Via the Zeitgeist, the Templeton Foundation has asked a bunch of famous smart people “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” I wouldn’t ordinarily note this, but if you scroll down a little, you’ll find my thesis advisor, Bill Phillips, who offers an “Absolutely Not!”:
[A] scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. Scientific statements must be “falsifiable.” That is, there must be some outcome that at least in principle could show that the statement is false. I might say, “Einstein’s theory of relativity correctly describes the behavior of visible objects in our solar system.” So far, extremely careful measurements have failed to prove that statement false, but they could (and some people have invested careers in trying to see if they will). By contrast, religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable. I might say, “God loves us and wants us to love one another.” I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false. Some might argue that if I were more explicit about what I mean by God and the other concepts in my statement, it would become falsifiable. But such an argument misses the point. It is an attempt to turn a religious statement into a scientific one. There is no requirement that every statement be a scientific statement. Nor are non-scientific statements worthless or irrational simply because they are not scientific. “She sings beautifully.” “He is a good man.” “I love you.” These are all non-scientific statements that can be of great value. Science is not the only useful way of looking at life.
Of course, most of the attention will go to Christopher Hitchens, who does his usual act somewhat farther down the page. This is the problem with being smart, sensible, and decent…
Brilliant. Religious scientists always seem to have really profound things to say.
I can: A giant wearing a toga and a long white beard suddenly materializes, demonstrates omnipotence, omniscience, and other miracles, then demands a multi-million-man Death Match in the valley of Har Megiddo.
Or just says, “Carry on as you were – I’ll be back sometime later,” and Ascends.
How would the giant demonstrate omnipotence? He may be able to do anything that somebody asks him to, but it’s possible there’s something he can’t do that nobody thinks of. Same goes for omniscience, although I would just ask him to give the simultaneous position and momentum for that photon right over there.
And besides, a death match that large would be freakin’ awesome. Needs of the many over the needs of the few, right?
One might also say, “God hates all _______ and wants us to persecute them.”
This is likewise a statement so divorced from any observable reality that it’s not testable (see “you can’t prove a negative). However, it can do our culture great harm to let people project such authority onto such arbitrary, sweeping statements, with so little grounding in reality. Phillips’ imagination of a loving god is far less inflamatory than the imagination of a vengeful god; but this is not because it is a more rational, evidenced postulate, but rather because love is a positive value – for human reasons that do not require a divine explanation.
I saw this in a magazine advertisement some time ago, and thought several of the replies printed were well thought out. Some were idiotic, of course, but that’s okay.
What bothers me about this is that I think the question is misleading. Probably even deliberately so.
Many people, like Hitchens, are interpreting the question to mean “Does science imply that there is no god?”. That is the bait. The switch is that they are subtly asking a different question: “Does science imply that people’s beliefs in a god (regardless of if that believe is well founded) have no use?”
I can’t imagine even Hitchens would claim that there are no effects of a belief in god, hence it isn’t obsolete. He’d probably even admit that some of those effects are positive, too, but that on the whole the negative effects outweight any positive ones. But as soon as you start talking about these positive/negative stuff, you are starting to ask questions about morals, not science. Mostly the clamor about science and religion is about science disproving god, not disproving the utility of a belief in god.
I think if they were honest they might have just asked more clear about the question. Does science disprove god?
Phillips has it exactly right. Science and religion are, or at least should be, orthogonal. Although I consider myself agnostic, I have no quarrel with religious people, even deeply religious people, who recognize this viewpoint. I even know a few practicing scientists who are deeply religious. “Obsolete” is not a term that should apply to religious faith.
The problem is that there is a category of people who want to believe in their religion, but are not secure enough in their faith to not feel threatened by science. These are the people who went after Galileo in the 1600s, and these are the people who nowadays insist on teaching creationism in our allegedly secular public schools. (I’ve also noticed that the people in this category who call themselves “Christian” are the least likely to follow the teachings of Christ as recorded in the Bible, but that’s a separate rant.) The trick for us scientists is to oppose this group while recognizing that not all people who consider themselves religious belong to this group.
“It is an attempt to turn a religious statement into a scientific one.”
