertainment and interpretable examples, but I do have a
real problem with the way that relatively harmless (in itself)
constrained philosophical belief is always brought in to cover for the
malignant forms of majority religion. People are flying into buildings,
blowing themselves up, crusading against science and birth control,
beating kids up on school grounds, and damning non-believers to hell,
all in the name of religion...and if those practices are criticized,
there's always someone who'll say, "How can you disparage religion so?
Einstein believed in God! Quakers are pacifists! Episcopalians have gay
ministers!"
That some people can be human and tolerant and thoughtful in spite of
their religion just says to me that human beings have the potential to
do good things, no god or supernatural forces required. But when the
good the people do in the name of liberal religious belief is used as a
beard to provide cover for the odious excesses of superstition, no
thanks. That makes them as bad as the freaking wacko fanatics.
catshark
>wade wrote:
>> Larry Moran wrote:
>> > On 6 Jul 2006 19:27:14 -0700, wade <wade....@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>
>As it seems to me, the transition from methodological
>naturalism to tentative ontological naturalism requires no
>special intuition or additional premises beyond the
>scientific method. It requires only the observation that
>methodological naturalism works and continues to work. This,
>in and of itself, seems to be a stunning fact, if indeed
>what so many religious people seem to have been telling us
>about the world for as long as humans have been able to
>write -- that it was made by a god(s) who continue(s) to
>interact with it -- turns out to be the case.
>
>In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
>demonstrating that anything supernatural exists.
By what method of investigation? If you mean that no case investigated by
science, with its methodological naturalism, so what? When a means of
investigation that assumes that any result will be naturalistic discovers,
*when* it works, only naturalistic causes, is hardly a revealing result.
The tricky part would be finding out what percentage of *all* phenomena in
the universe have naturalistic explanations and how we could tell when any
individual phenomenon breaks the rule.
>In such a
>situation, ontological naturalism is the minimal position
>that can be adopted consistent with the objective evidence:
How do you define "objective evidence"? The scientific method need not be
coextensive with objectivity. My personal observation of a unique event
(say, for drama's sake, a murder) cannot be reproduced by others after the
fact, but is it (though maybe not my interpretation of the observation)
still as much objective evidence as my observation of what the reading on
an oscilloscope is.
>adopting it tentatively I think is justifiable
>scientifically in much the same way as any other scientific
>hypothesis: it seems to be a matter of induction from
>experience. It is in any case quite consistent with a
>scientific world view. It seems to be the most parsimonious
>hypothesis. Still it could be a wrong hypothesis ... the
>razor has its exceptional clause.
>
[...]
>
>This, it seems to me, is quite a common apologetic for
>organized religion in the modern era. God is said to be so
>complex, so vast, so utterly transcendent that it is clearly
>beyond human capability even to begin to understand what it
>is that he says, if indeed he speaks at all. And, on the
>basis of this ineffable and enormous, unimaginable mystery
>which is said to exist, the Cardinal seeks to show that if
>one sees the `grounds of credibility' it is *unreasonable*
>to withhold assent (and hence also *reasonable* to
>assent). The integrity of religion is said to rest on preserving
>the `mystery of the divine' and the `contents of revelation'
>it is redundantly claimed, cannot be disproved.
>
>Now I think it is the case that any scientist making
>any such claim in public about any scientific
>question would be, quite rightly, laughed to scorn.
And a scientist who made the claim in public that he/she had just conducted
a scientific experiment about, say, the nature of God, would also be
laughed to scorn. So? Is anyone disputing that science and theology use
different methodologies?
>
>But in religious thinking it seems that this kind of
>`intellectual' argument is perfectly acceptable at
>least among some who are presumably experts
>on theology.
>
>This is not the kind of argument that I aspire to be
>able to make, personally.
>
>I personally can't begin to see how anyone could\
>consider such an approach to learning about the
>world as is expressed above to be consistent with a
>scientific approach to knowing about the world, or how any
>one could deny that a serious conflict exists, when there
>are religious people who hold such views.
Why does inconsistency equal conflict? If I chose not to use an ax to
perform brain surgery, does that mean that medicine is somehow in conflict
with lumberjacking? If someone uses methods other than science to explore
the metaphysical or spiritual aspects of life (whatever they may be) does
that mean they are necessarily denying the efficacy of science within its
sphere? Aren't you making the unstated assumption that the entirety of
"the world" is capable of being understood through the use of science? If
so, what is in conflict is your *philosophy* and religion, not science and
religion.
>
>Now I'm *not* saying that this is the only religious view
>possible, and I'm not saying that any religious scientists
>who have spoken in this thread hold any such view, nor
>am I saying that this is the only view possible for a religious
>scientist.
>
>But to pretend that there is clearly no conflict simply
>beggars the imagination as far as I'm concerned. The
>conflict between religion and science appears to have
>existed ever since writing was invented. Both organized
>religion and science seem to have been with us almost
>since the beginning of recorded history (Astronomy
>at least appears to have had very deep roots and
>to have arisen together with agriculture, and it's with
>the first civilizations that we find the rise of organized
>religions with written scriptures.)
>
>This is not a conflict that is easily dismissed by a little
>bit of linguistic legerdemain, I'm afraid.
I'm sorry, but how is calling a lack of consistency between approaches to
(arguably) wildly different subject matters "a conflict" anything but
linguistic legerdemain?
Just a question: are the implications you draw from what other people say
an example of science at work? If not, isn't your inconsistency in not
resorting to scientific evidence here a conflict within your own views?
>
>If you are such a person then you just aren't a team player.
>
>Science on the other hand *demands* such questioning and
>probing of its practitioners, especially in the case where
>it is the fallible testimony of a human witness which is at
>question, never mind if that testimony is said to be about
>putative matters which are said to be ultimately humanly
>unknowable.
>
>The *legal* process demands questioning and probing of the
>always admittedly fallible testimony of eyewitnesses in
>court.
<cough> No, it doesn't. The legal process will quite happily trade
certainty of having *a* result within reasonable time limits for certainty
of the *truth* of the result. But I'm not sure how relevant that is
anyway.
>
>I suggest that questioning and probing are not merely a
>`part of the epistemology' of science, as commonly
>understood.'
>
>They are in fact the sina qua non of a scientific approach
>to knowing about the world in the first place.
But here we are back to the question if the scientific approach is the only
reasonable approach *and* somehow exclusive. If you hold the scientific
approach, can you hold no other? Can you also hold that, say, art and
literature are valid ways of "knowing" the world?
>
>That, I think, is one source of the conflict.
>
>One must always consider that there may be alternative
>explanations, and try to see whether such can be ruled out
>or not by testing and probing. But once that testing has
>been done, it's perfectly legitimate scientifically to
>believe (tentatively) in one or another of the explanations
>that may survive.
>
>What I would really like to hear is an explanation of how
>Avery Cardinal Dulles apologetic above can be made
>consistent with a scientific world view.
Why does it have to be consistent to merely avoid being "in conflict"?
[...]
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
One of the strengths of science is that it
does not require that scientists be unbiased,
only that different scientists have different biases.
- David L. Hull -
pzm...@gmail.com
Gordon Hill wrote:
>
> There is no need for scientific fact and religious belief to be
> contradictory.
This is one of those misconceptions I find aggravating. Science is not
a collection of "scientific facts" -- it is more than a set of answers.
Science is a process. *How* you come by your answer is more important
than what the answer is.
In that better understanding of what science is, it is definitely true
that the religious way of understanding the world contradicts the
scientific way of doing the same.
Mark Isaak
> Sorry I'm so late to this party -- it looks like fun!
>
> Mark Isaak wrote:
>
>> One of the first things I learned, when I left my church and began
>> actually learing about religion, is that religious beliefs are incredibly
>> diverse, even among people who grew up going to the same church all their
>> lives. Many religious beliefs are, of course, incomatible with science;
>> we seem them all the time here. Others, though, are quite different in
>> their nature.
>
> But doesn't that diversity of beliefs suggest that they have to be all
> wrong (or at best, all but one is wrong)?
Does the variety of different currencies around the world suggest that
all money is worthless?
> I really don't care if the
> conclusions of a religion are compatible with the current conclusions
> of science; we're comparing processes here, not end results. Religion
> is an invalid process. It's a set of stripped gears, spinning wildly,
> that accomplishes nothing much -- you don't get to give it credit if it
> spits out a correct answer once in a millennium.
Invalid for what? For informing about organic chemistry? Of course. For
helping people live happy and fulfilled lives? That's another matter.
And I'm sure it does not help everyone in that regard, but I am also sure
that it does help some.
>> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
>> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
>> forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
>> mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
>> just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
>> approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
>> scientists who hold it?
>
> This is picking and choosing. Why not throw out the silly story?
It is a well-established fact that people remember stories better than
they remember raw data. They value stories more, too, which is why
advertizers put more testimonials than graphs and tables in their ads.
> As we
> know from examples, those arrestingly silly stories grow and grow and
> eventually become the whole point of the religion. "Forgive others,"
> though, is a good message that even an atheist can accept. It actually
> diminishes it a bit if it becomes, "Forgive others because a
> supernatural being briefly became humanlike and died temporarily before
> becoming ruler of the universe."
Agreed, but it diminishes even more if nobody ever thinks about it.
Stories tend to get retold over and over.
>> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
>> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
>> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
>> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
>> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
>
> Ever hear of the word "evangelical"?
Evangelism is a moral wrong by any remotely serious moral standard.
Evangelicals themselves can justify it only by refusing to consider the
rest of their religion. Don't expect me to defend it.
I am not arguing that religion is necessarily good. It is not. There is
much about religion that causes problems: evangelism, promotion of
self-deception, formation of a priest caste whose main interest is to
increase their own power. But these problems are not universal. I have
not studied religion enough to know how common the exceptions are, but I
have seen exceptions.
> Just as the silly fables become the be all and end all of a religion, so
> too does the need to proselytize become ever more pressing as the
> foundations of their belief become shakier and shakier.
Agreed. Much of what passes for faith (including, I think, almost all of
creationism) is really lack of faith in people trying hard to convince
themselves.
> [snip more that I agree with]
>>
>> Finally, what's wrong with compartmentalization? I have never heard
>> anyone say that being a mystery fan is incompatible with being a bus
>> driver, even though you can't read mysteries and drive a bus at the same
>> time (at least, not for long). Sure, the person may run into problems if
>> he tries to think about religion and science at the same time, but I
>> imagine there are lots of things (USENET, for example) that would distract
>> a scientist from getting any science done.
>
> Compartmentalization is good. I like reading science fiction, for
> instance, but as I do, I also criticize the bad science that is often
> contained in it.
It is possible to do the same with the Bible, Vedas, Popol Vuh, etc. In
fact, I have read science fiction which was just a retelling of
mythology.
> The majority of the people who call themselves religious in this
> country do not make that distinction. The fairy tales in their big book
> of superstitious hodge-podge are considered real, genuine, historical
> facts. [. . .]
Right. I am not talking about those people.
> That some people can be human and tolerant and thoughtful in spite of
> their religion just says to me that human beings have the potential to
> do good things, no god or supernatural forces required. But when the
> good the people do in the name of liberal religious belief is used as a
> beard to provide cover for the odious excesses of superstition, no
> thanks. That makes them as bad as the freaking wacko fanatics.
We have in common an aversion to bad religion. I would submit, however,
that attacking *all* religion to get rid of the bad is a poor strategy.
First, it is unjust. Not all religion deserves condemnation. And when
people see you thoughtlessly condemning obviously good people, you will
lose credibility. Second, religion is a very nearly universal craving.
You and I may not crave it, but most people do. Eliminating religion
would be only slightly easier than eliminating breathing.
Better to determine what is bad about religion and condemn that. I
believe a good place to start is to point out that it is morally wrong for
any person, uninvited, to press their religious beliefs on another. Such
behavior is against the widely-accepted Golden Rule, so it should not be
controversial that it is wrong. Let's be more discriminating about our
targets.
Matt Silberstein
<1152389924.8...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com> wrote:
Yes, but you did not show an actual misconception. The processes and
basic concepts are quite difference, but that does not mean that the
*results* are necessarily different. Now in practice religion has had
to retreat every time it has tried to stand up to science, but that is
just how the world happens to work, not how in necessarily must work.
--
Matt Silberstein
Do something today about the Darfur Genocide
http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org
"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"
wade
Mark Isaak wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 08:19:55 -0700, pzmyers wrote:
> > Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
> >> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
> >> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
> >> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
> >> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
> > Ever hear of the word "evangelical"?
>
> Evangelism is a moral wrong by any remotely serious moral standard.
> Evangelicals themselves can justify it only by refusing to consider the
> rest of their religion. Don't expect me to defend it.
Most evangelicals probably tend to agree that evangelism is morally
is a moral wrong, except for when they've decided that their particular
set of beliefs is really essential and all others are dangerous. It
still
strikes me as ironic when this takes the form of arguments designed
to aggressively convert others to atheism because of the dangers
and asserted evils of theism.
And so, I will try to convince everyone that universal tolerance
is the only acceptable view. I will not tolerate any other.
Nic
>
<snip apologies=maximal>
> In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
> demonstrating that anything supernatural exists.
Just wanted to react to this one point. It's the old
if-treason-prospers-none-dare-call-it-treason thing. If I can play
with it, like the magnets I played with on my grandparents' dining room
table when I was a kid, then it aint supernatural. By definition! As
soon as I can get to it it becomes science. While it remains beyond my
reach, it remains, well 'lies' is a bit harsh, but 'rumour' will do.
The supernatural domain seems to me to be necessarily the domain of
phenomena heard of 'second hand'. Okay, okay, I take it on trust, and
have no first hand experience of lunar landings, etc. But in such
cases I'm taking it on trust indirectly from people who I *trust* are
like me, and that doesn't automatically include preachers of religion.
Hope that was relevant.
