Mon 22 Oct 2012
Religion’s Big Whimper
Posted by anaglyph under Hmmm..., In The News, Religion, Science, Skeptical Thinking, Space
[65] Comments
CERN, in Geneva, has been holding over the last few days a conference called ‘The Big Bang and the interfaces of knowledge: towards a common language?’
Decoding this for you: it’s a convening of scientists and various religious commentators to attempt to find a way to square religion with the uncomfortable facts that science throws up to challenge it.
After pausing for just a moment to reflect on whether Betteridge’s Law should be applied to the conference title, let’s hear what the first speaker at the conference, Andrew Pinsent had on his mind according to BBC News Europe. Science, he said, risked:
“…trying to turn society into a machine” if it did not engage with religion and philosophy.
Of course, he does not really mean ‘philosophy’ here, because science has always engaged with philosophy, from the very earliest of Greek knowledge at least, and probably before that. No, he has lumped philosophy in there in order to stack it squarely on the side of religion and divorce it from science because he needs to do that to set up his argument. As is almost de rigeur for religious thinkers(i) these days, he starts by depicting science as a mechanical process devoid of any wonder or beauty, so that he can make those things the sole domain of religion; science will make us into machines, religion is the only chance we have to stay human.(ii)
Why do religious people think like this? It’s profoundly offensive for a person such as myself who has no religious belief to hear that I can’t, apparently, experience the world as anything other than cold mechanical processes. Does Mr Pinsent have no clue at all that by voicing this opinion he is saying ‘Those of us who hold religious beliefs are better than the rest of you’?
You can see that I am predisposed already to think that this CERN conference is likely to be a pile of horseshit. Mr Pinsent goes on:
‘Science in isolation is great for producing stuff, but not so good for producing ideas’
What a brainless pronouncement. This man is confusing science with industrial manufacture. Why is he speaking at a conference at CERN? What does he even mean by ‘science in isolation… [is] not so good for producing ideas’? Isolation from what? Its ideas maybe??? WTF?(iii)
Further down in the BBC article we hear from co-organiser of the conference Canon Dr Gary Wilton, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Brussels, who said that the discovery of the Higgs particle:
… raised lots of questions [about the origins of the Universe] that scientists alone can’t answer.
Yeah, and you know what Canon Dr Wilton? The Anglican Church can’t answer them either. Nor can any other religion on the planet. Making up a story does not count as an answer.
Another of the speakers at the conference, Professor John Lennox from Oxford University, is on record as having taken Stephen Hawking to task for asserting that we do not need to entertain the idea of a ‘God’ setting the Universe in motion:
When Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for ‘the blue touch paper’ to be lit to ‘set the universe going’, the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God?
Who lit the blue touch paper if not God? Oh, how about a rainbow-coloured unicorn, or a jolly green elf? They’re at least as plausible as candidates for holding the matches as the Christian God. The fact is, the beginnings of the Universe are shrouded in mystery. Mystery, as in ‘We don’t know – it’s a mystery’ not ‘It’s a mystery and therefore it’s the God (that I personally believe in) that was written about in an ancient book full of irrational beliefs!’ We’ve had other things that were shrouded in mystery in the past and they’re not now. Many of those things (the Earth-centered Universe; the order of life on Earth; lightning; the processes of human birth, of the cardiovascular system, of the brain; the giant fossil bones in river beds) were once mysteries, in just the same way as religion sees the beginning of the Universe now. It is a constrained mind that can’t make the equation here.(iv)
This kind of nutty religious noodling simply makes me furious. These people don’t want a serious philosophical debate, no matter how they may be couching it. Having a genuine philosophical discussion about these kinds of big questions might be of some value. Having a religious discussion is entirely worthless because they’ve already made up their mind that they know the answer.
Canon Dr Wilton sums up his hopes for the CERN conference by saying:
By the end… we might find new ways of understanding our own positions.
By which he means ‘I’m never going to change my mind, because I hold an irrational belief that can’t be swayed no matter what. But maybe I can get scientists to cut me some slack and stop being such a nuisance with their infernal ‘facts’.’
Canon Dr Wilton has no intention whatsoever of ‘finding a new way to understand his position’ – not in any meaningful way, in any case. Faced with a mystery, he just calls ‘God’ and that’s the end of it. That’s not how science works. Science is able to entertain the idea of a mystery without making a pronouncement. Or, science can contemplate the proposition that an old bloke with a white beard set things in motion. Or that it’s turtles all the way down. Or that we’re in someone else’s computer simulation.
The difference is that scientists just don’t merely presuppose one of those things and set about trying to convince everyone by talking it up. Science needs evidence, something religion is remarkably short on.
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Addendum: As I was writing this over the weekend, the BBC site published an update to the conference. It was refreshing to see, at last, some thoughts from an actual scientist – physicist and all-round sensible person Lawrence Krauss:
One gets the impression from a meeting like this that scientists care about God; they don’t. You can’t disprove the theory of God. The power of science is uncertainty. Everything is uncertain, but science can define that uncertainty. That’s why science makes progress and religion doesn’t.
Contrast that to this further waffle from the Professor John Lennox, who we heard from above:
If the atheists are right, the mind that does science… is the end product of a mindless unguided process.Now, if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn’t trust it.
I doubt Professor Lennox has even the faintest clue how utterly stupid a declaration like that sounds. It’s just another way of saying ‘But look at how amazing humans are! That can’t just be a product of evolution!’ Well, Professor Lennox, it can be and it is. Your lack of understanding of how things work does not, as I’ve said, imply the existence of a God, no matter how much mystery there is in the process.
Andrew Pinsent also features in the update, once again attempting to create a division between science and philosophy, as if scientists can’t be philosophers. Just look at his language – it is careful and insidious. Lawrence Krauss, by contrast, makes it clear that the issue here is science and religion, not philosophy. If you’ve read any of Krauss’s books, you will know that, like all good scientists, he’s no stranger to philosophy.
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Thanks to acce245 for throwing this one my way.
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Footnotes:
- I use the word advisedly, because I actually don’t believe many of these people really think. [↩]
- Whatever ‘human’ actually means. We are now completely augmented by the science we have created. We are already ‘machines’. Maybe Mr Pinsent thinks we should go back to the pre-fire veldt. Oh wait, we were using tools even then. [↩]
- I’ll allow that Mr Pinsent might have been quoted out of context here – it’s hard to tell in the BBC article. It goes on to tell us that Mr Pinsent says we ‘need to get back to the ideas of Einstein’ – as if somehow there are no great thinkers in science anymore. This is the comment of a person with a profound lack of knowledge of science and scientists. It’s a mark of people who want to seem like they’re talking knowledgably about science to refer to Albert Einstein – the only great scientist they know. Mr Pinsent, you might like to read up on some of the great modern ideas people of science: Richard Feynman; Roger Penrose; Geoffrey West; Stephen Hawking; Garret Lisi – oh, and I could go on for pages… But when you’ve finished, then tell me with any earnestness that science is no good for producing ideas. [↩]
- And, aside from that – as I’ve written on these pages before – it is entirely possible that at some stage or another we might run up against the limits of human comprehension. There is nothing that says that we will necessarily be able to understand the Universe. This is no license to presuppose God, however. [↩]
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I give out Super Charged Flash Salutes in Ohio all the time, just not in the form of fireworks.
Oh? Am I not the only one here from Ohio? Yay! So, how are we deciding this vote coming up soon? I hear we almost always get it right…
Haven’t you got a hamster or a squirrel or something that decides by licking its nuts? Or have I got that wrong?
No, we elect nuts who are squirrelly and always try to hamstring us. But I can see where you might get confused.
Also, first guy to run that can lick his own nuts gets my vote. Too bad you’re not eligible, eh?
I want to see your version of the elections televised. Watching Obama and Romney attempting to, well… that WOULD be amusing.