I don’t agree. In order to make the statement “God loves us and wants us to love one another,” one must make the implicit statement “God exists”. Once you use the word “God”, which we must take to mean something, you have ascribed some descriptive aspects to that entity, including at least the aspects of existence and desire.
Therefore, to make the statement “God loves us and wants us to love one another,” is to make the implicit statement “This universe has a being called God which exists and has desires for our behavior.”
That, my friends, is a scientific statement.
“I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false.”
In current science, or in all future science? An intellectual circa 1000 BC might have said “The Gods create the Lightning; I cannot think of anything that could prove that statement false.”
I think it IS a scientific statement to say either “this universe has a God” or “this universe has no god”. Both answers, while far, far out of our reach today may not be always so.
While it is true that not all statements are scientific statements, the claim that our universe was ordered by a super-being who created the laws of nature IS at the very root a scientific statement. If this super-being exists, it is the Grand Unification Principle taken to the extreme! How could that NOT be a scientific wonder to beat everything ever uncovered by the mind of Man?
To clarify, I wrote: “the claim that our universe was ordered by a super-being who created the laws of nature IS at the very root a scientific statement.”
This is another beef of mine. While Bill Phillips doesn’t explicitly make this statement, it is implicit in his use of the word “God”, is it not? The problem with the term “God” is that it is used to bundle in a bunch of slippery assertions.
Unless he’s speaking of some non-creator god. In which case, he should clarify, because he’s using the word in a way I’ve never heard.
Pierce (#1) provides a reasonable falsification. But if – no, when* – that never happens, then what?
If it’s never falsified, or even attempted to be falsified (as there’s nothing, as Phillips points out that we can do to try to falsify it), what’s the point? One can believe it all one likes, but it’s a null statement, in a way that “She sings beautifully,” (observable, measurable), “He is a good man” (observable, measurable) and “I love you,” (testable based on behaviour) are not.
vs.
On the other hand, “It’s good for people to love one another,” or even, “It’s good for people to behave as though they love one another,” are statements one can actually work with.
One can imagine coming up with a definition of ‘good’. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I can imagine it being done, through some sociological/psychological/combined/other method. One can also imagine a definition of ‘love’, or at least ‘love-like behaviour’.
One could then, reasonably empirically, test whether “It’s good for people to behave as though they love one another.” Then, it’s a useful, or at least, observable and debatable statement.
(* Curse you, ScienceBlogs, for not supporting the <strike> tag!)
I said:
Pierce isn’t commenter #1, he’s #2. I could have sworn it was number 1 when I first saw it, but my mind (or God, I guess 🙂 ) could have been playing tricks on me.
Phillips also states:
If an atheist claims to have absolute certainty that there is no God, then I agree that’s a position of faith. But I think most atheists (myself included) only claim that the available evidence does not support belief in (a) God. If that’s a position of faith, then every conclusion is a position of faith.
Phillips acknowledges that his belief in God is non-falsifiable, and I’m fine with that. If he’s unwilling to define his concept of God sufficiently to make it falsifiable, that’s OK with me too.
But to claim that atheism is a position of faith is wrong. Faith means believing something in the absence of (or even in spite of) compelling evidence. Disbelieving something in the absence of compelling evidence is not faith.
Phillips also writes: “Recently, the philosopher and long-time atheist Anthony Flew changed his mind and decided that, based on such evidence, he should believe in God.”
Can I just say that this example is something I find distasteful. There’s something that just raises my BS-meter when the name “Flew” is bandied around. Here is a man who backs teaching intelligent design, which I’m pretty sure Phillips doesn’t agree with. A man who some claim is suffering from reduced mental faculties and manipulation by those who want to use him as a win for their team, but at any rate, has become a bit of a human tug-of-war rope.
So what, if Anthony Flew believes in a god, what enlightenment does that provide to the issue? Why does Phillips bring him up? To what end? Theists always bring up Flew. They never bring up Shermer, or Erhman, or Barker or Runyon or any number of former Christians who became atheists. What does it matter to the truth or falsehood of their claims?
