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Are Science and Religion Incompatible?
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| Renegade |
Read this in the latest issue of the Free Inquiry magazine and thought it might be good to stir up a bit of controversy here. I'm only quoting a small section of the article here, but the rest of it is available from the link at the bottom if you want to read the whole thing:
| quote: | There is a conflict between science and religion, and it is zero-sum. Surely it is time that scientists and other intellectuals stopped disguising this fact. Indeed, the incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either one has good reasons for what one strongly believes, or one does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they can. When rational inquiry supports the creed, it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided. It is only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, that its adherents invoke “faith.”
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If there were good reasons to believe in a God, belief in him would be perfectly reasonable—and would, perforce, be part of the magisterium of scientific rationality. As every religious dogmatist knows, there is only one magisterium. Religion and science are in perfect agreement on this core point of epistemology: there is nothing more sacred than the facts. |
http://www.secularhumanism.org/inde...age=harris_26_1
I think the article makes an important point here, and it's one that many in this conciliatory age seem reluctant to make. Both science and religion address issues of epistemology (how we "know" what we "know"), ontology (the nature of being and beings) and human nature (our fundamental facticity, our reasons for certain behaviour, our origins etc.) and, as such, I believe, they should be held to similar logical and empirical constraints. The existence of an interventionalist God (that is, a God that is actively engaged in the workings of the world), for instance, should produce quantifiable phenomena. If we do identify quantifiable phenomena that could have only come from a being as powerful as a God, then these phenomena should be as readily addressed by science as by religion. The manifested God, under these circumstances, immediately becomes a scientific issue and the tennets of science would have to change to accomodate his existence. If God could be proven, it would change the nature of science as drastically - if not more so - as it would the nature of religion.
So if science and religion - at their most fundamental levels - are asking similar questions, searching for similar truths and examining the same phenomena (or lack thereof) along the way, then they are either compatible or they are not. The notion of "faith" - which, as the article states, is merely an indefensible retreat for theists whose rational and empiricial inquiries have yielded answers that are unsatisfactory to them - doesn't change this reality and I don't think that the other traditional fallback position of "the mutual exclusivity of religion and science" has much merit either given that, as I've said, religion and science have many fields of inquiry which overlap.
So, the question is, how can we reconcile science and religion in this day and age? Is there room for both or are they incompatible enough to make the "belief" in both simultaneously completely irrational? |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
I think the article makes an important point here, and it's one that many in this conciliatory age seem reluctant to make. Both science and religion address issues of epistemology (how we "know" what we "know"), ontology (the nature of being and beings) and human nature (our fundamental facticity, our reasons for certain behaviour, our origins etc.) and, as such, I believe, they should be held to similar logical and empirical constraints. |
I partially disagree with you here. While it is obvious that science and religion are and were at odds regarding "lower-level" puzzles like human behaviour or the behaviour of the universe, and while science regularly won on these issues, the ultimate questions like "why anything exists" still cannot, and maybe will not, be answered using scientific means. Although, to be fair, such questions may not be answered through religious means either. Additionally, however, all of science is based on approximations and observations. All of those approximations and observations seem to work, so we seem to know how and why some things happen. On a basic level like the question of evolution or the roundness of the earth, such suggestions are sort of silly. But on the essential level, they are not. Like, can you prove to me with 100% certainty that you really exis? We both know you can't. You can only establish relations between processes that already seem to happen around you, so you can say you exist because I see you and I see you because you exist. Such an implication, though, requires that my perception is fundamentally flawless and omniscient. But why they are happening the way they are happening, or why anything is happening at all, is a different question entirely, and so far I haven't seen anyone come close to answering it.
| quote: | The existence of an interventionalist God (that is, a God that is actively engaged in the workings of the world), for instance, should produce quantifiable phenomena. If we do identify quantifiable phenomena that could have only come from a being as powerful as a God, then these phenomena should be as readily addressed by science as by religion. The manifested God, under these circumstances, immediately becomes a scientific issue and the tennets of science would have to change to accomodate his existence. If God could be proven, it would change the nature of science as drastically - if not more so - as it would the nature of religion.
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It is not necessarry that an interventionist god produces immediately quantifiable phenomena. For example, quantum effects are completely random and although you can statistically determine the general behavior of particles, there's no way you can predict what will happen to a single particle. Parralel to that is a butterfly effect which basically says that small disturbances in the beginning can cause large disturbances in the end. Ultimately the position of few electrons may end up causing a storm killing thousands of people. Let alone what can be done by manipulating the position of every subatomic particle in the universe. And the funny thing is that with a same statistical distribution of particle behaviours you can achieve dramatically different large-scale effects. So such actions are both interventionist and unobservable. |
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| Lepanto |
| most definatly compatible. |
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| Subey |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
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You have summed up Science's position on Itself and Faith perfectly.
