Sunday, May 10, 2009
Science & Religion, Draper & White, Redux
In my previous post, I cited some of the ideas discussed in Dr. Principe’s course on Science and Religion. My friend (and, no I don’t mean this ironically or facetiously—I know the guy and consider him a good friend) at Agnostic Popular Front (http://agnosticpopularfront.blogspot.com/) took some issue with Dr. Principe’s assertion that science and religion use the same overall strategy, prompting this reply:
(Begin post)
It seems to me that science and religion have strategies for achieving knowledge which are so different as to be quite nearly diametrically opposed, and this is fairly obvious whenever they both attempt to answer the same questions, such as:
* What are rainbows? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%209:12-15;&version=31) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Scientific_history)
* What are thunderstorms? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2036:26-37:16;&version=31) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm)
* What is the nature of man? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201:26-27,2:7;&version=9) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Origin)
* How can we cure mental illness? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%205%20;&version=49) < >
(reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
)
* How can we cure physical illness? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%205:14-15;&version=31)
< > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine#Basic_sciences)
* Why are the planets arranged just so? (faith http://books.google.com/books?id=gNVB0QnZlXgC&pg=PA163&vq=%22intelligent+and+powerful+being%22&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0#PPA163,M1) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System )
I've drawn faith-based answers from my own faith tradition, no doubt other faith traditions have created their own answers. Answers yielded up by the scientific method, by contrast, are cross-cultural and useful regardless of whether one speaks Arabic, Basque, Castilian, Dutch, English, or Finnish, and regardless of whether one prays to Allah, Bhagavan, Christ, Deus, Elohim, Freya, or whomever. In every case, faith-based answers get about as far as "magical immaterial mind mediating by means most mysterious" and pretty much leaves it at that.
Even the great Isaac Newton, when stymied in his investigation of the origins of the solar system, decided to chalk it up to an intelligent designer and ceased doing any more research on the question. Meanwhile, methodological naturalists are busily arguing amongst themselves, refuting each other, testing out new theories, refining old ones, and generally getting on with the business of adding to humanity's understanding of the world. It is because scientific knowledge is considered provisional that they are allowed to keep moving forward and learning new things.
(End post.)
Seems to me, Damion makes the mistake of confusing strategy with tactics. While it is certainly true that the question “What is a rainbow?” will likely have a different answer from our pals at Biblegateway.com than the answer proffered at Wikipedia, that is not the point I was making: rather, the point is that in answering the question, both the scientist (I use this term loosely—I DON’T consider the Wikipedia the compendium of All Things Truly Scientific) and the theologian (again, used loosely—Biblegateway is A religious viewpoint, not the representative of all religious viewpoints) use the same fundamental strategies: a rainbow can be looked at by a simple, FALLABLE human being, and a reliable statement about an overall fundamental objective TRUTH can be adduced from it; further, this objective truth is an accurate representation of an overall objective reality—the truism is true, regardless of whether anyone actually believes in it; likewise, the truism remains valid universally. These strategies are all underpinned by various ASSUMPTIONS: that rainbows ARE knowable in any reliable sense; that our observations are reliable; and that truth isn’t one thing in this corner of the universe and another thing somewhere else. These assumptions are and must be accepted as axiomatic, without any basis for proof of their validity. They are simply taken ON FAITH.
Or, to put it another way, if the difference between science and religion is that science is based on reason and religion on faith, knowing full well that the very concept of objective truth must itself be taken on faith, doesn’t that mean that science is just another form of religion? And doesn’t that make them the same rather than different? So the difference between them is that there is no difference between them. Uh-huh…
Note also that in his reply, Damion goes little further than to cite the Wikipedia and Biblegateway to support his argument. His point, seems to me, is that in arguing that science and religion are diametrically opposed to one another in strategy, one need not look very far to find evidence supporting this position. Perhaps so. But not going any further also commits (or, at least, borders on committing) the logical fallacy of COLLECTIVISM—the identification of some viewpoint proffered by a member of some larger group and then conflating that viewpoint as representative of the entire group. An example would be to say that because some people in Nashville like Country music, all people in Nashville like Country music; thus, all people in Tennessee like Country, and since Tennessee is part of the US, so do all Americans.
The point is, not all religious people will explain rainbows in the same way that the folks at Biblegateway do. Religion is a vastly complex and often delicately nuanced human activity, oftentimes difficult NOT to oversimplify. As is, frankly speaking, practically ANY human activity.
I could, for instance, find examples of people saying incredibly stupid things in the name of science. Like this one: Eric Pianka, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, says the entire world would be just oh so much better off if 90% of human beings were suddenly wiped out. Disease, he told the Seguin Gazette, “will control the scourge of humanity. We’re looking forward to a huge collapse.” Dr. Pianka has speculated that an airborne Ebola virus would be an ideal killing medium.