<snip apologies=maximal>
pzm...@gmail.com
Mark Isaak wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 08:19:55 -0700, pzmyers wrote:
> > But doesn't that diversity of beliefs suggest that they have to be all
> > wrong (or at best, all but one is wrong)?
>
> Does the variety of different currencies around the world suggest that
> all money is worthless?
Invalid comparison. We are talking about mutually contradictory
beliefs.
>
> > I really don't care if the
> > conclusions of a religion are compatible with the current conclusions
> > of science; we're comparing processes here, not end results. Religion
> > is an invalid process. It's a set of stripped gears, spinning wildly,
> > that accomplishes nothing much -- you don't get to give it credit if it
> > spits out a correct answer once in a millennium.
>
> Invalid for what? For informing about organic chemistry? Of course. For
> helping people live happy and fulfilled lives? That's another matter.
> And I'm sure it does not help everyone in that regard, but I am also sure
> that it does help some.
I am unconvinced. You could also say that constant hand-washing helps
an obsessive-compulsive individual be happy, but that doesn't make it a
good thing, or a reason for not looking for a more fundamental
treatment.
Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
>
> >> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
> >> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example) that
> >> forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever for every
> >> mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming alive again is
> >> just there to make the point into a good story. Do you think that this
> >> approach is incompatible with religion, or that there are no
> >> scientists who hold it?
> >
> > This is picking and choosing. Why not throw out the silly story?
>
> It is a well-established fact that people remember stories better than
> they remember raw data. They value stories more, too, which is why
> advertizers put more testimonials than graphs and tables in their ads.
Then religion should change and plainly say, "What I'm about to tell
you is not literally true, but it is a useful mnemonic to help you
understand." We aren't dealing with zen koans, though -- we're dealing
with fundamentalists, evangelicals, and literalists.
>
> > As we
> > know from examples, those arrestingly silly stories grow and grow and
> > eventually become the whole point of the religion. "Forgive others,"
> > though, is a good message that even an atheist can accept. It actually
> > diminishes it a bit if it becomes, "Forgive others because a
> > supernatural being briefly became humanlike and died temporarily before
> > becoming ruler of the universe."
>
> Agreed, but it diminishes even more if nobody ever thinks about it.
> Stories tend to get retold over and over.
>
> >> Another approach is, "there is no possible way to test this, but I am
> >> going to believe it anyway." That is certainly not science, but as long
> >> as they don't suggest there is any reason for others to believe, how is it
> >> incompatible with science? You surely do some of the same sort of thing
> >> yourself, such as having favorite foods or believing in moral values.
> >
> > Ever hear of the word "evangelical"?
>
> Evangelism is a moral wrong by any remotely serious moral standard.
> Evangelicals themselves can justify it only by refusing to consider the
> rest of their religion. Don't expect me to defend it.
Great! Now try and get on television and say that. "Evangelical" is a
word that is treated with unalloyed respect and reverence in this
country. People are proud to be evangelical. Many consider it an
inarguable responsibility laid down in the New Testament which they
must obey.
Now, also: how do we counter it without evangelizing for secularism?
>
> I am not arguing that religion is necessarily good. It is not. There is
> much about religion that causes problems: evangelism, promotion of
> self-deception, formation of a priest caste whose main interest is to
> increase their own power. But these problems are not universal. I have
> not studied religion enough to know how common the exceptions are, but I
> have seen exceptions.
Buddhism and Taoism seem to escape much of the worst of it. The thing
is, in order to get away from those problems, a religion has to divorce
itself from the concept of the supernatural, which pretty much
demolishes the concept of God as well.
This is a problem. A big problem.
Get into an argument about religion, and what will happen? People will
start sidling away from the real problems...they might agree that
evangelism is bad, that belief in the supernatural is unfounded, that
the mythology too often gets inflated into literalism, but oh, no -- we
can't criticize religion. We aren't talking about *those* people, all
of a sudden. We're only talking about this minute, inconsequential
minority of religious people who have fairly diffuse deistic beliefs,
not those fundie crazies.
>
> > That some people can be human and tolerant and thoughtful in spite of
> > their religion just says to me that human beings have the potential to
> > do good things, no god or supernatural forces required. But when the
> > good the people do in the name of liberal religious belief is used as a
> > beard to provide cover for the odious excesses of superstition, no
> > thanks. That makes them as bad as the freaking wacko fanatics.
>
> We have in common an aversion to bad religion. I would submit, however,
> that attacking *all* religion to get rid of the bad is a poor strategy.
> First, it is unjust. Not all religion deserves condemnation.
Not all criminals deserve condemnation. Some are stealing bread to feed
their starving children.
This is true. But we can still say "Stealing is wrong," while at the
same time maintaining a just sense of proportion and admitting that in
some cases there are ameliorating circumstances.
Similarly, we can say that religion is wrong. If there are a small
number of special cases, we can deal with them as they come up. Let's
start with a clear and simple premise, though, and quit dragging this
ineffectual minority out as living shields for the nonsense.
It is not as if anyone is proposing to jail or shoot people for having
religious beliefs, or chop off their hands for touching a bible. It's
much milder than that: religious biases are not to be considered sound
grounds for defining real world policy in things like government,
education, medicine, etc. It's a personal choice that does not grant
anyone special privileges.
> And when
> people see you thoughtlessly condemning obviously good people, you will
> lose credibility. Second, religion is a very nearly universal craving.
> You and I may not crave it, but most people do. Eliminating religion
> would be only slightly easier than eliminating breathing.
I disagree! How often has it been tried? We live in a world where
people are indoctrinated into religious belief from childhood. If we
stopped just that, somehow (unfortunately, I also believe we do not
have a right to interfere in parenting, within limits), I do not think
it would be such a painful thing to give up faith. We're seeing that
other countries than the US are doing a much better job of giving up on
crazy nutball religion than we are -- no one is suffocating on the
streets of Europe from a deficiency of piety, I don't think.
>
> Better to determine what is bad about religion and condemn that. I
> believe a good place to start is to point out that it is morally wrong for
> any person, uninvited, to press their religious beliefs on another. Such
> behavior is against the widely-accepted Golden Rule, so it should not be
> controversial that it is wrong. Let's be more discriminating about our
> targets.
That's very naive.
You do know that there are a great many people here who believe that
their God has told them no butt-sex allowed, and they have a book that
says their God will destroy whole cities and nations if butt-sex
occurs, and there are evangelists on television who pronounce doom and
catastrophe on the country for giving people who engage in butt-sex the
rights of ordinary citizens? That certainly is a case of pressing
religious beliefs on others, but clearly there is a widely held
exception to the Golden Rule: if God says it's OK to treat others
evilly, then it is allowed. God gets to trump the Golden Rule.
You are assuming that the religious will concede that the rights of
their fellow human beings are greater than the whims of their god. They
won't agree with you.
pzm...@gmail.com
Matt Silberstein wrote:
> On 8 Jul 2006 13:18:44 -0700, in talk.origins , pzm...@gmail.com in
> <1152389924.8...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Gordon Hill wrote:
> >>
> >> There is no need for scientific fact and religious belief to be
> >> contradictory.
> >
> >This is one of those misconceptions I find aggravating. Science is not
> >a collection of "scientific facts" -- it is more than a set of answers.
> >Science is a process. *How* you come by your answer is more important
> >than what the answer is.
> >
> >In that better understanding of what science is, it is definitely true
> >that the religious way of understanding the world contradicts the
> >scientific way of doing the same.
>
> Yes, but you did not show an actual misconception. The processes and
> basic concepts are quite difference, but that does not mean that the
> *results* are necessarily different. Now in practice religion has had
> to retreat every time it has tried to stand up to science, but that is
> just how the world happens to work, not how in necessarily must work.
We are talking about whether science and religion are compatible. Now,
you may define science as a collection of facts, and therefore claim
that any religion that comes up with a similar collection of facts is
hunky dory, but I don't define science that way. Science is a process,
a way of looking at the world and figuring out how it works. Religion
is a dogma that defines how the world works by tradition and revealed
knowledge.
Those two METHODS are not compatible. When I talk about preserving and
advancing science and educating people about science, I'm not talking
about getting them to memorize Mendeleev's table or Linnaeus's
taxonomy. I want them to know how to DO science, or at least know how
science is done by its practitioners.
Now you might argue that, *in principle*, some religion could
accommodate itself to science and completely concede our understanding
of the natural world to methodological naturalism. I don't really give
a damn about theoretical daydreams about what religion could do if only
it were sensible, though. In practice, it doesn't. Here's a nice little
quote from Carl Sagan on that:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and
concluded, 'This
is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our
prophets said,
grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no,
no! My god is
a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or
new, that stressed
the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science
might be able to
draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the
conventional faiths.
That Carl. What an optimist.
CreateThis
You left out the worst problem with religion. It makes humans into
sheep: dumb, compliant and grateful to be fleeced. Worse, it subverts
personal responsibility for morality, stunts our moral growth as a
society and produces authority-addicted masses with hot buttons in
easy reach. Our political system is just hitting its stride in
exploiting them.
CT
Matt Silberstein
<1152408795.9...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>> On 8 Jul 2006 13:18:44 -0700, in talk.origins , pzm...@gmail.com in
>> <1152389924.8...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Gordon Hill wrote:
>> >>
>> >> There is no need for scientific fact and religious belief to be
>> >> contradictory.
>> >
>> >This is one of those misconceptions I find aggravating. Science is not
>> >a collection of "scientific facts" -- it is more than a set of answers.
>> >Science is a process. *How* you come by your answer is more important
>> >than what the answer is.
>> >
>> >In that better understanding of what science is, it is definitely true
>> >that the religious way of understanding the world contradicts the
>> >scientific way of doing the same.
>>
>> Yes, but you did not show an actual misconception. The processes and
>> basic concepts are quite difference, but that does not mean that the
>> *results* are necessarily different. Now in practice religion has had
>> to retreat every time it has tried to stand up to science, but that is
>> just how the world happens to work, not how in necessarily must work.
>
>We are talking about whether science and religion are compatible. Now,
>you may define science as a collection of facts,
I don't. I define science as the best available way of learning about
the world given the premise that the world works by some sort of
rules.
>and therefore claim
>that any religion that comes up with a similar collection of facts is
>hunky dory, but I don't define science that way. Science is a process,
>a way of looking at the world and figuring out how it works. Religion
>is a dogma that defines how the world works by tradition and revealed
>knowledge.
No, religion is a view that the world is run by willful beings and the
way to understand/affect the world is to understand/placate those
beings.
>Those two METHODS are not compatible. When I talk about preserving and
>advancing science and educating people about science, I'm not talking
>about getting them to memorize Mendeleev's table or Linnaeus's
>taxonomy. I want them to know how to DO science, or at least know how
>science is done by its practitioners.
Again, the claim was about the *facts* of science, not the process.
You changed the subject.
>Now you might argue that, *in principle*, some religion could
>accommodate itself to science and completely concede our understanding
>of the natural world to methodological naturalism. I don't really give
>a damn about theoretical daydreams about what religion could do if only
>it were sensible, though. In practice, it doesn't. Here's a nice little
>quote from Carl Sagan on that:
>
> How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and
>concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our
>prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no,
>no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or
>new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science
>might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the
>conventional faiths.
Funny, I see that most of the major Western religions have done what
you ask. Only a few make the objections.
>That Carl. What an optimist.
CreateThis
Isn't it just apples and oranges? I don't think religion defines
'understanding' or 'world' the way science does, so how can one
contradict the other? I see it as a land dispute - the universe is
being demystified by science at an ever increasing rate and religion
is feeling the pinch for philosophical real estate. The Holy Gaps are
closing.
CT
Mark Isaak
> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 21:29:50 GMT, Mark Isaak
> <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
>
>>[...]
>>I am not arguing that religion is necessarily good. It is not. There is
>>much about religion that causes problems: evangelism, promotion of
>>self-deception, formation of a priest caste whose main interest is to
>>increase their own power.
>
> You left out the worst problem with religion. It makes humans into
> sheep: dumb, compliant and grateful to be fleeced. Worse, it subverts
> personal responsibility for morality, stunts our moral growth as a
> society and produces authority-addicted masses with hot buttons in
> easy reach. Our political system is just hitting its stride in
> exploiting them.
I think that is a consequence of the priest caste going for power. A big
part of how they get power is to tell people to act like sheep. We need
to spread the message that people who comply are feeding the evil.
The most venerated figures in religion were iconoclasts and blasphemers
like Christ, but most priests would be out of a job if they let people
follow him.
Mark Isaak
>
> Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 08:19:55 -0700, pzmyers wrote:
>
>> > But doesn't that diversity of beliefs suggest that they have to be all
>> > wrong (or at best, all but one is wrong)?
>>
>> Does the variety of different currencies around the world suggest that
>> all money is worthless?
>
> Invalid comparison. We are talking about mutually contradictory
> beliefs.
Only partly invalid. Most religions are not mutually contradictory.
Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Baha'i, Buddhism, and Lakota
spirituality, to name just a few, are mutually compatible. People's
beliefs about these religions are often mutually contraditory, but people
are probably even more ignorant, generally, of religion than they are of
evolution.
>> > [...] Religion is an invalid process.
>>
>> Invalid for what? For informing about organic chemistry? Of course. For
>> helping people live happy and fulfilled lives? That's another matter.
>> And I'm sure it does not help everyone in that regard, but I am also sure
>> that it does help some.
>
> I am unconvinced. You could also say that constant hand-washing helps
> an obsessive-compulsive individual be happy, but that doesn't make it a
> good thing, or a reason for not looking for a more fundamental
> treatment.
>
> Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
> some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practice does no harm, and
discouraging it makes people miserable, should we discourage it?
You seem to assume that religion always causes harm. Yet that is not
true. For one thing, social support makes people live years longer, and
churches are the main social support system in most people's lives.
