I do love the effort you put into your posts.
Thank you. I'm sorry it was so long, I got interested and carried away.
I hope I've matched your arguments with the appropriate section of my post that you quoted. If not, please correct me.
However, from my point of view, these are typical science generated apologies for not having to confront the obvious when it comes to god beliefs.
Skeptic Ginger, I think we've been this way before and that we will always disagree about this. These aren't apologies, they are reasons. The belief in God(s) is a matter of faith, not fact, and not a matter for science, which examines the natural world. I hope you checked out the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy link, it was very interesting.
It is no surprise there are many, (even a majority though I do believe that tide is shifting), of scientists who prefer not to challenge god beliefs. Gould's
NOMA is popular and was only described in print in 1997. It is still accepted by many in the scientific community. But not by all and not without the challenge of objections. It's hardly a consensus.
It seems to me that few ideas in the scientific community escape the "challenge of objections." I'm sure there are some who would even challenge the idea that more funding for science is a good thing.
Not all the quotes I gave were espousing NOMA specifically, although they may have been similar. And to offset those you dismiss as "scientists who prefer not to challenge god beliefs" are those whom I will dismiss as scientists who prefer to re-define science and turn it into a "quasi-religion" because they don't believe in God (followers of Methodological Naturalism). According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it is this group, rather than theistic religion, that has a science/religion conflict.
Our own Dr Plait, the Bad Astronomer, prefers this non-confrontational apology that allows a double standard for god beliefs among skeptics and the scientific community. His point is tolerate god beliefs because not doing so needlessly shrinks the skeptical community.
To repeat a quote from the National Academy of Sciences,
Science, Evolution, and Creationism:
Science said:
Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.
This is not a "non-confrontational apology" but an explanation of the reason God is outside the realm of science. Science and religion "address aspects of human understanding in different ways." Science cannot answer all questions about all things.
The phrase "double standard" is also incorrect, as
this section of Understanding Science demonstrates:
Understanding Science said:
Within science, the term natural refers to any element of the physical universe — whether made by humans or not. This includes matter, the forces that act on matter, energy, the constituents of the biological world, humans, human society, and the products of that society.
<snip>
In practice, what's natural is often identified by testability. Natural things behave in predictable ways — though we may not yet fully understand them — which have observable outcomes. This predictability means that we can test hypotheses about natural entities by making observations. Ghosts, for example, are supernatural entities without a basis in the physical universe and so are not subject to the laws of that universe. Hence, ghosts are outside the purview of science, and we cannot study their existence (or lack thereof) with the tools of science. If, however, we hypothesize ghosts to be natural entities, made up of matter and energy and bound by the laws of the universe, then we can study them with the tools of science — and must accept the outcome if the tests we perform suggest that ghosts do not exist as natural entities.
But, science is only about the "majority" when the majority draw a consensus conclusion based on evidence which can be evaluated and confirmed. So the fact there is a scientific consensus on global warming is an important point, but the fact the majority in the scientific community weren't so sure about moving crustal plates or the cause of gastric ulcers being a bacterial infection did not turn out to be important.
I'm not sure what part of my post you're addressing, but if it is the fact that a majority of scientists see no conflict or incompatibility between science and religion, then what you are saying here is irrelevant. I'm talking about
scientists' beliefs, not the
conclusions of science.
No one here is saying scientists cannot tolerate god beliefs of individuals who are otherwise critical thinkers. Personally, I believe the consequences of such tolerance are not being considered. But there are also consequences of not tolerating god beliefs within our community. Take your pick:
Offend otherwise critical thinking people now by challenging their god beliefs,
or, run the risk of exposing the hypocrisy of giving god beliefs a double standard pass when challenged to explain why god beliefs are OK but other woo beliefs are not.
I think calling religion or belief in religion/God "not thinking," "magical," "grandiose," and other such things does not show toleration of religion by anyone. As to the "consequences of such tolerance," I would usually considered them benign. For instance, tolerance might encourage students to believe in or even study evolution; it might encourage funding for science; it might help bring back a better level of science education (particularly biology) in the U.S.; it might lead to an increasing respect for the conclusions of science (e.g., global warming).
There is not a "double standard." This is an opinion not borne out by evidence. See above.