Looking forward, indeed. And once again the epistemic superiority of scientific pronouncements crushes the silly speculations of all those religious folk. Is Dr. Pianka’s assertion another example of, as Damion puts it, the cross-cultural and useful answers provided to us by the scientific method?
Surely not. Surely it simply demonstrates that only SOME answers provided by the scientific method are cross-cultural and useful. True. As are SOME answers provided to us by religion.
The Bible, for instance, evinces certain truths. These truths are as real as any truths uncovered by science, “regardless of whether one speaks Arabic, Basque, Castilian, Dutch, English, or Finnish, and regardless of whether one prays to Allah, Bhagavan, Christ, Deus, Elohim, Freya, or whomever.” For instance, there is this truth:
In German, it goes like this: Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
In Old English, the same truth is expressed as: An angenom gesceop God heofanan and eorthan.
I have Bibles in German, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, and each one expresses that same real, objective, reliable truth: In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. That truth is not dependent upon any language used to express it, nor does it hinge on to whom we offer our prayers. Go ahead, pray to Freya all you want—the universe is still what it is, the product of the God who made it.
Lastly, we have this comment: “It is because scientific knowledge is considered provisional that they are allowed to keep moving forward and learning new things.”
This comment gives in to two myths: the myth of the scientific juggernaut, and the myth of the recalcitrant religious zealot. The first of these myths says that scientific knowledge advances monodirectionally and purposefully. We learn a new thing and move on to learn the next new thing. However, history does not bear this out. Sometimes, in gaining some new bit of scientific knowledge, scientists are compelled to revise or even toss out various ideas previously held as true. One example is phlogiston, which scientists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries used to explain how fires burned. However, once oxygen was discovered, phlogiston—and all the scientific advances made under phlogiston theory—had to be abandoned.
Furthermore, some scientific advances become lost technology. How, for instance, did the ancient Egyptians erect 150-ton obelisks, a thousand years or more before the invention of the pulley? Although attempts have been made at re-inventing the technology capable of doing such a thing, the fact remains that we still don’t know for certain how it was done.
The point is, science doesn’t move ONLY forward. Sometimes it moves backwards, sometimes it flounders. Sometimes it returns to ideas long ago abandoned. Seen this way, the history of science has been a history of being WRONG about one thing or another.
The second myth, that of the recalcitrant religious zealot, holds that religious people reached their conclusions about the state of the world a long time ago and obstinately resist any new ideas that come along for fear of angering some higher power. Such a view is, to use the theological term, a bunch of hooey. Theologians for centuries have tweaked and refined their views of God, nature, and religion, and, (just like scientists) continue to do so. They adhere to whatever truths they uncover (vis-à-vis my comments about Genesis 1:1), and seek to uncover new ones. Read St. Augustine of Hippo, and compare his views with those of Moses Maimonides, and then do the same with St. Thomas Aquinas. Theologians learn new things, just like scientists do, and so we’re back to where I started: the differences between science and religion are not as quite clear-cut as we often presuppose. And the notion of diametrical opposition is illusory.
(Begin post)
It seems to me that science and religion have strategies for achieving knowledge which are so different as to be quite nearly diametrically opposed, and this is fairly obvious whenever they both attempt to answer the same questions, such as:
* What are rainbows? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%209:12-15;&version=31) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Scientific_history
* What are thunderstorms? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2036:26-37:16;&version=31) < > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm
* What is the nature of man? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201:26-27,2:7;&version=9
* How can we cure mental illness? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%205%20;&version=49
(reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
* How can we cure physical illness? (faith http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%205:14-15;&version=31
< > (reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine#Basic_sciences
* Why are the planets arranged just so? (faith http://books.google.com/books?id=gNVB0QnZlXgC&pg=PA163&vq=%22intelligent+and+powerful+being%22&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0#PPA163,M1
I've drawn faith-based answers from my own faith tradition, no doubt other faith traditions have created their own answers. Answers yielded up by the scientific method, by contrast, are cross-cultural and useful regardless of whether one speaks Arabic, Basque, Castilian, Dutch, English, or Finnish, and regardless of whether one prays to Allah, Bhagavan, Christ, Deus, Elohim, Freya, or whomever. In every case, faith-based answers get about as far as "magical immaterial mind mediating by means most mysterious" and pretty much leaves it at that.
Even the great Isaac Newton, when stymied in his investigation of the origins of the solar system, decided to chalk it up to an intelligent designer and ceased doing any more research on the question. Meanwhile, methodological naturalists are busily arguing amongst themselves, refuting each other, testing out new theories, refining old ones, and generally getting on with the business of adding to humanity's understanding of the world. It is because scientific knowledge is considered provisional that they are allowed to keep moving forward and learning new things.
