Science & Theology News was looking for some famous and charismatic scientists to respond to an interview with Noam Chomsky on various issues touching on science and religion. They were able to get Lawrence Krauss to agree, but then they ran out of ideas and ended up asking me. So you have some of the deepest questions we face about meaning and the universe, addressed by someone recently voted the world’s top intellectual, with responses by the author of The Physics of Star Trek and an assistant professor with a blog. What a great world!
You will notice that most of my answering comments are short and sweet. You can take this as evidence that I know how to pack a tremendous rhetorical punch into just a handful of words, or that I was in a hurry as the deadline was approaching. But sometimes I do go on a bit when a nerve is struck, such as this discussion on whether science and religion ever overlap in their respective spheres of interest.
ON STEVEN JAY GOULD AND “NON-OVERLAPPING MAGISTERIA”
CHOMSKY: Steve Gould [was] a friend. But I don’t quite agree with him [that science-and-religion are “Non-Overlapping Magisteria”]. Science and religion are just incommensurable. I mean, religion tells you, ‘Here’s what you ought to believe.’ Judaism’s a little different, because it’s not really a religion of belief, it’s a religion of practice. If I’d asked my grandfather, who was an ultra-orthodox Jew from Eastern Europe. ‘Do you believe in God?’ he would have looked at me with a blank stare, wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. And what you do is you carry out the practices. Of course, you say ‘I believe in this and that,’ but that’s not the core of the religion. The core of the religion is just the practices you carry out. And yes, there is a system of belief behind it somewhere, but it’s not intended to be a picture of the world. It’s just a framework in which you carry out practices that are supposed to be appropriate.
KRAUSS: Science and religion are incommensurate, and religion is largely about practice rather than explanation. But religion is different than theology, and as the Catholic Church has learned over the years, any sensible theology must be in accord with the results of science.
CARROLL: Non-overlapping magisteria might be the worst idea Stephen Jay Gould ever had. It’s certainly a surprising claim at first glance: religion has many different aspects to it, but one of them is indisputably a set of statements about how the universe works at a deep level, typically featuring the existence of a powerful supernatural Creator. “How the universe works” is something squarely in the domain of science. There is, therefore, quite a bit of overlap: science is quite capable of making judgments about whether our world follows a rigid set of laws or is occasionally influenced by supernatural forces. Gould’s idea only makes sense because what he really means by “religion” is “moral philosophy.” While that’s an important aspect of religion, it’s not the only one; I would argue that the warrant for religion’s ethical claims are based on its view of the universe, without which we wouldn’t recognize it as religion.
I was going to say that these guys might be famous, but do they have their own blogs? No! Except, of course, Lawrence was our very first guest-blogger, so that counts for something. And, I remembered, Noam Chomsky actually does have a blog. A funny one that consists of answers to occasional interview questions asked by someone from Z magazine, but I suppose it counts. Man, everybody has a blog these days.
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I think Chomsky’s distinction is a good one. Religions have official beliefs about the existence of God, the creation of the world, God’s various interactions with humans, the divinity of various saviors, etc. But that stuff is decoration. The core of religion is a practice: you go to a special building certain times of the week, you say certain prayers, you celebrate certain holidays. It is possible to complete reject all the beliefs of religion and keep the practice. Why would you want to do that? It’s culture! It’s tradition! Life without tradition would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof, as Tevye says.
Chomsky’s distinction sounds like a cop-out to my little naive non-intellectual brain.
I certainly agree that religion begets a form of culture, and I’m willing to grant that a counterpoint to today’s dominant culture of hypercapitalism is a welcome thing these days. But most of Chomsky’s comments are strictly about Judaism, where apparently theology really is separate from practice. Most religions do take the theology quite seriously. In my case, I was instructed against the dangers of being a “cafeteria Catholic”, that only believing what I wanted and rejecting the rest was not what a true Catholic did.
In the article as a whole, Chomsky’s answers are, as usual, a mixture of genuinely provocative thought and flippant, evasive nonsense. Sean did a good job, though. 🙂
In the future, everyone’s blog will be famous for 15 minutes….
Well done Sean, pretty heady company. However I wish the other Sean Carroll (Endless Forms Most Beautiful)had also been included, or at least an evolutionary biologist. Choamsky states “Not to underrate the theory of evolution, that’s a terrific intellectual advance, but it tells you nothing about whether there’s whatever people believe in when they talk about God. It doesn’t even talk about that topic. It talks about how organisms evolve. ”
Well it is evolution that built the human brain which gave rise to the emergent phenomena of the humnan mind which is where the (bad) idea of religion springs from. So I disagree that evolution says nothing about what people believe in when they talk about god, it’s just that we don’t know how to listen very well yet.
Sean,
Could you elaborate on your comment about science being quite capable of making judgments about whether the world follows a rigid set of laws or is occasionally influenced by supernatural forces? The latter doesn’t jive with my idea of what science is about: asking verifiable questions.
The occasional influences are, in principle, meassurable.
Except of course for a FSM God which maliciously only fiddles when we are not looking.
I liked your answers, Sean!
