Originally Posted by dreadgeek
I knew I should have chosen my words more carefully. I originally had written suite of tools for understanding Nature. I think that science and spirituality answer absolutely different sets of questions. I will agree, provisionally, that there is no reason to believe that science disproves a belief in one or more divine beings. At the same time, I'm going to insist that there is nothing that science can do to prove that there is any kind of divine being. If one is going to believe then believe and do so wholly but science can offer you not one shred of support for your beliefs. That is not it's job.
At the same time, that street goes both ways. If science cannot tell one whether or not there is a god or many gods, then spirituality/religion cannot tell science what it's conclusions should be. I understand that, for instance, the young women saying that they believe that some divine being created the Universe and all that is in it. I understand that they believe that the Bible offers an explanation about what happened that it renders all other explanations moot. I get that. I also have to say, "so what?" Evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life available at present. If we're going to educate people in the life sciences then we're going to have to teach them evolution. Otherwise the life sciences won't make sense. However, it doesn't matter if evolution violates this or that holy book. It really doesn't matter because Nature isn't obliged to agree with what our religions would prefer.
I have said before and I'll say again--I don't promote atheism nor do I try to evangelize for a naturalistic worldview. I have nothing with which to replace that which gives people meaning and unless I do (and that question just isn't in my competencies) it would be wrong, in a deep ethical sense, for me to try to do so. That said, I'm not going to apologize for a naturalistic worldview. Just as you wouldn't (and shouldn't) apologize for a non-naturalistic worldview.
Yet, I'm still going to insist on demarcation. I think that's fair. While I don't see any good reason to believe in a heaven and I'm going to apply a fair and consistent standard (i.e. no special pleading) I am not going to argue that science 'disproves heaven' or what have you. For that, however, I think religion/spirituality needs to recognize the demarcation lines as well. Whether someone believes that the Bible teaches that humans were created by God is and should be irrelevant to the scientific process. "God created humans" is a religious statement, it has no business in a scientific discussion unless there is some proof that we *need* to invoke a divine being (and we don't) to explain some feature of the natural world we shouldn't allow it into the discussion. If we *do* have to allow that idea into the discussion then that statement has to be subject to the same criteria otherwise we are no longer doing science.
Yes, this is a limitation science imposes on itself but it is a necessary limit. It is the reason why you can take a scientist in Mumbai, one in Berkeley, one in Beijing and one in Cairo and all present them with data and they will be able to have a conversation about that data. They may all hold different religious beliefs or none what-so-ever but that won't get in the way because there is a common language to talk about the matter. The problem with invoking religious language in a scientific discussion is that in order to have a common ground we now have to agree that one person's religious assumptions are the correct ones. It cannot *simultaneously* be true--in the sense that I used it earlier, where that means 'the world is actually obliged to be that way'--that the Universe was created by one divine being in 6 days and was birthed by another divine being while being the egg of yet another divine being. Those three statements are mutually exclusive if are meant to take them as factual.
So before we can get down to explaining how something might give birth to a universe we would have to establish that this something exists. If I really and truly believed that the Greek pantheon described an objective "out there" reality is there anything you could say to convince me otherwise? Most likely not.
In science, on the other hand, ultimately there *must* be things that would convince me otherwise. If there isn't, I'm simply not doing science. I may not have a word for what I am doing, but whatever that word is it isn't science.
As an aside: something I have always found curious about the idea that there is not an objective reality 'out there' is how astoundingly self-centered it is. I take your existence as read (otherwise I'm either hallucinating or you are an AI in which case you can pass a Turing test). I presume that you take my existence as read. That means that without proof, I presume that your existence has some objective fact whether or not I have ever encountered you. If I had never been on the Internet, or had I died in, say, 1977 you would still exist. Therefore, barring evidence that I'm hallucinating or that you are an AI, I can say you objectively exist. I think that an objective reality is a pretty safe bet--like using a scale between 0 and 1, with zero being "does not exist" and one being "does exist" that objective reality is a .9 easily. I would say that our confidence on that should be high enough that for any ordinary purpose we can treat it as if it were true.
That .1 percent of skepticism is, to me, the mark of a scientist. There is a chance, however unlikely, that there isn't an objective reality. Although I think that there are a lot of other entities--certainly on this planet--that would probably disagree and would go about behaving as if they actually exist whether or not we believed in it. Like the honey badger, it don't care, it exists whether we believe in it or not.
Cheers
Aj
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06-24-2011, 07:27 AM
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