Abbas Raza at 3 Quarks Daily, just before kindly linking to my martini post, mentions a recent BBC documentary, Jonathan Miller’s Brief History of Disbelief. Not sure how I will ever get to see it, but it sounds great; very similar in spirit to the Moments in Atheism course I taught with Shadi Bartsch some time back. The synopses look about right:
Shadows of Doubt
BBC Two Monday 31 October 2005 7pm-8pm
Jonathan Miller visits the absent Twin Towers to consider the religious implications of 9/11 and meets Arthur Miller and the philosopher Colin McGinn. He searches for evidence of the first ‘unbelievers’ in Ancient Greece and examines some of the modern theories around why people have always tended to believe in mythology and magic.Noughts and Crosses
BBC Two Monday 7 November 7pm-8pm
With the domination of Christianity from 500 AD, Jonathan Miller wonders how disbelief began to re-emerge in the 15th and 16th centuries. He discovers that division within the Church played a more powerful role than the scientific discoveries of the period. He also visits Paris, the home of the 18th century atheist, Baron D’Holbach, and shows how politically dangerous it was to undermine the religious faith of the masses.The Final Hour
BBC Two Monday 14 November 7pm-8pm TBC
The history of disbelief continues with the ideas of self-taught philosopher Thomas Paine, the revolutionary studies of geology and the evolutionary theories of Darwin. Jonathan Miller looks at the Freudian view that religion is a ‘thought disorder’. He also examines his motivation behind making the series touching on the issues of death and the religious fanaticism of the 21st century.
I’m happy to see Baron D’Holbach in there, although a little surprised that Hume’s name wasn’t featured more prominently. And it’s too bad that he discounts the role of scientific discoveries; my own theory is that the mechanics of Galileo and Newton was actually much more influential in the development of atheism than people tend to believe.
Also interesting was this quote from the interview with the director, Richard Denton:
BBC Four: Were you surprised to find the first American presidents were so sceptical about religion?
RD: I was incredibly struck by their quotations – these guys wouldn’t even get considered as candidates if they said anything like that now. And I was depressed by that because it made me feel that we have not made a great deal of progress since the Age of Enlightenment. If anything, we’re going backwards at the moment.
Ain’t it the truth.
I do agree that science doesn’t have much to say about religion directly, but it seems to me that it repeatedly contradicts it indirectly, i.e. by making predictions that disagree with religious dogmas and by attempting to provide explanations for phenomena that differ from the existing theistic ones.
Cian, I’m not sure which religious dogmas you could be referring to. Sure, the theory of evolution contradicts the fundamentalist view of creation, but there are plenty of religions that don’t interpret Genesis literally. But do other branches of science — quantum mechanics, seismology, genetics, whatever — really contradict religious dogmas?
And, as to your comment about “existing theistic [explanations]”, are you complaining that science tries to find natural explanations for phenomena? Should scientists just sit on their asses and say, “Oh, well, since the Bible explained the creation of mankind, no need to investigate how bacteria become antibacterial-resistant”? Would you like to join Kansas in redefining science so that supernatural explanations are allowed? And I have to point out that even some major religions even understand the difference between religion and science.
I agree. Dead (?) or alive 🙂
There should be enough information spread around that such could be constructed ? 🙂 If the author’s thoughts had been spread throughout society and ages, then what tell tale sign would have lead you to those who had added perspective on the continue dissemination of their words, in relation to science?
It all had to begin somewhere and historically this path is well worn:)
The Thaleans 🙂
I am not sure religion is irrelevant to science, because it can drive intuition towards the scientific results.
But certainly science is NOT irrelevant to religion.
Religions (or at least Christianism) assume the basic postulate that man has freedom.
Suppose now that I am a XIX century scientist: I would probably believe that nature is deterministic, and since man is made out of matter, he is also determined by some initial condition. Therefore there would be no freedom (unless one believes that inside man’s brain laws of physics are different from laboratory results, which is a rather bizzarre belief) and therefore the man would be reduced to a machine and religion would be false.