I think Lawrence did a good job too. I was just a tiny little bit dissapointed by Chomsky though…
citrine, I think that science is about understanding how Nature works through comparison of hypotheses with data. The presence or absence of supernatural influences can certainly be part of an hypothesis. More details are in my paper “Why Almost All Cosmologists are Atheists”:
http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/nd-paper.html
And I think you meant “jibe,” not “jive.” (Although maybe.)
Sean,
The key question, however, is what happens to the testability of a hypothesis if it includes the possible role of supernatural forces. A closely related question is how one distinguishes supernatural forces from natural ones. It seems to me that “supernatural” is almost always taken to mean “an expression of the intentions of an invisible being of unspecified constitution” (god, demon, angel, spirit, ghost, etc). Inasmuch as intentions are inherently fickle, it hard to imagine any effective strategy for testing an assumption of such an influence.
Apologists for religion don’t care much about problems of this sort. They figure, well, if one can explain the otherwise mysterious appearance of a hole in one’s backyard by the intentions (and presumed actions) of a neighbor’s dog or child, why can’t I extrapolate that mode of explanation by invoking so-called supernatural beings? The epistemological significance of the fact that dogs and human children are physical beings whose actions are presumably constrained (at least) by physical laws is discounted.
Of course this is a logical and methodological criticism of supernatural explanations, not an empirical one. One can always respond, “well, yeah, but supernatural forces could still exist and be causing observable events. You can’t prove that they’re not!” Add some religious conviction and you have an irrefutable position, albeit a scientifically sterile one.
Eugene writes: Chomsky’s distinction sounds like a cop-out to my little naive non-intellectual brain.
Why a cop-out? Most religious people I know (that is, people who participate in religious services) confess to not really believing in the theology. That includes Catholics, Jews and Protestants.
Kristin writes: Most religions do take the theology quite seriously. In my case, I was instructed against the dangers of being a “cafeteria Catholic”, that only believing what I wanted and rejecting the rest was not what a true Catholic did.
I’m not talking about what Church leaders say, I’m talking about what Church members say. Many Catholics that I know don’t care whether they are considered “true Catholics” or not.
A historical note: the idea of “non-overlapping magisteria” is sometimes attributed to Gould, but of course the idea is much older, going back at least as far as Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant. In 1923 Robert Millikan convinced a number of scientists and theologians to sign a declaration stating:
Although this is, as Sean says, phrased in terms of “moral philosophy”, I should point out that the idea of distinct realms also extends to metaphysics. Science and religion may not be “non-overlapping”, but there are nontrivial areas outside their intersection.
Geeorge
Thank you, Chris W.!!
We needed some fresh air in here. I could hardly breathe.
Daryl,
I think religion without theology is not a religion. One can call it “culture”, “moral philosophy”, “spiritual practice” etc, but it is certainly not the religion one claims to practice. There is some element of picking and choosing what you want to believe in any religion, but choosing not to believe in the reason the religion exists in the first place is tantaumount to not believing it. That’s the cop-out I refer to, it is a form of rationalization.
Of course people who “practice without belief” can call themselves religious, there is nothing to stop them. But I would think that the people who actually “practice with believe” are not going to accept that those people are members of their faith. And I would certainly not call those who “practice without belief” members of their religion.
Chomsky’s viewpoint is reminiscent of that of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli philosopher and scientist who was very influential when I was growing up. Among other things he was famous for promoting his “religion as practice” or “do as you are told” version of Judaism, dismissing any claim for more comprehensive viewpoint as redundant.
Since Leibowitz was, to say it mildly, a unique personality, I always assumed this point of view is unique also, I now have a second data point (which may not be indpendent)…I am wondering therefore if the story is a bit larger than I had imagined, interesting…
But of course, religion as practice is not that uncommon viewpoint among practitioners of other religions (I am not that sure about christianity), in that case I see no overlap with science at all.
Eugene,
Why do you object to calling it religion? Why do you care what it is called?
There is some element of picking and choosing what you want to believe in any religion, but choosing not to believe in the reason the religion exists in the first place is tantaumount to not believing it.
Right. For many people, belief is not relevant to their religious practices. Why do you call it a cop-out? Why do you call it rationalization?
Moshe,
I think that for many liberal “religious” people, there is no overlap between religion and science. If there is a scientific question, about how best to cure cancer, or what caused the Tsunami, or where humans came from, the liberal adherent defers to science for the answer. They don’t look to their Holy book or their priest.
It’s nice that we’ve been instructed on whom to accept as “World’s Top Intellectual”. So when do we find out who’s “World’s Top Emotionalist”?
If we’re after titles, I’ll be ‘world’s worst zither player*’
*It’s a safe bet. I’ve never picked one up.
Daryl,
Well, I guess one can redefine religion till it does not overlap with science. I would claim that then it has been stripped off its most essential bit : theology, that it is no longer religion but a set of practices that one follows just because it’s a tradition to do so. I would think it’ll be a bit hard to get everybody on board on the redefinition.
I am not saying that people who claim they are religious without belief are not sincere. I am just saying that, to me it sounds like a cop-out, for the reasons I stated above. (It’s a bit like Unitarianism, “a feather bed for a fallen Christian” as Darwin recalled his grandfather said.) I am sure these people will disagree with me though.
