There’s a movement afoot to frame science/religion discussions in such a way that those of who believe that the two are incompatible are labeled as extremists who can be safely excluded from grownup discussions about the issue. It’s somewhat insulting — to be told that people like you are incapable of conducting thoughtful, productive conversations with others — and certainly blatantly false as an empirical matter — I’ve both participated in and witnessed numerous such conversations that were extremely substantive and well-received. It’s also a bit worrisome, since whether a certain view is “true” or “false” seems to take a back seat to whether it is “moderate” or “extreme.” But people are welcome to engage or not with whatever views they choose.
What troubles me is how much our cultural conversation is being impoverished by a reluctance to face up to reality. In many ways the situation is parallel to the discussion about global climate change. In the real world, our climate is being affected in dramatic ways by things that human beings are doing. We really need to be talking about serious approaches to this problem; there are many factors to be taken into consideration, and the right course of action is far from obvious. Instead, it’s impossible to broach the subject in a public forum without being forced to deal with people who simply refuse to accept the data, and cling desperately to the idea that the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t getting any warmer, or it’s just sunspots, or warmth is a good thing, or whatever. Of course, the real questions are being addressed by some people; but in the public domain the discussion is blatantly distorted by the necessity of dealing with the deniers. As a result, the interested but non-expert public receives a wildly inaccurate impression of what the real issues are.
Over the last four hundred or so years, human beings have achieved something truly amazing: we understand the basic rules governing the operation of the world around us. Everything we see in our everyday lives is simply a combination of three particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — interacting through three forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force. That is it; there are no other forms of matter needed to describe what we see, and no other forces that affect how they interact in any noticeable way. And we know what those interactions are, and how they work. Of course there are plenty of things we don’t know — there are additional elementary particles, dark matter and dark energy, mysteries of quantum gravity, and so on. But none of those is relevant to our everyday lives (unless you happen to be a professional physicist). As far as our immediate world is concerned, we know what the rules are. A staggeringly impressive accomplishment, that somehow remains uncommunicated to the overwhelming majority of educated human beings.
That doesn’t mean that all the interesting questions have been answered; quite the opposite. Knowing the particles and forces that make up our world is completely useless when it comes to curing cancer, buying a new car, or writing a sonnet. (Unless your sonnet is about the laws of physics.) But there’s no question that this knowledge has crucial implications for how we think about our lives. Astrology does not work; there is no such thing as telekinesis; quantum mechanics does not tell you that you can change reality just by thinking about it. There is no life after death; there’s no spiritual essence that can preserve a human consciousness outside its physical body. Life is a chemical reaction; there is no moment at conception or otherwise when a soul is implanted in a body. We evolved as a result of natural processes over the history of the Earth; there is no supernatural intelligence that created us and maintains an interest in our behavior. There is no Natural Law that specifies how human beings should live, including who they should marry. There is no strong conception of free will, in the sense that we are laws unto ourselves over and above the laws of nature. The world follows rules, and we are part of the world.
How great would it be if we could actually have serious, productive public conversations about the implications of these discoveries? For all that we have learned, there’s a tremendous amount yet to be figured out. We know the rules by which the world works, but there’s a lot we have yet to know about how to live within it; it’s the difference between knowing the rules of chess and playing like a grandmaster. What is “life,” anyway? What is consciousness? How should we define who is a human being, and who isn’t? How should we live together in a just and well-ordered society? What are appropriate limits of medicine and biological manipulation? How can we create meaning and purpose in a world where they aren’t handed to us from on high? How should we think about love and friendship, right and wrong, life and death?
These are real questions, hard questions, and we have the tools in front of us to have meaningful discussions about them. And, as with climate change, some people are having such discussions; but the public discourse is so badly distorted that it has little relationship to the real issues. Instead of taking the natural world seriously, we have discussions about “Faith.” We pretend that questions of meaning and purpose and value must be the domain of religion. We are saddled with bizarre, antiquated attitudes toward sex and love, which have terrible consequences for real human beings.
I understand the reluctance to let go of religion as the lens through which we view questions of meaning and morality. For thousands of years it was the best we could do; it provided social structures and a framework for thinking about our place in the world. But that framework turns out not to be right, and it’s time to move on.
Rather than opening our eyes and having the courage and clarity to accept the world as it is, and to tackle some of the real challenges it presents, as a society we insist on clinging to ideas that were once perfectly reasonable, but have long since outlived their usefulness. Nature obeys laws, we are part of nature, and our job is to understand our lives in the context of reality as it really is. Once that attitude goes from being “extremist” to being mainstream, we might start seeing some real progress.