>> >> For example, consider the "myths as metaphors" approach of Joseph
>> >> Campbell. For such a person, what is important is (for example)
>> >> that forgiveness is available to them; they need not suffer forever
>> >> for every mistake they make. The bit about someone dying and coming
>> >> alive again is just there to make the point into a good story. Do
>> >> you think that this approach is incompatible with religion, or that
>> >> there are no scientists who hold it?
>> >
>> > This is picking and choosing. Why not throw out the silly story?
>>
>> It is a well-established fact that people remember stories better than
>> they remember raw data. They value stories more, too, which is why
>> advertizers put more testimonials than graphs and tables in their ads.
>
> Then religion should change and plainly say, "What I'm about to tell you
> is not literally true, but it is a useful mnemonic to help you
> understand."
Yes, it should. Often, it does. The Bible contains a warning against
literalism (something like, "The letter kills, but the spirit gives
life"). Unfortunately, the last thing fundamentalists and literalists
want to know is what their holy books say.
Let's try pointing out the hypocrisy of preaching against the Golden Rule
in the name of Christianity. People have a more visceral distain for
hypocrisy.
>> I am not arguing that religion is necessarily good. It is not. There
>> is much about religion that causes problems: evangelism, promotion of
>> self-deception, formation of a priest caste whose main interest is to
>> increase their own power. But these problems are not universal. I
>> have not studied religion enough to know how common the exceptions are,
>> but I have seen exceptions.
>
> Buddhism and Taoism seem to escape much of the worst of it. The thing
> is, in order to get away from those problems, a religion has to divorce
> itself from the concept of the supernatural, which pretty much
> demolishes the concept of God as well.
It demolishes most people's concept of God. No big loss.
Suppose you have an army of a thousand men, and you want to take over the
world. Do you say, "Okay, men! Today we take over the world. Attack!"
Or do you start by choosing battles that you have a hope of winning?
Especially if one of those battles solves most of the problems you were
having with the world in the first place?
Religion doesn't bother me. Religious bigotry does. If I were to fight
religion, I would have no hope of getting anywhere. If I fight religious
bigotry, I can make much more progress. You seem to want to fight all of
religion because religious bigotry bothers you. I can understand your
point that religious bigotry will reemerge as long as religions exist, but
bigotry of some form or another will reemerge as long as people exist. I
submit that your approach (as I imperfectly understand it) is the more
naive.
Mark Isaak
Religion is not a way of understanding the world. It is more a way of
relating to the world. For many people, relating to it requires
understanding it, but that is not an essential part of religion. A lot of
religion, in fact, deals with how to relate to things one does not
understand. Furthermore, even if you do require understanding, you can
use science for that part and traditional (or nontraditional) religion for
the rest.
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 18:10:13 -0700, pzmyers wrote:
[snip]
>> Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
>> some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
>
> I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practice does no harm, and
> discouraging it makes people miserable, should we discourage it?
That's a good question. I don't think there's a simple answer.
The way you pose your question almost presupposes the answer. You probably
think that the answer is no, we should not fight against ignorance if
being ignorant makes people happy.
That's not so clear to me. I tend to think that knowledge is always better
than ignorance. You are imagining a situation where a false belief is
very comforting and dispelling that belief might make people very unhappy.
This is true in the short term but maybe not in the long term. Surely you
don't think it's always a good idea to let people remain ignorant just
because they want to?
[Note to others, we are assuming for the sake of argument that religion
is false. Mark is suggesting that atheists keep quiet about their
"discovery" for fear of upsetting the apple cart. It doesn't matter
whether religion is actually false or not in this case. The argument is
valid (perhaps) as long as atheists think they're right.]
> You seem to assume that religion always causes harm. Yet that is not
> true. For one thing, social support makes people live years longer, and
> churches are the main social support system in most people's lives.
I think PZ knows this. He knows that Young Earth Creationists often
belong to churches with strong support groups. I don't think you're
going to get very far if you want us to lay off Young Earth Creationists
for fear of upsetting them.
The real question is, what is harm? Is ignorance harmful? I think it is.
[snip]
> Suppose you have an army of a thousand men, and you want to take over
> the world. Do you say, "Okay, men! Today we take over the world.
> Attack!" Or do you start by choosing battles that you have a hope of
> winning? Especially if one of those battles solves most of the problems
> you were having with the world in the first place?
>
> Religion doesn't bother me. Religious bigotry does. If I were to
> fight religion, I would have no hope of getting anywhere. If I fight
> religious bigotry, I can make much more progress. You seem to want to
> fight all of religion because religious bigotry bothers you. I can
> understand your point that religious bigotry will reemerge as long as
> religions exist, but bigotry of some form or another will reemerge as
> long as people exist. I submit that your approach (as I imperfectly
> understand it) is the more naive.
People like Richard Dawkins have strong opinions about religion. What do
you want them to do? Are you saying that they should keep their opinions
to themselves because they have no hope of changing the world?
I don't think that's really an argument that you want to make. All
radical change starts with a few loud voices in the wilderness. What if
people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ had
listened to people like you?
If you believe that something is true then it can never be "naive" to
stand up and fight for it. It may be naive to think you will win in your
lifetime but that's a different story.
[There's a very good chance that secularism will triumph in many countries
during the lifetime of our children. I think *you* are being somewhat naive
to think that the battle is hopeless. Remember, Dawkins is British and he
may not care very much about the hopelessness of the struggle in the
former colonies.
In Canada, I live in a very secular society. There's nothing particularly
radical about being an atheist. Atheists can run for political office
and even get elected. There's no reason why I should keep my views to
myself, is there?]
Larry Moran
catshark
(Larry Moran) wrote:
[...]
>>> Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
>>> some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
>>
>> I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practice does no harm, and
>> discouraging it makes people miserable, should we discourage it?
>
>That's a good question. I don't think there's a simple answer.
>
>The way you pose your question almost presupposes the answer. You probably
>think that the answer is no, we should not fight against ignorance if
>being ignorant makes people happy.
>
>That's not so clear to me. I tend to think that knowledge is always better
>than ignorance. You are imagining a situation where a false belief is
>very comforting and dispelling that belief might make people very unhappy.
>This is true in the short term but maybe not in the long term. Surely you
>don't think it's always a good idea to let people remain ignorant just
>because they want to?
Do you think you can or should force people to learn if they don't want to?
[...]
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed
by a cloud of comforting convictions which
move with him like flies on a summer day.
- Bertrand Russell -
Nic
catshark wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Jul 2006 20:52:28 +0000 (UTC), lam...@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca
> (Larry Moran) wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
> >>> some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
> >>
> >> I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practice does no harm, and
> >> discouraging it makes people miserable, should we discourage it?
> >
> >That's a good question. I don't think there's a simple answer.
> >
> >The way you pose your question almost presupposes the answer. You probably
> >think that the answer is no, we should not fight against ignorance if
> >being ignorant makes people happy.
> >
> >That's not so clear to me. I tend to think that knowledge is always better
> >than ignorance. You are imagining a situation where a false belief is
> >very comforting and dispelling that belief might make people very unhappy.
> >This is true in the short term but maybe not in the long term. Surely you
> >don't think it's always a good idea to let people remain ignorant just
> >because they want to?
>
> Do you think you can or should force people to learn if they don't want to?
You can! And you can only fail if the material is rubbish in the first
place. So as for the "should" part, what's to lose? Or is the
"should" question that of whether to keep things under ones hat until
'they' are getting warm enough in their enquiries to want to ask? I
constantly want to ask millionaires what the secret is, and they just
get all evasive.
pzm...@gmail.com
catshark wrote:
>
> Do you think you can or should force people to learn if they don't want to?
That's a radical idea. So we should perhaps dismantle the public school
system? Stop enforcing laws that require parents to give their kids
some kind of education?
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that it is a uniformly
good thing for a society to demand that its citizenry receive some
basic level of education. We could argue about how much should be
required, but you know, we should force people to learn to read and
write and do basic arithmetic, at least.
(I know, I'm such a fascist.)
wade
I believe the question at hand is how much of the following
we teach.
a. rabbits feet don't bring good luck
b. astrology is pseudoscience and in
current pracise a fraud seeking money from guilible people.
c. 2+2=4
d. split infinitives are potentially confusing but not always
so just be careful or even avoid them when reasonable.
e. stories about life after death are all lies promoted by
either guilible people or frauds seeking money.
f. daily excercise keeps your body and mind healthy
and that's why we give up 40 minutes of class time
each day 'cause we all benefit in the long run.
g. your belt should match your shoes.
h. Yankees suck.
i. capitolism is good/bad/indifferent.
j. eating lots of meat is wasteful of natural resources and
hunting is evil.
k. weirdos who disagree with the majority are dangerous
and should be avoided or locked up.
catshark
pzm...@gmail.com wrote:
> catshark wrote:
> >
> > Do you think you can or should force people to learn if they don't want to?
>
> That's a radical idea. So we should perhaps dismantle the public school
> system? Stop enforcing laws that require parents to give their kids
> some kind of education?
>
> I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that it is a uniformly
> good thing for a society to demand that its citizenry receive some
> basic level of education.
Absolutely. And you know that wasn't the subject.
First of all, it was not at all clear that Larry was restricting
himself to children, in public schools or otherwise. And, no matter
how important *we* might think biology is, education in it is of
considerably different import to the well being of society as a whole
than having citizens who can read, write, add and subtract.
> We could argue about how much should be
> required,
Well, at least you are willing to talk about it, which is a good thing.
According to the latest Pew Poll, you might need all your eloquence to
keep biology in public schools, without at least coupling it with
creationism (see, especially, Table 5 and the numbers for "seculars"):
<http://pewresearch.org/obdeck/?ObDeckID=35>
And remember that Larry is right that depending on the Constitutional
interpretation of the Establishment clause by the Supreme Court may not
be a safe tactic.
> but you know, we should force people to learn to read and
> write and do basic arithmetic, at least.
>
> (I know, I'm such a fascist.)
I wonder if you would be willing to put the question of teaching
creationism in public school science classes to a democratic vote
today.
Now let's go back to the actual question: do you think that, balancing
all factors, people can be or should be forced to learn, beyond basic
education, that which contradicts their strongly held religious (or
other) beliefs?
Oh, and since neither you nor Nic bothered to ask, I think we sometimes
need to try but, when we do, is when we must be most circumspect about
it.
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Civilization means, above all,
an unwillingness to inflict
unnecessary pain.
- Harold Laski -
John Wilkins
> pzm...@gmail.com wrote:
> > catshark wrote:
> > >
> > > Do you think you can or should force people to learn if they don't
> > >want to?
> >
> > That's a radical idea. So we should perhaps dismantle the public school
> > system? Stop enforcing laws that require parents to give their kids some
> > kind of education?
> >
> > I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that it is a uniformly
> > good thing for a society to demand that its citizenry receive some basic
> > level of education. We could argue about how much should be required,
> > but you know, we should force people to learn to read and write and do
> > basic arithmetic, at least.
> >
> > (I know, I'm such a fascist.)
>
> I believe the question at hand is how much of the following
> we teach.
>
> a. rabbits feet don't bring good luck
> b. astrology is pseudoscience and in
> current pracise a fraud seeking money from guilible people.
> c. 2+2=4
> d. split infinitives are potentially confusing but not always
> so just be careful or even avoid them when reasonable.
I agree. It is better to carefully avoid split infinitives. In Latin.
> e. stories about life after death are all lies promoted by
> either guilible people or frauds seeking money.
> f. daily excercise keeps your body and mind healthy
> and that's why we give up 40 minutes of class time
> each day 'cause we all benefit in the long run.
> g. your belt should match your shoes.
> h. Yankees suck.
Who are the Yankees?
> i. capitolism is good/bad/indifferent.
You got a problem with executive and legislative buildings? Or a problem
with Jupiter's temples?
> j. eating lots of meat is wasteful of natural resources and
> hunting is evil.
> k. weirdos who disagree with the majority are dangerous
> and should be avoided or locked up.
*cough*
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
Mark Isaak
> On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 16:28:06 GMT,
> Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 Jul 2006 18:10:13 -0700, pzmyers wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>> Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in ignorance makes
>>> some people happier. Should we therefore encourage ignorance?
>>
>> I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practice does no harm, and
>> discouraging it makes people miserable, should we discourage it?
>
> That's a good question. I don't think there's a simple answer.
>
> The way you pose your question almost presupposes the answer. You probably
> think that the answer is no, we should not fight against ignorance if
> being ignorant makes people happy.
Actually, no. I was not commenting on ignorance in particular, but on the
broader issue of there being values higher than happiness. Maybe there
are some, but it looks like dangerous territory to go there. Life can get
miserable if happiness is undervalued.
A more important consideration, I think, is unintended consequences.
Ignorance that makes people happy is still not good because it has
consequences of causing misery further down the line.
> That's not so clear to me. I tend to think that knowledge is always
> better than ignorance. You are imagining a situation where a false
> belief is very comforting and dispelling that belief might make people
> very unhappy.
No, I am thinking of a belief that is religious but not false. You still
seem to have the false belief that such religious belief is not possible.
> [Note to others, we are assuming for the sake of argument that religion
> is false.
You are assuming that. I have stated repeatedly that, although much
religion is false, not all is.
> Mark is suggesting that atheists keep quiet about their
> "discovery" for fear of upsetting the apple cart.
Huh? Which Mark?
>> You seem to assume that religion always causes harm. Yet that is not
>> true. For one thing, social support makes people live years longer,
>> and churches are the main social support system in most people's lives.
>
> I think PZ knows this. He knows that Young Earth Creationists often
> belong to churches with strong support groups. I don't think you're
> going to get very far if you want us to lay off Young Earth Creationists
> for fear of upsetting them.
You do know, don't you, that there are churches which contain no Young
Earth Creationists? In fact, let me simplify things. Everywhere in
this thread, unless I specifically say otherwise, nothing I have said or
will say applies to creationists of any stripe. I am talking about a
religious position even further from creationism than atheism is.