(End post.)
Seems to me, Damion makes the mistake of confusing strategy with tactics. While it is certainly true that the question “What is a rainbow?” will likely have a different answer from our pals at Biblegateway.com than the answer proffered at Wikipedia, that is not the point I was making: rather, the point is that in answering the question, both the scientist (I use this term loosely—I DON’T consider the Wikipedia the compendium of All Things Truly Scientific) and the theologian (again, used loosely—Biblegateway is A religious viewpoint, not the representative of all religious viewpoints) use the same fundamental strategies: a rainbow can be looked at by a simple, FALLABLE human being, and a reliable statement about an overall fundamental objective TRUTH can be adduced from it; further, this objective truth is an accurate representation of an overall objective reality—the truism is true, regardless of whether anyone actually believes in it; likewise, the truism remains valid universally. These strategies are all underpinned by various ASSUMPTIONS: that rainbows ARE knowable in any reliable sense; that our observations are reliable; and that truth isn’t one thing in this corner of the universe and another thing somewhere else. These assumptions are and must be accepted as axiomatic, without any basis for proof of their validity. They are simply taken ON FAITH.
Or, to put it another way, if the difference between science and religion is that science is based on reason and religion on faith, knowing full well that the very concept of objective truth must itself be taken on faith, doesn’t that mean that science is just another form of religion? And doesn’t that make them the same rather than different? So the difference between them is that there is no difference between them. Uh-huh…
Note also that in his reply, Damion goes little further than to cite the Wikipedia and Biblegateway to support his argument. His point, seems to me, is that in arguing that science and religion are diametrically opposed to one another in strategy, one need not look very far to find evidence supporting this position. Perhaps so. But not going any further also commits (or, at least, borders on committing) the logical fallacy of COLLECTIVISM—the identification of some viewpoint proffered by a member of some larger group and then conflating that viewpoint as representative of the entire group. An example would be to say that because some people in Nashville like Country music, all people in Nashville like Country music; thus, all people in Tennessee like Country, and since Tennessee is part of the US, so do all Americans.
The point is, not all religious people will explain rainbows in the same way that the folks at Biblegateway do. Religion is a vastly complex and often delicately nuanced human activity, oftentimes difficult NOT to oversimplify. As is, frankly speaking, practically ANY human activity.
I could, for instance, find examples of people saying incredibly stupid things in the name of science. Like this one: Eric Pianka, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, says the entire world would be just oh so much better off if 90% of human beings were suddenly wiped out. Disease, he told the Seguin Gazette, “will control the scourge of humanity. We’re looking forward to a huge collapse.” Dr. Pianka has speculated that an airborne Ebola virus would be an ideal killing medium.
Looking forward, indeed. And once again the epistemic superiority of scientific pronouncements crushes the silly speculations of all those religious folk. Is Dr. Pianka’s assertion another example of, as Damion puts it, the cross-cultural and useful answers provided to us by the scientific method?
Surely not. Surely it simply demonstrates that only SOME answers provided by the scientific method are cross-cultural and useful. True. As are SOME answers provided to us by religion.
The Bible, for instance, evinces certain truths. These truths are as real as any truths uncovered by science, “regardless of whether one speaks Arabic, Basque, Castilian, Dutch, English, or Finnish, and regardless of whether one prays to Allah, Bhagavan, Christ, Deus, Elohim, Freya, or whomever.” For instance, there is this truth:
In German, it goes like this: Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
In Old English, the same truth is expressed as: An angenom gesceop God heofanan and eorthan.
I have Bibles in German, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, and each one expresses that same real, objective, reliable truth: In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. That truth is not dependent upon any language used to express it, nor does it hinge on to whom we offer our prayers. Go ahead, pray to Freya all you want—the universe is still what it is, the product of the God who made it.
Lastly, we have this comment: “It is because scientific knowledge is considered provisional that they are allowed to keep moving forward and learning new things.”
This comment gives in to two myths: the myth of the scientific juggernaut, and the myth of the recalcitrant religious zealot. The first of these myths says that scientific knowledge advances monodirectionally and purposefully. We learn a new thing and move on to learn the next new thing. However, history does not bear this out. Sometimes, in gaining some new bit of scientific knowledge, scientists are compelled to revise or even toss out various ideas previously held as true. One example is phlogiston, which scientists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries used to explain how fires burned. However, once oxygen was discovered, phlogiston—and all the scientific advances made under phlogiston theory—had to be abandoned.
Furthermore, some scientific advances become lost technology. How, for instance, did the ancient Egyptians erect 150-ton obelisks, a thousand years or more before the invention of the pulley? Although attempts have been made at re-inventing the technology capable of doing such a thing, the fact remains that we still don’t know for certain how it was done.