But as everybody should know this is NOT the case, and even IN PRINCIPLE one can not even predict what a single particle will do, apart from computing probabilities and putting constraints.
Therefore today there is no such thing as determinism killing religion, but there is today a choice: is man’s action a result of pure randomness (constrained by laws of physics) or it is the result of something that one can call FREEDOM (again constrained by laws of physics)?
And similarly is the Universe result of randomness(as “landscape” people believe) or somebody set the constant on purpose to allow life?
Is the evolution of biological life due to randomness or somebody drove this evolution towards a precise result?
The real amazing thing is that today every man is free to choose between these two options and is free to make up his mind based on his own intuition.
But I am afraid that most of the public still think as XIX century scientist/philosophers used tp do, that religion is ruled out by science.
And, even worse maybe some scientist still think the same!
a few salient quotes:
“The human mind is evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.” E.O. Wilson
“One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.” Steven Weinberg.
My favorite characterization of Intelligent Design, from a Martin Amis novel that pre-dates ID:
“I don’t know much about science, but I know what I like”.
I have a question for the scientists who hold religious beliefs. How do you reconcile this with your profession? It seems to me that the most basic tenet of science is that the universe is systematic and the rules describing ALL phenomena can be discovered. So a scientist with religious beliefs says to himself, “All these natural phenomena I’m working on lie in the domain of science, but when my body dies…then some magic happens. Science doesn’t apply here.”
It just seems like an inconsistent partition to me.
Doug? wrote: “but everyone has to deal with the spiritual issues of life.”
This is the beginning of the tautological breakdown of your post. There is no evidence that this is true, unless, or until, one states as an organizing principle that the “spiritual issues of life include certain semiotic sets (x, y, z, and so forth). Indeed, in the current manifestation of culture in the US one can easily live a full life without once “dealing” with spiritual issues. This is true of course, unless you create sets of constructs that somehow link consumer shopping and intake of alcoholic beverages as having some spiritual relationship.
In some ways a statement such as: “everyone has to deal with scientific issues of life” would also be false, given dependence upon semantical and grammatical relations for constructing the issues and the acts of “dealing with.” Do i have to deal with scientific issues to post this text? Some would say yes, others could say no. Would it matter at all?? Probably not. The technology is not science, and being alive is not religion.
hi S.McHugh,
you can read my previous post and you’ll find why I think a scientist (and indeed any human being) is free to choose between believing or not in free choice and God.
OK. I’ve read your post, but I don’t see a clear answer to my question. You seem to have decided that the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics allows for the existence of god. No? Too tenuous for me, I’m afraid. A believer can always put god just outside our current observational bounds if it makes him comfortable, but I’m wondering how one can reconcile this insistence with the act of extending our boundaries? In other words, science continues to reveal where god is not. Does it still make sense for its practitioners to maintain a belief in the god-of-the-gaps?
In #18 Eugene writes:
It’s not a negative view of scientists, or science. It’s a negative view of the attitude some scientists take wherein, because of their learning, they set aside the counsel of God, supposing they know of themselves. This is a haughty and arrogant posture to take, in my opinion. But while exclaiming against the idea of a Creator and characterizing the practice of religion as a “thought disorder,” is arrogant, the sad fact is that the law and society have institutionalized the indoctrination of this attitude in our public schools.
Parents are told they must teach spiritual principles to their children at home and at church, but must send them to public school where philosophy and the theories of science are given full reign to “wreck the case for religion” in their young minds, while their parents are told to back off, so-to-speak. Denton says it plainly:
So, these parents have become alarmed in the U.S., and they are fighting back, not willing to stand idly by while this happens, and they are making it clear to teachers, school systems, and the state, that this cannot stand. The irreligious have no right to a bully pulpit to “wreck the case for religion” in public schools. The doctrine of separation of church and state is subverted when the irreligious point of view is labeled science, and thus licensed to argue that because “all living things can have the illusion of design without there being a designer,” it follows that there is no designer. This is a specious and deceptive argument that is tacitly being used to “wreck the case for religion” in public schools.
