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The Great Debate: "Has Science Refuted Religion?"

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CALTECH COSMOLOGIST AND PHYSICIST Sean Carroll teams up with Skeptic magazine publisher and science historian Michael Shermer in this epic debate with noted conservative author and King's College President Dinesh D'Souza and MIT physicist Ian Hutchinson as they go head-to-head over one of the most controversial issues of our age. As science pushes deeper into territory once the province of religion, with questions such as Why there is something rather than nothing?, Where did the universe come from?, How did life arise?, What was the origin of morality?, and others, inevitable conflicts arise over the best approach to answer them. Don't miss this great debate and come with your questions for the audience participation portion of the day!
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Will watch tonight. Early comments... "ugh" to Dinesh. He's tragically deluded.
 
I was at the debate. I would have liked to have asked Ian Hutchinson what were the miracles he claimed to have seen; but, being part of the Skeptic staff, I had to run out to tend to book sales while the Q & A session was still on.

One thing I noted, which I'd seen before, was Dinesh D'Souza's combative and derogatory style of debating. Of the four debaters, only D'Souza indulged in attacks on the character of those opposing him. I frankly find the man dishonest. Once, during a radio show, he was asked a trenchant question by omeone calling in, to with he replied, "Well, let me ask you a question." After the caller answered D'Souza's question, the show moved on, without the caller's question ever being addressed.
 
I think it has. The universe is so vast that for a god to exist hed have to be more vast than anyone could ever comprehend. No sign of that out there.

If a god does exist this earth of ours is just a tiny example of what the universe was created for. It wasn't just for us.

Me I think there is no god.
 
Watched the entire debate. Current comments..."ugh" to Dinesh. He again offers no substantive argument.
 
It becomes a wedge attack, one part "this guy doesn't know enough, and because of that, God" and "God must exist because he must, therefor God" you know, God isn't scientific, so why can science claim that it can find him?! -.-

What I am tired of with Dinesh is his completely despicable attempts at handwaving. He goes up there and condemns science for saying that IT DOESN'T KNOW. but here's the problem...THAT ISN'T TRUE. We know many things, maybe not life after death but we know what DOESN'T happen...life. That's insane to propose an afterlife and say it DOES happen when there's no mechanism and science recognizes that. Then Dinesh VILIFIES that?! He is absolutely a troll, an insane troll. He just flat out handwaves and ignores the problem that to say you don't know with good reason is FAR better than saying you know with a lie. If Dinesh lived by that he'd be the most atheist-y atheist around -.-
 
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Watching now.

Gah. The logical fallacies are flying thick and heavy from Ian so far (~30 mins into it).

Can't wait to hear the refutations!
 
While watching the video, I suddenly realized I was slowly being mesmerized by Dinesh's 1980's style suit jacket's massive shoulder pads as they rocked back and forth. It was an eerie, snake-charmer like movement.
 
Science and religion are orthogonal. They do not intersect. To debate them is pointless, akin to dancing about architecture.
 
Since science is, in fact, a religion…it quite obviously cannot refute itself. Sure it’s turtles all the way down, until you get to the bottom. Then there’s nothing left but faith. A demonstrably true claim…by default….simply because there is absolutely no way to establish how or why we know anything at all (or even that what we know is explicitly accurate)!

IOW….faith (aka: religion).

And what is this thing ‘knowing’…and what is this thing ‘we’…trivial things it would seem. How about an update on what the scientific community actually does know about these issues:

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

This is the established consensus position of the scientific community (recently confirmed). We don’t know what consciousness is and we don’t know how it is produced. IOW…we don’t know how we come to any conclusions at all about anything!

How about a quote from one of the lesser known cognitive scientists in the world:

“It should be obvious to everyone that by and large science reaches deep explanatory theories to the extent that it narrows its gaze. If a problem is too hard for physicists, they hand it over to chemists, and so on down the line until it ends with people who try to deal somehow with human affairs, where scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so, except in a few areas that can be abstracted for special studies.
On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world.”

Noam Chomsky

…and a few other trivial questions that science has yet to answer: What the universe actually is…or where or how it originated. Hardly significant.

So we don’t know what this place is or where it came from and we don’t know what we are or how we work….but obviously, science knows enough to rule out religion….obviously.

There's a train-a-comin...and it's called 'God of the gaps'. Some gaps!....and where did I mention 'God'?