The point is, science doesn’t move ONLY forward. Sometimes it moves backwards, sometimes it flounders. Sometimes it returns to ideas long ago abandoned. Seen this way, the history of science has been a history of being WRONG about one thing or another.
The second myth, that of the recalcitrant religious zealot, holds that religious people reached their conclusions about the state of the world a long time ago and obstinately resist any new ideas that come along for fear of angering some higher power. Such a view is, to use the theological term, a bunch of hooey. Theologians for centuries have tweaked and refined their views of God, nature, and religion, and, (just like scientists) continue to do so. They adhere to whatever truths they uncover (vis-à-vis my comments about Genesis 1:1), and seek to uncover new ones. Read St. Augustine of Hippo, and compare his views with those of Moses Maimonides, and then do the same with St. Thomas Aquinas. Theologians learn new things, just like scientists do, and so we’re back to where I started: the differences between science and religion are not as quite clear-cut as we often presuppose. And the notion of diametrical opposition is illusory.
Labels: philosophy of religion, philosophy of science
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I use this term loosely — I DON’T consider the Wikipedia the compendium of All Things Truly Scientific
Whenever someone takes a cheap shot at the Wikipedia, I almost always challenge them to show me precisely where the wiki went awry, in order that I may make the relevant corrections post haste. Usually, my interlocutors fail to rise to the challenge.
These strategies are all underpinned by various ASSUMPTIONS: that rainbows ARE knowable in any reliable sense; that our observations are reliable; and that truth isn’t one thing in this corner of the universe and another thing somewhere else. These assumptions are and must be accepted as axiomatic, without any basis for proof of their validity.
Seems to me that the only assumption we really need make is that our senses provide us with data about the universe which are not merely verisimilitudinous, but actually correspond to objective reality. That is, we must assume that are not, like Thomas A. Anderson, caught up in a world of programmed simulacra. This assumption is one with which I am perfectly comfortable, and which I expect most people to make. Those who refuse to make this leap are hardly worth wasting one's words, and this goes double for the solipsists.
...knowing full well that the very concept of objective truth must itself be taken on faith, doesn’t that mean that science is just another form of religion?
Of course not. If that were so, then all attempts at knowledge about the world outside of one's own mind would have to be considered equally as leaps of faith and we will have destroyed the impact and meaning of the word "faith" by massive dilution. Faith is, in one religious tradition, the hope of things unseen. This is worlds apart from those belief formed on the basis of direct apprehension by the senses.
...the logical fallacy of COLLECTIVISM—the identification of some viewpoint proffered by a member of some larger group and then conflating that viewpoint as representative of the entire group.
I tried to make it clear that I was merely sampling for faith-based answers from a single faith and for a small batch of representative questions about the world. No doubt there are plenty of other questions and other answers, but I doubt that you will find one in which faith and reason are converging upon the same answers, while staying faithful to their respective methodologies.
Eric Pianka...says the entire world would be just oh so much better off if 90% of human beings were suddenly wiped out.
Humans (of all faiths and none) will say ridiculous things from time to time. It is a huge mistake, though, to assume or imply that such statements follow from the rigorous application of the scientific method to a well-defined empirical question about the nature of the world. Indeed, it is difficult to even formulate what the question might be in this case.
"Ought we look forward to an extinction level event?" cannot possibly be reformulated into an empirical question, as it incorporates issues of subjective motivation and ethics. If that is the question, the faith-based answer might be yes or no depending on whether you belong to a faith tradition which extols radical apocalypticism and eagerly awaits God's next great winnowing of the human race. There is, of course, no possible scientific answer to such a ridiculous question, but it should give everyone pause that more than a few faith-based worldviews take this possibility seriously and joyously.
Surely it simply demonstrates that only SOME answers provided by the scientific method are cross-cultural and useful.
Surely you do not mean to suggest that Pianka’s answer is the result of a scientific investigation of any sort. If so, what was the hypothesis and what sort of empirical evidence was adduced to prove or disprove it?
Whenever someone takes a cheap shot at the Wikipedia, I almost always challenge them to show me precisely where the wiki went awry, in order that I may make the relevant corrections post haste. Usually, my interlocutors fail to rise to the challenge.
These strategies are all underpinned by various ASSUMPTIONS: that rainbows ARE knowable in any reliable sense; that our observations are reliable; and that truth isn’t one thing in this corner of the universe and another thing somewhere else. These assumptions are and must be accepted as axiomatic, without any basis for proof of their validity.