Ironically, mankind is now on the verge of attempting to try its hand at designing life. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that someday, men could attempt to restart life this way on a “dead” planet, like Mars, and one could make the case that, eventually, life might evolve from that primitive intervention into various life forms on the planet in plant and animal kingdoms, possibly rejuvenating the planet, and making it possible at some point for human beings to be taken there to begin reproducing and colonizing it. Perhaps, for their own good, it might be decided too that the memories of their former life would be erased, and that they were to be given help from time to time, including answers to their questions about who they were and how they came to be that approximated the truth, but which were adapted to their capacity to understand.
Now, imagine that after many generations, they had advanced dramatically and sought to discover for themselves, the origin of life. How misguided would they be when they, after ultimately discovering the power of evolution and the role of DNA, concluded that no designer had a hand in it? The point is that, if we, after our brief moment on this planet, have discovered more about the creation than our ancestors were prepared to understand, why should we allow ourselves to become vain and foolish and overlook our own frailties, because of it?
The Apostle Paul warned us not to be wise in our own conceits, yet this is just what we are doing. This is another way of saying that our own arrogance, in thinking that we know so much, will be our downfall, because our “wisdom” becomes foolishness and profits us nothing. It is good to be learned, if we hearken unto the counsels of God, but if set them aside, supposing we know of ourselves, disaster awaits us.
It turns out that an ancient American warned us, but the early settlers of this land could not make sense of his words in those days, and dismissed the ancient legends as foolishness, burning the precious books and destroying the ancient knowledge of the former inhabitants of the land in the mad quest for gold. But hear his words today:
Doug
Doug says :
>>It’s not a negative view of scientists, or science. It’s a negative view of the attitude some scientists take wherein, because of their learning, they set aside the counsel of God, supposing they know of themselves. This is a haughty and arrogant posture to take, in my opinion. But while exclaiming against the idea of a Creator and characterizing the practice of religion as a “thought disorder,” is arrogant, the sad fact is that the law and society have institutionalized the indoctrination of this attitude in our public schools.
I think you just contradicted your first sentence with the rest of the paragraph. Besides I can’t listen to God’s counsel if I don’t believe in Her existence. That’s an arrogant posture in your opinion I am sure, but well, you are entitled to it and I respect that. Now, if you can respect my opinion and think a bit more before associating disbelief with arrogance.
You know, I generally try to be one of those nice atheists who doesn’t go around telling theists how irrational they are, in part because I don’t think my own position is all that much more rational. But when somebody comes in and lays down one of these “your arrogance keeps you from accepting God and you oppress me and you’re gonna burn” sermons, I have to reconsider my niceness for just a little while.
Hi S.McHugh,
you make a good point that a believer can put God beyond the present observational constraint.
In this case there is no conflict between science and faith.
But, as you say, this is suspicious, because it seems unfair that every time that you find a law that
contradicts free will you say: ok, maybe free will acts on smaller scales.
What I am saying is that the already discovered probabilitic nature of laws of physics is
NOT a law that contradicts free will. It puts constraints on free will, but it allows for an important role of it.
So you don’t have to go beyond observational constraints in order to allow for free will: its’ already there!
while “uncertainty” was created in probabilistic reductionism, at a certain level, what makes one think that there was not some “underlying” connection that governs our perceptions? Was connected, in ways that we did not understand?
Would this imply lack of vision, while religion could invoke God beyond what we understand reasonably well?
Empowerment outside of ourselves?
I think such further educaton within the current realms has made for interesting comparisons, in terms of what is acceptable when you consume models. “Religion” as a model might then not work? 🙂
So you leave room, even within the “gaps:)
Presumably good and evil are meaningful concepts in human life. The religious get their versions of these concepts rather easily, namely, from God. The atheists make other metaphysical assumptions to arrive at good and evil, perhaps more compatible with science than God, but assumptions nonetheless.
