Answering Krauze on Science and Atheism

Internet evangelism is perhaps one of the most rude and futile activities possible, so I want to avoid any appearance of filling up Ed's comment boxes with annoying attempt to convince people. Nonetheless...

PLP said:

But keep in mind that the disconnect is precisely the disconnect between public and private beliefs; You can get any answer you want (or no answer at all) out of theological "reasoning" depending on your privately chosen premises. To apply the word "reasoning" (or "truth") to a process (or its outcome) that can yield any answer at all, even mutually contradictory answers, seems to stretch the words beyond usefulness.

It's true the theological reasoning can produce any outcome you like, if you provide it with suitable premises -- but then, that's true of any form of reasoning. An experiment can prove nearly anything you want, if you sufficiently contort either your data or your mode of evaluating it. However, in science, people can readily reproduce your results and examine your frame of interpretation to correct you. American religiosity (perhaps because of the emphasis on 'personal interpretation' common to much of its Protestant background) has a strongly anti-intellectual tendency to assert that "I've found it to be true, and foo on you if you disagree". (The theological partisan in me would say that's why Protestant theology tends to be either vacuuous or very basic.) This is, however, far from the only way to go about things. To take a very basic example, another Catholic might say to me, "Violence is always wrong." To which I might reply, "In that case, then either Jesus sinned, or the story of his driving the money changers from the temple is wrong. If you can't show one of these to be compatible with the rest of your beliefs, then your claim is false." Now, obviously, this sort of conversation takes a number of things as given which someone else might flatly deny. But none of the elements of such an argument would be internal to the participants. It's a very basic use of reason, but then, one does have limited space...

Pierce Butler said:

Those are good questions you raise, but they're human questions - not cosmic - and in the absence of more successful guidance from divine influences than we've seen so far, it's up to humans to create the answers.

I agree that a question such as "what is justice" does not necessarily require turning to a deity to answer. I think some of the best writing on the topic was done by Plato, who obviously didn't base his reasoning on Christianity. However, while the question of "how do I behave justly" can be thought of as a human, relational question, I think often coming up with an answer requires making certain cosmic assumptions. For instance, before one may say that all people should be treated equally under the law, one must come up with some reason for thinking that all people are in any important sense equal, despite the fact that in physical and mental ability, it is pretty clear that not all people are equal. If one chooses to treat everyone equally anyway (or not) one makes certain assumptions about what a human being is, and how one deserves to be treated, which are essentially metaphysical.

Anthony said:

It might be good to come down to earth and remember that the actual political argument concerns two things: 1) the results of several particular sciences such as biology, paleontology, anthropology, astronomy; and 2) the Bible, interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of its sentences in modern English. Do these two offer equivalently valid explanations of the material world? Of course not.

But isn't the very nature of the compatibility argument that one may fully accept as factual the findings of the sciences without speaking on the existence of God one way or the other? The problem, after all, with the ID nonesense (in addition to being based on false claims about cellular biology) is that it attempts to pull religions conclusions into a science class. If one turns around instead and says "Evolution is true and therefore God doesn't exist" in science class, one runs afoul of the same 'non overlapping magisteria' (to use Gould's phrase).

Certainly, forms of biblical fundamentalism that are premised on a young earth will necessarily be disproved by the fact discovered by modern science, but that's because biblical fundamentalism makes the mistake of trying to speak on scientific issues, not because science itself is somehow capable of ruling out the existence of God.

My take on this issue: one can be not an athiest and still be a fully respectable, intellectually honest scientist (despite what extremeists like PZ Myers says)... but, you can't be completely credulous in your religion. There *are* a lot of real instantiations of religion in the world today that are inconsistent with what we've learned through science, and there's no sense in denying that. On the other hand, you do not *have* to be an athiest to fully accept science.

I blogged about this a bit here: http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=42

Sandefur's argument why theism (and that's what we're talking about, not religion) and science are incompatible wasn't very convincing. He set up the competing ways of thinking like you do in this article; scientific and supernatural. Then he simple dismissed those who claim to hold both positions, which is what theist scientists do, as "intellectual bigamists", which is nothing more than a negative rephrasing of their actual position. As much time as he spent criticizing "compatibilists" of dodging the issue he himself spent no more than 1 sentence addressing them.