Seems to me that the only assumption we really need make is that our senses provide us with data about the universe which are not merely verisimilitudinous, but actually correspond to objective reality. That is, we must assume that are not, like Thomas A. Anderson, caught up in a world of programmed simulacra. This assumption is one with which I am perfectly comfortable, and which I expect most people to make. Those who refuse to make this leap are hardly worth wasting one's words, and this goes double for the solipsists.
...knowing full well that the very concept of objective truth must itself be taken on faith, doesn’t that mean that science is just another form of religion?
Of course not. If that were so, then all attempts at knowledge about the world outside of one's own mind would have to be considered equally as leaps of faith and we will have destroyed the impact and meaning of the word "faith" by massive dilution. Faith is, in one religious tradition, the hope of things unseen. This is worlds apart from those belief formed on the basis of direct apprehension by the senses.
...the logical fallacy of COLLECTIVISM—the identification of some viewpoint proffered by a member of some larger group and then conflating that viewpoint as representative of the entire group.
I tried to make it clear that I was merely sampling for faith-based answers from a single faith and for a small batch of representative questions about the world. No doubt there are plenty of other questions and other answers, but I doubt that you will find one in which faith and reason are converging upon the same answers, while staying faithful to their respective methodologies.
Eric Pianka...says the entire world would be just oh so much better off if 90% of human beings were suddenly wiped out.
Humans (of all faiths and none) will say ridiculous things from time to time. It is a huge mistake, though, to assume or imply that such statements follow from the rigorous application of the scientific method to a well-defined empirical question about the nature of the world. Indeed, it is difficult to even formulate what the question might be in this case.
"Ought we look forward to an extinction level event?" cannot possibly be reformulated into an empirical question, as it incorporates issues of subjective motivation and ethics. If that is the question, the faith-based answer might be yes or no depending on whether you belong to a faith tradition which extols radical apocalypticism and eagerly awaits God's next great winnowing of the human race. There is, of course, no possible scientific answer to such a ridiculous question, but it should give everyone pause that more than a few faith-based worldviews take this possibility seriously and joyously.
Surely it simply demonstrates that only SOME answers provided by the scientific method are cross-cultural and useful.
Surely you do not mean to suggest that Pianka’s answer is the result of a scientific investigation of any sort. If so, what was the hypothesis and what sort of empirical evidence was adduced to prove or disprove it?
Whenever someone takes a cheap shot at the Wikipedia...
CHEAP shot? Rahtha! I stand by my assertion: the Wiki is NOT the compendium of All Things Truly Scientific. The fact that there are Wiki posts over Mystery Science Theater 3000 should bear this out.
...the only assumption we really need make is that our senses provide us with data about the universe which are not merely verisimilitudinous, but actually correspond to objective reality.Uh-huh. And, as I pointed out earlier, both the scientist and the theologian use this same strategy. (This is not the ONLY assumption we should make, by the way. Another assumption is that human beings are actually capable of understanding what we see. A monkey is incapable of understanding the schematic diagram of a warp engine no matter how many times he looks at it. And there are other assumptions as well.)
Faith is, in one religious tradition, the hope of things unseen. This is worlds apart from those belief formed on the basis of direct apprehension by the senses.But faith is only ONE aspect of religion, not its ONLY aspect. Religious believers, just like scientific ones, also use direct apprehension by the senses. Moses didn't just SENSE the presence of God, he saw it in a burning bush or a pillar of fire. Again, you're relying on a sloppy definition of science and religion, that science is based on reason and religion on faith. It's an oversimplification.
Surely you do not mean to suggest that Pianka’s answer is the result of a scientific investigation of any sort.Pianka is a biologist, not a televangelist. He holds a PhD, not a ThD. Surely, with a doctorate in biology, he has been trained in some formulation of the scientific method, or he's at least heard of it. So why does he think that 6.5 billion people is some 6 billion too many? Did some angel appear to him and make the declaration? Or does some facet of biology lead him to this conclusion? Far be it from me to say that he derives his comment from the scientific method--I doubt that he does. I note only that if we hold that science is based on reason, how does this explain Pianka's comments? Answer: there's something wrong with the idea that science is based on reason. To repeat: the thing that's wrong is that it's oversimplified, which has been my point all along.
CHEAP shot? Rahtha! I stand by my assertion: the Wiki is NOT the compendium of All Things Truly Scientific. The fact that there are Wiki posts over Mystery Science Theater 3000 should bear this out.
...the only assumption we really need make is that our senses provide us with data about the universe which are not merely verisimilitudinous, but actually correspond to objective reality.Uh-huh. And, as I pointed out earlier, both the scientist and the theologian use this same strategy. (This is not the ONLY assumption we should make, by the way. Another assumption is that human beings are actually capable of understanding what we see. A monkey is incapable of understanding the schematic diagram of a warp engine no matter how many times he looks at it. And there are other assumptions as well.)