As for that last comment, I decline to even go there.
Also, I think that Religion should not be allowed into scientific debates again until one of them finally gets some new, empirical evidence for whatever god they are supporting. Good science begets good science, so saith me.
Like I said, they don’t really care for the debate. As usual, religion is desperate to have the kind of legitimacy that can only come via scientific process.
When confronted with some form of baseless religious claim, I like to remind myself that the speaker (like myself) is comprised of 90% bacteria and 10% of what we could call human.
Bacteria has a lot to answer for….
By that logic bacteria are also mostly responsible for all humanity’s scientific progress. Which is rather an eerie thought.
Every time I clean the bathroom, how many Einsteins are being flushed down the drain?
Bacteria will always out compete humans.
Nah. That’s a lot like saying a car is only roughly 10% human (it’s driver – 180lb driver vs 1800lb car, for example). The human still gets the blame for a DUI, even though it was the car that hit that darn pedestrian, tree, culvert, ditch…
I admire your ‘faith’ that it is the 10% human in control of the steering wheel.
Science and religion are incompatible. Let the guys talk all they want, but it’s sad that supposedly bright and educated people can come up with such gobbeldy-gook in an attempt to legitimize (legitamise?legitemize?) religious beliefs.
Also, as it is related, it appears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXplBAreEGc&t=325
Krauss talks about science and religion.
The best way for religious people to become atheist is to actually READ the bible. From the very beginning to the end – without anyone else interpreting the passages for them.
Religious spend too much time (re)interpreting and/or leaving out the massive contradictions in these texts.
If anyone has not discovered this YouTuber already I recommend Nonstampcollector:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk
I doubt that’s the best way for most religious people to become atheists. Most religious people aren’t Christian to begin with. Until about 1000 years ago, there were barely any Christians. Muslims and Jews still outnumber them. That doesn’t even factor in Hindu (which allows for people to believe in god or not), Zen/Tao Buddhism (which is atheist, Buddha was a man), and various other religions.
Then again, it comes down to that faith thing. Christians believe it is the word of god, and reading it reinforces that idea. To most people who aren’t biblical scholars, it doesn’t make much difference that the Jesus in the first part of the gospels isn’t the same as in the second part. This is just part of the mystery of the god-thing. Islam, in fact, works in just the opposite way, as Mohammed points out that people who don’t believe in god won’t be able to, because god will render them unable to do so. Then again, they also believe that people were formed from thick clots of blood, so maybe that’s an allegory? I would say that Allah is probably wrong literally, but I don’t want an axe wound to the head from one of his adherents…
Hey Anaglyph,
I am brought here by our mutual friend Mr Gifford, with who I recently had a “Does God Exist?” debate until the ungodly hours of the morning…
My main concern is that this all gets framed in far too binary a way.
In the same way that you’re right to call BS on the attempt to divorce philosophy from science, I think that sometimes we dismiss all religious people as dogmatic stick-in-the-muds. And yet there are many instances of philosophers and theologians and scientific minds arising from religious backgrounds. And even that definition is muddied: look at Newton, who was generally Christian and “saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation” but whose specific views meant he could have faced severe punishment as a heretic.
I’m not saying that we couldn’t lose a lot religion and be better off. But I think entirely dismissing a sense beyond “we’re just atoms in an uncaring universe” would also risk losing the great things that many people do who are inspired by their faith (and far more inspired to do things beyond their own back yard or personal advantage than I am!)
Even Einstein (at least as far as Wikipedia reports) was more vehemently against atheism than he was against religion, and held some sort of sense of things greater than his ability to know. But I see from your footnotes that you might be a bit sick of having his name raised :-P
Anyway, cetainly some of the speakers at the conference appear to be what I would (scientifically) term ‘dicks’. But while science and religion might be incompatible, I don’t think that science and faith (or belief) are…
Sorry to snipe this spot before the rev, but I disagree most forthright. If one calls himself a Christian, one is taking the entirety of the bible as the veritable word of god. End of discussion. Anyone who says that she is only ‘partly’ Christian, or only adhere to certain tenets, are not Christians, but are instead vocalizing a personalized thing that just happens to line up with what one already believes. If one tells me that this ‘god’ happens to believe everything that the person believes, and nothing more (oh, I won’t go to hell because I repented of my lust and greed!), is creating religion without a god, so to speak, as the person would act as they do regardless of whether or not a man in the sky tells them they should or should not.
One cannot say that god is almighty, but that god is fallible. It’s hard to imagine a god that can watch you and I and every single one of the probably 140 billion (107 billion, if you like the PRB number better) or more people who have ever lived, but doesn’t know that they evolved from other species, is a strange and quizzical deity indeed.
One cannot just write off the parts of the religion they don’t agree with, just as one cannot write off the parts of science they don’t like. One is either a Christian or a blasphemer; a Muslim or an infidel; a warrior who will inhabit Valhalla with the Valkyries, or a coward doomed to the pits of bad eternity. If one tells me, however, that a part of the bible doesn’t mean anything because one does not agree with it, that doesn’t jive. What does he mean, god was wrong when he said there were two lights in the sky? What does he mean, when he says Jesus died for every person, except if those people are subservient women or damnable money-lenders in the temple, or people who don’t believe in him? If not believing is a sin, isn’t it one Jesus died for?
But that is all tangential to the point. If one would like to provide empirical evidence that her god exists, then the science community would be glad to hear it. In the mean time, science is going to go about science, and if we happen to find The FSM or the IPU or Allah or YHWH or Zeus, then so be it; but if not, then we don’t have to attribute to them what isn’t theirs. (In all fairness, Krauss does a much better job explaining this in those 7 parts than I can do in a brief posting here).
Secondarily, what is religion without faith? Why is religion pushing so hard to get evidence for something that, until very recently indeed, requires faith as the cornerstone? You can’t call it faith if you require proof of it.
Then again, maybe that’s why I’m an atheist…
Heh. I appreciate the irony that my comment about things being too binary led to “You must accept every single part of the bible or else you’re not really a Christian.”
What part can you not believe in, and still be a Christian, then? That’s all I’m asking.
Oh, Rev. I think we’re just Christians that don’t believe in Jesus or God. I get it now. Anyone who happens to follow any part of the bible is now a Christian! It’s all so clear….
Hi Minty and welcome to The Cow.
I’ll take your thoughts point by point because there are numerous things to consider here.
•First, the binary nature of the argument.
While I understand what you’re getting at, I think I have to point out that the issue is, in fact, binary. Either there is a ‘Creator’ of the Universe, as most religious people would contend, or there is not. There’s no real grey area here. To put it in a different way, there is either a supernatural explanation for all things, or there is a natural, explicable one. I happen to think that the reliable, agreed-upon evidence suggests that the world as we experience it proceeds along natural pathways, and evidence also suggests that things we once considered supernatural tend to get explained, eventually, as natural events that we just didn’t previously understand. There is always, of course, the possibility that some of the things that may be at some time considered supernatural – like the beginning of the Universe, for instance, or the genesis of life – will never get explained by our science, but I reiterate something I said in my post: that does not mean that there is actually a supernatural explanation for them. It simply means we don’t understand. It is not really beyond possibility that we might reach the limits of understanding when it comes to some things. It still doesn’t in any way imply that the things we don’t understand are not natural.
In a similar way, God either exists or does not exist – you can’t really have this both ways – there can’t both be a Creator and not be a Creator. That would be the ultimate hedging of bets.
Now, if you aim to redefine God into some unfathomable mysterious being who sits right outside our consciousness and whose Mind and Will we can never know, then you need to have a good reason as to exactly why you’ve just created such a being, because, by your own definition you’ve just put Him/Her/It right outside human ken – into the same place as the Mystery that We Cannot Understand that I spoke of above. And I feel I need to make it clear that when most people talk about ‘God’, they are not talking about the kind of God that just lit the blue touch paper and stood well back. Most people, when they invoke God, are specifically talking about a being that has a material effect on their personal lives.