What I’d ask Dr. Phillips is, why the appeal to anecdote? What enlightenment did you think the reader might gain from ‘this guy used to be an atheist philosopher, and now he believes in God’ without giving us the reasoning he has used to bring him to that conclusion? If that reasoning is, as has been indicated in his writings and speeches, that he has come to be swayed by the arguments of William Dembski and Michael Behe, what do you think of that as an argument? Is Flew really a good spokesperson for an enlightened “belief”, if it requires faulty understanding of mathematics and biochemistry to reach it?
Have you seen this Onion report on Christopher Hitchens?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27996
Typically fuzzy thinking. The examples he gives of non-scientific but useful things (singing beautifully or a person is good) are, in fact, falsifiable. Let’s have a real example, like, blue is a good color.
But the real problem is that the whole question is misstated. The correct question is not whether science makes religion obsolete, but whether rational thought makes religion obsolete. “Science” is an application of rational thought. It is a subset of the phenomenon which, I would certainly argue, does make religion obsolete.
Wilson, #10: Pierce isn’t commenter #1, he’s #2. I could have sworn it was number 1 when I first saw it, but my mind (or God, I guess 🙂 ) could have been playing tricks on me.
Brandon’s comments were held for moderation by the spam filter, whose ways passeth all understanding. I released them right around the time you were posting, and it changed all the numbers.
Mark P, #14: Typically fuzzy thinking. The examples he gives of non-scientific but useful things (singing beautifully or a person is good) are, in fact, falsifiable.
Because, of course, everybody agrees that Mother Theresa was a good person…
(physical reality) – (empirical reality) = faith
Faith is destroyed if it works. If you have faith you can only be denied. Test of faith! What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
Can God make a collection plate so vast that even He cannot fill it? Sure! ALL OF THEM. Take the hint.
Quoth MarkP: The examples he gives of non-scientific but useful things (singing beautifully or a person is good) are, in fact, falsifiable.
No, they aren’t. What sounds like beautiful singing to you might be fingernails-on-the-chalkboard annoying to me, or vice versa. De gustibus non disputandum, and all that.
Define a good person, define Mother Theresa. Then compare the two.
(There are no real-life problems, just incorrect semantic)
The only reason that the two examples can be debated is that they are hard questions in some sense, but all that is required is a definition of, for example, “good.” Then the statement can be falsified. Try that with the existence of god. (“God” is invisible, undetectable, not bound by physical laws, omnipotent and omniscient, and he loves the little children. Debate his existence.)
But what about the main point, that the real question is whether rational thought makes religion obsolete?
“But what about the main point, that the real question is whether rational thought makes religion obsolete?”
I agree, it’s a poorly formed, or even unformed question, with many possible actual questions begging to be drawn from it.
One such question is “has ‘rationalism’ or evidence-positive thinking about theological subjects made religion obsolete within your life? Or is such evidence-positive thinking properly applied to theological subjects?”
A follow-up might be “do you see or do you expect to see a societal change along these lines? Why or why not, and what do you think that might look like?”
Oh, so it was God! 😀
Thanks for the clarification, Chad.
milkshake:
and MarkP:
I may be simplistic, but at least I didn’t imply – explicitly denied, in fact – that finding a definition of ‘good’ would be easy. “All that is required,” indeed!
However, I appreciate both your comments, because you managed to bring into sharp relief the whole idea – which Chad was attempting, apparently in vain, to show – that ‘good’ may well be subjective.
Feeding the poor? Good.
Opposing contraception, in the direct face of the miseries caused by overpopulation? Maybe not so good.
Declining to use sterilized needles or painkillers for the dying? (Same link.) Also, maybe not so good.
But in her own eyes, those were good (or one assumes she wouldn’t have done them) – presumably because it was God’s Will – and in the eyes of millions of Catholics who agreed with her.
So, what’s good? Is it really that easy?
Mark P: But what about the main point, that the real question is whether rational thought makes religion obsolete?
I think it’s a wonderful attempt to re-frame the question in a way that makes your preferred answer look superior to the answer you don’t want to hear.