> The real question is, what is harm? Is ignorance harmful? I think it is.
Ignorance is unavoidable. I have devoted much of my life trying not to be
ignorant, and in some ways I have suffered as a result. Reading
interferes with my social life, and I am forever frustrated that I don't
have enough time to learn about all the subjects I want to know more about.
Until yesterday I did not know there was an (American) football team
called the Ravens. Was that ignorance harmful, or would it have been more
harmful for me to spend more time in front of the TV on weekends boning up
on modern sports?
Ignorance is not the problem. Willful ignorance is. And then, the
problem is more in the willfulness than the ignorance.
> [snip]
>
>> Suppose you have an army of a thousand men, and you want to take over
>> the world. Do you say, "Okay, men! Today we take over the world.
>> Attack!" Or do you start by choosing battles that you have a hope of
>> winning? Especially if one of those battles solves most of the problems
>> you were having with the world in the first place?
>>
>> Religion doesn't bother me. Religious bigotry does. If I were to
>> fight religion, I would have no hope of getting anywhere. If I fight
>> religious bigotry, I can make much more progress. You seem to want to
>> fight all of religion because religious bigotry bothers you. I can
>> understand your point that religious bigotry will reemerge as long as
>> religions exist, but bigotry of some form or another will reemerge as
>> long as people exist. I submit that your approach (as I imperfectly
>> understand it) is the more naive.
>
> People like Richard Dawkins have strong opinions about religion. What do
> you want them to do? Are you saying that they should keep their opinions
> to themselves because they have no hope of changing the world?
>
> I don't think that's really an argument that you want to make. All
> radical change starts with a few loud voices in the wilderness. What if
> people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ had
> listened to people like you?
>
> If you believe that something is true then it can never be "naive" to
> stand up and fight for it. It may be naive to think you will win in your
> lifetime but that's a different story.
And I believe what I say is true. That it is also pragmatic is a bonus.
> [There's a very good chance that secularism will triumph in many
> countries during the lifetime of our children. I think *you* are being
> somewhat naive to think that the battle is hopeless. Remember, Dawkins
> is British and he may not care very much about the hopelessness of the
> struggle in the former colonies.
>
> In Canada, I live in a very secular society. There's nothing
> particularly radical about being an atheist. Atheists can run for
> political office and even get elected. There's no reason why I should
> keep my views to myself, is there?]
No, as long as you don't mind publicizing factually wrong views.
Larry Moran
Mark Isaak <eciton...@earthlink.guess> wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:52:28 +0000, Larry Moran wrote:
[snip]
>> The way you pose your question almost presupposes the answer. You
>> probably think that the answer is no, we should not fight against
>> ignorance if being ignorant makes people happy.
>
> Actually, no. I was not commenting on ignorance in particular, but on
> the broader issue of there being values higher than happiness. Maybe
> there are some, but it looks like dangerous territory to go there.
> Life can get miserable if happiness is undervalued.
>
> A more important consideration, I think, is unintended consequences.
> Ignorance that makes people happy is still not good because it has
> consequences of causing misery further down the line.
I'm too confused to follow this train of thought. What do you mean by
"ignorance"? Do you mean a false belief in God? Are you saying that
we should dispel false beliefs (ignorance) because those false
beliefs will have consequences down the line?
[snip]
>> That's not so clear to me. I tend to think that knowledge is always
>> better than ignorance. You are imagining a situation where a false
>> belief is very comforting and dispelling that belief might make people
>> very unhappy.
>
> No, I am thinking of a belief that is religious but not false. You still
> seem to have the false belief that such religious belief is not possible.
>
>> [Note to others, we are assuming for the sake of argument that religion
>> is false.
>
> You are assuming that. I have stated repeatedly that, although much
> religion is false, not all is.
Sorry, I misunderstood. I was addressing this question ...
"Even more appropriately, you could argue that living in
ignorance makes some people happier. Should we therefore
encourage ignorance?"
"I am unconvinced by your unconviction. If a practise does
no harm, and discouraging it makes people miserable, should
we discourage it?"
This question makes the assumption that people believe in something
that is wrong. I thought you were saying that we should let them be even
if we know they're wrong. I thought you were saying that we should
leave them along because they are happy.
Now you've switched back to the argument that religion isn't false in
the first place. That's a different point entirely. I can't keep up.
[snip]
>>> You seem to assume that religion always causes harm. Yet that is not
>>> true. For one thing, social support makes people live years longer,
>>> and churches are the main social support system in most people's lives.
>>
>> I think PZ knows this. He knows that Young Earth Creationists often
>> belong to churches with strong support groups. I don't think you're
>> going to get very far if you want us to lay off Young Earth Creationists
>> for fear of upsetting them.
>
> You do know, don't you, that there are churches which contain no Young
> Earth Creationists? In fact, let me simplify things. Everywhere in
> this thread, unless I specifically say otherwise, nothing I have said or
> will say applies to creationists of any stripe. I am talking about a
> religious position even further from creationism than atheism is.
I'm addressing the *form* of your original argument. You seem to be saying
that religion provides strong social support and we should be wary of
disrupting that support even if we know it is propped up by false belief.
I was making a reductio ad absurdum argument when I brought up the
Young Earth Creationists. I was asking if the form of your argument applies
to them as well. I assume you will say no. The next question is how do
we decide which false beliefs to leave in place because they produce a
strong social support group? (Please don't switch back to saying that
some religion is not false. That's a different argument entirely.)
I will now make the assumption that you are defending some rather ill-
defined version of religion that you believe to be true. I don't know
what this religion is, is it some form of deism?
With all due respect, you seem to be wanting to have your cake and
eat it too. You are happy to attack all the "bad" religions (see Panda's
Thumb). You are happy to attack atheists for threatening the "good"
religion. But you are unwilling to describe this "good" religion so
we can see what you're talking about.
Don't you think that's a bit unfair? You leave me no choice but to
try and guess what you're defending and every time I guess wrong you
criticize my posting. Instead of beating around the bush why not just
come out and tell us about the "good" religion that is not false?
[snip]
>> In Canada, I live in a very secular society. There's nothing
>> particularly radical about being an atheist. Atheists can run for
>> political office and even get elected. There's no reason why I should
>> keep my views to myself, is there?]
>
> No, as long as you don't mind publicizing factually wrong views.
Please back up your claim. Tell me what is factually wrong. The best
way to do this is to explain your factually correct version of religion.
Can you do that?
Larry Moran
David Ewan Kahana
> On 7 Jul 2006 21:21:16 -0700, "David Ewan Kahana" <d...@bnl.gov> wrote:
>
> >wade wrote:
> >> Larry Moran wrote:
> >> > On 6 Jul 2006 19:27:14 -0700, wade <wade....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >
> >As it seems to me, the transition from methodological
> >naturalism to tentative ontological naturalism requires no
> >special intuition or additional premises beyond the
> >scientific method. It requires only the observation that
> >methodological naturalism works and continues to work. This,
> >in and of itself, seems to be a stunning fact, if indeed
> >what so many religious people seem to have been telling us
> >about the world for as long as humans have been able to
> >write -- that it was made by a god(s) who continue(s) to
> >interact with it -- turns out to be the case.
> >
> >In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
> >demonstrating that anything supernatural exists.
>
> By what method of investigation?
What method of investigation do you propose besides the
scientific method, and what example of a supernatural event do
you have it in mind to investigate?
I'm going to require an example here of what you have in mind, I
think, rather than just a rhetorical question, if in fact you
want to go further than just to point out what you seem to think
are some inconsistencies in my position.
Nevertheless, generally: I have in mind any method of
investigation that is rigourous enough that it goes so far as to
take an unbiased look at such objective evidence as exists for
and against the supposed phenomenon and by objective I mean
roughly evidence that it can be agreed upon by people who have
beliefs that make them, in general, amenable to rational
discourse, after an open debate about rules for accepting
evidence, irrespective of emotional, religious, cultural and no
doubt other forms of prejudice, to be sufficiently convincing on
which to base belief.
For example the mere observation of the fact that something is
written in some old book describing how this or that miracle
supposedly happened, coupled with an assertion that this is the
undisprovable truth, and a subjective statement from some witness
or other, or a whole lot of witnesses that they feel, or believe
it to be true in their own lives is not at all to my mind a
satisfactory basis for any investigative method, and it certainly
doesn't establish the existence of the beings that are said to
have caused the miracles to happen. There are just too many old
books of the genre in question. I think that there is very
unlikely ever to be any cross-cultural agreement without
abandoning a very reat deal of what is said in all of the
books. I wonder what would be left at the end. Now does this mean
that I think belief has no function in human life? Far from it. I
am open to all possibilities, but I want there to be some real
dialog on the question, because I am far from convinced that all
forms of religious belief are benign or open to reason. I think
that we are in a historical period
Hindu and Buddhist doctrines I would have said, from superficial
examination, are quite different than the major surviving Western
religions earlier in my life, in tnat they do not seem to make
such an explicit division of the world into realms of good and
evil. Of this division the Zen master Seng-ts'an said in the
sixth century: `The struggle between good and evil is the primal
disease of the mind.'
http://www.selfdiscoveryportal.com/cmSengTsan.htm
But I can't forget that Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu extremist,
and that in recent times Hinduism seems to have given rise to a
very intolerant strain, so that this, the mother set of
doctrines, has been responsible for some terrible massacres in
the last couple of decades. So I understand at least from my
Indian friends, both Muslim and Hindu by background.
What I would ask for is evidence that can be definitely agreed on
between people to the largest extent possible, independent of all
of their emotional, cultural, and philosophical prejudices -- and
I require that evidence both for and against claims of the
supernatural be weighed.
I am in opposition to any method of investigation that accepts
such claims at face value based on the subjective reports of
witnesses about the events in question and then proceeds to
generate new beliefs from that point.
My approach is to be highly skeptical of claims of supernatural
phenomena but still, I don't think that forbids me from being
open in principle to the possibility that they happen.
For example: there have been books written that are filled with
reams upon reams of claims for the occurence of `paranormal'
events, all of which look to be more or less well-defined
happenings on the basis of the ordinary language descriptions
provided by those who have claimed that such things
happen. Claims are sometimes explicitly made that these events go
beyond what appears to be allowed by physical laws at least as I
think they are currently understood.
There are claims that people come back to life. There are claims
that the laying on of hands can cure paralysis in an instant.
There are claims that some people can read other people's minds,
that some other people can talk to one's dead relatives in the
world beyond, and that certain people have precognitive powers
and can foretell the future. Some people believe, even yet, in
the efficacy of astrology. Some people say that they foresee
future events, particularly tragic ones, before they
happen. There are claims that pure thought can influence the
motions of various objects. There are claims that wee ghosties
and goblins sometimes appear to visitors at certain far flung
castles in the Scottish highlands. There are claims that a
monster inhabits Loch Ness. There are claims that collective
prayer can influence the gyrations of the stock market. There
have been claims made that the Virgin Mary appears sometimes in
the sky and sometimes even in cheese sandwiches.
There's a claim that Jesus Christ died on the cross to atone for
our sins, was resurrected, ascended to heaven on the third day,
and that he sits at the right hand of the father. There's a
claim that the Archangel Gibreel dictated the words of Allah to
Muhammad (PBUH). There's a claim that the living descendants of
Muhammad still walk the earth and that one day the hidden Imam
will return. There's a claim that YHWH said we should have no
other gods before him, and that he doesn't want us to make for
ourselves idols of gold, and that one day (let it not be in my
lifetime) mashiach will come. Is mashiach the same as the hidden
Imam, and how are these to be related to Jesus Christ?
Am I to take all of these claims equally seriously?
Do you think your investigative method has any possibility of
deciding between these claims if and where they conflict?
Science doesn't rule out any of these claims a priori; but
neither does my tentative acceptance of methodological naturalism
forbid me from evaluating such claims, though if I chose to do so
(as a general rule, I don't) it means that I clearly would
proceed with some considerable skepticism. To the extent that
measurable effects of the beings in question are said to continue
in the world all of these claims are susceptible to investigation
by methodological naturalism.
I observe that such claims as I list here are all, in fact,
claims about the world that we collectively inhabit, whether we
happen to be scientists or not. Now you can go right ahead and
deny that I know for sure that ontological materialism is the
correct hypothesis and say that there is more to the world than
is dreamt of in my philosophy ... this doesn't bother me in the
slightest.
I've already admitted that my belief is tentative and I'm open to
any objective counter-arguments, and for me that is the central
important distinction between the scientific method of generating
belief and the religious. If organized religion becomes
rationalized to such a degree, then I probably won't have much
problem with it at all. For example, Steve Schaffner in this
thread tells me that all of his religious beliefs are held
tentatively. I don't understand completely what he's saying, but
I suspect that he must be open to reasonable argument on many
questions, given that he makes such a statement.
I have no question whatsoever that the mere fact that such claims
are even made by some people and then believed by others *does*
have real physical effects in what I choose to call the natural
world. So at an absolute minimum, it seems to me that the
consequences, and moreover the nature of belief are investigable
by perfectly natural means.
All people, at least as long as they have not suffered certain
forms of brain damage seem to be capable of adopting beliefs
about the world and all people do in fact so do so, whether they
are scientists or not. Sometimes, we may agree, a person's system
of beliefs can become so disturbed due to damage to the brain
that it is no longer coherent enough to allow them to function
properly in the world. Such can be said to be psychotic belief
systems. So there is a whole range of belief systems that people
can adopt, we will both accept, if you agree with me here. But
how are these belief systems to be distinguished from one another
and can they be, in fact?
Now, below is my speculation, and well out of my area of
expertise, but I offer it as an attempt to clarify what I have
been saying here.