Andy H: “Only if you start from the position that miracles don’t happen, therefore anyone who says they saw one is either delusional or lying.”
” I’ve recently read Sean’s book, and he is careful to explain situations where there are competing views among scientists. Why not do the same here?”
Just because someone sincerely believes something doesn’t make it true. These types of assertions, however, need to be supported by evidence that can be repeated and tested or they can not in the long run be taken very seriously. Assertions regarding miracles have never met this criteria and never will. Contrast this to your comment about competing views among scientists regarding theories of the natural world. Eventually, one is proven to be better than another precisely through such testing against the real world.
Janna: “Knowing the rules doesn’t automatically mean that you know the implications of those rules. As far as I know, we are nowhere near of understanding the complete dynamics of our little planet. Correct me if I’m wrong. Did I miss that memo?”
No you didn’t miss the memo; you are correct, we don’t know all of the nuances of our best theories and some of our theories will inevitably turn out to be wrong to some degree or another. The question is: how to we arrive at better theories? We don’t achieve this by using gaps in our knowledge to posit theories that explain everything (and nothing)and that apply equally as well whether the theory assumes a god, or alien creatures or whatever else one can think of. We have steadily achieved progress by proposing new theories that can be tested and provide explanations that are hard to vary. See David Deutsch’s video in this regard:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation.html
@ DaveH #59
So you’re saying that such a beginning is subjective rather than objective? OK, in that case, someone, or some government can come along and say that a newborn baby, or a fetus which is 8 months old is not yet a “new human life”. Now suppose a vast majority of the people in this country think the same way, and a law gets passed that says such “beings” can be killed if they get to be too inconvenient.
Is that OK with you?
Why do you think the notion of an objectively fixed beginning to a “new human life” does not exist? Let’s reason one out, shall we? No religious references or references to God, etc.
Probably some 80% of the comments here are ignoring things Sean said in his post in order to make some objection or other that was specifically addressed by Sean. Example: all the ‘we don’t really know the rules’ referencing some minutia about the standard model or quantum gravity, when Sean clearly stated that ‘we know the rules’ applied to the realm of everyday human experience. We’re either talking widespread failure in reading comprehension, or widespread disingeniousness.
Oh, and the numerous claims of ‘you can’t disprove X!’ cited as a reason that X and science are compatible. Disproving X is beside the point, a major part of science is rejection of unparsimonious hypotheses. If X is superfluous as an explanation, then it is incompatible with science. That is where ‘we know the rules’ is applying to things like life after death, which some people are objecting to because they want to know the experiment that disproves an afterlife. No experiment needed to claim the afterlife has been ruled out, at least until the afterlife hypothesis becomes non-superfluous.
It seems a lot of the accomodationists, when they aren’t restating the lame old ‘some scientists are religious’ (#6), want to conflate ‘compatible with science’ and ‘compatible with particular scientific discoveries’.
I love that we even got a climate denier in here (#64). “All the evidence for climate hysteria is based on climate models” – lolwut? James Hansen, for one example, makes his entire case from paleoclimate data, experimental data, and basic physics, specifically because he knows people object to the models.
I think this is a fair concern, though for me personally I think there is an important difference between those who simply believe there is compatibility, and those who believe it so strongly that they think us incompatibilists are just being dicks. And in addition, I get incredibly irritated at those who argue for compatibility on empirical grounds when us incompatibilists have made it abundantly clear that we are making a philosophical claim.
But your point is well-taken: Honest compatibilists — in the sense that they do not distort the claims of those who disagree — do not deserve overmuch disparagement. I may think you are wrong on this point, but it would be inappropriate to extend that to an inference about your personality.
Andy H: “Take one of the great Creeds, the Apostle’s Creed [translated below] . . .” These statements of belief have not changed in nearly 1,700 years (or more). Where are the scientific experiments which have, or can, disprove these beliefs?”
Here is the translation (via your link to Wiki) of the Apostle’s Creed:
1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
3. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
4. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
5. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.
6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
7. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
9. The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
10. the forgiveness of sins,
11. the resurrection of the body,
12. and life everlasting.
You are correct. There is no experiment or scientific test or any argument of any kind whatsoever that can disprove these beliefs — just as there is no test that disprove that garden fairies cause plants to be greener than they otherwise would. This does not make such beliefs true, and it is not any kind of support for the view that they should inform our understanding of the world. You can substitute garden fairies for god and make virtually the same exact assertions — and they can’t be disproved either. These types of assertions explain everything and nothing at the same time.