God and science only cross paths and create problems when one (or both) overstep their bounds. Science cannot be used to confirm or deny the existence of something outside the natural realm and the belief in a god cannot be used as an excuse for confirming or denying any science. People do this constantly and every single one of them are wrong. Even if you disagree about the specifics of what Dr. Phillips said, it still does not change the fact that he is right.
In other words, we have values — not just beliefs. The statement “He is a good man” combines values (what I consider “good”) with science (observations indicating that his actions conform to what I consider good).
This observation does not support the point he’s trying to make, however. As far as I can tell, he’s claiming (a) that religion makes non-falsifiable claims, and (b) non-falsifiable claims are not open to rational analysis.
To (a) I would respond that he’s using the fuzzy-minded Platonic ideal notion of religion, which has little to do with how most believers views God. Real people’s religious beliefs typically impinge upon the real world (such as the parents in Wisconsin who unsuccessfully tried to pray their daughter out of a diabetic coma, rather than getting medical treatment).
To (b) I claim that if one is committed to a rational worldview (which is how I am interpreting the question’s premise), then non-falsifiable claims must be rejected as unsupportable. This in no way prevents me from claiming “He is a good man,” because values are not claims about the world.
Interesting topic. I agree with Philips that the existence of a god(s) is beyond the scope of science and nonfalsifiable. It is possible that (like in Ken Miller’s view) he/she/it set up the laws and sat back and let it run. However, I would suggest that specific claims made by various religions are. One possible claim could be that the existence of the universe, or better, the big bang must have been caused by God. Better worded, God is a necessary condition for the universe. There are a number of naturalistic scenarios out there which strongly suggest this is not true.
Even more specific claims are made in Christianity if you look at Genesis, of course. In fact Paul states that sin entered the world through Adam and Christ takes it away. In this literal view, Adam, and the surrounding context concerning the creation story are quite necessary for the justification of a salvation plan and the cruxifiction and resurrection story. One can (and I know many who do, including friends and family) try to “metaphorize” these stories away in some fashion, but then where does one stop? In my view, it seems the entire fabric becomes unraveled. In any case, if one’s religious view is dependent on the literal interpretation, it has been shown in all probability to be false. Many stories in the Bible are also amenable to historical, archaeological or even literary analysis. For example, there is no corroborating archaeological support for the Exodus story.
So, yes, the simple existence of a supernatural God (even one who occasionally intervenes, without leaving anything behind for investigative purposes) is beyond the scientific method. But when a particular theological framework makes claims (especially when such claims are considered special revelation) that are subject to investigation, than they’re “in bounds”.
Davis: To (a) I would respond that he’s using the fuzzy-minded Platonic ideal notion of religion, which has little to do with how most believers views God. Real people’s religious beliefs typically impinge upon the real world (such as the parents in Wisconsin who unsuccessfully tried to pray their daughter out of a diabetic coma, rather than getting medical treatment).
Wow.
That’s absolutely breathtaking.
In the space of two sentences, you manage to throw out an accusation that Phillips, who was speaking about his own religious beliefs doesn’t know how real religious people think, and follow that right up with an assertion that real religious people hold to the views of a tiny, tiny minority of lunatics who forgo medical treatment in favor of prayer.
That’s absolutely stunning. You deserve some sort of a prize. Or, possibly, a job working for Bill O’Reilly.
Chad, I could turn that comment around and say that the original framing is a wonderful way to get the answer someone else wants. The only answer to that question (does science make religion obsolete?) is, “No.” For proof, see modern America. But it is a meaningless exercise. I suggested a different approach because I think it is possible to actually answer that question in a meaningful way. Even that reframing is probably not quite right. The real question ends up being, “Is religion consistent with rational thought?”
And the answer I prefer is a true answer.
I suspect that many scientists would agree that rational thought is inconsistent with religion but choose to believe anyway, for a wide variety of reasons. I also suspect that a religious scientist has a compartmentalized view of the world. But, so what? I really, truly do not care what someone else believes, as long as it doesn’t harm another person. In fact, the only way I judge a belief system to be bad or good is to ask, “Does this belief system result in object benefits and no harm?” Some religion, as practiced by some people, passes that test. Some does not. The truth of that belief system is not my concern, as long as it passes that test.