Before I’m accused of repeating the tired argument that atheists are immoral or something, let me make it clear that I’m only pointing out that good and evil are not derived from science. Everybody, not just the religious, are living with ideas that are non-scientific.
S. McHugh: “..the most basic tenet of science is that the universe is systematic and that the rules describing all phenomena can be discovered.”
This may be a necessary supposition for the purpose of motivating scientists to engage in unrestrained exploration of the universe in the manner we call ‘scientific’, but why should we assume that this tenet must prove true per se? Adopting this tenet is a practical matter and has nothing to do with any insight into an ultimate truth.
S.M.: “A believer can always put god just outside our current observational bounds..”
Or a believer can put God all the way outside our observational bounds by declaring God transcendent (as Christians and many others do) and therefore now and forever beyond the ken of science. Science must follow the rules; a transcendent God exists beyond the rules.
S.M.: “..science continues to reveal where god is not.”
Does science reveal where god is not? So some process or other (eg. evolution) explains someting that seems to contradict a particular brand of theism – even if we discredit that particular theism we’re still left with all the theisms that regard that process as just another of God’s creations.
Just in case anyone is in doubt as to the Discovery Institute’s motivations in all this, see this page and Stephen Meyer’s bio at Palm Beach Atlantic University. (Stephen Meyer is director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.)
(BTW, here are some definitions of apologetics.)
#30 S. McHugh
>I have a question for the scientists who hold religious beliefs. How do you reconcile this with your profession?
Here’s a group of people who do very well with reconciling the two: the Jesuit astronomers at the Vatican Observatory. I am convinced that these people are brilliant ‘bridges’ between religion and science, and who can show religious people the value of science.
Interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article966.html
Here’s a piece of the interview that I think makes clear their position (sorry for the length) Notation: GC = Guy Consolmagno, AM = Astrobiology Magazine
GC: […]but also to reassure the religious people science is a good thing. Don’t listen to people who say you have to choose one or the other.
And there’s two things going on there. One is the sense that, if God made the universe, and he made it good, and he loved the universe so much that, as the Christians believe, he sent his only son, it’s up to us to honor and respect and get to know the universe. I think it was Francis Bacon who said that God sets up the universe as a marvelous puzzle for us to get to know him by getting to know how he did things. By seeing how God created, we get a little sense of God’s personality. And that means, among other things not going in with any preconceived notions. We can’t impose our idea of how God did things. It’s up to us to see how the universe actually does work.
AM: Isn’t the belief that God created the universe a preconceived notion?
GC: It is. And it’s a preconceived notion that in one form or another every scientist has to have. Because here’s the other side: to be a scientist you have to have two fundamental assumptions, so fundamental you don’t even think about it. You assume that the universe makes sense, that there really is an objective reality; there really is a logic to this; it’s not just chaos; there really are laws to be found. We’re so used to that assumption, you don’t realize it. A lot of cultures don’t have that.
And the other assumption you have to make is that it’s worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you’re not going to be a scientist, you’re not going to be interested in Mars. So it’s a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. Seeing how the universe works is worth spending a lifetime doing.
AM: Why is it a religious statement?
GC: By religious I mean that it is based on certain fundamental assumptions you have about how the universe works and what your place in the universe is. And ultimately, that’s a religious assumption. Whether it’s my religion or somebody else’s religion, lots of people with lots of religions are looking at science. I’m not saying it’s only one religion that has that assumption. But I’m saying that there are religions that don’t. There are brilliant cultures throughout history who have had fabulous mathematics and glorious ethical systems – and no science. It really is an important fundamental assumption that you have to have, especially day-to-day as a scientist. It’s what gets you up in the morning.
You know, one of the scary things as a scientist is that you’re not punching a clock. There’s probably nobody looking over your shoulder to see if you’re working today. It’s only after two years, when you haven’t produced anything, that you don’t get the next grant and then you’re out of a job. But day-by-day, what gets you up, what makes you do the work? Why are you excited about this stuff? And why do you think that it’s worth doing, when people are starving in the world?
