I have to agree with Jerry Coyne here: the program on Faith and Science at this year’s World Science Festival is a mistake. I went to last year’s Festival, and I have great respect for Brian Greene and Tracy Day for bringing together such a massive undertaking. It would be better if they didn’t take money from the Templeton Foundation, but money has to come from somewhere, and I’m not the one paying the bills. I don’t even mind having a panel that talks about religion — it’s a big part of many people’s lives, and there are plenty of issues to be discussed at the intersection of science and religion.
But it would be a lot more intellectually respectable to present a balanced discussion of those issues, rather than the one that is actually lined up. The panelists include two scientists who are Templeton Prize winners — Francisco Ayala and Paul Davies — as well as two scholars of religion — Elaine Pagels and Thupten Jinpa. Nothing in principle wrong with any of those people, but there is a somewhat obvious omission of a certain viewpoint: those of us who think that science and religion are not compatible. And there are a lot of us! Also, we’re right. A panel like this does a true disservice to people who are curious about these questions and could benefit from a rigorous airing of the issues, rather than a whitewash where everyone mumbles pleasantly about how we should all just get along.
I’m not as much of an anti-Templeton fundamentalist as some people are; I won’t take money from them, but I will cooperate with institutions and organizations that do take money from them, even as I grumble about it. (Money laundering as the route to moral purity.) But this event is a perfect example of the ultimately pernicious influence that Templeton has. I disagree with Jerry and others who consider Templeton money a “bribe” to people who are willing to go along with their party line; I have no doubt that Ayala, Davies, Pagels and Jinpa will express only views that they sincerely hold and would still hold in the absence of any monetary reward. What Templeton does is that it hands people with those views a giant megaphone. Francisco Ayala is a respected scientist who happens to believe that science and religion complement each other rather than coming into conflict; that’s fine, although somewhat unremarkable. But then he wins the Templeton Prize, and that exact same opinion gets plastered all over the media.
Panels like this one at the WSF are the same story. Maybe exactly the same event would have been organized even if Templeton had nothing to do with the Festival; but I doubt it. (Update: upon reflection, I don’t know what the process was by which the event was organized, and I shouldn’t cast dark aspersions in the absence of evidence. My real point is that I don’t think that the panel should have happened the way it did, and I don’t want to detract from that.) Plenty of science festivals and museums seem to get along perfectly well without discussing religion at all. And if you did want to discuss it, there’s no way that an honest investigation into how scientists feel about religion would end up leaving out some fully committed atheists who would be pretty uncompromising towards belief.
Four hundred years after Galileo turned his telescope on the heavens, it’s incredibly frustrating that we still have debates over whether the world can be described in purely naturalistic terms, rather than accepting that insight as an amazing accomplishment and moving on to the hard work of articulating its consequences. It’s a shame that the World Science Festival is helping to keep us back, rather than moving us forward.
“You need evidence that religion is looney and incompatible with science?”
You need reading comprehension instruction. Specific examples of incompatibility are readily available and conceded. The claim is that religion and science are *philosophically* incompatible. That’s a very different thing and yes, it needs to be supported. Can you support it?
“[S]cientific beliefs are not, they follow cause, effect chains mostly, and make verifiable predictions.”
Science is different, surely. But are you not claiming scientism — that only science is a beneficial road to discovery? If so, you’re on a very dangerous road.
Well we disagree. Certainly religion isn’t the road to discovery, only the road to self-delusion.
I think that YOU need to provide evidence that they are compatible when, quite clearly, they are not.
“Well we disagree.”
You have the right to hold whatever views you like, not matter how demonstrably wrong.
“Certainly religion isn’t the road to discovery, only the road to self-delusion.”
You’re entitled to your opinion, but that hasn’t been my experience.
“I think that YOU need to provide evidence that they are compatible….”
Your inability to support and defend your position doesn’t eliminate your proof burden.
“[Q]uite clearly, they are not.”
So you keep saying. But no matter how often you claim it, no matter how loudly you shout it, and no matter how fiercely you cling to your dogma, the fact remains that you *still* haven’t supported (much less demonstrated) your position. That repeated failure ought to give you pause before you claim that *others* are delusional.
This is typical of believers–saying that we have to “disprove” that a god exists (or in this case, to prove that religion and science are incompatible.) No, you
have to prove existence. It isn’t up to me to prove that fairies or unicorns don’t exist either.