“I could turn that comment around and say that the original framing is a wonderful way to get the answer someone else wants. ”
Templeton Foundation, do that? Quelle surprise.
I think Bill Phillips offers a perfectly valid point, though, I might have used the word “verifiable” instead of “falsifiable”. I say this because many theologians also insist that religious views be consistent with the observed universe. In evaluating the statement, “God loves us and wants us to love one another,” a theologian might consider the problem of evil. One could argue (and many do) that the existence of evil is evidence that God does not love us, and that this falsifies the claim.
In other words, I think religious people still insist on evidence to support their beliefs, they just cannot create new experiments to test their claims.
For me “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” sounds quite similar to “Does growing up make belief in Santa Claus obsolete?”
(but I am not mean enough to break the news to the kids)
“I think Bill Phillips offers a perfectly valid point, though, I might have used the word “verifiable” instead of “falsifiable”.”
These are very different statements:
religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable
religious statements are not necessarily verifiable
Why is it that the first can be made, and can be made to stand alone, unassailable, by virtue of it being merely asserted? In fact, doesn’t that make it a weightless assertion by mere competition with an infinite number of “not necessarily falsifiable” counter-claims?
And I also ask, how does Phillips know that “God loves us and wants us to love one another” is not falsifiable? I don’t mean in the here and now, but its future potential to be falsifiable. To know that this statement is not potentially falsifiable is to make a faith claim ITSELF about the nature of God’s hiddenness and the limitation of all future human inquiry. Does he know for sure that 29th Century MetaScience will not have developed a method of inquiry into questions of gods? Indeed if Behe’s genomic tinkerer-god existed, we very well MIGHT be able to detect such a being’s handiwork. Or perhaps there’s a star-maker God, analogous to Behe’s, but at a cosmological scale. So again, Phillips is making a faith claim about the only kind of God that to him could possibly exist, and assuring us that we don’t need to look for Him using science. What kind of a claim is that? Why does he get to set the definition of God anyway?
Check my work here, but it seems to me that Phillips expresses as a person of faith, a faith-based claim that certain faith-based claims are unassailable by science. Is that a scientific assertion? It doesn’t seem to me that it can possibly be.
I think the answer is no, but, then again, I don’t think belief in supernatural beings is needed for a person or society to have values and ethics. We need science and we need values to live in a society, but we don’t necessarily need supernatural beings.
But then the question arises – do these supernatural beings need us? Because you know that they could have easily created someone more thankful, pious and obedient…yet they gave us free will – And look at all this mess and grief! Some people are even capable of calling our Creator names, as if he was a dictator or something.
Chad – no contest where you pit Hitchens against someone else to see who is most polite, nuanced or fair is likely to have a surprising outcome.
Consider however as a ‘yes’ response what Steven Pinker said. It was a fairly typical atheistic viewpoint, expressed (or at least so I thought) calmly, genially and without fuss or showmanship.
To me, it seems self-evident that voice belongs in the public discussion over science and religion just as much as Kenneth Miller and your old adviser. Do you broadly agree?
Consider however as a ‘yes’ response what Steven Pinker said. It was a fairly typical atheistic viewpoint, expressed (or at least so I thought) calmly, genially and without fuss or showmanship.
To me, it seems self-evident that voice belongs in the public discussion over science and religion just as much as Kenneth Miller and your old adviser. Do you broadly agree?
Yes.
I have no real problems with Pinker’s answer. I think he may over-sell some of the science, in his usual manner, but the style and content of what he wrote is perfectly fine.
If the science-vs-religion debate were being conducted between people like Pinker and people like Phillips, I think the world would be a vastly better place than it is.
If I were answering this question along with Drs Phillips and Pinkers, I would have said something along the lines of:
One of the crucial points that is usually missing in these discussions is that the science vs. religion dichotomy is false, but pervasive and influential in terms of why people believe what they do. As Dr Phillips says, science and (non-fundamentalist) religion generally do have different aims (if only because non-fundamentalist Christian religious authorities have more or less conceded the territory to science in the last 500 years).