It is interesting to point out that a lot of physicists (Einstein, among others) were compatibilist to some degree, while biologists largely are not. It seems rather parochial of biologists raised in the Christian tradition to reject all concepts of God because the evidence clearly refutes one book (Genesis) from one interpretation of one religious tradition. Many people point out that biology and those who follow biology (like Dennett, who is obviously not a biologist) suffer from a sort of triumphalism right now, thinking that evolution can explain everything. Dawkins has even hinted that some form of evolutionary theory can be applied (somehow) to cosmology! I guess my point is that biologists should approach the ultimate questions with humility - their studies do not speak to such questions. Where a religious claim conflicts with a confirmed fact, however, the biologist, the physicist, and rationalists of all stripes should point out the errors of such a claim.

Excellent post Ed. As a theist, I agree with you completely. These issues won't go away, but they aren't the big one, which is the integrity of science and especially of science education.

I have to add that I find so much useful information in the works of Dawkins and Dennett that I'm going to go right on reading and recommending their books even if they do think I'm less intelligent. It's pretty likely I am less intelligent, though I don't think my theism is a manifestation of that.

This is a great post, Ed. I too enjoy reading Dawkins. In fact, for all the provocative statements he likes to make, he's also been quoted to the effect that of course evolution does not necessarily rule out a creator and that many 'intelligent' religious people accept the theory.

I can't believe any atheist with any social skills is still calling him/herself a "bright" and expecting to be taken seriously. IF your words and actions don't live up to the self-appelation, you only end up looking dimmer.

I might as well call myself "God" and expect others to start worshipping me.

As an atheist myself, I personally do find it hard to understand why, given the vast amount of scientific knowledge - none of which has required any sort of supernatural explanation - people do still choose to believe in supernatural things. I do understand it to some degree from a purely emotional perspective but, not from a rational one.

Consider the staggering success that science has had in explaining the natural world around us and the utter failure religion has had in that regard.

Consider that nobody, anywhere, throughout the entire written history of humankind, has ever been able to produce one single, shred of independent, testable, verifiable evidence for the existence of anything supernatural.

Consider the many, many cases where scientific knowledge does directly conflict with specific religious beliefs. As you said, Ed, I will always choose the natural explanation over the supernatural one.

I simply see no reason to believe in any sort of deity. Do I know there is no god, of course not, that is impossible to know. However, I strongly suspect (and conduct my life with the working assumption) that there is no god or any other sort of supernatural anything.

On a personal level, I don't believe there is necessarily a correlation between intelligence and belief in the supernatural but, there could very well be a case made for education levels and belief in myth and superstition - especially where education in the sciences are concerned as evidence by the much larger percentage of atheists and agnostics in the physical sciences than in the general population.

I don't believe that *people* who believe in God are idiots. I do believe that *belief* in God-myths is idiotic.

There's no rule that says smart people can't do dumb things.

Would you say I need to grow up?

Bravo, Ed! Being a theistic evolutionist, I completely agree with you. It makes me so frustrated to see the arrogance on both sides of the religious debate. If everyone had an ounce more of humility, what a better world we would be living in. Unfortunately, I feel like humility is a dying trait these days especially in the political and religious worlds.

Your point about the "big-tent" nature of ID is well taken, too. Until the ID community can agree on a natural history of the world, there efforts to conquer evolution will always fall flat. And they never will be able to come up with a unified theory of ID because as soon as some decision is made regarding common descent or the age of the Earth, half of the group will disband and ID will self-destruct. A lovely Catch-22.

On a related note, it's funny to me how some on the ID side think that reaching out to theistic evolutionists is a key to advancing ID (http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1147#comments), but then we have Dembski saying that "design theorists are no friends of theistic evolution". Perfect!

K Klein wrote:

I don't believe that *people* who believe in God are idiots. I do believe that *belief* in God-myths is idiotic.

I think it depends on what you mean by "god-myths". If you mean "believe in a god", then I would disagree. If you mean "believe in certain claims of divine revelation", I would likely agree. There are some conceptions of God that are internally incoherent. In such cases, believing in those conceptions is highly irrational. But I don't think the belief that the world was created by something, absent contradictory claims about the nature of that creator, is an irrational belief.

My intended meaning for "God-myths" is much more toward the latter than the former. I would go so far, for example, as to count the Gospels as "God-myths".

Given all that we know about the natural world, about the history of the Bible, and the history of other religions, to believe that the Gospels are anything but popular mythlogy seems rather silly.

Prompted by concerns that the term "Bright" made naturalists sound arrogant, Dennett recently proposed that supernaturalists adopt the word "Supers" to describe themselves -- thus, we have Brights and Supers, not Brights and Dims. However, like most readers here, I still think the term is self-defeating, and a poor substitute for "metaphysical naturalism" or other mouthfuls.