When the religious people who are speaking at the CERN conference say ‘God’, it is clear that they do not mean the remote, ineffable, inscrutable being that merely set things in motion. They quite clearly believe in the personal God who has some interest in human affairs. This is quite simple to discern, because the Blue Touch Paper God – by definition – would not give a flying fuck about humans, so why even bother caring if he existed? It’s EXACTLY the same as him not existing at all, except for a very academic point!
•Onto your next thought: Religion has spawned some brilliant minds.
Yes, brilliant thinkers of the past were often religious, but crediting the fact that they were religious as the reason that they were brilliant is spurious. Religion, and religious thought, can’t take the credit for the great insights of scientists like Isaac Newton. It’s not helpful to the argument to frame Newton’s circumstances in terms of modern thought. I can just as easily contend that, had Newton been alive today, he would not have been religious. In Newton’s time, and in the time of Galileo and Copernicus before him, MOST people were religious, and religious intolerance was much greater, so fewer people felt inclined to question religion. Newton didn’t have the framework to reason himself out of religion, but he might have if he’d been born in the 21st century. Who knows? What we do know is that NONE of the insights of Isaac Newton about the natural world came from his irrational beliefs. Indeed, Newton held other irrational beliefs that led exactly nowhere. Only Newton’s science has endured.
By crediting religion as being in some way necessary to the arising of great thinkers, you are simultaneously belittling all those great thinkers who have arisen without any religious framework or beliefs. Stephen Hawking has envisaged amazing things, but he holds no religious belief. Richard Feynman has peered into the mechanics of the Universe, but he was an atheist. I don’t see that you have a case for arguing that religion is in some way necessary to have great insight – it seems to me to be rather incidental.
•Your third thought, going on from that: Without the inspiration of religion, we would not have people doing great things.
The ‘sense’ you have that we’re more than just atoms, is, I assert, merely ego. You want there to be something more than just ‘this’ (although, I don’t really understood that feeling – to me ‘this’ is quite amazing) but the only reason for you to think that things should be different is because you ‘feel’ that there should be ‘something more’. Why should there be? And, if there isn’t, why do you think that it should diminish us in any way? My many atheist friends don’t indulge in this illusion, and it doesn’t seem to me that any of them are lesser people for it – they all seem pretty normal, with nice families, loving relationships and positive life appreciation. And they’re all generally very happy, allowing for the kinds of normal ups and downs that all humans experience. If religion is so necessary, how is it that these people function? And not only function, but are contributive, creative, generous, civic-minded citizens.
Your example of Einstein having ‘some sort of sense of things greater than his ability to know’ still doesn’t command a need for a supernatural explanation, especially ‘God’. It is extremely possible that the Universe contains things greater than the ability of any of us to know. But that’s an entirely different idea to saying that we somehow DO know there is a God. Like I said, mystery does not imply anything other than mystery. By invoking God you’re saying that you actually understand the mystery, ie, it’s a human concocted notion of some kind of God who is mysterious! Why do you even need to insert God in there? That is just completely puzzling to me.
•And lastly: Science and faith are compatible.
I profoundly disagree. The very nature of faith is incompatible with science. Faith demands that you suspend your rational faculties and simply believe, regardless of observations of the natural world that might tell you things that are contrary to your faith. Science is built on the idea that observations of the natural world can be shared by any other observer and agreed upon. Nothing in science works by faith, and so, faith can never be compatible with science.
Interesting reply.
“Yes, brilliant thinkers of the past were often religious, but crediting the fact that they were religious as the reason that they were brilliant is spurious.”
“By crediting religion , you are simultaneously belittling all those great thinkers who have arisen without any religious framework or beliefs.”
Um… at what point did I deem religion NECESSARY? I said that there were some great scientific thinkers who were also religious. I did not at any point say it was mandatory for scientific excellence! That’s the “Honda is a car- all cars are Hondas” school of thought.
I merely replied to the “Science and Religion” cannot co-exist theme that was stated above, saying that I didn’t believe that it was IMPOSSIBLE for good science to come from religious people. That seems very different to me to your claim that I implied only religion begets great thinkers.
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“The very nature of faith is incompatible with science.”
Irrational, unchanging faith is, absolutely.
But that’s dogma, not faith. It’s the kind of thing that led Fred Hoyle to rubbish the big bang theory because he believed in a static universe.
My scientific knowledge has limits, but I believe there have been theories proposed by scientists that (often do to technological limitations of the times) were impossible to check, or even measure. But they were a good enough framework for people to begin to try and test. Scientists proceeded with some belief that it was worth exploring: they didn’t know, there was little to no evidence, but they believed it was worth entering into unknown spaces. How is this different to faith?
Unless you equate faith with “There is a god who is judging us all and you had better believe in my god!”. That, in my book, is close-minded dogma.
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“The ‘sense’ you have that we’re more than just atoms, is, I assert, merely ego. ”
“My many atheist friends don’t indulge in this illusion, and it doesn’t seem to me that any of them are lesser people for it.”
Again, this seems to be the binary thinking. For a start, did I ever suggest that atheists are lesser people? No, I merely suggested that if you completely dismissed a sense of something greater for ALL people, then you do humanity a diservice.
Not everyone is built the same. Some people are inspired by a belief in “greater than atoms” to go and do astonishing things- often things that are far more than I would be able to handle!
I don’t see how dismissively labelling them as “indulging in an illusion” helps any more than god-botherers saying “You’re going to hell!”
In a moment of great serendipity, a few minutes ago I was listening to National Radio while washing the dishes. They had a program on Georges Lemaître, who I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never heard of. As Wikipedia says “He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.”
He gets called The Father Of The Big Bang Theory. And he was a priest. And an early computer geek.
Oh, and Einstein, while evidently liking the man, refused to believe in his theories of an expanding universe.
In summary:
* Religion is not mandatory for great thinking.
* Religion is not prohibitive of great thinking
* Religion often becomes used for power and then it’s a massive PITA.
* Even the best scientists can be dogmatic and closed off at times. They’re human.
* People are varied, and inspired in different ways. “All non-atheists are deluded dicks” is no more useful than “All non-believers will perish in flames”.
All praise The Cow!
I’m going to address a few points here.
-Einstein didn’t accept the theory of expanding universe
Well, ultimately this is wrong. Einstein applied science to it. He did ultimately submit that it made more sense. He did, as most scientists do (and as Feynman most notably pointed out in one of his earlier talks, I think here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIN_-Flswy0 ) is first to see if something can be shown true, and then do the second part (which most religious people miss, usually willingly) which is to try to see if that same thing can be shown false. Lemaître gave solid evidence for why we had an expanding universe, and so Einstein naturally did the second step (because someone else had done solidly the first part). It may have taken Einstein several years, but he got it, and found it two things which are necessary for science: possible to show true, and not possible to show false. This is why Gravity is a theory and no longer a hypothesis; we haven’t been able to show it wrong (although we do update it from time to time – the bible has yet to update the fact that the moon isn’t a star, or a source of light). It is absolutely incorrect to say that Einstein didn’t accept it because he didn’t ‘believe’ in it. He questioned it because that is what science does.
-Religion is not prohibitive of great thinking…
Not necessarily, but this doesn’t tell us anything. The moon also isn’t prohibitive of great thinking, nor is the sun, nor is gravity, nor is a cat, nor is most philosophy. Religion, however, is not philosophy (as you seem to be confusing the two – just because a person believes something doesn’t make it religious; this is the domain of philosophy). Religion tends to be prohibitive of good thinking though, otherwise religion would not exist. For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpxtBZuvaA As much as you might not like it, this is the majority of religious thought on ‘science.’