Religion, unlike science, does also deal in questions of the meaning of life, ethics, aesthetics, and how to live your life – science can inform these questions, but it can’t answer them. However, unlike science, modern philosophy also deals with these questions – the meaning of life, ethics, aesthetics, and typically does so in a far more coherent, intelligent and meaningful way (given that science can inform the way modern philosophers answer the question, where it fundamentally cannot alter the way religionists answer the question) than religion ever could. A wispy God who exists outside the material world can not be disproven by science, but philosophers can, and have, shown that this idea of God is most likely incoherent and irrational.
Brandon @ 3: How would the giant demonstrate omnipotence?
Mysteriously hijacking my cherished # 1 position on this thread comes fairly close, no?
How could any deity convince a hardcore rationalist that she is God (without cheating by direct mental reprogramming)?
Spectacular deeds? (That could just be a more advanced George Lucas.)
Doing something beyond the rationalist’s comprehension? (Stage magicians, karatekas, and knitters do that to me all the time.)
Filling the rationalist with a sense of limitless awe? (Anyone who’s experienced the Grand Canyon, a Shostakovich symphony, or peyote has been there already.)
In short, some of us might well remain agnostics even if every event in the Book of Revs were to happen exactly as forecast (I for one would be forced to consider that as an alien-invader trick – Mr. Lucas, would you like to read my screenplay?).
Nor are non-scientific statements worthless or irrational simply because they are not scientific. “She sings beautifully.” “He is a good man.” “I love you.”
Maybe it’s just me being a mathematician and not a scientist, but it seems somewhat short-sighted to suggest that the quoted questions are non-scientific. They certainly are on a very superficial level. The reason I quote my area of expertise is that in the field of mathematics a person typically encounters radical connections between seemingly disparate subjects, the likes of which I have not seen in my study of science generally.
There are very scientific questions to be asked about things like aesthetics, morals, and emotions. Namely, why and how do these things arise? There is probably a perfectly reasonable answer to these questions, especially given the steady mounting of evidence that human beings are essentially deterministic. Even as a child I balked at the postmodernist arrogance that suggested especially that the Artistic was somehow unquantifiable, and emotions essentially preternatural.
I disagree with the statement that religious notions are not falsifiable. Certainly it is not the case that EVERY religious notion is falsifiable (for example, Deism probably wouldn’t be), but specific instances of how a god or gods might act are certainly falsifiable, because they are about how the world works, and/or how god/gods interfere in the world.
I would highly, highly recommend Dr. Vic Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis” as one of the strongest arguments against the existence of a specific type of god: the omni god that is all loving, all powerful and all knowing.
For example, Stenger points out a simple falsifiable experiment: if prayer is meant to interfere in the world (as it is in many religions), then prayer should have measurable effects. Of course, we know that this is not the case in any reasonably well controlled study, so immediately we say “Well, the hypothesis that god cares about praying has been falsified, to a first approximation”.
Similarly, we might say that the god hypothesis entails that there might be some nonphysical character to the human psyche: a soul. Modern neuroscience seems to pointing us towards a completely physicalist view of the mind (though this is certainly not the only conclusion0, which, if shown to be true, would falsify the idea of a soul.
I don’t do Dr. Stenger’s arguments justice here, but I think the book is quite good and quite readable, despite his somewhat robotic tone.
Wow Chad, do you always jump to the most uncharitable interpretation whenever someone disagrees with you?
I’m claiming that Phillips’ version of religion (which I’m familiar with, as I’ve known plenty of people with his beliefs) is the minority version. While it’s true that “death by prayer” is a rare event, it’s certainly a widespread belief among Christians the world over that prayer is effective in obtaining desired results. This is the majority view, and this is a falsifiable claim.
I much prefer Phillips’ version of religion, but it’s not what I find when I leave the bubble of my urban setting.
It continues to astonish me how low the bar for smart, sensible, brilliant, and profound is set when applied to religious statements. His argument is just warmed over NOMA at its core, which is laughable (you can’t be an alternate source of knowledge when you produce no knowledge), and his examples of “non-scientific statements” seem like the sort of things children and idiots say. And some wonder why the Courtier’s Reply is trotted out so much.