AM: And what’s your answer?
GC: My answer is the answer I gave before. That it’s one of the things that makes us human and, for me, it’s one of the things that bring me into close personal touch with God.
Eugene wrote:
Eugene, I don’t intend to offend those who differ from me in their beliefs, just because they differ. If someone honestly doesn’t know that God lives, or chooses not to believe it, they won’t take offense when aggressive atheists, seeking to argue their case, and destroy the case for faith, are taken to task for their stance, which is to insist that, as a matter of public policy, we must not be permitted to acknowledge that we depend upon God as individuals and as a nation in any official capacity.
However, I’m of no account among the men of affairs who are today seeking to establish their own atheistic view in this country. What I say is nothing more than a feeble reflection of what our noble and honorable forefathers have said: that it is arrogant and shameful for Americans not to acknowledge the hand of God in all things. For instance, in Abraham Lincoln’s words:
While these may seem like harsh words to those who are cut deeply by them, they are not offensive to the just, who receive them gladly. If the hearts of the nation are won over by those who continuously argue for disbelief, while the voice of those who know better is never raised in opposition to their deceit, then how shall the judgments of God be stayed from this nation?
We must never forget how heavily the sword of his justice fell upon the former inhabitants of this land, and yet there were great promises made unto their fathers that he would remember their descendants, who still live among us. How much more shall we stand in jeopardy, if we ignore what happened to them, and we too forget him, and deny the God of Heaven, as they did, after having displaced them so readily and rudely in this, the choicest of all lands, and received the great blessings we have received in their stead, as outlined above by President Lincoln, because of the faith of our forbearers?
But God has made it known in our day that when we are fully ripe in iniquity, we shall be swept off the face of this land as a people, because he has decreed a solemn decree that the inhabitants of this land shall serve the God of the land, which is Jesus Christ, or be swept off the face of the land in his own due time. If he did it to the former inhabitants, we shouldn’t suppose that he won’t do it to us.
There are great things to be understood regarding the work of the God of Israel, not only in this land, but on the whole face of the earth, but I must stop here. Suffice it to say, that the history of disbelief is much greater, more central, and deeply disturbing than Sean ever imagined. The pathos in the drama of the struggle between good and evil, between belief and disbelief, is not brewed in an evening cocktail; it echoes in the mountain valleys, in the canyon walls, and in the streets of desolate cities, as the thunder of the great deep, heaving itself beyond its bounds.
This generation of Americans has not known the sorrow of former generations, and they do not yet realize the enormity of the price former nations have paid for the forsaking of their God and his righteousness to turn to Godlessness and to walk after the lusts of their own hearts until they were fully ripe in iniquity, but read the lamentation of a believer who experienced it first hand in Jerusalem:
So, as President Lincoln so wisely observed, “It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” Here’s the point: We can be wise and do it now, or we can wait and see if it was really as bad as Jeremiah described it.
Doug
I still think Nietzsche’s musings on the subject were spot on.
“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! ” – The Gay Science
But it must also be noted that while Nietzsche was certainly no fan of Christianity and the Church of his day, whether he was an athesist is open to debate.
Regarding athesists as the “arrogant” ones: Is it not the height of arrogance to presume that this God we speak of – omnipotent, omniscient – would care in the slightest about we mere mortals fighting out an existence on this rather irrelevant (except for us) corner of the universe? And further that He would send His son to us and be willing to engage with us on daily and invididual basis through prayer?
I can understand faith in the mystery of universe and something like a ‘life-force’ or spiritual energy which we can have no understanding in. (perhaps in the spirit of buddhism?) But a “personal” relationship with God I cannot understand.
And in the end we find that our spirituality, faith and religion is a personal matter – to embrace, engage with, be skeptical of or shun completely.
Religious freedom is a hallmark of many free societies – as it should be. Atheists would not (and rarely do) advocate that all religion should be banned because they believe it to be wrong. Nor should theists expect the state or society to give religion a primacy in the making of laws and deciding on values, or mores.