However, the church did make any number of assertions that could be tested (e.g. the sun revolves around earth) — and please don’t make me research and list the countless claims that every religion, myth, etc. has made about the natural world that have systematically been refuted by science.
As Bee said, the realm in which myth and religion has to operate is steadily shrinking and I think the best example of this is that the most up-to-date defenders of religion, myth, etc., have been forced to fall back to “quantum uncertainty” as the latest justification. Not much room left to maneuver at the planck scale.
Will this be the last redoubt and is the victory of reason near? No, I suspect this debate will last as long as there are still things we don’t fully understand. Why, because that’s the way this type of thinking works. Can’t explain X, then insert god or Zeus or garden fairies and move on. Which is to say, there is no end in sight.
Mike (#76): “These types of assertions, however, need to be supported by evidence that can be repeated and tested or they can not in the long run be taken very seriously. Assertions regarding miracles have never met this criteria and never will.”
But miracles are by definition* things that aren’t repeatable and testable. Christians don’t claim that blind people routinely get their sight back today, they claim that in a few specific instances a long time ago, some blind people were healed. There a lots of things that aren’t provable by scientific method (i.e., repeatable testing), but that doesn’t mean they can’t be true (See Adam’s post in #58).
Jason A. (#78): I think what Sean is saying is that science has disproved religion (“But that framework turns out not to be right . . . .”). Therefore, whether science has or has not “disproved X” is entirely relevant. You seem to be saying that religion isn’t necessary to explain the world, which I think is a somewhat different argument.
*There are, of course, broader definitions of miracle (“the birth of every child is a miracle!”)
@ Lonely Flowers, #61,
“you are not an ingredient for meringue.”
Very astute. Although, Soylent meringue is yum.
Anyhow, robots can make meringue, as natural processes can make fruit. And alcohol, and trees, and living creatures…
I am not necessary to make meringue. In fact, given the right set of circumstances, meringue could arise naturally. Eggs, sugar and heat are easy to come by in the natural world, as is a willing “whisk”. The major obstacle (unlikelihood) there is getting from natural sugar to refined caster sugar.
To reiterate the original point: Magic ingredients are not necessary to make meringue, just as “the soul” is not necessary to make living creatures. Vitalism is not an active area of research – It’s just that it (always) takes religion an age to catch up.
Andy H: “There a lots of things that aren’t provable by scientific method (i.e., repeatable testing), but that doesn’t mean they can’t be true.”
This is an argument that any assertion one wants to make, however outlandish, in connection with some “current” gap is our ability to test and replicate must be taken seriously. I respectfully disagree, as I’ve already pointed out far too often above.
To be taken seriously, even in the absence of the current ability to test and verify, an assertion must have some shred of explanatory power in terms of what we already do know. Miracles (i.e. violations of the known laws of physics) simply do not.
As I noted earlier, this short video clip of David Deutsch addresses this point directly and persuasively:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation.html
Paul H
Do human zygotes have a special place in your belief system ?
Do the same questions apply to non human zygotes, or do they lack some essence that does not appear to exist in nature ?
Personally, I think the whole science/religion debate is an absurdly American spat. Unfortunately, by the nature of the modern world, whatsoever Americans find worthy of debate the rest of the world must subscribe to. Unfortunately this process never goes the other way.
My point is this: the science/religion debate is in truth inextricably linked with the notion of the so called American “culture wars” and cannot be honestly “framed”, discussed or understood outside of that context. As such all discussion of the debate outside of this context—particularly by non-Americans—is abstract philosophy at best, and utter intellectual dishonesty at worst. There is virtually no merit to discussing this issue outside of the culture wars context except for a very small community of philosophers who were probably discussing it anyway.
Basically, almost all the “debates” and discussions on this issue talk about anything except the elephant in the room, and as a result have very little in the way of real substance. Serious people should decline the opportunity to add to the farce.
Personally, I think the whole science/religion debate is an absurdly American spat.
If only.
At UK universities for example, there are a large number of Muslims, many of whom have opinions, which are collectively and individually voiced, and some of these Muslim students are biology students, and yet more ARE NOT biology students.
Mike (#79 & 82): I’ve bookmarked your video and hope to watch it soon when I have 15 minutes.