I think that this distinction depends on what state of mind it is
that people are actually referring to when they say that they
believe something, and what beliefs actually are. Now the
standard epistemological account of belief and knowledge, which I
have previously been informed by Wilkins and have since checked
for myself too, is that belief is a propositional attitude, an
irreducible state of mind with respect to a proposition that
holds that proposition to be true, and as such, belief is to be
treated as analytic and indivisible, while knowledge is treated
as synthetic and is given a standard definition.
I rather suspect that this account may not have completely
settled the matter or captured its full complexity, and that the
final resolution of what belief consists in may depend upon
having a much better understanding of the way in which our brains
actually work than I know to be presently available.
Now one reason I think that people do adopt beliefs about the
world, as it seems to me, may be that a belief system forms a
definite basis on which future actions can be planned and taken
in the world on the part of the believer.
If that were the case, and if we cede that it is possible that
some belief systems, as I have suggested, can become so
incoherent or inconsistent that they simply do not allow for
useful functioning of the believer in the world, then we can
begin to imagine a possible meaning for belief which seems on the
surface at least to be closely related to the standard
epistemological account. Namely, a belief, any belief, no matter
how it is arrived at is an internal representation of a state of
the world which can be accessed and can lead to physical action
in the world, and when I say state of the world, I mean state of
everything that matters to human beings survival in the world, so
that belief includes of necessity also beliefs about the belief
systems of other human beings.
One thing that the formalisation of the scientific method which
has occurred with the development of writing has done, I think,
is to provide a formalized way of testing certain beliefs for
justification, and of seeing just how accurate the beliefs
actually are as representations of the world. It's true that one
does not have any a priori justification for the particular
formalisation of the process that's used in the scientific
method, to the extent that it has even been completely
formalized. The justification can be only a posteriori.
But I would claim that such justification does exist.
Now part of the scientific process is that rational discourse and
questioning and examination of potential scientific beliefs must
be tolerated at all points and should be encouraged and certainly
demanded of practitioners.
I do not think that this is *always* the case in religious
systems of thought and this seems to me to be a worrying
issue. Because religion _may_ in some cases, and to some extent,
either greater or lesser, cut itself loose completely from the
world and either hold some propositions to be absolutely true, or
alternatively, explicitly include some completely paradoxical
propositions as basic articles in the belief system. When that is
done, I suspect that a severe potential instability is created,
assuming that logical consistency is required. These central
paradoxical beliefs may serve as attractors for the thought
process of the believer, and the endless attempts to resolve the
paradoxes can lead to the construction of quite arbitrary new
beliefs.
In addition, I don't think that anyone, scientist or no, lives by
reason alone. But I suspect that there is something in us which
drives us to create our belief systems by some sort of a logical
process, and I wamt to suggest without being coercive that it
might be much better if we do not, any of us exclude reason and
rational discourse totally from our lives or choose to construct
our beliefs in a way that is inconsistent with a rational
approach and is made to be inaccessible to reason.
So I think that we should not allow any set of beliefs to exclude
itself from examination by fiat.
> If you mean that no case investigated by
> science, with its methodological naturalism, so what? When a means of
> investigation that assumes that any result will be naturalistic discovers,
> *when* it works, only naturalistic causes, is hardly a revealing result.
> The tricky part would be finding out what percentage of *all* phenomena in
> the universe have naturalistic explanations and how we could tell when any
> individual phenomenon breaks the rule.
>
Can you please describe for me a method of investigation of the
supernatural that is not methodological naturalism and give a
specific example of the supernatural that you think has been
objectively established by means of it?
I will tell you my working hypothesis. There are no such
examples of supernatural phenomena that can be established to
exist. But I'm open to persuasion.
Until I'm persuaded, I consider this argument to be a
strawman. You can certainly say that science assumes: (insert big
fancy words of your choice) and I can certainly say that science
assumes something else.
But, basically, I think that science assumes nothing more than
any other human beings assume in living their daily lives. Most
people, most of the time, behave as if ontological nsturalism is
correct, and they do not depend on supernatural events to feed
them, for example, or to prevent them from falling off of
mountains if they happen to be mountaineers. If they walk off the
top of the Brooklyn Bridge, or leap from the burning world trade
center, then they probably expect to die, even if they do believe
at that moment that they will live forever in some putative
paradise or hell, or be reincarnated or whatever ...
Religious people sometimes claim that prayer can work wonders and
produce miraculous cures for otherwise incurable diseases. These
cures are said to violate physical law and mainstream medical
understanding.
If this is true it makes a big difference to how medicine should
be practiced, wouldn't you say?
How would you suggest that we investigate such claims?
Some religious people claim that God will send you to hell where
you will burn forever if you are a man and you have sex with
another man.
How would you suggest that we evaluate such `witnessing' about
God's will by means of your method?
Do you think that your new method of investigation will turn out
to be consistent with science?
> >In such a
> >situation, ontological naturalism is the minimal position
> >that can be adopted consistent with the objective evidence:
>
> How do you define "objective evidence"? The scientific method need not be
> coextensive with objectivity. My personal observation of a unique event
> (say, for drama's sake, a murder) cannot be reproduced by others after the
> fact, but is it (though maybe not my interpretation of the observation)
> still as much objective evidence as my observation of what the reading on
> an oscilloscope is.
>
Fleshing out your drama a bit: What if it happens to be the case
that, in addition, you are known to be a paranoid schizophrenic
who expresses the belief that President Bush has told the NSA to
send z-rays into your brain to find out what it is that you are
thinking? What if the murdered victim was your room mate in an
insane asylum, and himself a paranoid schizophrenic? What if
your fingerprints were found on a dinner knife sticking out of
his chest, and your account of the murder is that five NSA men
came into the room and held you down while they stabbed your
roomate to death and that it was all done because you had
discovered the z-rays and revealed the truth? Say, for the sake
of argument that there actually were some men from the NSA at the
hospital at the time of the murder.
Is your subjective, and I do demand on the use of the word
subjective in all cases of personal testimony, account of the
murder to be given the same weight as it would be were the
surrounding facts otherwise?
I should think that possibly, some additional witness or some
other evidence might be of help to the prosecutor in this case,
at least if he has decided to prosecute a member of the NSA for
the crime.
What would a jury or a judge make of it all? I have no idea.
But science, I think, demands that some of the same factors need
to be corrected for in evaluating subjective reports of
experimenters.
How is that done?
First, people tend to work in groups when they do experiments for
some of the reasons that you point out. It's hoped that this
reduces the probability that oscilloscopes have simply been
misread, or that one or more of the experimenters is a psychotic
or is bending the truth to further his own personal interests in
one way or another. Nevertheless these are not unknown
occurrences. These days, some of the problem of reading dials or
oscilloscopes is eliminated at least in physics, by the use of
high speed computers. Hard records can often be kept of nearly
all of the raw data that comes out of detectors in high energy
physics, and these can be examined and re-examined later at will
(indeed, they *must* be examined later and by automated means in
general, since the amount of data generated by modern particle
detectors is so absolutely tremendous that it is a real technical
challenge just to handle and store it all in an adequate
fashion). So in most cases in high energy physics analysis is
actually done automatically, by means of computer programs, which
tends to remove the particular kind of subjective bias that you
have suggested is a possibility, though it is shifted into the
writing and error-checking of the computer programs, which is
certainly a process subject to error and bias.
If experimenters don't work in groups, then it's generally always
required that the experiment be well described enough to be
repeatable by someone else, and for major discoveries at least in
physics, experiments are repeated and there is a great deal of
duplication of effort built into the process of a good
experiment. We are actually talking about small to medium scale
industrial engineering efforts, really, too, when we talk about
large scale physics experiments. So one can complain and wonder
whether some collective subjectivity is entering into the whole
process at some point. On the whole I am of the feeling that the
process works in general very well, to the extent that, as I have
repeatedly emphasized it is demanded of scientists, that they in
every way possible question everything and every assumption that
goes into the production of experimental results.
It should be noted that not a single living human being has ever
experienced the objective world in the first place. We all
construct our subjective experience of the world by means of the
use of all of our senses and our brains.
This is why the results of quantum mechanics were so very
shocking to so many physicists when the phenomena were first
encountered, though I think that they may not have been quite so
shocking to the later generations ... the results suggested that
the world operates on very small scales _objectively_ (that is,
as established by the rules of investigation of theoretical and
experimental physics) in a way that is quite inconsistent with
the sense pictures we are all accustomed to be able to construct
of the world. No one has managed to form any stable, accurate
and satisfactory mental picture of what goes on at subatomic
scales.
So the objective physical world is always a propositional
construct as it seems to me. It is in effect a story written in
a combination of ordinary language plus mathematics, on the basis
of which story tentative beliefs can be formed, and there are
definite rules used in making up that story as well as in making
changes in it.
So testimony about personal experience is always subjective in a
scientific sense. What is called objective has to be argued over,
and it has to be shown to be arrived at by some definite and
agreed upon procedures.
Are the procedures of science perfect? Undoubtedly not.
Nevertheless I hold that science may have something to say
_objectively_ about just how we construct our subjective
experiences, and I see no fundamental limitation for the
scientific method in this area. Neuroscientists are not at the
point of being able to elucidate the processes that constitute
conscious experience with any great confidence yet as far as I
can tell, but there have been some exceedingly interesting
findings which suggest that the naive subjective pictures that
most of us have of how our minds work are very deeply wrong in
some important respects. I imagine that it very well may happen
in the future that more can be said and said more
definitely. When that happens, perhaps people will begin to have
a better understanding of what belief is and what the role of
religious belief is in human life. I am neutral on that role. I
can see that there may well be positive effects of belief as well
as negative.
But I think we live in a time where there a great many very
dangerous religious ideas circulating, and I do not wish
scientific critics of religious thinking to be silenced by means
of tactics that look to me to be no more than schoolyard
bullying, viz. the free-floating rationale that Cardinal Dulles
expresses and that some other religious people in the USA seem to
do as well. I think that we desperately need to have an open
dialog, and that this will include looking carefully at the
arguments of scientists who are very critical of religion in
general and who are vocal about it, and if it is found that they
have good points to make then these should be taken account of.
Larry Moran is correct in his observation that over 90% of
members of the Amercian National Academy of Sciences do not
believe in god(s). This means that a large and in my view, by
some measure at least, important contingent of scientists will be
completely neutralized in a discussion on what looks to me to be
a very critical issue in the USA, namely, which way are we going
with religion?
We need a hell of a lot less guests on Bill Moyers talking about
how the Bible is to be made relevant for modern life, and how God
gives them the inspiration for their music and their poetry, and
we need a lot more guests like Salman Rushdie, talking about his
experiences of religion from the point of view of a hard line
atheist who was under a sentence of death for his publically
expressed views about Islam.
We need people to start questioning as objectively as possible,
what on earth it is that people actually mean when they say
something like: `I believe in God.'
No doubt it's likely, though I think it might depend on precisely
what is said about the nature of _God_, and the precise
experiment in question.
For example, suppose that tomorrow some clinical trials emerge
proving that intercessionary prayer to Christ (by devout
Christians) could not cure some types of disseminated late stage
cancer in some statistically significant percentage of cases,
while prayer to Allah (by devout Muslims) could.
Would this result say something objective to you about the nature
of God?
It sure would to me, and it would present a very major problem
for science as I understand it.
Would the study really be laughed to scorn, do you think?
I know that we already have had both a hoax and a negative result
in published studies on this question. But were those really the
only possible outcomes?
Here's my objection to what you seem to be arguing, given what
the Cardinal claims: if the nature of _God_ is said in the first
place to be humanly unknowable, to be ultimately indescribable in
human language in fact, and the contents of such fragments as we
can learn are said to be undisprovable, then what the Cardinal
has done is in effect to set up a great big blank space into
which he can write whatever he wishes to write. A lot of what he
actually wishes to write there is his own and other people's
interpretation of some stories from a very old book.
And it seems to me that then, it can never be objectively known
or agreed what is actually in that space by the very construction
of the initial premise that is used.
Unless of course this supposedly objective other method of
investigation that you've proposed is shown to really exist.
The best that can possibly be done is to say that there are
x-number of witnesses who testify to so and so, and that lots of
people accept the authority of those witnesses, and that we all
(who see the grounds of credibility) believe what they say
because we accept their authority about their subjective
experience.
But we're faced with a whole lot of people who I'm sure do not
agree with Cardinal Dulles interpretations, and with some who may
I suppose become willing to kill for their interpretations.
> So? Is anyone disputing that science and theology use
> different methodologies?
>
I'm disputing that the kind of theology Cardinal Dulles has
outlined is using *any* objective methodology and I contend that
it is in fact constructed for one precise purpose: to insulate
all of its conclusions from the world to the maximum extent
possible and to render them immune to almost all critical
analysis, but especially to scientific analysis, by a two pronged
attack, mystification combined with a poison pill in the form of
a barely hidden negative statement about those who may be
inclined to criticize.
It is said to be *untrusting* to question the authority of the
witness.
In addition, I presume that some people at least, are going to
form their beliefs based on what the Cardinal and his witnesses
feel inclined to say to them, as well as what they think about
what is said, of course, and their beliefs will have real effects
in the world, effects that may well impact me and people close to
me.
I would like to hear what methodology is it that you claim this
theology is using that can be said to be objective in the sense
that I've tried to define?
> >
> >But in religious thinking it seems that this kind of
> >`intellectual' argument is perfectly acceptable at
> >least among some who are presumably experts
> >on theology.
> >
> >This is not the kind of argument that I aspire to be
> >able to make, personally.
> >
> >I personally can't begin to see how anyone could\
> >consider such an approach to learning about the
> >world as is expressed above to be consistent with a
> >scientific approach to knowing about the world, or how any
> >one could deny that a serious conflict exists, when there
> >are religious people who hold such views.
>
> Why does inconsistency equal conflict? If I chose not to use an ax to
> perform brain surgery, does that mean that medicine is somehow in conflict
> with lumberjacking?