The problem for scientists (and athesists) with regards to ID and the rest, is when religion imposes or takes over from science in explaining *science*, and dogmatically judges those who don’t live according to their interpretation of the bible. (take your pick of social issues – gender, sexuality, abortion etc) Unfortunately, for many Christians their religion demands of them an evangelical and ‘spreading of the message’ mode of faith, and thus we have conflict.
m
My neighbor (HS history teacher) told me “of all the religions, Buddhism is the most scientific”. It does not advocate an absolute truth, but that “truth is relative”. The latter is reflected in the Theory of Relativity (“it depends on your frame of reference”), or Politics (“Where you stand [ on an issue ], depends on where you sit [ your affiliated group ]”). He use the film “The Matrix” as an example, where a virtual-world was the perceived reality.
I found this really interesting article, which gave some background on Eastern Philosophy & it’s attraction to.. by Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer:
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/VerhoevenBuddhismScience.htm
Buddhism and Science:
Probing the Boundaries of Faith and Reason
Dr. Martin J. Verhoeven
Religion East and West, Issue 1, June 2001, pp. 77-97
Western interest in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, historically coincided with the rise of modern science and the corresponding perceived decline of religious orthodoxy in the West. Put simply: Modern science initiated a deep spiritual crisis that led to an unfortunate split between faith and reason—a split yet to be reconciled. Buddhism was seen as an “alternative altar,” a bridge that could reunite the estranged worlds of matter and spirit. Thus, to a large extent Buddhism’s flowering in the West during the last century came about to satisfy post-Darwinian needs to have religious beliefs grounded in new scientific truth.
…
By the 1890s America was caught in the throes of a spiritual crisis affecting Christendom worldwide. Modern scientific discoveries had so undermined a literal interpretation of sacred scripture, that for many educated and thoughtful people, it was no longer certain that God was in his heaven and that all was right with the world. These rapid changes and transformations in almost every aspect of traditional faith, had such irreversible corrosive effects on religious orthodoxy, that they were dubbed, “acids of modernity.” They ate away at received convictions, and ushered in an unprecedented erosion of belief. People like my grandparents, brought up with rock-solid belief in the infallible word of God, found their faith shaken to its very foundations. It was as if overnight they suddenly awoke to a new world governed not by theological authority but by scientists. New disclosures from the respected disciplines of geology, biology, and astronomy challenged and shattered Biblical accounts of the origins of the natural world and our place and purpose in it. Sigmund Freud captured the spirit of the age well when he said “the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science.” The Copernican Revolution, continued by Galileo, took our little planet out of the center position in the universe. The Earth, held to be the physical and metaphysical center of the Universe, was reduced to a tiny speck revolving around a sun. Then Darwin all but eliminated the divide between animal and man, and with it the “special creation” status enjoyed by humans. Darwin, moreover, diminished God. The impersonal forces of natural selection kept things going; no divine power was necessary. Nor, from what any competent scientist could demonstrate with any factual certainty, was any Divinity even evident—either at the elusive “creation,” or in the empirical present. Karl Marx people portrayed people as economic animals grouped into competing classes driven by material self-interest. Finally, Freud himself characterized religious faith as an evasion of truth, a comforting illusion sustained by impulses and desires beyond the reach of the rational intellect. Nietzsche’s famous declaration that “God is Dead” may have seemed extreme, but few would have denied that God was ailing. And certainly the childhood version of a personal, all-powerful God that created the world and ruled over it with justice and omniscience was for many a comforting vision lost forever.
…
This trend linking Buddhism to science continued, even accelerated, into the 20th century. Einstein’s work and further developments in the new cutting-edge physics seemed to provide even further evidence that science and Buddhism were merely different rivers leading to the same sea. Where the old theologies crumbled under the juggernaut of science, Buddhism seemed to hold its own, even thrive. The early (and even contemporary) exponents of Buddhism pushed this idea. It remains an area of great promise and interest; but it is not one without difficulties.