I think there are two questions: (1) Does modern science disprove the existence of (the Christian) God? I think this was Sean’s main point (“that framework turns out not to be right”); and (2) is there any affirmative evidence to believe in the existence of God?
I think the answer to the first question is “No” and I take it that you don’t really disagree. I think the answer to the second question is “Yes” and recognize that you do disagree. But I think they are different questions. I believe that there is affirmative evidence for God and that it has significant explanatory power, but that it is not the type of evidence subject to the scientific method. I also recognize that reasonable people may disagree about the weight to give such evidence. I don’t know that I am equipped to give a full explanation of this, certainly not in the space of a blog comment, and instead would refer to you somewhere like Amazon to search for the wealth of material on Christian Theology and apologetics (and ask you to note, of course, the relative lack of material on the existence of garden fairies, tea cups, and spaghetti monsters. 😉 )
That the “church” has been incorrect as to matters of science in the past does not mean that it has also been incorrect as to matters of faith. Even scientists have been incorrect about matters of science. But my point in referring you to the creeds is to show that, as to matters of faith, Christian beliefs have not really changed in two millenia.
Science might or might not be able to prove or disprove the existence of things like a god or a soul. The Michelson-Morley experiment didn’t disprove the existence of the aether (at least within experimental limits) but it started a journey that demonstrated that the aether was irrelevant; if you can’t detect a thing or measure any effect from a thing, then for all practical purposes, that thing does not exist. Anyone is certainly free to imagine the existence of all sorts of things that can’t be proven, like god, a soul or an afterlife, at least as long as it doesn’t cause harm to someone else. But don’t try to convince me that the things you imagine actually exist. That sort of thing is not worth talking about outside a book discussion club.
Andy,
There is also a “wealth” of material on Astrology.
“as to matters of faith, Christian beliefs have not really changed in two millenia.”
Wrong, and I refer to you somewhere like Amazon to search for the wealth of material on Christian Theology and apologetics.
Sean,
The problem isn’t your belief in the incompatibility of science and religion (a belief that I share but express more precisely as an incompatibility in their supporting epistemologies).
The problem is your view – please correct me if I’m getting your position wrong — that Western Civilization is best served by abandoning its current religious underpinning without first replacing it.
Even I, as a long-time atheist, find that to be an utterly puerile position, the sort of thing one expects from a precocious 15-year old. That civilization can function indefinitely without some sort of religious basis, that we are not in the West currently surviving on hundreds of years of cultural capital built up by our Christian predecessors, that the problem is not to improve religion but to abandon it, these are all ideas that are just silly. They belong in a dormitory bull session, not in a constructive panel on the relationship between science and religion.
It seems to me that those who believe that science and religion are incompatible are making two essential claims. The primary claim is that science and religion are somehow inherently or philosophically incompatible. I think that claim is clearly and demonstrably false. Science is not a philosophy and demands no particular philosophy.
Looking at the incompatibility claim in the most generous possible light, science is incompatible with a significant number of religious claims (e.g., a 6,000 year-old earth). Moreover, religious claims have been limited dramatically by science (e.g., we can now explain thunder and no longer need to postulate some divine action to account for it). There is no doubt that religious claims have entailed egregious overreaching throughout history in terms of what it can and does explain. But I think the incompatibilists are engaging in similar overreaching now. Incompatibilists cannot rightly claim that religious views cannot logically and philosophically be consistent with what is presumed to be known by science at any particular point in history. They *can* rightly claim that a simplistic claim of “science and religion are compatible” is misleading because so many religious claims can be shown to be false by scientific means. But a claim of “science and religion are incompatible” is as simplistic and misleading in that it has not (and cannot) be philosophically demonstrated. In no way is a claim of epistemic incompatibility justified. At most, it’s a shorthand device to try to divide and conquer within its constituency.
“It’s not strictly true, but it’s *useful*.”
The secondary claim seems to be that science and faith are methodologically incompatible. I think this claim is perhaps trivially true but utterly beside the point. The best that can be said (from the incompatibilist viewpoint) about this question is that there has been a historical disconnect between the scientific approach to the world and the religious approach, which follows in that religion’s methods for attempting to discover the truth have so often failed when testable by science. Accordingly, some have concluded, perhaps understandably, that all religious claims are probably false.
Yet even if one grants that the methodologies are different (and perhaps even incompatible, whatever that means in this sense), so what? Science has no means to tell us what we ought to do, how we ought to live and what we ought to value. At best, science can inform those questions. Science surely works is the sense that its methodology is able tell us what is and, using this method to accumulate a body of knowledge, it is highly useful for us as we navigate our world. But to what *end* will it be put to work? As Werner von Braun’s life story aptly demonstrated, that always remains an open question.