Sean seems to have a propensity to raise the religious issues of science more than the scientific issues of religion, but are there really legitimate scientific issues of religion, and legitimate religious issues of science to be considered? If so, what are they? Ultimately, the answer to this question must be no, because the practice of religion does not address its issues scientifically, just as the practice of science does not address its issues religiously.
However, the purpose of both the practice of religion and the practice of science is the same: to discover the truth of reality. In the case of science, the truth that is sought is limited to the reality of the structure of the physical universe. In the case of religion, the truth that is sought is not limited in this way, but it is limited in another way: it is more expedient to know some aspects of reality than others.
The biggest issue of science is the true nature of space and time. The biggest issue of religion is the true nature of God. If in the study of the nature of space and time, the man of science declares that there is no God, or, if in the study of the true nature of God, the man of God declares that there is no such thing as space or time, neither can convince the other that this is true.
This is the epistemological gulf between the two “magisteria.” It is real. The man of science can argue all day long that the evidence that convinces him that the big bang is real and that, consequently, it should also convince us all that God does not live, argues his case with the man of God in vain. Such reasoning will never persuade the man of God that God does not live. This does not mean that the man of God is incapable of logical reasoning, or that he stubbornly refuses to consider the facts and their implications. On the contrary, if anything, the man of God regards the position of the atheistic man of science as illogical and foolish in light of the knowledge he has that God does, indeed, live.
“Space and time do not exist as you suppose,” he might argue. His argument is based on the implication that, since God exists, the big bang is an incorrect concept stemming from incorrect assumptions about the true nature of space and time. However, because of the epistemological difference between the two seekers of truth, it is only possible that one might throw doubt on the other’s conclusions and in the process establish the superiority of one epistemology or the other.
Thus, the scientific cases for a cosmic time-line beginning with the big bang, and for the fossil record found in the earth’s crust, are used to establish that the reality of physical and biological evolution implies that there is no Superior Being involved, especially not the historical one of the Christian-Judeo tradition that so naively explains the creation of Heaven and earth in six days. “Impossible,” cries the man of science, “preposterous.”
Meanwhile, the troubled man of God, afraid his children will be misled by this attack on his epistemology, reflects on his position in light of the attack. Maybe, six days are actually six periods, or ages, called days. Maybe, … and he then starts to look for a way to explain the disparity scientifically. However, even if he could succeed at this, it will do him no good, because the knowledge that God lives that he possesses, and that he wants his children to obtain, cannot be obtained scientifically. He is using the wrong epistemology. What he must do instead is urge his children to learn to practice the religion, to employ the correct epistemology, to hold in abeyance the conclusions of the man of science, as regards the true nature of God, understanding that he is not in any position to know such a thing.
Indeed, the man of God will always be better off pointing out the scientific weaknesses of the man of science’s own case. He might ask, “What is making the expansion of the universe accelerate? Does the vacuum have negative pressure?” The man of science has no answer. He might ask, “Does the Higgs really exist? If not, what then is the origin of mass?” Again, the man of science has no answer to this, and many other fundamental scientific issues. Thus, the man of God can conclude that the man of science’s case for the true concept of the nature of space and time, and for the big bang that is based upon it, is incomplete and far from conclusive. How then can he take the position that there is no God? Maybe, his faulty understanding of space and time are at fault, causing him to reach incorrect conclusions about something he is in no position to know the certainty of through scientific means.
Moral: There is enough work for each to do in his own magisteria that he has no business trying to persuade the practitioners of another magisteria that they are wrong in their own realm. If the man of science wishes to engage religious issues on a scientific basis, his efforts are doomed to fail just as surely as the man of God’s efforts will, if he endeavors to establish scientific truth on a spiritual basis. Both are better off pointing out the weaknesses of their respective arguments based upon the appropriate epistemology. The magisteria are “non-overlapping.”
Re belief vs. practice: it sounds like many of the posters here have not spent much time in the heartland of this country, outside of small academic enclaves. I don’t have numbers but suspect that a large percentage of members of the Protestant faith in this country do sincerely believe — belief is paramount, and practice much less so, even for those who do not attend church regularly. (In a strange reversal, many protestant theologians and ministers are more open to intellectual discussion and debate on theological issues than are their congregants). This is very different from religions which emphasize ritual or practice.
Thus in attempting to understand the divide, which is essential in order to address some of the issues (such as evolution) that are having a very real impact on our society, it is a mistake to underestimate the strength of the beliefs held by many americans, even those who do not subscribe to strict literal interpretations of the bible. Religious ideas and beliefs bring great comfort to many people, even those with rather vague (usually protestant) beliefs, while science is seen as difficult and incomprehensible, and scientists as arrogant and cold. Those that hold such beliefs and attitudes are for the most part reasonably intelligent, thoughtful, caring individuals (and include individuals with advanced degrees in many fields and professions). Just as those in the science community are for the most part reasonably intelligent, thoughtful, caring individuals.
Moving between these two communities, with many colleagues and neighbors in one, and many extended family members, friends and former neighbors in the other, the most striking difference is the impression each has of the other.
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