-At what point did I say religion is NECESSARY…
I agree, it’s unnecessary. Except where you keep bringing up the idea that ‘oh, there must be something greater than that which is observable because…’ Science shows us what is, and there is much wonder in it. As Feynman says, we must be content sometimes to like the questions, having something to imagine. It doesn’t mean we have to imagine a god. However, if one brings up religion, one is supporting it, in this way. It’s no better to say that you believe that Zeus or Allah or some being we just haven’t ever seen or heard of had something to do with it. A being that somehow just follows your own tenets of what religion must be.
‘Oh, having faith in the literal version of a 1000 year old book is hilarious! But only believing in parts of it, now that’s something I can get behind! Who cares that devout Jews and Christians think it’s the word of god, that is just strange. I’m gonna believe in the creator I want to, because it’s much more convenient and explains things in a way I like better.’
Most people don’t believe in Pythagoras’ 5 holy shapes, but he and his people did. It also seriously stagnated his ability to take mathematics to any point higher. We could look at religion and the plight of Tycho Brahe even, but I digress. Science doesn’t care which god you like better, which creation story, which code of ethics. Science concerns itself with what is. If you have an immutable belief no matter what the evidence shows, that’s just as dogmatic as any religion.
-Irrational, unchanging faith is dogmatic.
-Scientists can be dogmatic
No. Dogma is, as defined by google, ‘A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.’ Science doesn’t do this. Philosophy doesn’t tend to do this. Religion does this. Religions claim that there is a god absolutely (not all, but the ones we are discussing presently do). Religions try to square everything with the idea that there is a god. Science doesn’t. If a god exists, we will at some point probably observe it. We won’t rely on thousand-year-old texts that say a god created things to base our worldview upon. We, as scientists, see that the moon is not a light, or that the sun is always keeping us in orbit (and this means there were not 3 days of darkness at the sound of a trumpet). Despite this evidence, the bible still contains these stories as credible, but science texts do not.
-Faith isn’t just dogma, it isn’t just a belief (that my god is real; that ragnarok approaches; that the river styx is the gate to hell; that sasquatch lives in rural america).
No, but any faith that doesn’t allow for new evidence is exactly the same as dogma. If one continues to believe in a creator that placed man here 6000-10000 years ago, despite that evolution shows us that we have been here much longer, then one is accepting a dogmatic stance. If one refuses to believe in the big bang because they believe a god made creation, that’s dogmatic. Doing as Einstein did, however, questioning that which is asserted against that which can be shown, doesn’t require faith.
-Science from religious people vs science and religion co-existing.
Also, on another point there, good science coming from religious people is not the same as science and religion co-existing. Just because a man whole-heartedly believes in Thor doesn’t mean he can’t perform good science. It doesn’t mean, however, that Thor is now magically a part of science. ‘Oh, hey, he believes in Zeus, and he does good science, Zeus must be real!’ ‘Oh, hey, he has faith in something, and he does good science, his faith must be absolutely correct!’ That’s an appeal to authority, false cause, and perhaps an appeal to emotion logical fallacy. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
To the point about Lemaitre, I’ll post the point directly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkErzj_GJSI&t=480
The whole speech is great, though. Seriously, watch all of it.
And you have to watch into part 5 to get the rest of his point. Just FYI.
I hadn’t seen that particular Krauss lecture, but what he says in regard to Lemaître is indeed one of my points – the science works independantly of any religious belief someone may care to superimpose on it.
(And it is, of course, great to see that a religious person like Lemaître defends this principle in spite of the Pope attempting to hijack it for the same kinds of ends as the CERN religious speakers)
Agreed about Le Maître’s stand against religion’s attempted hijacking! But it seems to me excessively reductionist to suggest that his own beliefs and religious views could be subtracted from his personality without any effect.
Perhaps this is my point: science may work independantly of religion, but people do science, and people are motivated by a great variety of sources. If a belief framework motivates them to great thinking – even if it’s motivated by some sort of desire to “get closer to God” or “understand his divine” purpose – then while that may not accord with my beliefs, then I’m hardly going to lambast them for it and say “you could have got there without your silly illusions”.
Lemaitre’s big bang theory also had to stand up to dogmatic denial (and apparently also derision) from Einstein and Hubble. So you have hijackers and detractors – from both sides of the spectrum.
Anyway, haven’t we got done the whole “pure science without the taint of illogical practice is the aim”? Surely 46 years of Star Trek suggest that some aspects of human nature defy “we are all only atoms.” ;-)
Well, I’m not suggesting Lemaître’s views don’t make up aspects of his personality. I’m not saying ‘religion never had any part to play in the thinking of great minds in the past’. As I said above, it may have, and it may not have. Anything we may care to say on that topic is speculation. My contention is simply that religion is not necessary to think great things. You yourself have agreed on this point. So then, any reason for needing religion to exist is separate from that.
That’s an ‘end justifies the means’ argument and such reasoning is ethically perilous. It also doesn’t take into account another thing I said above in respect to Newton – you’re making it seem like religious thought is always positive, but there are numerous instances of religious thinking being an impediment to someone’s scientific thinking. My rationale is that if religion is not necessary to great thinking (which you’ve agreed) and if it may have a negative consequence (which it plainly can) then it’s a liability.
Yes, but you seem to have missed the point – it does not matter what Einstein or Hubble or the Pope or anyone thought about this, the science inexorably won the day. That’s how science works. Understand: Einstein was persuaded by Lemaître’s science, and changed his views. The Pope did not change his views, he just rearranged the whole thing to suit his alread- decided dogma. He did, in fact, what the Church has done all through history when confronted with indisputable scientific evidence – he moved God a little bit further away, back into the shadowy areas of scientific contention.
See below.
Whups! I figured I was probably an agnostic, but I see that Wikipedia says “Agnosticism can be defined in various ways”.
Acce245, your words have convinced me that you have to completely buy into every single part of a belief system, so it can’t be one that can be “defined in various ways”.
Given that, I’m now a converted Atheist! Hurrah! There is no God! And I won’t attribute to anyone else the possibility there is! Oh, this is sooo much easier. No shades of grey, no part or nuanced beliefs. It’s so… fundamental. How lovely.
If you don’t know that Jesus is the son of god, you probably don’t believe it. -Penn Jillette
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWlQaZ0DWo
If one does not accept the entire bible, they can still be called Christians, sure. But if one doesn’t accept the full rigors of the scientific method, they cannot be called a scientist. This is the difference.
Also, since it’s related, another video here on the further breakdown of religion (and perhaps why people don’t believe all of it but somehow some of it or some such)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9w8JougLQ
If “A” is atheist and “Z” super religious, then the argument depends on where you are on that line. “M” thinks “N O P…” are holier than thou types, and “L K J I…” are non-believers or backsliders at best and therefore not a real or proper “christian”. Religious people tend to think that their belief (and that of their ‘church’) is the proper one.
Yes, but the problem is that everyone east of ‘C’ tends to think that they are ‘M’ and that anyone outside their point is an ‘A’ or a ‘Z’ and nothing in-between.
For example, a regular Christian who is probably close to ‘M’ would find both Muslims and Mormons on the ‘A’ side, because to them, there is no god but god. The only people, from the perspective of an ‘M’ Christian, that go toward ‘Z’ would include priests, ‘scholars’ of the bible, Jesus himself, et cetera. To an ‘M’ christian, Mormons are godless because they don’t believe in the same god, and vice versa with an ‘M’ Mormon.
I’m saying, I think it’s a faulty scale, is all.
of course it’s faulty. The view of any one person will be colored by their view of where they fitt on the line. Christians tend to think that their own version of belief is the correct one. the application of position will change with each persons view. Moreso if applying a spot to someone else.
Since it’s related.
http://popstrip.com/faithist
Don’t forget to click for the hidden comic… twice!
@Minty: I’m going to move this down a bit so we don’t get into too much nested threading.