That questions of meaning, purpose and value must not be the exclusive domain of religion is something with which I can wholeheartedly agree. However, Gould’s NOMA is correct in the sense that science — both philosophically and methodologically — is not even equipped to deal with (much less answer) those types of questions. Those who oppose religion can (and should) propose alternative philosophies to deal with and answer these questions. They, like the religious, can and should use the best available facts to inform that process. The days are long past when religion could claim to control the whole field with respect to these questions. But the claim that science pushes religion off the field entirely is just plain wrong.
Belizean, my standard for whether a belief, and specifically a religious belief, is acceptable is that it provide a net objective benefit. I would like to see anyone prove that the christian religion has done so. Add it all up, the pros and cons, the good and bad, and show me that there has been a net objective benefit. I don’t mean making someone feel better about a hope to see a dead relative in an afterlife, or comforting someone with the idea that god must have a plan despite all the horrible things that happen. I mean objective; a benefit that can be shown. One benefit could be something like Habitat for Humanity. One bad point might be the forced conversions and deaths of thousands of American Indians. Add it up honestly and let’s see whether the net is good or bad.
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Apropos the first paragraph of the original post: I like the idea that Paul Dirac, for example, was an uninteresting extremist whose views on science are no more informative to us than the opinions of a young-earth creationist.
Just as a “militant” atheist is one who admits their godlessness in public, a “New” atheist is one who basically agrees with what the guy was saying in 1927.
Incidentally, the remarks quoted above, which Dirac made at the fifth Solvay Conference, were what prompted Wolfgang Pauli to say, “Our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is, There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.” So, Gentle Reader: all these complaints about shrillness and stridency were made long ago, and with more style to boot.
“Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. . . .” Or, in a newer translation:
Sean, I think you mixed up two different things together. You argued that new atheist movement were being considered as extremism by the religious people and ones who believe religion and science are compatible. In USA the former is a minority and the latter is the mainstream. For the issue of global warming this is not so. I do not think the global warming deniers are the mainstream here in USA. Maybe the opposite is true. If you deny the global warming you tend to be considered as a crackpotor an extremist at best. When one view is eligible for extremism, a (pseudo-)necessary condition is that it should be a minority view. After I read your article, I didn’t know how I should categorize Freeman Dyson who cannot let go religion and doubts the certainty of global warming.
Sean:
Following up in support of comments like those of Shecky Riemann (9), and
to clarify an important part of the problem, I’ll address your climate example:
What are the roots of the divide between the AGW “consensus” and the skeptical “deniers”? Can the divide be bridged?
Beginning near the turn of the 20th century, with the theoretical studies of Svante Arrhenius about how infrared absorbing gases help determine the surface temperature of the earth; then spurred by the reexamination of those models in the 1950’s, by Roger Revelle, and in the 1960’s, by Jule Charney; and then James Hansen’s modeling of the unique green-house-gas (GHG) induced forcing of the atmospheric temperature of Venus – climatologists and geophysicists began to further reexamine such models in greater detail. This was also strongly stimulated by Charles Keeling’s accumulating data of the steadily increasing concentration of well-mixed atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory, beginning in 1958, at about 317 ppm (presently at about 390 ppm). It was quite clear that the CO2 concentration had been flat, at about 280 ppm for centuries (if not millennia) prior to the growing use of fossil carbon (coal, petroleum and natural gas) to fuel the industrial revolution. That CO2 record was the prototypical – and almost ‘noiseless’ – “hockey stick”.
Although the theoretical models still leave uncertainty, particularly about the sign and magnitudes of the effects, on GHG feedbacks, of some low- and high-clouds, a consensus began to develop that risks of resulting increases in global temperature – and the risks associated with their possible consequences – deserved substantial increase in attention.
Large efforts ensued to TRY to collect sufficiently unbiased, and statistically significant ‘other’ proxies for the hockey stick; global mean surface temperatures (GMST), ocean heat content (OHC), seal level rise (SLR), glacial ice-cores, sediment cores, tree-ring dendrology, etc. – all much noisier than the Keeling curve. The GMST trend for the last 40 or so years has converged to something like a mean of +0.2C/century, with considerable spread to the associated ‘95% confidence interval’. The others are not too out of line. And the increasingly more realistic (and more complicated) climate models are not ‘too’ far off either.