I am more than familiar with NOMA and the arguments one cannot 'prove' gods don't exist. I am aware these are probably majority opinions in the skeptic and scientific communities. That does not change my view nor weaken my resolve that I am correct.
As I said at the beginning of this post, we'll have to agree to disagree on whether science can or cannot prove that gods don't exist.
The emperor has no clothes IMO as far as NOMA goes. The idea god beliefs serve some purpose science cannot loses its appeal when you change perspectives. There are many things about the needs of a human being which are based in our socio-cultural-biological essence. Science serves to describe and successfully interact with the Universe, not fulfill every human need. But when one uses science to investigate human need, mythical god beliefs are not a special thing, they are an indoctrinated need.
And yet, when I change perspective the other way, I discover that faith/religion/spiritualism/belief in God, whatever you want to call it (except god belief - a detestable phrase from a language standpoint, and one I refuse to use) does indeed "serve some purpose science cannot." It answers questions science doesn't address; e.g., Is there a God? Why am I here? What happens after I die? Science deals with things of nature. Religion deals with things of the mind (as opposed to the brain) and spirit.
I have learned a lot since joining this Forum about how wonderful the things science tells us can be. How complex some things are and how small variations can have significant effects. How things have to happen just so for a certain result to occur. According to one physicist, J.C., Polkinghorne, in
Belief in God in an Age of Science:
J.C. said:
Those who work in fundamental physics encounter a world whose large-scale structure (as described by cosmology) and small-scale process (as described by quantum theory) are alike characterised by a wonderful order that is expressible in concise and elegant mathematical terms.
<snip>
There is no a priori reason why beautiful equations should prove to be the clue to understanding nature; why our minds should have such ready access to the deep structure of the universe. It is a contingent fact that this is true of us and of our world, but it does not seem sufficient simply to regard it as a happy accident. Surely it is a significant insight into the nature of reality.
<snip>
There is much more to the Mind of God than physics will ever disclose, but this usage is not misleading, for I believe that the rational beauty of the cosmos indeed reflects the Mind that holds it in being.
And a biologist, M.D., and former atheist, Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project, said at the
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s Faith Angle Conference:
Dr. Collins said:
<snip>I began to realize that even in science, where I had spent most of my time, there were pointers to God that I had paid no attention to that were actually pretty interesting.
One obvious one, although maybe it's not so obvious, is that there is something instead of nothing. There's no reason there should be anything at all. Wigner's wonderful phrase "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" also comes to mind – Eugene Wigner, the Nobel laureate in physics, talking about the amazing thing about the whole study of physics is that mathematics makes sense; it can describe the properties of matter and energy in simple, even beautiful, laws. Why should that be?
<snip>
The Big Bang, the fact that the universe had a beginning out of nothingness, as far as we can tell. From this unimaginable singularity, the universe came into being and has been flying apart ever since. That cries out for some explanation. Since we have not observed nature to create itself, where did this come from? That seems to ask you to postulate a creator who must not be part of nature or you haven’t solved the problem. In fact, one can also make a pretty good philosophical argument that a creator of this sort must also be outside of time or you haven’t solved the problem.
So now we have the idea of a creator who is outside of time and space, and who is a pretty darn good mathematician, and apparently also must be an incredibly good physicist. An additional set of observations I found quite breathtaking and do to this day is the fact that the physical constants that determine the nature of interactions between matter and the way in which energy behaves have precisely the values they would need to have for any kind of complexity or life to occur.
<snip>
But you can’t look at those numbers and not marvel at what’s going on here. You’re basically stuck with two options: Either those constants were set by an intelligence that was interested in having a universe that was not sterile, or the alternative is that actually there are an almost infinite number of other parallel universes out there that have different values of those constants. Of course, we have to be here in the one where everything worked or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
That second hypothesis, the multiverse hypothesis, does require a certain amount of faith because those are not other parallel universes that we ever expect we would be able to observe. So which of those is a more faith-requiring hypothesis? I would ask you to think about that from my perspective, using the Ockham’s Razor approach that the simplest explanation may in fact be the right one. This sounds a lot like all of these things are pointing us toward a creator who had an intention about the universe that would include setting these constants so that interesting things might happen.