It seems to me that you are mincing words. There are a lot of
scientists, I think, including myself who may consider that what
I've said about Cardinal Dulles idea constitutes a basic
conflict. Let's see if some of them are inclined to disagree
strongly with me.
The question that seems to me to matter is in fact the inverse of
the one you ask: suppose that someone *does* choose to perform
brain surgery with an ax because he/she *believes* on the basis
of information about the infinite mystery at the core of
lumberjacking, which has been gained through `witnessing' that
Paul Bunyan himself said that this is the best way of doing brain
surgery. What if a surgeon says, you can't question me because
I've witnessed this to be the case, and you would be a bad person
if you didn't accept what I say?
What if prayer together with axes start being regularly used in
open heart surgery, instead of scalpels and anesthesia?
You may have read some of the accounts of what surgery was like,
in the last century before there was anesthesia. I don't want us
returning to that state, and to the extent possible, I want
objective methods to be used by medical practitioners in deciding
on modalities of treatment.
In the USA a criminal prosecution of the surgeon will ensue at
the present day, I suspect.
Now I know that this may seem to be a ridiculous
exaggeration. But I seem to recall that a couple of decades ago
the Chinese had a pilot program which was testing whether
acupuncture could serve as adequate anesthesia in certain kinds
of major surgery: the religious belief in question being one that
had to do with certain `energy' flows that were said to occur in
the human body in traditional Chinese medicine. I think the
program was terminated because too many patients were dying from
the shock of the pain.
Personally I consider that there is a conflict between this kind
of reasoning and scientific reasoning, since it seems to me that
once you give up _all_ mooring to the world, and _all_
objectivity in your system of generating beliefs, and in addition
you attempt to pre-emptively disable the critical faculties of
all those who accept the beliefs in question by saying that it is
`untrusting' and `withholding respect' for the witness to refuse
to accept the method, then you have created a potentially very
dangerous situation. I I suspect that in this case many types of
noxious beliefs can and will be generated that may have real and
I would say, on occasion, extremely negative consequences in the
world.
For example, many devout Muslims appear to have a religiously
motivated belief that women's bodies should be more or less
completely covered up when they appear in public. They think that
Allah wishes it to be so, and that it is sinful for them to be
seen in public uncovered. As a result of the intensity of this
belief it appears that the religious police in Saudi Arabia
actually prevented a number of young women students who were in
their school, and so, not wearing the abaya, from leaving the
school when it caught on fire. In this way a number of the girls
were burned to death. Some men who tried to rush through the line
of religious police into the fire and help the girls get out of
the building were actually beaten up and prevented from coming to
their aid.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm
This is a case where a system of beliefs has influenced action I
happen to think, and I think that a bit of scientific and
rational criticism is definitely in order on this question of
whether God really cares deeply about whether men can see certain
parts of women's bodies in public or not.
And in case it may seem that I am just trashing Islam, I will say
right now that some adherents of the particular religion from
which I have drawn the statements that seem to me to be in
conflict with science have their share of beliefs about what they
say `God' wants that I consider to be equally subjective, noxious
and utterly divorced from considerations of the real world.
> If someone uses methods other than science to explore
> the metaphysical or spiritual aspects of life (whatever they may be) does
> that mean they are necessarily denying the efficacy of science within its
> sphere?
I'm not convinced that there is a metaphysical `sphere' (the
question of the existence or non-existence of a priori synthetic
truths not having been established or proven impossible by modern
epistemology -- Wilkins: please correct and elaborate if you are
reading, feel the inclination and find it necessary!)
I think that all spiritual experience is material in nature. Can
you convince me that I'm wrong?
But the answer is of course no, I don't necessarily think that
anyone who believes in religious belief is necessarily denying
the efficacy of science or even excluding religion.
Do you really imagine that this is what Cardinal Dulles is doing?
In any case, my argument is two fold: (1) There exists a conflict
between some forms of religious belief and science. (2)
Scientific critics and studiers of religious belief should not be
silenced by a kind of general opprobrium and unqualified respect
that is too often given to religious beliefs in general.
> Aren't you making the unstated assumption that the entirety of
> "the world" is capable of being understood through the use of science?
No. I remain open to persuasion that there *is* something else.
I insist on an open argument, that's all.
> If
> so, what is in conflict is your *philosophy* and religion, not science and
> religion.
>
> >
> >Now I'm *not* saying that this is the only religious view
> >possible, and I'm not saying that any religious scientists
> >who have spoken in this thread hold any such view, nor
> >am I saying that this is the only view possible for a religious
> >scientist.
> >
> >But to pretend that there is clearly no conflict simply
> >beggars the imagination as far as I'm concerned. The
> >conflict between religion and science appears to have
> >existed ever since writing was invented. Both organized
> >religion and science seem to have been with us almost
> >since the beginning of recorded history (Astronomy
> >at least appears to have had very deep roots and
> >to have arisen together with agriculture, and it's with
> >the first civilizations that we find the rise of organized
> >religions with written scriptures.)
> >
> >This is not a conflict that is easily dismissed by a little
> >bit of linguistic legerdemain, I'm afraid.
>
> I'm sorry, but how is calling a lack of consistency between approaches to
> (arguably) wildly different subject matters "a conflict" anything but
> linguistic legerdemain?
I think it is simply not known in the first place that the
subject matters are so wildly different as you suggest, but it's
not really a question of the subject matters in any case. It's a
quetion of the methods. The religious method of knowing about
god(s) as I see it expressed by Cardinal Dulles these days, and
as it appears to have been described in the scriptures themselves
(revelations from prophets, or angels, theophanies, and etc.) I
consider to be both inconsistent and in fundamental conflict.with
the scientific method.
I will await with eagerness your exposition of an alternate
method by which at least one proposed supernatural objects can be
objectively investigated and shown to exist.
Let me try to understand your point here: I made what seems to me
to be a fairly natural interpretation of the meaning of Cardinal
Dulles' statements which are after all framed in ordinary human
language.
My interpretation of what he says could be right, and it could be
wrong. You don't actually express any opinion here on which is
the case, but you do suggest that I'm being unscientific, and
thus inconsistent, in not resorting to scientific evidence to
support my interpretation but nevertheless I do interpret what he
says.
It seems to me that in your company I'd be better off just
avoiding any mention of my opinion that Dulles entire outline of
this putative process of investigation of religious matters is
unscientific by its very construction and that he appears to use
the tactic of imputing negative moral qualities to his potential
opponents, which is in fact a very well known argumentative
procedure.
Let me ask you a question in return: Do you deny or agree that
Dulles is making some moral point in what he says here about not
accepting the authority of witnesses being tantamount to
*withholding our confidence -- as well as personal respect and
trust -- from the witness*?
Or, do you think that there may be even a small chance, let's say
even a lot lot smaller than a 50% chance, that some other people
might read what Dulles says in the same way that I do?
If I'm right and that is what he is doing, then why on earth
should I as a scientist accept, indeed, why should anyone at all
accept Cardinal Dulles moral authority on the matter?
Did I ever say that every opinion I have is a scientific one?
Did I ever suggest that I believe I am completely rational in all
things, or that I always strive to be rational?
In the first place, I am clearly not an expert in the majority of
fields that I am discussing here.
But aren't you the one who is trying to claim that religion is
completely consistent with science?
So what exactly is your problem here: how is it that you think
that I can have an internal conflict?
I can be dead wrong, yes.
But do you think that my one *tentatively* expressed
philosophical position here: ontological naturalism, is somehow
inconsistent with doing science and/or disprovable?
> >
> >If you are such a person then you just aren't a team player.
> >
> >Science on the other hand *demands* such questioning and
> >probing of its practitioners, especially in the case where
> >it is the fallible testimony of a human witness which is at
> >question, never mind if that testimony is said to be about
> >putative matters which are said to be ultimately humanly
> >unknowable.
> >
> >The *legal* process demands questioning and probing of the
> >always admittedly fallible testimony of eyewitnesses in
> >court.
>
> <cough> No, it doesn't. The legal process will quite happily trade
> certainty of having *a* result within reasonable time limits for certainty
> of the *truth* of the result. But I'm not sure how relevant that is
> anyway.
>
I take your point, and thanks for the correction: demand is the
wrong word. There are strict practical limits on the exploration
of truth in a criminal trial. But consider the hypothetical trial
above of the NSA man. Some cross-examination of the witness
would have to be allowed for the defence, wouldn't it, and
probably some psychiatric testimony as well?
The relevance is simply this: there are many fields of human
endeavour where reality testing and examination of some form has
come to be an accepted custom when it comes to evaluating the
ralative truth or falsehood of subjective testimony.
People, it seems, even have fairly specific neural mechanisms fro
evaluating whether someone is being truthful or not. If damaged,
the ability can be lost.
> >
> >I suggest that questioning and probing are not merely a
> >`part of the epistemology' of science, as commonly
> >understood.'
> >
> >They are in fact the sina qua non of a scientific approach
> >to knowing about the world in the first place.
>
> But here we are back to the question if the scientific approach is the only
> reasonable approach *and* somehow exclusive. I
No, I don't think so. What I said is that if you prevent
questioning and probing I think that you have disabled the
scientific method beyond repair.
I said nothing about exclusivity here.
> If you hold the scientific
> approach, can you hold no other? Can you also hold that, say, art and
> literature are valid ways of "knowing" the world?
>
I think that it depends what you mean by `knowing,' and `world.'
I don't admit the ontological split in the world that you seem to
claim exists. First of all I think that art and literature are
both very broad categories. I think in part and at times they can
both be ways of discussing the subjective world of human
experience, and of recording for posterity what subjective
experience was like for the authors. These two means are the most
direct ways in fact in which I think previous societies speak to
the present time about what the subjective experience of the
authors and artists was like.
Both art and literature sometimes represent explicit efforts on
the part of the author to try to express subjective truths, and
feelings about the world of human collective and individual
experience. On the other hand literature can also serve the
purpose of escapism, pornography, moralizing, preaching,
propagandizing and so on, and so can art.
When literature becomes explicitly and consciously historical,
and the authors self-consciously appear to strive for some kind
of objectivity in the way that they write about experience (say
at least as to places and dates), then I think that literature
takes on yet another form: history of course.
I think that some historians who practise as academics today do
indeed strive to achieve some level of objectivity, and when
history is cross-pollinated with archaeology, anthropology,
biology, and possibly other disciplines that can contribute new
ways of testing the ideas expressed, then something pretty close
to a scientific approach to knowing the world objectively is at
least being attempted in a literary form.
But are Harry Potter novels or Tolkien's Ring series really
attempts at knowing the world or describing how the world is
objectively? I think there is a real problem in saying that.
At other times and in other contexts art has served and does
serve very pragmatic functions, and at still other times, and I
would say that always when it is at it's best, it depends on
stimulating our visual systems in ways that we find enjoyable.
In otherwords I think that it also provides a form of play for
those who enjoy it.
Similarly art and literature can also serve the purpose of
escapism, pornography, moralizing, preaching, propagandizing and
simply the commercial purpose of making money for its authors and
the publishers.
There is a pure joy in reading too, which involves the use of the
visual system as well as the auditory and language processing
areas of the brain, and to some extent for me the sense of touch
as well.
Both may well say something valid about the `world' of subjective
experience, and I certainly am inclined to think that they do,
based on the way that they sometimes seem to produce echoes in my
own subjective experience. They sometimes seem to tell about the
ways in which people are different and at the same time
alike. But how much of that is my perception and how much what
the author meant, I can't really tell you for sure.
But if you think it would be AOK for, oh, I don't know, John
Updike or Jackson Pollack to say to us all: the world expressed
in literature and the world expressed in art together constitute
a `sphere' of knowledge which is wholly separated from objective
reality and unconstrained in any way by it, and that whatever is
said there is undisprovable in principle by any objective means,
and that we as a society should now proceed to form all of our
beliefs based on what Pollack says we see or that we should see
in Pollack (which I don't think he ever did try to do, BTW), or
based upon what Updike writes, and that science may not even
analyze art and literature because they are fundamentally
supernatural then I'm going to respond you that those are
admitted writers and makers of *fiction*, and that artists are
made of flesh and work in a medium and writers, similarly do. So
science is *not* excluded from treading in and around their
domains, which I think can be consistently said to be one aspect
of human behaviour, and as such a proper subject of analysis for
many particular scientific disciplines.
[snip]
Thanks for the effort that you've put into this response, I
appreciate it and you've forced me to think very hard.
Now I owe a response to wade and Steve Schaffner as well here,
but time in the objective world is very limited for me now, and
I'm going to merely say that I appreciate both of their responses
as well.
David
Mark Isaak
> [snip prelude, which I admit is confusing.]
>
> Please back up your claim. Tell me what is factually wrong. The best way
> to do this is to explain your factually correct version of religion. Can
> you do that?
I can try, but I doubt I can succeed.
Factually correct religion is simply religion with any factually incorrect
parts removed.
As I noted in another post, religion is not a way of describing the world;
it is more a way of relating to the world. Most people find it hard to
relate to things they cannot understand (I think it is instinctual to fear
the unknown), so religion in the pre-scientific era included a lot of
description in mythical terms. We now know that those descriptions are
wrong, and we can drop them and replace them with correct descriptions.
Except that is easier said than done. First, those descriptions are
intimately tied with other moral and spiritual teachings; it would be
impossible to remove them entirely without discarding worthwhile parts,
too. It's easier to leave them there with a disclaimer not to take them
literally.
Second, science, in giving more correct understanding of things, does not
solve the problem of relating to the unknown. In fact, science increases
the scope of our ignorance, or at least our awareness of it. We still
need some way to cope with the unknown. Most scientists do this by
viewing the unknown with wonder, but not everybody has learned this
approach, so many still cling to all-explaining fictions. A factually
correct religion is one which accepts the unknown without the need for
such fictions. Examples are Taoism and such Christianity as has a
non-naive understanding of faith.