There’s a general ‘feeling’ that such correlation of very different ‘kinds observations’ and models SHOULD help to build confidence above the level provided by each ‘independent’ data set, but so far, no good ‘statistical’ tools exist for ‘averaging’ such diverse results to get a ‘net mean and confidence interval’. In the breach, the current paradigm (both within – and outside of science) has developed to rely on the collective intuitions and confidence of those ‘experts’ who are judged to be most familiar with the data sets and with their relevance to related physical models (theories).
But even if the GMST trend were ‘only’ +0.1C/century, the associated risks would be only delayed by a ‘blink’ of geologic time – still demanding to be taken quite seriously!
This certainly over simplifies things, but probably describes the root of the origins of the mainstream AGW “consensus”– and of the current position of many ‘warmists’ – and why they believe we must begin to seriously plan for the risks.
Why is this so inimical to most skeptical “deniers’?
Well, we have the record of ‘failed jeremiahs’:
1) Robert Malthus, who at the end of the 18th century, published his simple but penetrating theoretical econometric model, “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, that has turned out to have been ‘off’ in the timing of its predictions (but I believe, probably is about ‘correct’ in predicting what we must expect, if some appropriate changes in human behavior fail to accommodate – ‘in time’ – to the reality of the finite resources of our planet); and
2) the predictions of the Club of Rome’s 1972, “The Limits to Growth”, that also have proven to have been somewhat premature.
And the IPCC was supposed to adhere closely to the (impossible?) charge to be “policy relevant” rather than “policy prescriptive”!
The perceptions of just where science fits – in the spectrum of beliefs – DIFFER among policy makers, the general public – and, to some extent, even among scientists – and this has to contribute a great deal to the resulting dissonance.
Further, it certainly doesn’t help that many believe motivation for science, does and should stem from values derived from Golden Rules, while others, e.g., Positivists, insist (incorrectly, as I have argued below) that science can, and should, be freed from ALL such metaphysical baggage 😉
I believe these unpleasant pieces of the puzzle need to be fit in place in order to understand the apparent irrationality of the position of many ‘honest’ “deniers”, and some of the ‘incompatibilites’ of atheistic/religious/ideological antagonisms.
For further ‘clarification’ of these latter points, see:
“The Sceptical Scientific Mind-Set in the Spectrum of Belief: It’s about models of ‘reality’ – and the unavoidable incompleteness of evidence, for – or against – any model”.
http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/ScienceInTheSpectrumOfBelief.pdf
Andy H: “That the “church” has been incorrect as to matters of science in the past does not mean that it has also been incorrect as to matters of faith.”
The problem with this position is that one of the main differences between science and faith is that prior to science wresting control of some area from the grasp of “faith”, that belief was itself a matter of faith. The church’s defense of the sun revolving around the earth was based on and justified by faith. Simply because “common sense” seemed to support the position only made the struggle more difficult. So, something is a matter of faith, but when science succeeds in providing an acceptable explanation, it becomes a matter of science. And, no matter how many times this happens, faith remains undiminished? Again, what this argument boils down to is the fallacy that all one needs to do is point to some area where science can not yet provide a definitive answer, and then insert whatever theory one likes — whether or not it meshes with everything we’ve learned and know, and regardless of its lack of explanatory power.
Spirituality, faith or the quest of the divine on one hand and the search of truth and reason on the other, are aspects of human nature. This duality is a truly fascinating characteristic of human beings. Why anyone would want to mutilate human nature and mutate people to something different from what they really are?
Giotis: “Why anyone would want to . . . mutate people to something different from what they really are?”
Human beings are in large measure a product of mutation. We are much different and dare I say, better, today than our very distant ancestors several millions of years ago. I’ll I’m saying is, let’s keep the ball rolling. 🙂
I think the problem is that, especially in the USA, religion, through politics, dwells too much in the domain of science instead of keeping their focus into the moral aspects of life.
Also, some people (not you mr. Carroll, of course) spend too much time and effort treating religion as silly fairy tales and religious people as mentally challenged cows. These guys know nothing about marketing and how to bring people to a better understanding of the mechanisms and the beauty of science.
What would have happened if Georges Lemâitre were to be cast into oblivion for his religious beliefs? As well put by pope John Paul the second: “Religion tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.
My personal opinion is that religion can even motivate people to discover and enjoy the world of science, given the so many wonders it unravels to the human mind. (forgive my bad english)