Faith is, in one religious tradition, the hope of things unseen. This is worlds apart from those belief formed on the basis of direct apprehension by the senses.But faith is only ONE aspect of religion, not its ONLY aspect. Religious believers, just like scientific ones, also use direct apprehension by the senses. Moses didn't just SENSE the presence of God, he saw it in a burning bush or a pillar of fire. Again, you're relying on a sloppy definition of science and religion, that science is based on reason and religion on faith. It's an oversimplification.
Surely you do not mean to suggest that Pianka’s answer is the result of a scientific investigation of any sort.Pianka is a biologist, not a televangelist. He holds a PhD, not a ThD. Surely, with a doctorate in biology, he has been trained in some formulation of the scientific method, or he's at least heard of it. So why does he think that 6.5 billion people is some 6 billion too many? Did some angel appear to him and make the declaration? Or does some facet of biology lead him to this conclusion? Far be it from me to say that he derives his comment from the scientific method--I doubt that he does. I note only that if we hold that science is based on reason, how does this explain Pianka's comments? Answer: there's something wrong with the idea that science is based on reason. To repeat: the thing that's wrong is that it's oversimplified, which has been my point all along.
Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.
How does one arrive at the great transcendental truth that the universe is, fundamentally, the product of a mind? I remain genuinely agnostic on this question, because there is an appalling lack of knowable facts bearing thereupon. That said, I cannot see any reason to prefer the deistic hypothesis that matter is the product of mind rather than vice-versa.
The first of these myths says that scientific knowledge advances monodirectionally and purposefully.
As I pointed out earlier, scientific knowledge is provisional by its very nature, which means that it cannot possibly advance in this manner. It advances in fits and starts, revising or discarding old hypotheses over time. I do not see that we have any genuine disagreement on this point.
The second myth, that of the recalcitrant religious zealot, holds that religious people reached their conclusions about the state of the world a long time ago and obstinately resist any new ideas that come along for fear of angering some higher power.
One need look no further than the public pronouncements of elected officials to see religious people who "obstinately resist any new ideas that come along." This is a vital and current issue, especially for those who want their students to understand that mankind descended from non-human primates.
Theologians ... adhere to whatever truths they uncover (vis-à-vis my comments about Genesis 1:1), and seek to uncover new ones.
It is not enough to note that some theologians are willing to analogize Scripture and accept scientific truths, since that is merely the displacement of the faith-based approach with another epistemic approach. Can you name one theological truth which has been uncovered by faith-based means during the 20th century?
...as I pointed out earlier, both the scientist and the theologian use this same strategy.
As I said, we all have to assume that our senses are giving us good data, at least for the most part. This is a fundamental assumption, which everyone must use, whether they are scientists, theologians, plumbers, data analysts, etc.
Another assumption is that human beings are actually capable of understanding what we see.
Clearly this is not a good assumption. It only holds part of the time and then only partially. Just today I was stymied more than once trying to understand the figures on the screen.
Religious believers, just like scientific ones, also use direct apprehension by the senses.
So they have claimed, and yet it would seem that Catholics tend to apprehend Mary while Hindus tend to apprehend Vishnu. This sort of inconsistency serves greatly to undermine the veracity of religious experience.
Moses didn't just SENSE the presence of God, he saw it in a burning bush or a pillar of fire.
Either that, or else the Hebrews knew how to construct religious mythology in support of their national identity, manifest destiny, and drive for lebensraum. Does the fact that the God of Moses ordered them to ruthlessly conquer the promised land better fit your theory or mine?
Again, you're relying on a sloppy definition of science and religion, that science is based on reason and religion on faith. It's an oversimplification.
It is indeed an oversimplification, if indeed God appeared to Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the rest. You've not presented any evidence that this is truly so, beyond citing to a book of rather ancient and unverifiable mythology, which must be taken on faith because it is not corroborated by archeology and history.
Surely, with a doctorate in biology, he has been trained in some formulation of the scientific method, or he's at least heard of it.
So what? Do you really think that scientists are being scientific all the time, even when making broad and unverifiable claims about morality?
So why does he think that 6.5 billion people is some 6 billion too many?
Who knows? For that matter, who cares? Unless Pianka's conclusions were indeed arrived at by some sort of scientific process, it is wholly disingenuous for you to suggest that his ridiculous and immoral ideas have any bearing whatsoever on the validity of scientific processes.
I'm at a loss to even pose a falsifiable hypothesis which might conceivably lead to those conclusions without a leap-of-faith across the is/ought gap.
How does one arrive at the great transcendental truth that the universe is, fundamentally, the product of a mind? I remain genuinely agnostic on this question, because there is an appalling lack of knowable facts bearing thereupon. That said, I cannot see any reason to prefer the deistic hypothesis that matter is the product of mind rather than vice-versa.