Third, not everything we understand looks nice. A factually correct
religion is one which gives realistic views of death, suffering, and
unfairness. I suspect all major religions have some of this, since
theologians and philosophers have considered such issues for a long time.
The followers still shy away from what the best thinkers in their religion
have said, since they would rather be told all is well, but I think the
realistic approach exists for anyone willing to look for it.
Finally, it is important to remember that a factually correct religion is
not entirely factual. It includes feelings, moral values, and other
intangible views. That is the part I cannot describe, and it is arguably
the most important part. Folks like Gould argue that the part of religion
outside of factual claims should be the entirety of religion. While I
think it is possible to have a religion without any factual claims
(correct or not), I don't think many such religions exist in practice, nor
that they need to. There is more than one religion which teaches, "Get
real." Reality is a decent basis for religion.
catshark
> catshark wrote:
> > On 7 Jul 2006 21:21:16 -0700, "David Ewan Kahana" <d...@bnl.gov> wrote:
> >
> > >wade wrote:
> > >> Larry Moran wrote:
> > >> > On 6 Jul 2006 19:27:14 -0700, wade <wade....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > >
Okay, let me set out my objections/qualms/doubts about the whole "science
and religion are in conflict" argument in general:
Science is a "tool" of great worth but it has, however, certain
limitations:
- It cannot ever demonstrate with certainty that a naturalistic
"explanation" is, in fact, the "true" cause of a phenomenon -- the best it
can show is that, in all *observed* instances, the naturalistic "cause"
occurs in association with the phenomenon. A *sufficient* explanation is
not necessarily a *true* explanation.
- As Hume showed, the induction from that regularity to a law controlling
all future events cannot be logically certain. Nor can the method of
science rule out any single phenomenon having a non-natural cause, no
matter how often we observe similar events under seemingly natural cause
and effect (a good example is Asa Gray's suggestion that the timing and
exact nature of "variation" -- i.e. mutations -- could be "guided" to
present selection with the just the right "material" at just the right time
to have a particular result).
- For the above reasons (and perhaps more) science *itself* cannot answer
the question of how *much* of the material universe it can explain or
whether or not there is anything other than the material universe that
*needs* explaining. Those are philosophical issues.
For practical purposes, we can ignore these limitations when dealing with
technically "tractable" problems in the material universe because knowing
of a regularity that occurs all or nearly all the time is "good enough" for
our purposes. But the *choice* to ignore those limitations is, itself, a
*philosophical* one. There is no known way to scientifically decide those
issues and, therefore, no way to know if science is even capable of
contradicting religious tenets (at least those that do not posit a
*particular* outcome in the material universe).
Since science cannot determine if it actually conflicts with theology, it
follows that it cannot contradict it.
I think you are attempting to *model* your philosophy on science, but it
remains, as it must, *philosophy*. I think you have, on a number of
occasions, conflated your philosophy with science, going back and forth
between them as best suited your argument. I have no argument whatsoever
to make against your philosophy. Indeed, it is likely that I am as
irreligious as you and probably only slightly more theological (allowing as
I do for the possibility of something like Spinoza's god). But I think it
is your *philosophy* that is in conflict with religion, not science. And I
would assert that hijacking the name of "science" for your philosophy is
just as incorrect as the creationists' hijacking it as a name for their
theology.
I can only quibble over whether there are any alternative methods to test
religious claims or even whether they *can* be tested in the sense you
mean, since I myself do not claim any experience with such methods.
Otherwise intelligent and sometimes even very wise people tell me that they
feel sure that God exists and has certain attributes. Usually their
"method" involves some variation on "personal experience". I am not
concerned about which "method" is best or truer. I am concerned only with
the claim that *science* disputes religious claims.
Of course, claims made about what the material universe is or how it works
-- the age of the Earth, for example -- can be tested by science but
proving that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old does not go to the issue of
whether God exists. To a certain extent, there is a possible distinction
between "religion" and "theology" here. And it can certainly said the
science conflicts with certain religious beliefs but the statement, without
qualification, that "science and religion are in conflict" is wrong.
> > >As it seems to me, the transition from methodological
> > >naturalism to tentative ontological naturalism requires no
> > >special intuition or additional premises beyond the
> > >scientific method. It requires only the observation that
> > >methodological naturalism works and continues to work. This,
> > >in and of itself, seems to be a stunning fact, if indeed
> > >what so many religious people seem to have been telling us
> > >about the world for as long as humans have been able to
> > >write -- that it was made by a god(s) who continue(s) to
> > >interact with it -- turns out to be the case.
> > >
> > >In fact, methodological naturalism does work: no cases exist
> > >demonstrating that anything supernatural exists.
> >
> > By what method of investigation?
>
> What method of investigation do you propose besides the
> scientific method, and what example of a supernatural event do
> you have it in mind to investigate?
>
> I'm going to require an example here of what you have in mind, I
> think, rather than just a rhetorical question, if in fact you
> want to go further than just to point out what you seem to think
> are some inconsistencies in my position.
Let's say the methodology is Mother Theresa's personal experience of the
divine. Do you think science can properly test that and, if not, how is
science in *conflict* with such a claim?
> Nevertheless, generally: I have in mind any method of
> investigation that is rigourous enough that it goes so far as to
> take an unbiased look at such objective evidence as exists for
> and against the supposed phenomenon and by objective I mean
> roughly evidence that it can be agreed upon by people who have
> beliefs that make them, in general, amenable to rational
> discourse, after an open debate about rules for accepting
> evidence, irrespective of emotional, religious, cultural and no
> doubt other forms of prejudice, to be sufficiently convincing on
> which to base belief.
Whew! That's some definition of "objective"! I strongly suspect, once you
got down to the nitty gritty, your idea of "objective" would wind up being
methodological naturalism or close enough.
Now why does the method of investigation have to be "objective" in any
case? Remember here you were making the *meta-claim* that methodological
naturalism is demonstrably valid because "no *cases* exist demonstrating
that anything supernatural exists". If you restrict the evidence you will
accept to that which does not admit the possibility of cases of the
supernatural, you haven't really done anything but beg the question.
And simply because you demand "objectivity" when it comes to these
philosophical/theological questions does not make your philosophy into
science. Science acknowledges that it can't answer such ultimate questions
as "Does God exist?" and try as you like, you can't make it do more that it
capable of without making it into something else.
To quibble about your definition of "objective" as well, do you think of
yourself as objective, within those limits you yourself consider (with or
without negotiation with others)? Is what you experience (including what
you do in your work when all those other people aren't hanging around to
check immediately) pieces of data that you and, potentially, other people
should consider? Isn't all the data you intend to contribute to this
process based on your personal experience?
In short, isn't your personal experience a piece of objective data to you?
>
> For example the mere observation of the fact that something is
> written in some old book describing how this or that miracle
> supposedly happened, coupled with an assertion that this is the
> undisprovable truth, and a subjective statement from some witness
> or other, or a whole lot of witnesses that they feel, or believe
> it to be true in their own lives is not at all to my mind a
> satisfactory basis for any investigative method, and it certainly
> doesn't establish the existence of the beings that are said to
> have caused the miracles to happen. There are just too many old
> books of the genre in question. I think that there is very
> unlikely ever to be any cross-cultural agreement without
> abandoning a very reat deal of what is said in all of the
> books. I wonder what would be left at the end.
What? There was no religion before the books?
> Now does this mean
> that I think belief has no function in human life? Far from it. I
> am open to all possibilities, but I want there to be some real
> dialog on the question, because I am far from convinced that all
> forms of religious belief are benign or open to reason.
Just about the same can be said for all activities that humans engage in,
including science.
[snip evidence for people being bastards even while they profess a
religion, a point I don't dispute]
> What I would ask for is evidence that can be definitely agreed on
> between people to the largest extent possible, independent of all
> of their emotional, cultural, and philosophical prejudices -- and
> I require that evidence both for and against claims of the
> supernatural be weighed.
Science rightly does not look for evidence for or against the supernatural,
as science's tools cannot test the proposition. Thus this demand is a
philosophical one. If this is part of your supposed conflict between
science and religion, it is one of the areas where you are conflating your
philosophy with science.
>
> I am in opposition to any method of investigation that accepts
> such claims at face value based on the subjective reports of
> witnesses about the events in question and then proceeds to
> generate new beliefs from that point.
Yes, *you* are in opposition. Science would not make the attempt, since
the subject matter, the supernatural, is not within its purview.
Well, I don't know about you but I've seen pictures of the grilled cheese
sandwich. ;-)
>
> Do you think your investigative method has any possibility of
> deciding between these claims if and where they conflict?
Do you think science can even decide whether or not the image on the
grilled cheese sandwich was miraculous? If so, *how*? (Your turn to be
specific.)
Personal experience of the divine presumably will tell the person just as
reliably as science in this case.
>
> Science doesn't rule out any of these claims a priori; but
> neither does my tentative acceptance of methodological naturalism
> forbid me from evaluating such claims, though if I chose to do so
> (as a general rule, I don't) it means that I clearly would
> proceed with some considerable skepticism. To the extent that
> measurable effects of the beings in question are said to continue
> in the world all of these claims are susceptible to investigation
> by methodological naturalism.
>
> I observe that such claims as I list here are all, in fact,
> claims about the world that we collectively inhabit, whether we
> happen to be scientists or not. Now you can go right ahead and
> deny that I know for sure that ontological materialism is the
> correct hypothesis and say that there is more to the world than
> is dreamt of in my philosophy ... this doesn't bother me in the
> slightest.
>
> I've already admitted that my belief is tentative and I'm open to
> any objective counter-arguments,
[note philosophical decision to only accept "objective" evidence]
> and for me that is the central
> important distinction between the scientific method of generating
> belief and the religious. If organized religion becomes
> rationalized to such a degree, then I probably won't have much
> problem with it at all. For example, Steve Schaffner in this
> thread tells me that all of his religious beliefs are held
> tentatively. I don't understand completely what he's saying, but
> I suspect that he must be open to reasonable argument on many
> questions, given that he makes such a statement.
>
> I have no question whatsoever that the mere fact that such claims
> are even made by some people and then believed by others *does*
> have real physical effects in what I choose to call the natural
> world. So at an absolute minimum, it seems to me that the
> consequences, and moreover the nature of belief are investigable
> by perfectly natural means.
Unless you have evidence that *all* such claims have such effects and that
there is no other cause, that does not logically follow. It falls prey to
Hume's disproof of logical certainty of induction. No matter how many
cases you can show have sufficient naturalistic explanation, you cannot
prove there is a non-naturalistic cause. And since those types of causes
are outside the admitted purview of science in the first place, your
assertion is a philosophical one.
[snip acceptable philosophy]
> One thing that the formalisation of the scientific method which
> has occurred with the development of writing has done, I think,
> is to provide a formalized way of testing certain beliefs for
> justification, and of seeing just how accurate the beliefs
> actually are as representations of the world. It's true that one
> does not have any a priori justification for the particular
> formalisation of the process that's used in the scientific
> method, to the extent that it has even been completely
> formalized. The justification can be only a posteriori.
>
> But I would claim that such justification does exist.
A perfectly acceptable philosophical position but not a scientific one.
>
> Now part of the scientific process is that rational discourse and
> questioning and examination of potential scientific beliefs must
> be tolerated at all points and should be encouraged and certainly
> demanded of practitioners.
Huh? So "scientific creationism" must be tolerated and encouraged in
science?
>
> I do not think that this is *always* the case in religious
> systems of thought and this seems to me to be a worrying
> issue. Because religion _may_ in some cases, and to some extent,
> either greater or lesser, cut itself loose completely from the
> world and either hold some propositions to be absolutely true, or
> alternatively, explicitly include some completely paradoxical
> propositions as basic articles in the belief system. When that is
> done, I suspect that a severe potential instability is created,
> assuming that logical consistency is required. These central
> paradoxical beliefs may serve as attractors for the thought
> process of the believer, and the endless attempts to resolve the
> paradoxes can lead to the construction of quite arbitrary new
> beliefs.
>
> In addition, I don't think that anyone, scientist or no, lives by
> reason alone. But I suspect that there is something in us which
> drives us to create our belief systems by some sort of a logical
> process, and I wamt to suggest without being coercive that it
> might be much better if we do not, any of us exclude reason and
> rational discourse totally from our lives or choose to construct
> our beliefs in a way that is inconsistent with a rational
> approach and is made to be inaccessible to reason.
You are free to do so and, as far as I'm concerned, encouraged to spread
you philosophy as much as you can. Please just don't call it "science" and
pretend it is science that is in conflict with religion, instead of your
philosophy.
>
> So I think that we should not allow any set of beliefs to exclude
> itself from examination by fiat.
[Insert notation that this is fine philosophy.]
>
>
>
> > If you mean that no case investigated by
> > science, with its methodological naturalism, so what? When a means of
> > investigation that assumes that any result will be naturalistic discovers,
> > *when* it works, only naturalistic causes, is hardly a revealing result.
> > The tricky part would be finding out what percentage of *all* phenomena in
> > the universe have naturalistic explanations and how we could tell when any
> > individual phenomenon breaks the rule.
> >
>
> Can you please describe for me a method of investigation of the
> supernatural that is not methodological naturalism and give a
> specific example of the supernatural that you think has been
> objectively established by means of it?
Again, the personal experience of the divine, which is, as far as the
individual is concerned, as objective as anything the individual may
experience in science.
>
> I will tell you my working hypothesis. There are no such
> examples of supernatural phenomena that can be established to
> exist. But I'm open to persuasion.
>
> Until I'm persuaded, I consider this argument to be a
> strawman. You can certainly say that science assumes: (insert big
> fancy words of your choice) and I can certainly say that science
> assumes something else.
In which case we are quibbling about the *philosophy* of science.