OK, well, before I address what you’ve said, I think I need to clarify some of my terms here. When I talk about religion, I specifically mean some kind of belief in a supernatural agency that has an interest in human affairs. Nothing else. Make no mistake – this is what people like Andrew Pinsent, Gary Wilton and John Lennox mean when they get up at the CERN conference and talk about religion. That is why Andrew Pinsent is so eager to align religion with philosophy against science. He is attempting to blur religion into something much more reasonable.
If you’re defining religion to mean ‘some feeling that there’s more to it than I can comprehend’, it’s an entirely different argument, and, I reiterate, not what the CERN conference is about.
And when I talk about Faith, I specifically mean the kind of faith that religious people employ to justify their belief in that supernatural agency I mentioned above. I don’t mean the sort of faith that you have that your dog will bring a stick back, or the faith you have in your parents to always have your best interests at heart. Faith has a specific meaning to religious people and I’ll talk about it more in a bit.
Now:
Well, I’m kinda unclear as to what you’re saying, if not that. Your overall stance is surely that having religion is necessary, in some way, for humans to achieve great thinking – otherwise, why are you arguing for it? If it doesn’t matter – if it’s not necessary – then what is your point?
I don’t believe it’s impossible for good science to come from religious people either, and I didn’t say that. It’s plain that good science does come from religious people, from Mendel to Heisenberg. I just don’t think there’s any way we can definitively determine that their religion is material to their good science. You simply can’t point at a religious scientist and say the reason for their good science is tied to their religion, or if you took away their religion they would not have become a good scientist.
Well, hang on – I didn’t say that you implied only religion begets great thinkers. What I’m challenging here is the idea that, if we lost religion entirely, we would somehow affect our chances of having great thinkers. I just don’t believe that would happen. Religion may well have inspired people to think great thoughts, but then so have a great many other facets of human existence. Once again I say: you can have a mystery – and be inspired by that mystery – without crediting it to supernatural sources.
I think that here you’re just playing footsie with words. Religiously speaking, faith is faith. Faith, by its very nature, is irrational and unchanging. You want to invoke different ‘flavours’ of faith but that’s surely disingenuous. You go on to characterise certain scientific processes as a kind of faith – that’s a tactic of religious argument. Science does not proceed on faith – a process that does is not science, but magical thinking or pseudoscience. Putting up a hypothesis and testing that hypothesis is nothing to do with faith, no matter how you came to that hypothesis. Don’t confuse intuition, or risk, or wild guesses, or hunches with faith. For every intuition and hunch that’s paid off in science, there’s a million that didn’t – you just never heard of them. Religious faith is a very different and quite specific kind of idea and requires that you abandon all human notions of what you feel or think or believe, and submit to the idea that God’s Mysterious Will – no matter that it makes no sense to your human mind – is right. You can redefine that if you like, but I studied it in Church and I know what they mean by Faith. In fact, go read the Story of Isaac (Genesis 22) which is the go-to tale used to illustrate the meaning of faith to Christians. In the story, Abraham is instructed by God – pretty much on a whim – to kill his treasured son Isaac. The point of the story is that Abraham’s faith is so great that he unquestioningly sets about this task. Luckily for Isaac, God steps in at the last moment, stays Abrahams hand, they all have lemonade, the end. The clear message here for all Christians, is that they should have this level of faith in God. Blind, unquestioning, irrational Faith. Now, you can reinvent this meaning of faith into something different that suits you if you like, but when they talk about faith, this is what religious people mean. This idea has no compatibility at all with science.
Once again, I am specifically talking about religion, not some some diffuse ‘sense of grand mystery’. The point of the CERN conference was to find common ground between science and religion, NOT science and philosophy, or science and mystery.
When I talk about the ‘illusion’ I mentioned above I am specifically talking about the illusion of religion, that is, the idea that some kind of supernatural creative entity is personally interested in what humans do. If you are talking about something else – some diffuse ‘otherness’ that inhabits the Universe – it’s an entirely different idea. At the risk of being pedantic, I’ll underline it once more: this is NOT the idea that the religious thinkers at the CERN conference are putting forward.
Further, I think you will find I did not dismiss the idea that ‘a sense of something greater’ might spur people on. What I’m dismissing is that there is any relevance in the notion that that ‘sense’ is some kind of personally-relevant creator who cares about humans and what they do, and who has any material effect on their science.
Here you are once more inferring that religion is somehow material – necessary – to these peoples’ achievement of ‘astonishing things’. If you’re not saying that, what exactly are you saying?
And again – that he was a Jesuit is neither here nor there in regard to his science. Perhaps his religion inspired him perhaps it didn’t. If you have evidence that Lemaître gathered his ideas for the Big Bang directly from God, then let’s see it. I assert he did not. I assert he probably worked it out from his knowledge of physic and mathematics and from natural, observable principles. In other words, a person without religion could have done the same. In fact, it is Vesto Slipher who probably made most of the discoveries attributed to both Hubble and Lemaître, and he was not a religious man, and credits no religious influence at all on his work.
And your points:
* Religion is not mandatory for great thinking.
And yet you argue for it. If it’s not mandatory – that is, if we can think great things without it – then what does it matter whether or not we have it?
* Religion is not prohibitive of great thinking
Well, that’s rather a big separate topic, but I do believe that there is much evidence to the contrary for that. For instance, not all Isaac Newton’s religious ideas were useful. He believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible, for example, which includes Creationism. Who can say if this belief actually prevented him from thinking about evolution and natural selection? Holding a belief in Creationism – a religious belief – is explicitly unhelpful for great thinking.
* Even the best scientists can be dogmatic and closed off at times. They’re human.
Indeed, but so what? Being dogmatic is an entirely different proposition to accepting an irrational belief. If you were to tell me that ‘scientists accept irrational beliefs sometimes’, then I’d reply that they are not scientists in respect of that act.
* People are varied, and inspired in different ways. “All non-atheists are deluded dicks” is no more useful than “All non-believers will perish in flames”.
You’re reinventing my words to suit yourself here. I did not say – nor even imply – that ‘all non-atheists are deluded dicks’. That’s emotive and colourful language designed to give a certain impression of my argument. My contention is simply that religion – that is, the belief in supernatural agencies that materially and causally contribute to human concerns – has no place in the conducting of science. Not that ‘religious people can’t do science’ nor that religious people shouldn’t do science’ nor even that ‘scientific people aren’t and shouldn’t be inspired by religion’. My contention is that the tenets of religious belief are not necessary nor helpful to the scientific discipline.
The CERN conference is specifically about trying to show religious beliefs and science are compatible. I say they are not.
To Minty’s last comment, and to also avoid that nest.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
Appeal to emotion
Special Pleading
False Cause
Anecdotal
Middle ground
I am on mobile, can extrapolate later if you need.
And I think it is kinda Special Pleading or Moving the Goalposts to say that it is good for lemaitre to tell the pope not to use science to falsely validate a belief, but them say that scientists shouldn’t do exactly the same thing to religion, faith, and philosophy.
I submit.
I was trying to suggest that a completely binary “religion or belief has no part in science” view isn’t completely helpful, because science is done by people, and people are wired in different ways. People don’t conform to pure scientific logic. They’re motivated in diverse, complex ways. And even our greatest thinkers are prone to holding back scientific progress by being too dogmatic.
However, in suggesting that a binary view is not completely useful, I’ve been told:
“You must accept every single part of the bible or else you’re not really a Christian.” (Not that I’m a Christian)
“You’re saying religion is mandatory for great thinking, and belittling all non-religious thinkers”
“You’re making it seem like religious thought is always positive” (I think the word ‘always’ would be considered a fairly binary one. And I wouldn’t even use ‘often’. I just wouldn’t use ‘never’).
So before my suggestion that Le Maitre maintained a belief in God (while also coming up with the big bang theory) and it wasn’t a bad thing leads me into “ends justifies the means” ethical peril, I will bow out.