<snip>
Of course, from my perspective, having been an atheist and traveled this path, it seems to me that atheism is, of all of the choices, the least rational because it assumes that you know enough to exclude the possibility of God. And which of us could claim we know enough to make such a grand statement? Suppose the knowledge of God just happens to be outside of your little circle of understanding? Then would it not be the height of arrogance to say, I know there is no God? G.K. Chesterton says this quite nicely: “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, the assertion of a universal negative.”
Atheism is a pretty dogmatic position to take. It’s a fundamentalist position to take, in fact. So atheism won’t do. So how, then, do we put this synthesis together? I’ll give you the view that I’ve arrived at, which in my experience is also the view that about 40 percent of working scientists who believe in a personal God have arrived at. And, by the way, it is 40 percent. That surprises a lot of people who think atheists and scientists are synonymous. In fact, 40 percent of us feel quite differently.
So here it is – God, who is not limited in space or time, created this universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned – that fine-tuning argument – to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time. That plan included the mechanism of evolution to create this marvelous diversity of living things on our planet and to include ourselves, human beings. Evolution, in the fullness of time, prepared these big-brained creatures, but that’s probably not all we are from the perspective of a believer.
God, in that case, having a house that’s now well-designed for it, gifted humanity with free will and with a soul. We could argue about what a soul actually means. And at that point, humans received this special status: made in God’s image, not in physical terms, but in spiritual and mental terms. We humans used our free will to disobey God – that’s what the story of the Garden of Eden is all about – leading to our realization of being in violation of that moral law. Thus we were estranged from God. For Christians like myself, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.
Now there’s nothing in that synthesis, I would argue, that is in conflict with what I know as a scientist or with a reasonable reading of the Bible. We’ll come to “reasonable” in a moment because I think that’s where a lot of the arguments tend to get focused.
And I've already described my paradigm shifted view of 'proving' gods don't exist. That proposal asks the wrong question. The correct question is, when one looks at the evidence for god beliefs what conclusions are evident? Following the evidence to the conclusion, one finds overwhelming evidence god beliefs are fictional human creations. There is no evidence supporting alternative conclusions. Feel free to present contradictory evidence if you have any.
How Nietzschean of you. Please provide the evidence you mention. It will be hard for either of us to find evidence; neither of us was around when man first evolved, there was no writing, and there are no time machines. So I'll just provide another point of view:
Jay R. Feierman, The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and
Religion, page 81:
<snip>If having the capacity to hold symbolically coded beliefs that were acquired through social learning led to an increase in survival, then the effectiveness, efficiency, and even the size of the structures in the brain that acquire and hold symbolically coded beliefs in general would have increased in subsequent generations. In this respect, religious beliefs and the values that derive from their hierarchical organization would also have contributed to the capacity for humans to hold symbolically coded beliefs and values in general.
In contrast to the above, moods and feelings, which also are contributing causes of religious behavior, are functions rather than structures. As functions they do not have form. One cannot hold a mood or a feeling in one's hand. Nevertheless, the brain tissues whose functions are (or which produce) moods and feelings are structures that do have form and can evolve biologically by natural selection. As a result, if having certain religious moods and feelings led to an increase in survival, the brain tissues that generate moods and feelings in general and religious-related moods and feelings in particular would have increased in effectiveness, efficiency, and size in subsequent generations.
For example, there are a number of moods and feelings associated with spirituality that include such things as an increased capacity for commitment33 as well as feelings of awe, love (attachment), trust (faith), compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy, and hope.34 Most religions have such a spiritual component. Therefore, when individuals experienced these moods and feelings and as a result engaged in Type II Behaviors that increased their survival or the survival of their kin and co-ethnics (in tribal societies), the brain tissues that generated these moods and feelings would have increased in effectiveness, efficiency, and size in subsequent generations. The implication of this process is that, contrary to the more intuitive (and more secular) proposition that religious psychology evolved as a by-product of the mind,35 believing in God may have been what contributed to the creation of many parts of the human mind. Some would call that a "gift." This perspective is in contrast to other perspectives that may have prematurely dismissed religion's value.
Asking the right question, what does the evidence support, is not in conflict with the principles in the scientific process that one doesn't seek proofs, one seeks the best explanation for the evidence. The concept that new evidence is always possible has been abused when it comes to god beliefs. Not being able to prove gods don't exist is also NOT an argument that they might. Yet it is often stated as if it were evidence gods might exist. The scientific principle that new evidence is always possible should not stop us from drawing the conclusion based on current evidence that gods are fictional human creations.