The first of these myths says that scientific knowledge advances monodirectionally and purposefully.
As I pointed out earlier, scientific knowledge is provisional by its very nature, which means that it cannot possibly advance in this manner. It advances in fits and starts, revising or discarding old hypotheses over time. I do not see that we have any genuine disagreement on this point.
The second myth, that of the recalcitrant religious zealot, holds that religious people reached their conclusions about the state of the world a long time ago and obstinately resist any new ideas that come along for fear of angering some higher power.
One need look no further than the public pronouncements of elected officials to see religious people who "obstinately resist any new ideas that come along." This is a vital and current issue, especially for those who want their students to understand that mankind descended from non-human primates.
Theologians ... adhere to whatever truths they uncover (vis-à-vis my comments about Genesis 1:1), and seek to uncover new ones.
It is not enough to note that some theologians are willing to analogize Scripture and accept scientific truths, since that is merely the displacement of the faith-based approach with another epistemic approach. Can you name one theological truth which has been uncovered by faith-based means during the 20th century?
...as I pointed out earlier, both the scientist and the theologian use this same strategy.
As I said, we all have to assume that our senses are giving us good data, at least for the most part. This is a fundamental assumption, which everyone must use, whether they are scientists, theologians, plumbers, data analysts, etc.
Another assumption is that human beings are actually capable of understanding what we see.
Clearly this is not a good assumption. It only holds part of the time and then only partially. Just today I was stymied more than once trying to understand the figures on the screen.
Religious believers, just like scientific ones, also use direct apprehension by the senses.
So they have claimed, and yet it would seem that Catholics tend to apprehend Mary while Hindus tend to apprehend Vishnu. This sort of inconsistency serves greatly to undermine the veracity of religious experience.
Moses didn't just SENSE the presence of God, he saw it in a burning bush or a pillar of fire.
Either that, or else the Hebrews knew how to construct religious mythology in support of their national identity, manifest destiny, and drive for lebensraum. Does the fact that the God of Moses ordered them to ruthlessly conquer the promised land better fit your theory or mine?
Again, you're relying on a sloppy definition of science and religion, that science is based on reason and religion on faith. It's an oversimplification.
It is indeed an oversimplification, if indeed God appeared to Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the rest. You've not presented any evidence that this is truly so, beyond citing to a book of rather ancient and unverifiable mythology, which must be taken on faith because it is not corroborated by archeology and history.
Surely, with a doctorate in biology, he has been trained in some formulation of the scientific method, or he's at least heard of it.
So what? Do you really think that scientists are being scientific all the time, even when making broad and unverifiable claims about morality?
So why does he think that 6.5 billion people is some 6 billion too many?
Who knows? For that matter, who cares? Unless Pianka's conclusions were indeed arrived at by some sort of scientific process, it is wholly disingenuous for you to suggest that his ridiculous and immoral ideas have any bearing whatsoever on the validity of scientific processes.
I'm at a loss to even pose a falsifiable hypothesis which might conceivably lead to those conclusions without a leap-of-faith across the is/ought gap.
I should not discount the possibility of direct religious experience too quickly, but I'd be quite interested in hearing which particular religious experiences you think are actual and defensible , and how you can tell them apart from the more ordinary and common processes of faulty interpretation of mind states, faulty memory, faulty communication, myth-making, etc.
Am Anfang schuf Gott...God IS... or he AIN'T. Take your pick. The theist says IS, the atheist says AIN'T, and the agnostic says DUNNO. I'm a theist, so I'm part of the IS crowd.
So when I read Genesis 1:1, as a theist, I see a truth: there is a God, and he created everything. Whatever faith claims I make or reasons that I see for believing in his existence are irrelevant from an ontological standpoint. He IS. Why I believe this to be so is another topic altogether.
One need look no further than the public pronouncements of elected officials to see religious people who "obstinately resist any new ideas that come along."Uh-huh. Collectivism again. That SOME religious people resist new ideas does not mean that ALL religious people resist new ideas--nor that to be religious, one MUST resist new ideas. Just like, to be scientific, one doesn't necessarily have to claim that the world would be better off if 90% of us bought the farm.
You've not presented any evidence that this is truly so...Yer kinda driftin from my point: that science and religion share a lot in common. At the moment, I'm not arguing that I believe in God because I know that he appeared to Moses. I'm saying two things: (1)There's a God, and (2) faith is not the only thing leading me to claim (1) is true.
By the way, when I say "God," I'm calling him by his TITLE, not his NAME. Moses identified the God who appeared to him as Yahweh. Muhammed identified the God who spoke to him as Allah. Obama identified the God who speaks to his heart as Karl Marx (yeah, I'm being facetious, but not by much).