Adieu, cow.
I believe my arguments are clear. You are merely rephrasing what I’ve said in the way you you believe I said it, without trying to understand what I’m saying, that is, misrepresenting what I’ve said as the view you already hold. You deflect the substance of the discussion into areas that are not what was under discussion: for instance that “even our greatest thinkers are prone to holding back scientific progress by being too dogmatic” Of course they are – but who was arguing that they weren’t? As I’ve said numerous times now, my post is addressing the idea of whether science and religion are compatible. I say that in a very deep and fundamental way they are not. I’m not saying that religious people can’t do science, that religious people haven’t done science, that religion hasn’t ever led to interesting science, or that we should stop religious people from doing science; all things that you seem to think I’m saying, and keep rephrasing me to make it seem like I’m saying. What I’m objecting to is the idea put forward by the CERN conference that there is some compatibility between science and religion in which religion (as I defined it above) will provide science with something useful. That is the point I’m arguing to, and to which I keep attempting to bring the conversation back.
I’ve asked several times for you to clarify what you mean by certain things, and you don’t – so I can only assume that you either cannot do so, or think parts of your argument that I find unclear are so self evident that they don’t need further explanation.
It is entirely your right to bow out of the discussion, but personally, I always like to try to understand what another point of view is trying to say. Of course, I will argue strongly for my own point of view, based, I hope, on solid reasoning. I am quite prepared to change my mind IF you have some clearly articulated refutations.
I apologise if you think you are being put upon – as far as I can see I’ve been very reasonable in addressing your points. That you’re taking it personally is unfortunate – I believe I have not indulged in any ad hominems against you (even though your last reply makes it seem like that is my intent).
I may be being overly sensitive, but when I’m told that I’m “belittling all those great thinkers who have arisen without any religious framework or beliefs” then I don’t tend to take it as a compliment.
In fact, given that we’d be talking about some of my personal heroes, to suggest that I’m actively denigrating them does come off as an ad hominem.
I’ve been handed my views to me (eg: “crediting religion as being in some way necessary to the arising of great thinkers”) for things I’ve neither stated nor believed, as if I’m incapable of cultivating my own views.
You can draw on your obviously deep knowledge of the Christian bible ( certainly deeper than mine- I’m not a Christian) to tell me what ‘faith’ MUST mean, and that anything other view I have of it is only “playing footsie with words”. I don’t know that it helps with the progress of science, though.
Perhaps if someone could point out the huge horror of the means of Le Maitre’s producing an end big bang theory, then I’d accept that I’m heading for ethical peril. Was his religious life really so horrendous?
I think you’re right: science will inexorably win the day.
I’m just unsure, while we tend towards fundamentalism on both sides of the debate, that humanity will.
But hey, we’re just atoms. Science for the win!
I believe I have clearly articulated my thoughts on this.
That’s not an ad hominem.
You may have cultivated your own views on this, but you did not articulate them. I asked you several questions in this respect, but you didn’t answer them.
I believe I have made this quite clear in my argument above. You just want the idea of ‘faith’ to mean anything you want it to mean. I have clearly defined what I mean by faith, and why it is relevant in this context.
Why do you keep doing that? The use of emotive language does not help your argument. It’s a poor strategy. ‘Horror’? ‘Was his life horrendous’? Who on earth said or even implied those things? You’re just trying to make it seem like those words came from me. You said this:
You are quite clearly saying that it doesn’t matter what a person’s motivation is, if the outcome is desirable. I think that’s an ethically perilous idea. That is all. Why are you taking it as a personal slight? It’s an ‘end justifies the means’ argument. If you think it’s not, then give me some reasons.
The thing is, I am prepared to accept that there is a scale of grey in nearly everything that humans do, Minty, but there are some things where that just isn’t so. Science progresses in a certain way, and that certain way is incompatible with the way religion (as I’ve defined it above) sees the universe. You want to see religion and science on the same sliding scale, but they just are not.
Sarcasm? Really? That’s just disappointing.
Agreed. I was disappointed too. It did make me wonder what had reduced it to that, so I went back and read my original comment again.
Much of it agrees with your points rather than disputes them. I did say:
That to me seems a fairly mild proposition. However, before you asked *anything* about me clarifying my view (which seems fairly tame and straightforward there), your very first response included the “By crediting religion as being in some way necessary to the arising of great thinkers, you are simultaneously belittling all those great thinkers” comment that I objected to.
Now, I guess you use some semantic dodging and say that the use of ‘you’ was the ‘general population’ one, and not directed at me, but I think it’s fairly clear that it was saying that’s what I, in particular, am doing.
The tame call for not dimissing every religious person as a dogmatic fundamentalist lead to the immediate branding of me as a person whose views belittle all non-religious great thinkers, and a claim that I am pushing the “religion is mandatory for thinking” line.
While on the surface there is a exchange of views, I think underlying it is a very binary, no-quarter-given stance, and as you’ve stated, there are areas where you feel that there is absolutely no room for grey.
Going out on a limb, I’d guess you’ve dealt with some fairly draconion religious circumstances in your life, and that these shape at least part of your stridently anti-religious views. If that’s so, I can certainly understand it; religion has been responsible for many horrific things.
However, given that I’ve descended to sarcasm in a reaction to feeling tarred and feathered for mostly agreeing but also asking for not-totally-writing-off-all-religious-people, I think this is probably not the forum for raising a mildy dissenting opinion.
Apologies for the sarcasm in my previous post.
“…and that these shape at least part of your stridently anti-religious views.”
We are not anti-religious. We are not discussing whether people can have religious beliefs (faiths, if you want to call it) and still do good science. This is not the question at all, as you seem to want it to be. The question is, ‘can science and religion find a common ground.’ The answer, as far as we can reckon here, is no. The fact that someone may or may not believe in god has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not that god fits into science. Despite anyone’s philosophy, faith or religion, the moon orbits the earth, and is not a source of light. As it pertains here, it doesn’t matter if, for example, a Christian believes inexorably that the moon is a light source (some of these Christians booed Bill Nye in Texas a year or two ago for asserting the moon was not a light source), even though we can clearly demonstrate it is not. It doesn’t meant that religion led the great thinkers to do good science – and even if it did, it still skirts the point, that religion doesn’t square with science. The pope doesn’t change his belief that god created things just because we’ve discovered evolution. The bible doesn’t get appended and amended. The science texts do. This is the difference. It doesn’t matter that a person believes in the bible, it matters that the bible doesn’t agree with science. Individual takes on the religion do not represent the religion. One might rightly call those individual takes ‘philosophy,’ but I think that’s just as dangerous as begging the question of the means to an end. The two bombs dropped on Japan stopped the world war, but I doubt you will find many people who look at it from the perspective that the means (two nukes) justify the ends (the end of the war).
“I’m not belittling great thinkers by calling them religious, or something like that” (paraphrasing).
The point here is that, despite the fact that these people have done science, you (and others) keep bringing up the notion that somehow believing in something somehow allowed them to better do science. The corollary is, indeed, that if they didn’t have the religion, they wouldn’t have been as good thinkers. This is, in effect, what you are saying. Otherwise, why bring it up? If religion makes no difference, then it’s like adding a note that ‘oh yes, these brilliant people also ate bread regularly, and that must have increased their ability to do science too!’
“…I think this is probably not the forum for raising a mildy dissenting opinion.”
We aren’t arguing that religious people should be written off. It is through this exact style of debate that the Rev managed to tilt the scale of my brain toward a more logical thought. Granted, it took quite a while, but don’t feel put off by our responses. The whole point of the CERN debate was to, ultimately it appears, try to level the idea that God exists with the evidence that science shows. Science has no compelling evidence to suggest a god exists, but the Christians in particular like to switch the burden of proof and say that there is also no evidence he doesn’t exist (which isn’t how the process works).