…
The second area of doubt regarding modern science arises from within the scientific community itself. The last decades of the 20th century have seen an internal reexamination take place within almost every scientific discipline, as each has been forced to question its own foundations and exclusive claims to truth. We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift, the outcome of which still remains unclear. It revolves around a loss of the positivistic certainty that science once enjoyed and now finds slipping away. Ironically, the scientific “establishment” finds itself confronting a challenge to its exclusive authority that in many ways mirrors the spiritual crisis that religious orthodoxy faced with the triumph of modern science.
…
With the ground-breaking work of Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, and Sir Arthur Eddington, the rock-solid presupposition central to that classical scientific thought began to crumble. With the “new science” that started to emerge in the post-World War II era, the observer and the observed could not be presumed separate and distinct. Gone too was the neat subject/object distinction that had come to define classical science. This shift away from the study of the “outside” objective world of nature to the “inner” subjective world of the observer is a hallmark of the new science. As Heisenberg observed, “Even in science, the object of research is no longer nature itself, but man’s investigation of nature.”
[ is this related to the “anthropic principle”? ]
For example, Heisenberg pointed out that the very act of measurement interfered with what one was attempting to measure. You cannot separate the subject from the object of the experiment. So, if the scientist changes the very nature of the “reality” he or she investigates, then what is truth? What is purely objective fact? Where does the boundary lie (indeed, if there is one) between the mind and the external world? Consequently, the quantum theory of the new physics no longer claims to be describing “reality.” It describes probable realities. The new physics looks for possible realities and finds them so elusive that no one model can exhaustively account for everything. The indeterminacy of models has replaced earlier certainties.
Some, like Thomas Kuhn, even questioned the notion of science as an objective progression towards truth. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn observed that science, like religion, becomes heavily encumbered with its own baggage of non-rational procedures. Science accumulates its peculiar set of presuppositions, doctrines, and even heresies.
[ even more so now, with String Theory ]
Kuhn essentially demolished the logical empiricist and purist view that science personified the impartial progression towards a universal truth. Instead, he saw it as a series of shifting “paradigms”—a global way of seeing things which is relatively immune from disconfirmation by experience. One paradigm would hold sway for awhile, only to be displaced in a “revolution” by another conceptual worldview. These paradigms, both self-contained and self-perpetuating, tended to conserve and perpetuate their own ideas, just as religion tends to conserve and perpetuate its own beliefs.
For example, Galileo declared in the early 1600s that Copernicus was correct: The earth moves, and the sun is the center of our galaxy. The Church denounced these views as heresies and dangerous to the Faith. They forced Galileo to recant during a trial under the Inquisition. Although he was publicly compelled to affirm the existing “scientific” paradigm, Galileo still defied the authorities. After getting up from his knees, he is said to have mumbled “E pur si muove” (nevertheless it still moves). Placed under house arrest, Galileo lived out the rest of his life in seclusion.
The world, of course, shifted paradigms to accept the Copernican worldview. The Church, however, lagged behind, and only in 1992 did the Vatican lift the 1616 ban on the Copernican teaching. Einstein, whose theory of relativity was at first met with skepticism and doubt, later became an icon of scientific genius. And yet, even Einstein found himself resisting the new theories of the quantum physicists towards the end of his life—once again adding credibility to Kuhn’s thesis.
Whether Kuhn is correct or not is beside the point. His critique illustrates a larger trend: the suspicion that science does not have absolute answers, nor even ultimate authority. Thus, modern science presents less of a unified front, less of a final bastion of truth. Certainly many people still see themselves as living in a black and white world. But, in general, many scientists are coming to define their discipline in a more humble and tentative way. Science, for people at the turn of the century, stood for absolute, fixed truths and principles that held good forever; it embraced and explained an unchanging reality, or at least a reality that was changing according to constant and predictable laws. Today we are more modest, less presumptuous. A better working definition of science now might be “a form of inquiry into natural phenomena; a consensus of information held at any one time and all of which may be modified by new discoveries and new interpretations at any moment.” In contemporary science, uncertainty seems to be the rule.