….but carry on with your delusions conclusions.
 
annnnoid said:
So we don’t know what this place is or where it came from and we don’t know what we are or how we work….but obviously, science knows enough to rule out religion….obviously.
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Well we know how to measure some things and how to make technological toys like this computer and how to smash the atom... therefore NO GOD! :p
 
annnnoid said:
How about a quote from one of the lesser known cognitive scientists in the world:

“It should be obvious to everyone that by and large science reaches deep explanatory theories to the extent that it narrows its gaze. If a problem is too hard for physicists, they hand it over to chemists, and so on down the line until it ends with people who try to deal somehow with human affairs, where scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so, except in a few areas that can be abstracted for special studies.
On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world.”

Noam Chomsky
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What Chomsky says here definitely applies to the hard sciences, but we can actually find out quite a bit by applying the scientific method to the "fuzzy" data related to human activities and interactions. In fact, there are hugely successful companies whose business model is based on exactly that.
 
Cainkane1 said:
I think it has. The universe is so vast that for a god to exist hed have to be more vast than anyone could ever comprehend. No sign of that out there.

If a god does exist this earth of ours is just a tiny example of what the universe was created for. It wasn't just for us.

Me I think there is no god.
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Standing on a small speck of matter spinning around a small sun in the spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy and declaring that the whole thing was made just for me is hubris.
 
annnnoid said:
Since science is, in fact, a religion…it quite obviously cannot refute itself. Sure it’s turtles all the way down, until you get to the bottom. Then there’s nothing left but faith. A demonstrably true claim…by default….simply because there is absolutely no way to establish how or why we know anything at all (or even that what we know is explicitly accurate)!

IOW….faith (aka: religion).

And what is this thing ‘knowing’…and what is this thing ‘we’…trivial things it would seem. How about an update on what the scientific community actually does know about these issues:

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

This is the established consensus position of the scientific community (recently confirmed). We don’t know what consciousness is and we don’t know how it is produced. IOW…we don’t know how we come to any conclusions at all about anything!

How about a quote from one of the lesser known cognitive scientists in the world:

“It should be obvious to everyone that by and large science reaches deep explanatory theories to the extent that it narrows its gaze. If a problem is too hard for physicists, they hand it over to chemists, and so on down the line until it ends with people who try to deal somehow with human affairs, where scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so, except in a few areas that can be abstracted for special studies.
On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world.”

Noam Chomsky

…and a few other trivial questions that science has yet to answer: What the universe actually is…or where or how it originated. Hardly significant.

So we don’t know what this place is or where it came from and we don’t know what we are or how we work….but obviously, science knows enough to rule out religion….obviously.

There's a train-a-comin...and it's called 'God of the gaps'. Some gaps!....and where did I mention 'God'? ….but carry on with your delusions conclusions.
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Hilited
 
tsig said:
Standing on a small speck of matter spinning around a small sun in the spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy and declaring that the whole thing was made just for me is hubris.
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It is not that ordinary, its actually in the top 10% heaviest galaxies in the observable universe ;)
 
annnnoid said:
Since science is, in fact, a religion…
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And feet are quite obviously pineapples.

Sure it’s turtles all the way down, until you get to the bottom. Then there’s nothing left but faith.
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Not the kind of faith that religion depends on.

because there is absolutely no way to establish how or why we know anything at all (or even that what we know is explicitly accurate)!

IOW….faith
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Non sequitur.

(aka: religion).
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No. You are drawing a false conclusion.

This is the established consensus position of the scientific community (recently confirmed).
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Not that I disagree much with it, but stated where and by whom? And confirmed how?

We don’t know what consciousness is and we don’t know how it is produced. IOW…we don’t know how we come to any conclusions at all about anything!
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And yet we can build computers and networks for you to type that.

…and a few other trivial questions that science has yet to answer: What the universe actually is…or where or how it originated. Hardly significant.
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So, what's your sarcastic point? Religion gonna solve it?

So we don’t know what this place is or where it came from and we don’t know what we are or how we work….but obviously, science knows enough to rule out religion….obviously.
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Yup. Glad you agree :)

There's a train-a-comin...and it's called 'God of the gaps'. Some gaps!....and where did I mention 'God'?
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Is this a Johnny Cash thing?
 
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