See my reply down at comment 15 (I don’t know why the hell WP stuck it there, but hey).
@Minty
There has been a great deal of commentary here. Some very interesting; others a game in semantics. I would like some simple answers to simple questions.
Do you believe in a god or gods?
Is this belief based on any particular religion, eg Christian?
Do you believe that a god or gods created the universe?
If yes, then where do/did the gods come from?
Minty, you are clearly an intelligent person and can, therefore see the circularity of the above questions.
Why can you not simply accept that we do not know and may never know how the universe came to be?
If the universe was created for a purpose as religion suggests, do you believe it was to give rise to a species of primate on a small planet on a far flung arm of a galaxy among countless other galaxies?
If yes, does this not constitute an anthropological view of space and time?
Thank you.
Dianna, you are clearly both an intelligent and exceptionally perceptive person. :-P
Okay, flummery aside, the brief summary of my views:
I don’t believe in any particular god or follow any particular religion, although I have a bias towards the concept of “do unto others…”.
I do think it’s a big-ass universe and many things are possible, so I’m open to the idea of some greater plane of existence. But it’s not a “live every day in fear of being judged” or “all unbelievers must die” thing. It’s more that in an infinite universe (and I do like Einstein’s parable of a child in a gigantic library), then I reckon there’s an option of finding out that we level up (in a video game sense, not some weird Scientology way). Hell, we all know the “any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic” idea. So if we get massive life extension, and then consciousness extension, at some point quibbling about whether we’re just atoms or have an existence after death becomes meaningless semantics.
I have been told, of course, that this is so wishy-washy disney-world that I may as well stick to a God!
Anyway, coming back to more concrete, current terms, where that leads me is that I do worry that as soon as we dismiss ALL religious people (dodging the battle of faith vs religion for the moment) as being hide-bound dogmatists, then I think we do ourselves a disservice.
And once we get to the point of saying absolutely “Science+Religion=Fail” then it sounds to me like… fundamentalism. That’s the one thing that I most fear, the one thing that I think will hold humanity back.
I also am very uncomfortable suggesting that people who have suffered things that I suspect would probably destroy me (eg. Le Maitre’s WWI experiences, friends who were in Chile under Pinochet, etc) that really, the faith or beliefs that they hold and that seem to sustain them are just illusions that they’re indulging in. That seems the height of hubris.
In any event, I do agree as stated here that science will inexorably win the day.
But from a human perspective, uncovering scientific truth and TIMING are important. If all our advances get us to other planets BEFORE a catastrophic event on earth, then I would consider that good. (I don’t sit here worrying every day about that, but it is, scientifically, possible that there could be such an event).
Science is done by PEOPLE. And people work in all different sorts of ways. Some have religious beliefs as part of their desire for scientific enquiry. If it helps them advance thinking, and they’re not shoving their beliefs down people’s throats, then I’m fine with that.
The point I made about Einstein and Hubble being dogmatic and closed to big bang theory was only to say that there are all sorts of ways that people, from all sides of the spectrum, can DELAY scientific progress.
We’re human. We have quirks and differences. I don’t believe you could just subtract Le Maitre’s beliefs and expect his science would proceed without change. We’re not little silo building blocks.
If we really wanted to efficiently advance science and believed that religion is its antithesis, then we’d start human experiments on fundamentalists. We be pro-war, because look at how much technological and medicinal advances came out of two world wars. And hey, people are just atoms, so a few million (or billion) of them dying is immaterial.
But we don’t, because this isn’t just about science on a divorced-from-anything-other-than-logic scale. This is about people.
So if we’re going to make scientific progress on a timescale that’s valuable to humanity, I don’t think we want to arbitrarily dismiss large swathes of humanity, even if we think there’s no god, and they think there is.
Now go and getting working on unlocking that mutant gene that’ll allow me to fly, pass through solid matter and shoot lasers from my eyes. Because then I’ll be god-like, and be able to go around frying all those bloody argumentative atheists. Sheesh!
People aren’t ‘just atoms’ as you point out, though. It is the complex relations of those atoms that allow us to wonder at all that is.
Maybe this work of art can convince you of what we are trying to say more than what we are actually saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAU8jrvV9rg
Sheesh! Churlish? Much!
Sarcasm and not an single answer to any one of my questions. Which were in concentrated form:
Do you believe a superior/supernatural being created the universe?
And spare me the quotes from other sources – I am not at all impresses how well read you may or may not be. The most illiterate person may have all the reputed wisdom of Solomon.
Dianna
@diana
Actually, we’re pretty certain is was the big bang that brought us here. I think this video also ties into the whole thing we are discussing anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg
Actually, acce245, I, based on current scientific thinking, agree that it is most likely that the universe started with a big bang.
My question was not for you but for Minty. Who appears to see a supernatural element behind the machinations of the universe.
My question for you is, why considering that we are both arguing that science is not compatible with religious belief, you frame your comments to me in a less than positive manner?
I have tried to cut through the semantics, double speak of Minty, by asking simple clear and direct questions. This does not mean I am a simpleton – rather I am straight forward and have little patience for sophistry.
Capiche?
I don’t see what’s negative about the way I framed the comment, sorry. I was merely pointing out that I disagree that we don’t know how the universe began, or can’t ever know. It doesn’t appear to be special knowledge that we humans can’t attain. I must be missing something here. Unless I’m misreading the context of your question, and you intended that for Minty. I’m being as neutral as I can, I think.
@ acce245
My question was for Minty and not you.
I thought you meant that I believed the universe had a supernatural basis.
I cannot imagine how a sentient being could’ve deliberately created the universe – raises more question than it answers. Not the least being where did the ‘sentient being’ come from?
The idea of universes exploding, dying and exploding into existence again makes more sense to me. Plus I don’t see why the universe we observe is the only one either. The multi-universe theory appeals to me. After all not so many years ago we thought the Milkyway (our galaxy) was the only one and before that, Earth was the centre of the universe. Thanks to scientific thought and the natural curiosity of humans we now know a lot more.
One does not need religion to feel awe and want to understand more about the natural world around us.
I believe that science would be more advanced had religion not tried to stymy much research, for example Galileo was persecuted and Darwin agonised into his old age before publishing his work on evolution because he understood how his theory contradicted Christianity.
Yes, and I do think that’s what you’re doing, even if you don’t. I wasn’t using any kind of semantic dodging – I choose my words carefully.
Let me see if I can make it a little clearer for you. We have to go back to the beginning. My post is about the way that the religious people at the CERN conference are, in my opinion, disingenuously attempting to put forward the image that when it comes to science they are being rational and open minded. It is plain from what various people said in the BBC articles that from the outset they want to change the rules of engagement to divorce philosophical thinking from science and align it with religious thinking in opposition. I think it’s clear that the reason for this is that they know that religious thinking – and by this, I’m talking about the definition of religious thinking that I posted above, which is what they believe, not just some interpretation I pulled out of the air – is not compatible with the basic tenets of science. To be clear, science says that all things arise from observable natural phenomena. Religion, as Andrew Pinsent, Canon Dr Wilton and Professor John Lennox interpret it, demands a supernatural aspect, namely that some being/force/whatever created the universe and that entity has a personal interest in human affairs. By taking philosophy off the side of science and putting it with religion, they are removing a perfectly acceptable ally from the scientific side of the argument; if they were merely asserting that ‘there is more to it than we know’ – a philosophical standpoint – then really, I wouldn’t have written the post.
When you joined the conversation, you put forward the idea that the situation with religion and science isn’t ‘binary’ and that seemed to be your main thrust. I say once again that I think in this case, it is. The supernatural is not in anyway compatible with a natural view of the world. Each supplants the other. If you believe the world is the result of natural causes, you can’t say ‘except for sometimes when the causes are supernatural’ because you’ve just changed your view into one that allows the supernatural, that is, a supernatural view. It’s about as binary as you can get.