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As early as the 1940’s, the pioneering physicist Niels Bohr sensed this congruence between modern science and what he called “Eastern mysticism.” As he investigated atomic physics and searched for a unified field of reality, he often used the Buddha and Lao Tzu in his discussions on physics in his classes. He made up his own coat of arms with the yin/yang symbol on it. The American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer also saw in Buddhism a scientific parallel to the puzzling riddles of modern physics; his cutting-edge discoveries seemed to echo the enigmatic wisdom of the ancient sage. Wrote Oppeheimer:
If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say ‘no;’ if we ask whether the electron’s position changes with time, we must say ‘no;’ if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say ‘no;’ if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say ‘no.’ The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of man’s self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth-century science.
Thus, it grows increasingly difficult to believe in an external world governed by mechanisms that science discloses once and for all. Thoughtful people find themselves hesitant, unmoored, with an up-in-the-air kind of feeling regarding the most basic facts of life. It is said that “we live in an age when anything is possible and nothing is certain.” This post-modern dilemma highlights the felt need to reconcile facts and values, morals and machines, science with spirituality. And while traditional Judaeo-Christian theologies struggle to address this particularly contemporary malaise, Buddhism maneuvers this tricky terrain with apparent ease and finds itself sought after with renewed interest and popularity.
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Such insights early on intrigued Western thinkers, as Buddhism hinted of a new avenues of travel through the mind/matter maze. It led scientists like Albert Einstein to declare:
The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. . . If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.
Nietzshe was an atheist. Near the end of his career ( 1888 ‘Why I am so Wise’ ) he admitted that he had no logic to support his atheism, but he never recanted his atheism. Interestingly, Nietzsche was a huge Jesus fan; he regarded Jesus as the true ‘ubermench’. Nietzshe said of Christians “The only true Christian died on the cross.” .
I’m an agnostic with theist leanings. I find interesting your suggestion that a God of infinite powers would be unlikely to bother with humanity on the basis that we and our planet are physically small. Would a God capable of creating infinity be likely to value things on the basis of their size? Surely God would be no more likely to be impressed with something as big as a galaxy than with something as tiny as a microbe.
If we accept the omniscient, omnipotent God premise then all Cristian dogma is plausible on the grounds that God can make it so. “Personal” God would be supported, not contraindicated by God as omnipotent.
Incidentally, fundamentalists scare me.
Regards
#44 Michael D:
“The problem for scientists (and athesists) with regards to ID and the rest, is when religion imposes or takes over from science in explaining *science*, and dogmatically judges those who don’t live according to their interpretation of the bible. (take your pick of social issues – gender, sexuality, abortion etc) Unfortunately, for many Christians their religion demands of them an evangelical and ‘spreading of the message’ mode of faith, and thus we have conflict.”
Perhaps I can add a few more notes to this topic. In the newspapers the last weeks was this item:
“Vatican official refutes intelligent design theory”
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=17691
so this topic was on my mind to ask those at the Vatican Observatory when I visited there this morning (*) if the words by the director George Coyne was representing the Pope’s view. According to Guy Consolmagno (who works for Coyne), the answer is the two are in accord; the Pope refutes intelligent design too. If you think that is confusing, then I suggest to read the above news article to see how it fits with the Vatican’s views.
(*) It was a get-acquainted visit to a colleague and my first visit to VO (I’m not Catholic). Since the Observatory is located nearby to where I live and excellent research is made by Guy Consolmagno and the Jesuit astronomers there, I felt compelled to make a visit. I don’t have words to describe the Vatican Observatory, every corner demonstrated a fantastic piece of history. Four-hundred year old books, research papers by Newton, Maxwell, scientific instruments for the most clever purpose, 19th century telescopes, original documents by the Apollo astronauts given as gifts to the Pope, a log book of visitor signatures that included Eddington, Hertzsprung, Russell, Oort… I was in another world for some hours.
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