Faith certainly looks impotent from that perspective :D
I will sum up Faith's position on Itself and Science.
Faith believes that reality is equivalent to the World of Warcraft. Imagine in WOW an Empiricist and a Faithful who are both studying a rubic's cube.
The empircists thinks "If I study the cube then I will understand the World of Warcraft better".
The faithful thinks "If I study the cube then I will understand Blizzard better". |
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| Sunsnail |
| quote: | Originally posted by Subey
You have summed up Science's position on Itself and Faith perfectly.
Faith certainly looks impotent from that perspective :D
I will sum up Faith's position on Itself and Science.
Faith believes that reality is equivalent to the World of Warcraft. Imagine in WOW an Empiricist and a Faithful who are both studying a rubic's cube.
The empircists thinks "If I study the cube then I will understand the World of Warcraft better".
The faithful thinks "If I study the cube then I will understand Blizzard better". |
That's so confusing. Could you explain that analogy :conf: |
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| Subey |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sunsnail
That's so confusing. Could you explain that analogy :conf: |
I'll try! but my track record isn't so good :P
First some Borges to confuse you even more...
"It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. It is also venturesome to think that of all these illustrious coordinations, one of them -- at least in an infinitesimal way -- does not resemble the universe a bit more than the others."
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2 Notes of Emphasis:
1)The analogy represent's Faith's perspecitve
2)I have NEVER experienced faith personally
The World of Warcraft exists in 2 distinct places simultaneously. In one place it is filled with people "living" in it, and in the other there are people outside of it who are "designing" it.
If you are *in* WoW where would you go to find the designers? (aka if you are in the universe where would you go to find God?)
You could climb the highest mountains. Nope not there. Explore the deepest caves, no designers there. Examine the tiniest particles, still can't find any conclusive evidence of the designers.
So after an exhaustive search for designers the hard science people conclude "There are no designers to be found".
What this analogy illustrates is two thing's from Faith's perspective:
1) Science isn't going to find the designer's this way
and
2) Even though there is no direct evidence of the designers *IN* WoW (aka the universe) the entire place is in fact direct evidence (hence statement's from people with faith like "God is in a flower") |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Subey
If you are *in* WoW where would you go to find the designers? (aka if you are in the universe where would you go to find God?) |
Hm, my guess would by writing a note to a GM.
| quote: | | 2) Even though there is no direct evidence of the designers *IN* WoW (aka the universe) the entire place is in fact direct evidence (hence statement's from people with faith like "God is in a flower") |
Agreed, although in the beta version there was an island between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms on which GMs were stationed. Now you can only get there if you exploit a bug and you find a bottle with a note saying something like "you shouldn't be here". Still, though, a message from gods in a way... :)
But yeah, generally I do agree with your viewpoint on this issue. |
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| Subey |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Agreed, although in the beta version there was an island between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms on which GMs were stationed. Now you can only get there if you exploit a bug and you find a bottle with a note saying something like "you shouldn't be here". Still, though, a message from gods in a way... :)
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Haha, well my analogy may not appear elegant, but it is! Because it gives people a working conceptual framework of how a "subordinate reality" can exist within and interface with our own.
From there its not so big a conceptual leap to apply the same logic to ourselves.
[edit: It should be noted that this is an old theory. Most of the early work was done in D house. As an acknowledgement of that the "look and feel" of the Oracle in The Matrix is loosely based on Sara Momoh.] |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
to be honest ive never experienced religion on a level to be comparable with a \"field of inquiry\" as you state. maybe im cynical in this regard?
if the existance of god could be proven, and religion could become more than just faith, then i dont see why two, *rational*, methods of inquiry would be mutually exclusive or incompatible.
could it be argued that religion would need science to understand the universe, and science would need religion to understand god & the soul?
i dunno.
the one thing i am sure of though is that subey\'s analogies SUCK the big one :p |
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| DJ Shibby |
| Merge science, spirituality, and philosophy, and you will find your answers. |
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| Spacey Orange |
if science = how, and
religion = why,
then compatible |
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| Psy-T |
| quote: | Originally posted by Spacey Orange
if science = how, and
religion = why,
then compatible |
and if the why is just an inevitable coincidence among many others, who needs religion? |
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