Now, after this, you went on to give Isaac Newton as an example of how great minds can arise from religious backgrounds. Your implication here must surely be that Newton’s religious beliefs were somehow instrumental in informing his scientific discoveries, rather than simply being incidental to them. In other words, you are saying that Newton’s religious beliefs were necessary for him to have become the great thinker he was. I don’t think I’m misrepresenting you here, but I wasn’t entirely sure so I did ask for clarification on this issue. It seems to me odd that you would argue that religion is incidental to the thinking processes of great people, but that we should have it anyway. So, unless you are saying it’s incidental (that is, not necessary to Newton’s scientific thought process, just ‘there’) then you’re saying quite clearly that religion, somehow, was necessary for Newton to have become a great thinker (you did, in fact say that such people are ‘inspired by their faith’)
Proceeding on from that logically, it would seem that you hold that religion is a necessary quality for humans, in general, to produce great thinkers; that if we didn’t have it, we would be somehow poorer. Am I right here? Otherwise I’m not at all clear on why you would be defending it, and bringing up examples like Newton and Lemaître. If you’re just saying that they were scientists and also religious, then fine, as I said, I’ve never held that religious people can’t do good science. It’s plain they can. But my assertion from the beginning is that their religion (that is, their belief that a supernatural deity holds some direct sway over human existence) does not materially affect their science (that is, their observations of processes of the natural world). If it did – if they started factoring in supernatural elements into their science – it would cease to become science and lead nowhere (as in fact was exactly the case with Newton’s completely fruitless detours into alchemy).
I don’t feel I’ve misrepresented anything you’ve said, so far, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Now, by invoking this religious ‘specialness’ as a necessary part of the human progress toward enlightened thinking, you have disenfranchised all those people who don’t use or need any specialness but have just gotten there on their own human brainpower. Do you see my point here? Perhaps ‘belittled’ is too strong a word, so I apologise for that, but it certainly seems to me that if some people actually do have access to special dispensation from God, then they have some kind of divine advantage over people with just mere human brains. If you’re saying that this religious specialness is not actually help from God but exactly equivalent to other forms of inspiration available to the non-religious – the love of a beautiful woman, say, or the joy of adventure, or the thirst for knowledge, or even just the challenge of solving a good mystery – then fine, but you’ve then taken away the element of religion that I object to: the supernatural bit. The ‘religion’ simply becomes some feeling of great mystery out there – something I’ve already said is perfectly acceptable to me, but it’s not religion as the religious people at CERN define it.
Are you following my thoughts here? I don’t know how to make it plainer than that.
Actually, not at all. In general I have fairly reasonable, even nice, memories of my time in the Church. The problem for me was that as I started to discern a certain level of hypocrisy in what was being put forward as moral guidance, I began to ask questions. Pretty soon, I realised that asking difficult questions in church leads to one of two results: either you get a lot of equivocating and dissembling, or you get told ‘That’s just the way it is, you have to have faith’. Once I got the idea that things just weren’t adding up, the whole thing unravelled pretty quickly and I began to see that my faith was no different to – no better and no worse than – the faith of a Muslim, or the faith of a Mormon, or the faith of an Ancient Assyrian. The reason that anyone had any particular faith, it seemed to me, was purely a circumstance of geography. Where you were born dictated your faith. And yet, everyone thought their faith was correct and all the others were wrong. How could that possibly be?
From there, it’s easy to see, I think, that religion (and once again, I’m talking about a religion that credits supernatural beings as being involved in human affairs) is just a fairy tale. And, quite honestly, I think there’s a time when you need to grow out of fairy tales or your view of reality becomes severely distorted. That’s why I’m not terribly fond of religion. Stridently so? Perhaps. My bad. Unlike you, though, I think religion does harm – not to everyone, and not always, but a long term, slow, debilitating harm that retards the progress of the human race.
Despite the fact I have said these things:
“you’re right to call BS on the attempt to divorce philosophy from science”
“I did not at any point say it was mandatory for scientific excellence!”
“I’m not saying that we couldn’t lose a lot religion and be better off.”
“Religion is not mandatory for great thinking”
“certainly some of the speakers at the conference appear to be what I would (scientifically) term ‘dicks’.”
“science and religion might be incompatible”
etc etc, I still get this:
and
and
and
So really, in what way is what I actually state worth anything, when most people here will ‘infer’ and ‘logically proceed’ to something that’s nothing to do with my views?
Because, after all, I can be as clear as I like in my mind and words, but I’ll still be told:
It’s not a debate or a discussion. I’m being preached at.
“We’re human. We have quirks and differences. I don’t believe you could just subtract Le Maitre’s beliefs and expect his science would proceed without change. We’re not little silo building blocks.”
That’s where you are saying it. If you believe that Lemaitre’s beliefs shaped his science, then you are saying exactly that.
The corollary is, thence, that he would not have discovered the big bang, nor the theory for it, nor any of the science he did, because he would not have had religion. You are tying them together.
Otherwise, then, what do you mean it would not have changed? That he would have done more science, and discovered even greater things? That also implies that religion is a hindrance.
OK, so you’re saying Newton’s religious beliefs were not instrumental in informing his scientific views, then?
I’m seriously trying to understand your point. You keep taking it personally. I’m not the one making this about you. I want you to clearly articulate what you mean.
I’m saying that maybe Le Maitre might have been driven bat-shit fricking mad by seeing his young mates blown to bits for a few years, and that perhaps – PERHAPS – his belief system sustained him through that, and rather than being a post-war zombie or psycho headcase, he found a way to some sense of peace that gave him a platform to then proceed with science.
Maybe not. I wasn’t there. But I do think that some people survive horrific circumstances due to their faith. Some people do it as atheists.
But saying “I know that Le Maitre would have dealt with it just fine without his beliefs, because God is a fairy tale” is not a place I’m comfortable with going.
And Newton? Hell, yes, religion was instrumental – both as a motivation to discover what he saw as more of God’s grandeur in the universe (whether I agree or not!), and as a motivation by having to deal with the dichotomy of biblical vs scientific reality.
But does that mean I think religion is NECESSARY to great thinking, as everyone keeps ‘logically proceeding to’?
No. NO. EN OH.
Note the absence of a corollary, or tying it to something else, or inferring, or suggestion.
OK, that’s clearer.
You’re speaking of religion in a wider sense of ‘general help to the human condition’, from which other life issues can then derive value. I don’t disagree with that. Religion is obviously helpful to many people. But as I keep trying to say, my original post, and my argument, is not about that. It’s about the utility and relevance of religious thought in relation to science.
The CERN conference is about this topic specifically. It’s not about whether religion is generally helpful to humans, or even whether it’s inspiring to them. It’s about finding some kind of common ground between the ideas of religion and the ideas of science.
Minty, you are obviously a thoughtful person. I apologise if you got the impression I was attacking you. I’m not. I’m trying to understand how you think about this issue.
Although I do disagree with the idea that ‘religion helps bring about value to the human condition,’ it is, as you and I have been trying to point out, not the point of this conversation. I disagree because if a god created us, or the universe, or guides and directs us, then it doesn’t matter whether we feel fulfilled by knowing it or not, because then we’d ultimately be at the whimsy of that being anyway. We would only feel how we would feel because the supernatural thing makes us feel that way, anyway. But that’s tangential to this at best, and a bit meta I suppose.
But yes, I also apologize if it seems like I’m attacking you, Minty. I’m really not. We’re just trying to (perhaps pedantically, but I don’t think so) separate the gist of this conversation (is religion able to square when confronted with science) versus the idea that people with religion can do science. If we don’t question you, we can’t understand your more vague points. Questioning is, fundamentally, the way science is done, and the way reason is achieved. We question you to learn more about you.