Just what sort of “proof” were you wanting me to provide—religion is faith based, relies on magical thinking, isn’t falsifiable, isn’t capable of prediction that is replicatible, etc etc etc
I am sure it would be possible for an intelligent 8 year old to supply an adequate essay on the reasons, since it is so obvious that science and religion operate by entirely different rules of evidence (thats “evidence” when it comes to religion).
“This is typical of believers….”
This is typical of people who bite off more than they can chew — obfuscation and misdirection.
“…saying that we have to ‘disprove’ that a god exists….”
Had I made such a claim (that God exists) and were it the object of discussion here, it would indeed be my burden to support and demonstrate it. But that’s not at issue right now.
“…or in this case, to prove that religion and science are incompatible.”
That’s the claim that has been made and it is an entirely separate question. Moreover, it is a claim that, as of yet, you have been unwilling or unable to support.
“Just what sort of ‘proof’ were you wanting me to provide—religion is faith based, relies on magical thinking, isn’t falsifiable, isn’t capable of prediction that is replicatible [sic], etc etc etc.”
Blah, blah, misdirection, blah. Where’s your evidence of philosophical incompatibility?
“I am sure it would be possible for an intelligent 8 year old to supply an adequate essay on the reasons, since it is so obvious that science and religion operate by entirely different rules of evidence (thats “evidence” when it comes to religion).”
You may be right. It’s entirely possible that there is good evidence of philosophical incompatibility of which I am unaware and that nearly any intelligent 8 year-old could readily point to it. The question is, can *you* point to it?
Science and faith do not mix. Yes, with all our faith in scientific method established by Francis Bacon we need no other faith. In fact it is only their faith is faith and ours is objective reality.
Poor American academic savages! All these non-issues of faith and science you are talking about could have been seen for what they are (that is “non-issues”) if only history of philosophy was part of curriculum in US universities teaching science and you had chance to learn a bit of conceptual self-reflection. To say the truth, I am not the first who made this observation. Here is the earlies source:
Paul Feyerabend wrote : The withdrawal of philosophy into a “professional” shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth — and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism which you are now defending(from wiki on Paul Feyerabend).
Recommended reading:
• Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method: Philosophical papers, Volume 1 (1981), ISBN 0-521-22897-2, ISBN 0-521-31642-1
• Problems of Empiricism: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (1981), ISBN 0-521-23964-8, ISBN 0-521-31641-3
• Farewell to Reason (1987), ISBN 0-86091-184-5, ISBN 0-86091-896-3
• Three Dialogues on Knowledge (1991), ISBN 0-631-17917-8, ISBN 0-631-17918-6
• Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend (1995), ISBN 0-226-24531-4, ISBN 0-226-24532-2
• Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being (1999), ISBN 0-226-24533-0, ISBN 0-226-24534-9
• Knowledge, Science and Relativism: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1999), ISBN 0-521-64129-2
lol and you accuse me of misdirection and obfuscation. Religion=belief in supernatural
explanations without evidence and enshrinement of these supernatural beliefs in a holy book that cannot be changed and is perfect Science= belief in natural laws as demonstrated by evidence, congruence with reality, and
explanatory power which can be changed if proven in error. They are incompatible . QED–easiest proof I have ever given.
BTW, when Stephen J Gould wrote his essay “Non-overlapping Magisteria” about the cultures of Science and Religion, he was being accomodationist, but the title says it all. They are non-overlapping, ie incompatible. It is like a Venn diagram without an intersection and one
circle is rationality, and the other, superstition.
Dawkins has a great line for monotheists. Paraphrasing, he says that they dont believe in Zeus or Baal or Ra or Vishnu etc—just go one god further…
The footprint of the pernicious influence of the Templeton Foundation in their continued apologist’s effort to elevate religious doctrine to respectability in “rational” society. The Templeton Prize is indeed merely a large bribe and their funding of scientific initiatives and conferences are an attractive lure to encourage their agenda to be promoted in respectable venues. Augustine’s “City of God” is not only incompatible with his “City of Man” but his reasoning is still faulty as well as obsolete, just as are any modern day Christian apologists who continue to repeat his errors. But not the Templeton Foundation, they’ve discovered that to “beat them” you merely need to “join them” and has worked long and hard to found “fifth columns”. Just ONE example;
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/the-templeton-bribe/
Dawkins is actually paraphrasing the historian Stephen Henry Roberts, who said:
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
The fundamental incompatibility between science and religion is as follows. Science is concerned with the study of objective reality via empirical evidence and the formulation of theories based on that evidence. Religion is concerned with the belief in given concepts despite a lack of evidence, or even in spite of evidence to the contrary. The opposition between these two concerns could not be clearer.