More later...
So when I read Genesis 1:1, as a theist, I see a truth: there is a God, and he created everything. Whatever faith claims I make or reasons that I see for believing in his existence are irrelevant from an ontological standpoint. He IS. Why I believe this to be so is another topic altogether.
One need look no further than the public pronouncements of elected officials to see religious people who "obstinately resist any new ideas that come along."Uh-huh. Collectivism again. That SOME religious people resist new ideas does not mean that ALL religious people resist new ideas--nor that to be religious, one MUST resist new ideas. Just like, to be scientific, one doesn't necessarily have to claim that the world would be better off if 90% of us bought the farm.
You've not presented any evidence that this is truly so...Yer kinda driftin from my point: that science and religion share a lot in common. At the moment, I'm not arguing that I believe in God because I know that he appeared to Moses. I'm saying two things: (1)There's a God, and (2) faith is not the only thing leading me to claim (1) is true.
By the way, when I say "God," I'm calling him by his TITLE, not his NAME. Moses identified the God who appeared to him as Yahweh. Muhammed identified the God who spoke to him as Allah. Obama identified the God who speaks to his heart as Karl Marx (yeah, I'm being facetious, but not by much).
More later...
God IS... or he AIN'T. Take your pick.
I do not think it is reasonable to pronounce upon any subject where the evidence is so scant and contradictory as this one. It would be as reasonable to take a firm stance on a particular variety of superstring theory as against every other model of fundamental physics.
Whatever faith claims I make or reasons that I see for believing in his existence are irrelevant from an ontological standpoint.
Only to another theist.
That SOME religious people resist new ideas does not mean that ALL religious people resist new ideas...
All elevation of faith and inner conviction over reason and verifiable evidence gives cover to those few who resist the advances of scientific discovery. People of faith have enjoyed the protective shroud of faith and piety even as they protested against lightning rods, vaccines, and nearly every other lifesaving innovation of science.
Just like, to be scientific, one doesn't necessarily have to claim that the world would be better off if 90% of us bought the farm.
Nothing like that at all, until you've not shown that this perverse view has anything at all to do with scientific deduction. Until then, it sounds like an arbitrary moral position taken for reasons unknown.
Yer kinda driftin from my point: that science and religion share a lot in common.
I do not doubt they share some things in common, but I've been arguing that their epistemic approach is worlds apart. The one looks for evidence to falsify its hypothesis, the other looks within for confirmation of convictions held on faith.
I do not think it is reasonable to pronounce upon any subject where the evidence is so scant and contradictory as this one. It would be as reasonable to take a firm stance on a particular variety of superstring theory as against every other model of fundamental physics.
Whatever faith claims I make or reasons that I see for believing in his existence are irrelevant from an ontological standpoint.
Only to another theist.
That SOME religious people resist new ideas does not mean that ALL religious people resist new ideas...
All elevation of faith and inner conviction over reason and verifiable evidence gives cover to those few who resist the advances of scientific discovery. People of faith have enjoyed the protective shroud of faith and piety even as they protested against lightning rods, vaccines, and nearly every other lifesaving innovation of science.
Just like, to be scientific, one doesn't necessarily have to claim that the world would be better off if 90% of us bought the farm.
Nothing like that at all, until you've not shown that this perverse view has anything at all to do with scientific deduction. Until then, it sounds like an arbitrary moral position taken for reasons unknown.
Yer kinda driftin from my point: that science and religion share a lot in common.
I do not doubt they share some things in common, but I've been arguing that their epistemic approach is worlds apart. The one looks for evidence to falsify its hypothesis, the other looks within for confirmation of convictions held on faith.
The theist says IS, the atheist says AIN'T, and the agnostic says DUNNO.
This is as good an example as any to illustrate reason-based as opposed to faith-based thinking. A theist will generally say that there are good arguments for the existence of god(s), while the atheist maintains there are good arguments against the existence of god(s). I remain agnostic (at least as to god of Einstein, Spinoza, and Paine) because there is fault to be found in all such arguments, when they are laid out in a clear fashion such that the conclusions follow from the premises. This goes double for the more ambitious arguments which purport to prove the deity of some particular tribe.
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This is as good an example as any to illustrate reason-based as opposed to faith-based thinking. A theist will generally say that there are good arguments for the existence of god(s), while the atheist maintains there are good arguments against the existence of god(s). I remain agnostic (at least as to god of Einstein, Spinoza, and Paine) because there is fault to be found in all such arguments, when they are laid out in a clear fashion such that the conclusions follow from the premises. This goes double for the more ambitious arguments which purport to prove the deity of some particular tribe.
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