Believe it or not, offline I’m one of those people you’d never know was an atheist unless you asked me, or noticed the lack of religious knick knacks around the house. I find the subject of God’s existence as boring as Chad seems to find it. I’m just amazed by the consistency with which brilliant people say things that strike me as idiotic on this one, and only, subject.
So you have a little irrational, comfy idea you hold in your head that helps you not have nightmares about death, or gives your clear moral structure, or feeds your need for some overarching power and justice in the world, or WTF ever it does for you. So what? I can relate to a lot of that. Sure science makes that sort of thing obsolete, but who of us is scientific and up to date 100% of the time? I’m afraid of heights, but I don’t tie myself into semantic knots trying to justify it with idiotic comparisons to the taste of my sandwich or how much I love my mother. I just admit my weakness and move on. Why don’t you? Martin Gardner (RIP) nailed this one a long time ago, and I paraphrase from memory:
“I believe, by a completely irrational leap of faith, that there is a god I’ll meet when I die”
Is that really so damned hard?
Science Avenger said: “Martin Gardner (RIP) nailed this one a long time ago”
Gardner’s still with us at age 93.
Eric Lund:
And a successful adaptation in one environment may be useless in another. Those statements are not so much unfalsifiable as insufficiently qualified.
And about “I love you” – ever heard “He doesn’t love you, he’s just trying to get into your pants!” At least in that situation an obvious way to falsify the statement suggests itself!
Pierce, if it would make you feel better, Chad can delete my first post.
The hypothetical existence of God can explain anything, cannot rule out anything, and makes no predictions that can be tested by experiment. Scientifically, it’s a hypothesis that would be thrown out as soon as it came up. It doesn’t make sense to me to say religion and science are orthogonal, because if God exists and is all-powerful, how do we know that the outcome of any given scientific experiment was not ordained by God? How do we know we’re actually observing things about the universe rather than things God wants us to see?
This thread seems to be dead, but I’d like to make a meta-comment.
The internets are full of arguments over various political, moral, scientific or philosophical claims, and we can roughly break these arguments into several types: (1) You can “think aloud”, and argue as a way of clarifying for yourself what you believe, and why. (2) You can explain what thought processes led you to your conclusion without attempting to persuade anyone else to reach the same conclusion, and without suggesting that anyone should reach the same conclusion (if they only had a brain). (3) You can try to persuade those who disagree with you or are on the fence to come over to your side. (4) You can explain how those who believe what you do are intelligent, moral, courageous, honest, open-minded, etc. while those who disagree with you are stupid, immoral, cowardly, dishonest, close-minded, etc.
Argument type (4) is good, clean fun for all (but in my opinion, it is also stupid, immoral, cowardly, etc.) It seems to be the most common form of the unending science versus religion arguments occurring in ScienceBlogs…
Daryl McCullough wrote: “Argument type (4) is good, clean fun for all (but in my opinion, it is also stupid, immoral, cowardly, etc.) It seems to be the most common form of the unending science versus religion arguments occurring in ScienceBlogs…”
Take this thread as an example, just so I can see what you’re getting at. Which posts in this thread are doing what you accuse the “most common” of?
Because by my count, there’s a minority of type 4 comments in this thread of 46 posts. I counted 7 posts that I could categorize as that.
Can you point out the specific ones you count as this? Because I frankly don’t see it. I see lots of 1’s, a majority of twos and some threes.
Specifically, can you tell me how you read my posts? Because honestly they’re attempts at (2)’s, while inviting others to engage the ideas within and correct me if my thinking or my approach was in error.
Now, to you this might be a settled question, the “science vs. religion debate”. But for me, I still don’t know the answer, or much more importantly, a structure for REASONING to bring me to an answer. At the same time, I see others reaching conclusions very quickly and seemingly without much effort. I struggle with this, and I would very much appreciate the thoughts and arguments of others. In this topic, I see Bill Phillips making some very stark “this is the way it is” kind of pronouncements, and I wonder “why is it so EASY for him?” I want to know, “has he thought about this or that aspect? What about this other point of view, how has he reasoned that part out?”
In this thread, I posted several of my thought processes and asked for input, yet I received none.
Oh well.