#57: “Religion=belief in supernatural explanations without evidence and enshrinement of these supernatural beliefs in a holy book that cannot be changed and is perfect….”
Your commitment to this point of view is noted (again). It’s obviously false (think Deism or non-theistic Buddhism, for example). But even if it were true, we’re still waiting for you to support the idea that religion necessarily (philosophically) conflicts with science.
“BTW, when Stephen J Gould wrote his essay “Non-overlapping Magisteria” about the cultures of Science and Religion, he was being accomodationist, but the title says it all. They are non-overlapping, ie incompatible.”
Actually, it was a book and it was entitled “Rock of Ages.” Moreover, the point of the book was that there is *no* necessary conflict. Have you even read it?
“Dawkins has a great line for monotheists. Paraphrasing, he says that they dont believe in Zeus or Baal or Ra or Vishnu etc—just go one god further…”
Yes, and to the extent that it is an argument, it is a spectacularly poor one. The argument seems to go something like this:
1. Every believer in a given religion regards the gods of other religions as bogus.
2. The atheist adds just one more item to the list of deities denied by the believers in a given religion.
Therefore:
3. Religious belief of every sort is nonsensical.
Quite obviously, it is invalid as (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). Indeed, it is difficult to see how (3) is so much as *relevant* to (1) and (2). Even if the premises are both true, it is easy to see how the conclusion could be false.
#59: ” Science is concerned with the study of objective reality via empirical evidence and the formulation of theories based on that evidence.”
Okay.
“Religion is concerned with the belief in given concepts despite a lack of evidence, or even in spite of evidence to the contrary.”
I disagree, but even if I accept it for the sake of argument…
“The opposition between these two concerns could not be clearer.”
…does not follow. They are different, surely, but difference is not the same as philosophical incompatibility. My view of human rights posits that all persons deserve equal legal and moral standing. I can’t demonstrate it and I’m not even sure that there is evidence for it. Is science incompatible with human rights? Moreover, *every* system of thought requires undemonstrated assumption to get started.
Even science.
Oh, I see, Rob, you are a philosophical hair-splitter–a sophist. Yes, I have read Gould’s essay.
So what if it was in a book. His books are collections of his essays,
In demanding “evidence” you are pulling the same disingenuous crap that the IDers do.
In rejecting what to rational folks is reality, you represent the sort of useless speculation and
verbal jousting that Feynman hated. I tend to the sort of evidence that persuaded Samuel Johnson. When confronted with Bishop Berkeley’s solipism that reality is in the mind, he kicked a large stone saying “I refute it thus.” BTW, I did take a philosopy of science course as an elective ages ago—what a waste of time.
“Oh, I see, Rob, you are a philosophical hair-splitter–a sophist.”
No, I’m simply asking for care and precision in analysis. If the claim were merely that religion is a lousy bet because the results aren’t often good enough, or that science contradicts religion claims often enough that religious claims ought to be suspect, or something similar, we could discuss those claims and argue about them, but the argument would be a perfectly legitimate one. However, the incompatibility claim is a perfectly illegitimate one.
“Yes, I have read Gould’s essay. So what if it was in a book. His books are collections of his essays.”
His books often are, but “Rock of Ages” is not. So it’s pretty clear you haven’t read it and are simply making [stuff] up as you go along.
“In demanding ‘evidence’ you are pulling the same disingenuous crap that the IDers do.”
That’s an unwarranted slur, Gordon. And, if it matters, I object to ID as vociferously as I suspect you do.
“BTW, I did take a philosopy of science course as an elective ages ago—what a waste of time.”
Then you clearly didn’t understand it. In this instance, Dennett is correct (from DDI, p. 21):
“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.”
NOMA was reprinted as an essay, which I read. If I didn’t understand the course, I certainly fooled the professor with my mark. This whole discussion with you is degenerating.
IMO science and religion are incompatible, and that is legitimate. So legitimate that it is almost a tautology. Philosophy of science
often is about as edifiying and useful as Alan Sokal’s paper published in “Social Text”
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
Religion=unsupported statements that often contravene physical laws(supernatural) and are incapable of modification.
Science= statements about objective reality that are predictive, capable of in theory being
tested,have explanatory power, and are subject to modification.
Thats incompatible.
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