>
> But, basically, I think that science assumes nothing more than
> any other human beings assume in living their daily lives. Most
> people, most of the time, behave as if ontological nsturalism is
> correct, and they do not depend on supernatural events to feed
> them, for example, or to prevent them from falling off of
> mountains if they happen to be mountaineers. If they walk off the
> top of the Brooklyn Bridge, or leap from the burning world trade
> center, then they probably expect to die, even if they do believe
> at that moment that they will live forever in some putative
> paradise or hell, or be reincarnated or whatever ...
Yep. That is a variation on Hume's psychological argument for accepting
induction despite its lack of logical support. One problem is the same
people who live day-by-day as if the material world is all there is claim
that the supernatural or spiritual or the ineffable is important to their
lives. You can't accept the psychological evidence for one proposition and
deny it for the other.
>
> Religious people sometimes claim that prayer can work wonders and
> produce miraculous cures for otherwise incurable diseases. These
> cures are said to violate physical law and mainstream medical
> understanding.
>
> If this is true it makes a big difference to how medicine should
> be practiced, wouldn't you say?
Do you really think so? Patients don't pray now? I even understand that
not a few doctors pray for their patients. Do you deny that there are
spontaneous "cures" that medical science cannot explain?
>
> How would you suggest that we investigate such claims?
>
> Some religious people claim that God will send you to hell where
> you will burn forever if you are a man and you have sex with
> another man.
>
> How would you suggest that we evaluate such `witnessing' about
> God's will by means of your method?
You will determine if your personal experience of the divine supports it or
not.
>
> Do you think that your new method of investigation will turn out
> to be consistent with science?
I think I have been arguing all along that "inconsistency" is not equal to
"conflict".
[snip fine explanation of the scientific method as applied to appropriate
subjects]
>
> It should be noted that not a single living human being has ever
> experienced the objective world in the first place.
<cough> How could you know that objectively? That is actually a serious
issue in philosophy, not *just* my being a wise-ass.
[...]
> Are the procedures of science perfect? Undoubtedly not.
>
> Nevertheless I hold that science may have something to say
> _objectively_ about just how we construct our subjective
> experiences, and I see no fundamental limitation for the
> scientific method in this area.
And how did you objectively arrive at that conclusion?
[...]
>
> But I think we live in a time where there a great many very
> dangerous religious ideas circulating, and I do not wish
> scientific critics of religious thinking to be silenced by means
> of tactics that look to me to be no more than schoolyard
> bullying, viz. the free-floating rationale that Cardinal Dulles
> expresses and that some other religious people in the USA seem to
> do as well. I think that we desperately need to have an open
> dialog, and that this will include looking carefully at the
> arguments of scientists who are very critical of religion in
> general and who are vocal about it, and if it is found that they
> have good points to make then these should be taken account of.
>
> Larry Moran is correct in his observation that over 90% of
> members of the Amercian National Academy of Sciences do not
> believe in god(s). This means that a large and in my view, by
> some measure at least, important contingent of scientists will be
> completely neutralized in a discussion on what looks to me to be
> a very critical issue in the USA, namely, which way are we going
> with religion?
And you think that will somehow be rectified by telling the 80% +/- of
Americans who are religious that their beliefs are disproved by science?
Riiight! I wonder whether American science can survive its practitioners
unnecessarily picking fights with religion in general rather than
concentrating on the more limited (and more dangerous) subset of beliefs
and believers that deny science, human rights, political freedom and the
like. Wilkins' 95/95 rule works for theists, just as well as any other
group. 95% of religious people will be decent 95% of the time, *unless*
you threaten what they deeply believe in and care about.
[snip more on politics]
> > And a scientist who made the claim in public that he/she had just conducted
> > a scientific experiment about, say, the nature of God, would also be
> > laughed to scorn.
>
> No doubt it's likely, though I think it might depend on precisely
> what is said about the nature of _God_, and the precise
> experiment in question.
>
> For example, suppose that tomorrow some clinical trials emerge
> proving that intercessionary prayer to Christ (by devout
> Christians) could not cure some types of disseminated late stage
> cancer in some statistically significant percentage of cases,
> while prayer to Allah (by devout Muslims) could.
>
> Would this result say something objective to you about the nature
> of God?
Ummm. I'd love to see the grant application. Particularly what controls
you'd have to determine "devoutedness". And what "objective" things do you
think such a result would demonstrate? That God loves Christians more
because he releases them from this vale of tears and takes them to his
bosom sooner?
>
> It sure would to me,
Then you haven't thought about it much, I'm afraid.
>and it would present a very major problem
> for science as I understand it.
>
> Would the study really be laughed to scorn, do you think?
No, it would just be noted that science had better look for a naturalistic
explanation for such an unusual result and leave theology out of it, since
scientists don't seem very good at it.
>
> I know that we already have had both a hoax and a negative result
> in published studies on this question. But were those really the
> only possible outcomes?
Whatever other outcome there might be, it will not be theologically
determinative.
>
> Here's my objection to what you seem to be arguing, given what
> the Cardinal claims: if the nature of _God_ is said in the first
> place to be humanly unknowable, to be ultimately indescribable in
> human language in fact, and the contents of such fragments as we
> can learn are said to be undisprovable, then what the Cardinal
> has done is in effect to set up a great big blank space into
> which he can write whatever he wishes to write. A lot of what he
> actually wishes to write there is his own and other people's
> interpretation of some stories from a very old book.
>
> And it seems to me that then, it can never be objectively known
> or agreed what is actually in that space by the very construction
> of the initial premise that is used.
Now you are starting to see the problem. Unless *science* can state that
science can answer all questions about all of reality, whether material or
non-material, natural or supernatural, there must be a blank space of
unknown size and scope as far as *science* is concerned. The decision to
try to fill in the blank as theists do or to leave it blank is a
*philosophical/theological* issue, not a scientific one.
>
> Unless of course this supposedly objective other method of
> investigation that you've proposed is shown to really exist.
Or we decide not to accept your philosophical proposition that "objective"
evidence is the proper approach to the problem.
[...]
> >
> > Why does inconsistency equal conflict? If I chose not to use an ax to
> > perform brain surgery, does that mean that medicine is somehow in conflict
> > with lumberjacking?
>
> It seems to me that you are mincing words. There are a lot of
> scientists, I think, including myself who may consider that what
> I've said about Cardinal Dulles idea constitutes a basic
> conflict. Let's see if some of them are inclined to disagree
> strongly with me.
I would not be surprised if scientists had similar philosophies. But the
test of what is *science* is, you should pardon the expression,
"objective". Do you suppose your statements about religion and applying
"objective" tests to higher order theological claims will be appearing in
the technical literature in solving particular scientific questions anytime
soon?
>
> The question that seems to me to matter is in fact the inverse of
> the one you ask: suppose that someone *does* choose to perform
> brain surgery with an ax because he/she *believes* on the basis
> of information about the infinite mystery at the core of
> lumberjacking, which has been gained through `witnessing' that
> Paul Bunyan himself said that this is the best way of doing brain
> surgery. What if a surgeon says, you can't question me because
> I've witnessed this to be the case, and you would be a bad person
> if you didn't accept what I say?
>
> What if prayer together with axes start being regularly used in
> open heart surgery, instead of scalpels and anesthesia?
I would say that if the result was worse than other available methods, it
would die out on the basis of selection. Want to explain why religion
hasn't died out?
[...]
Excuse me? You want to claim that *science* is necessary to come to the
judgment that letting children burn to death is a bad idea? Conversely,
what do you do with the Nazi and Japanese scientists, for instance, who did
things just as bad if not worse than your example? Is this science talking
or your own morality?
[...]
> I'm not convinced that there is a metaphysical `sphere'
[...]
> I think that all spiritual experience is material in nature.
Your philosophical opinions noted.
> Can
> you convince me that I'm wrong?
Certainly not if you reject the evidence out of hand.
[...]
>
> In any case, my argument is two fold: (1) There exists a conflict
> between some forms of religious belief and science.
That very important qualification, "some forms," is consistently omitted.
> (2)
> Scientific critics and studiers of religious belief should not be
> silenced by a kind of general opprobrium and unqualified respect
> that is too often given to religious beliefs in general.
Then don't confuse "religious beliefs in general" with the reprehensible
beliefs of some believers. Most believers deserve at least the presumption
of respect in a civil society until and unless they prove otherwise.
[...]
> > Just a question: are the implications you draw from what other people say
> > an example of science at work? If not, isn't your inconsistency in not
> > resorting to scientific evidence here a conflict within your own views?
> >
>
> Let me try to understand your point here: I made what seems to me
> to be a fairly natural interpretation of the meaning of Cardinal
> Dulles' statements which are after all framed in ordinary human
> language.
>
> My interpretation of what he says could be right, and it could be
> wrong.
And it makes no pretense at being "objective," something you unrelentingly
demand of others.
>You don't actually express any opinion here on which is
> the case, but you do suggest that I'm being unscientific, and
> thus inconsistent, in not resorting to scientific evidence to
> support my interpretation but nevertheless I do interpret what he
> says.
>
> It seems to me that in your company I'd be better off just
> avoiding any mention of my opinion that Dulles entire outline of
> this putative process of investigation of religious matters is
> unscientific by its very construction and that he appears to use
> the tactic of imputing negative moral qualities to his potential
> opponents, which is in fact a very well known argumentative
> procedure.
Hardly. I need not endorse the Cardinal's beliefs in order to note the
inconsistency of your approach.
>
> Let me ask you a question in return: Do you deny or agree that
> Dulles is making some moral point in what he says here about not
> accepting the authority of witnesses being tantamount to
> *withholding our confidence -- as well as personal respect and
> trust -- from the witness*?
>
> Or, do you think that there may be even a small chance, let's say
> even a lot lot smaller than a 50% chance, that some other people
> might read what Dulles says in the same way that I do?
>
> If I'm right and that is what he is doing, then why on earth
> should I as a scientist accept, indeed, why should anyone at all
> accept Cardinal Dulles moral authority on the matter?
If a nonscientist should come to the same conclusion, it follows that
*science* is not the determining factor and science is not what is in
conflict with what the Cardinal may or may not have meant.
>
> Did I ever say that every opinion I have is a scientific one?
But you have to distinguish between what you claim is science and what you
hold as nonscientific belief if we can ever evaluate your claim that
science and religion is in conflict.
>
> Did I ever suggest that I believe I am completely rational in all
> things, or that I always strive to be rational?
>
> In the first place, I am clearly not an expert in the majority of
> fields that I am discussing here.
>
> But aren't you the one who is trying to claim that religion is
> completely consistent with science?
No, I said that I did not find inconsistency between science and religion
to qualify as "conflict" between them, rather clearly agreeing that
religion is not completely consistent with science. I also mentioned their
different methodologies (I think -- this is getting so long).
>
> So what exactly is your problem here: how is it that you think
> that I can have an internal conflict?
>
> I can be dead wrong, yes.
>
> But do you think that my one *tentatively* expressed
> philosophical position here: ontological naturalism, is somehow
> inconsistent with doing science and/or disprovable?
No, but neither is it *identical* to science. You can't claim your
philosophy's conflict with religion is a case of science being in conflict
with religion.
[...]
> >
> > But here we are back to the question if the scientific approach is the only
> > reasonable approach *and* somehow exclusive. I
>
> No, I don't think so. What I said is that if you prevent
> questioning and probing I think that you have disabled the
> scientific method beyond repair.
>
> I said nothing about exclusivity here.
>
> > If you hold the scientific
> > approach, can you hold no other? Can you also hold that, say, art and
> > literature are valid ways of "knowing" the world?
[...]
>
> But are Harry Potter novels or Tolkien's Ring series really
> attempts at knowing the world or describing how the world is
> objectively? I think there is a real problem in saying that.
I'm sorry, you may say that you are not arguing for exclusivity, but you
keep stating implicitly that the value of anything and everything is
dependent on its "objectivity".
[...]
>
> But if you think it would be AOK for, oh, I don't know, John
> Updike or Jackson Pollack to say to us all: the world expressed
> in literature and the world expressed in art together constitute
> a `sphere' of knowledge which is wholly separated from objective
> reality and unconstrained in any way by it, and that whatever is
> said there is undisprovable in principle by any objective means,
> and that we as a society should now proceed to form all of our
> beliefs based on what Pollack says we see or that we should see
> in Pollack (which I don't think he ever did try to do, BTW), or
> based upon what Updike writes, and that science may not even
> analyze art and literature because they are fundamentally
> supernatural
Then you agree with the IDers that, if you cannot come up with a
naturalistic explanation for some event, it must be supernatural? Or does
your exercise in testing run preferentially in only one direction? If
science is capable of disproving the supernatural, isn't its failure to do
so at least some evidence *for* the supernatural? (I, of course don't
think so, but I think you position seriously undermines the reasons why
that is not the case.)
> then I'm going to respond you that those are
> admitted writers and makers of *fiction*, and that artists are
> made of flesh and work in a medium and writers, similarly do. So
> science is *not* excluded from treading in and around their
> domains, which I think can be consistently said to be one aspect
> of human behaviour, and as such a proper subject of analysis for
> many particular scientific disciplines.
You must tell me how you plan to scientifically demonstrate that Updike was
not inspired by god(s).
>
> [snip]
>
> Thanks for the effort that you've put into this response, I
> appreciate it and you've forced me to think very hard.
It's worth it then. (Same here BTW.)
[...]
--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible
that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
- Rene Descartes -
TomS
<pan.2006.07.12....@earthlink.guess>, Mark Isaak stated..."
I have nothing to say in response to this. I can only applaud it.
--
---Tom S. <http://talkreason.org/articles/chickegg.cfm>
"... have a clear idea of what you should expect if your hypothesis is correct,
and what you should observe if your hypothesis is wrong ... If you cannot do
this, then this is an indicator that your hypothesis may be too vague."
RV Clarke & JE Eck: Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers - step 20