Can I ask you, for you, is this a “settled question” or an “unsolvable issue” and not worth further discussion? Or is this an area where active discussion might be fruitful?
Siamang: In this thread, I posted several of my thought processes and asked for input, yet I received none.
Well, I’m sorry you’re frustrated, but, honestly, I didn’t see anything in your comment (#31) that I could respond to. The questions you asked were all “How can Phillips believe X?” which I’m not in any position to answer– the essay on the Templeton site is a more detailed statement of his feelings on the subject than anything I heard in the six years I worked for him. I have no information to give you.
Beyond that, I also thought that you were making exactly the assumption that Bill was arguing against, namely, that all statements by scientists need to be scientific statements. Given that he explicitly rejects that whole premise in the bit that I quoted, I don’t really think there’s much of a basis for further conversation. We could go round and round about whether he’s right to reject that premise, but honestly, I’d rather grade lab reports.
“Beyond that, I also thought that you were making exactly the assumption that Bill was arguing against, namely, that all statements by scientists need to be scientific statements.”
I don’t think I advanced that argument. I think I was pretty clear that I was addressing the specific statement that Bill Phillips argued wasn’t scientific, “God wants us to love each other”. I was asking the simple question (I thought), which is “what makes that a non-scientific statement?” By what reasoning is this statement non-scientific? I have yet to hear such reasoning in this thread, since pointing out that there are specific claims being made about the nature of God beyond mere “existence” and claims about the limitation of all future science that I have yet to see supporting reasoning for. Why is the claim a non-scientific claim? The only answer people have given is “well, it’s just not, that’s why not.”
This is not to say that all statements by scientists need to be scientific statements. A scientist may say, “I want a warm bath” and that is not a scientific statement. But if a person, I don’t care who it is, says that the universe was ordered by an extraterrestrial who has specific desires about human behavior, THAT may indeed wind up to be a testable assertion one day. And that INTERESTS me, as it should interest anyone who cares about the root nature of the universe (which I think should include all physicists.)
Now, I’m not sure what makes a scientific statement and what makes a non-scientific statement. I’m also not sure who gets to choose… I’m not sure the speaker gets to choose.
Maybe the definition of “scientific statement” is that a statement only GETS to be a scientific statement at the moment in time when we have tools to test it. In which case, some claims in theology are safe for now.
“Given that he explicitly rejects that whole premise in the bit that I quoted, I don’t really think there’s much of a basis for further conversation. ”
Here’s what I’d like to figure out, WHY did he reject the premise, and by what reasoning? I’d LOVE to reject the premise as well. Please convince me, all who see things this way, by what reasoning can I bring myself to your side of the argument? Right now, I have a completely untested view, and it’s glaringly obvious to me that I have an untested view.
I mean, if this universe has an ordering force working in it, SURELY that is in the realm of possible human discovery, is it not? Why aren’t we looking in every corner of the universe for such a thing, if it is believed to exist by some of the most brilliant minds on the planet? Why do they KNOW, deep in their heart of hearts that this force exists, AND that it’s utterly, utterly undetectable now and to the end of human scientific endeavor?
If Daryl McCullough can express frustration at the endless SB round and round on Science v Religion, I’d like to take it to a new level if I may: Lots of heat here, not much light. Tons of people asserting that NOMA is right, or that NOMA is wrong… but nobody seems to say why. Nobody is engaging the question.
I guess that’s the main failing here at SB on this question, and why it’s continually so frustrating to have it brought up again and again. Everyone just asserts their conclusion without any discussion of the reasoning.
Today we have computers that people can speak to and the computer does as is told. The Bible says GOD SPOKE to make each thing, like THE MAIN WAVE from which each lesser wave exists with its interactions. And it seems like our lives are like “computarized” before Him to where He knows each and every detail, including knowing “the number of hairs on our head” and how to favor us so as to achieve the biggest unseen thing that God does, which is NOT doing an obvious miracle, but causes an interior convincing about the His REALITY and His love in anyone who is willing to “see” this. Let us consider developing a “proof” using P/Q concepts to prove or disprove this. I never liked that part of math myself but am willing to “learn it better” to do this!