You've totally confused me with this paragraph, but I'll try my best to figure it out. Firstly: I thought one used the evidence/observations to find out whether expectations of an idea hold true. You say it works the other way? You take a bunch of evidence/observations and come up with an hypothesis? I guess that's part of the circular process.
Secondly, how could "the concept that new evidence is always possible ha[ve] been abused when it comes to god beliefs"? Isn't it fundamental to good science that new evidence is
always possible and that it is
always possible to change the conclusions if new evidence demands it?
Thirdly, you can't prove a negative. So you are correct that you are not able to prove that gods don't exist. This does not mean that they do exist either. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This reminds me of some things said by
Barbara Bradley Hagerty at the 2009 Pew Forum Faith Angle Conference:
Barbara Bradley Hagerty said:
I just have one more story to tell you to illustrate a point. In 1991, there was a woman named Pam Reynolds. Have you all heard of her? She was found to have had an aneurysm on her brain stem. <snip>
Essentially what they did was they put her under anesthesia, they taped her eyes shut, they put in molded speakers in her ears that emitted really loud clicks – about 90 to 100 decibels.
<snip>
So she was basically without blood in her head or in a deep coma-like state for over an hour. When she awakened, she had quite a story to tell. Basically, she said that she floated upwards – she had an out-of-body experience and watched part of the operation – not all of it because she had a near-death experience in the middle of it. But what was interesting was, she could describe the operating theater – how many people were there, who was placed – she could tell where men and women were. She didn’t know their names, obviously.
She could describe a very unusual-looking bone saw called the Midas Rex bone saw and the blade container. It’s unusual; it looks like an electric toothbrush, so it’s not something you see all the time. She heard conversations, including the one where a female surgeon said that her arteries were too small in the left groin for a tube and so the chief surgeon told the other surgeon to try the right side – she heard this kind of conversation. So she saw things, heard things even though her senses were apparently blocked.
<snip>
...but her ability to describe the operation while under deep anesthesia when her eyes were taped shut and her hearing blocked – it raised a question for me: Was Pam’s mind or consciousness operating separately from her brain? <snip>
But Pam Reynolds’ story feels a little bit more compelling to me, probably not to a lot of you, but to me it does. For one thing, it’s corroborated. A doctor named Michael Sabom got all the hospital records and the transcripts from this operation and found that when Pam said something happened, that in fact did happen in the order that she suggested. It seemed to corroborate her account.
<snip>
I just want to conclude by observing that in my year of interviewing scientists, I learned something about scientists. When they hear of a case that they don’t like – one that doesn’t jive with their worldview – they call it just an anecdote. When they like a story, they call it case history.
Now most scientists would probably say this challenge to a materialist worldview is an anecdote. After all, Pam’s story could lead to the astonishing notion that somehow we have consciousness or maybe a soul that could survive death. Other scientists – in fact a growing number – will call Pam’s story a case history, something to be explored and not just so easily dismissed. But I’m sure of a couple of things. First, this question of consciousness is the next big battle in the emerging science of spirituality. And second, how a scientist comes down on the debate about consciousness will be as much a matter of his own belief system as it will be of the science.
Fourthly, what is this current evidence that gods are fictional human creations?
So how is science supposed to be compatible with religion (excluding religions proposed that contain no god or other magical beliefs) when the scientific process reveals the religious beliefs to be fiction. Are god believers within the scientific community willing to admit they believe in fiction but find it fulfills some human need so who cares? Do theist scientists simply ignore or deny the overwhelming evidence god beliefs are fictional human creations? That occurs but is such denial compatible or simply tolerable currently?
The idea that religious beliefs are fiction is opinion. You have not shown it to be fact, so don't claim "scientific processes" with no basis. There is no reason for anyone who believes in God(s) to "admit" (loaded word) they believe in fiction. Science deals with facts in the natural world. Religion (and God) deal with belief outside the natural world.
http://royalsociety.tv/rsPlayer.aspx?presentationid=100
J.C. Polkinghorne said in a lecture at the Royal Society that the questions that science addresses are also limited.
Edited by jhunter1163:
Edited quote, replaced with link. Please don't quote lengthy blocks of text. Links are fine.