The late Douglas Adams told a story about a man who thought there were millions of tiny people inside television sets, shifting everything inside around. After an engineer friend sat him down and carefully walked him through the technical processes and mechanisms involved in forming tv images, the man eagerly embraced the new explanation. BUT he still figured that, for all that, there might be just a couple little men inside that tv set. You shouldn't rule them out.

I think the science vs. religion debate comes down to the theme behind this story. One method builds from the bottom up through dint of hard work and discipline: the other way follows intuitive top-down explanations. Cranes and skyhooks. Those who operate and understand cranes -- and who still look upward for skyhooks -- are not unlike the moderate gentleman who wants to reserve a couple little men inside that television set.

The conflict isn't that they couldn't be there. It's in understanding how they got there in the first place, and why there are now so few of them.

I cannot follow Dennett or Dawkins to the conclusion that they actually do believe, that those who believe in God are, perhaps by definition, less intelligent than those who don't. That is the only way to interpret Dennett's silly use of the term "brights"

Well apparently it's not actually the only way to interpret it, because I don't interpret it that way. I interpret as Dennett being sick and tired of having a bad reputation for not buying into theism and wanting to put a positive spin on it, maybe taking a small swipe at the anti-intellectualism of many of the theists who think atheists are bad people in the process.

Thanks for the great post, Ed. As both a believer and an 'evolutionist' I sometimes find myself providing the flip side explanation: trying to explain to religious people that religion does not preclude the truth of evolution, despite the fact that some religious people insist it does (in attempt to disprove evolution) and some scientists insist it does (in an attempt to disprove evolution). Taking the middle ground so often seems to result in being attacked from both sides...

VisualFX brings up a set of points which, if unpacked, perhaps explains the divide a little more clearly:

Consider the staggering success that science has had in explaining the natural world around us and the utter failure religion has had in that regard.

Consider that nobody, anywhere, throughout the entire written history of humankind, has ever been able to produce one single, shred of independent, testable, verifiable evidence for the existence of anything supernatural.

It seems like one of the key differences between theists and atheists (at least, those in both camps above a certain intellectual level of sophistication) is that the two groups often expect religion to explain (or fault it for not explaining) different things. The key contention of several of my atheist friends is that "With science we don't need religion to explain anything -- and religion's explanations were wrong anyway."

However religious believers, except perhaps those of the less educated or more fundamentalist stripe, generally don't turn to religion because they're seeking answers to questions such as: How did mammals evolve? Does the blood circulate? Is the brain the center of the nervous system? Does the Earth orbit around the Sun?

Rather, people usually turn to religion to answer questions like: What is the purpose of life? What is 'Good'? What is 'Justice'? What is 'Love'? Is there an afterlife?

Science is an unparalled method for finding out things about the physical world, but it's not really designed to answer the sorts of metaphysical questions that people usually turn to religion to answer.

If the question "is there a God?" is more like asking "what is 'Love'?" and less like asking "does the earth orbit around the sun?", then that seems to place the concept of God into the category of human-centered values and needs, rather than the category of objective facts and truths about the universe.

And that, I think, is the problem.

By the way, I've probably mentioned this before, but neither Dennett nor Dawkins came up with the term "Bright." That was the work of Paul and Mynga Futrell, who presented it to Richard Dawkins at an Atheist Alliance International convention (he was in the audience.)

The word is supposed to be a happy, positive term designating those people with a "naturalistic world view." "Atheism" is negative in that it defines itself against something else. Great emphasis was placed during their presentation on the fact that this term is NOT supposed to imply anything about intelligence or lack of intelligence. "I am a bright." Not "I am bright." The Enlightenment, hope for humanity, appreciation for the world, etc. etc. An attempt to aid in public relations, like the word "gay."

No, it is not really successful at avoiding an implication that nontheists consider themselves smarter than theists. But it's heart was in the right place, and both Dawkins and Dennett knew this background when they took on the challenge of spreading the meme.

If the question "is there a God?" is more like asking "what is 'Love'?" and less like asking "does the earth orbit around the sun?", then that seems to place the concept of God into the category of human-centered values and needs, rather than the category of objective facts and truths about the universe.

That would depend on whether one takes a concept like 'love' or 'justice' to have an objective nature or to be relational. To the extent that religion (or at least traditional religion) tries to answer these questions, it does so with the assumption (such as Plato made in his philosophical enquiry) that there is an objective criterion of 'love' or 'justice' which may be discovered or revealed.

I would certainly tend to put the answer to question "Is there a God?" in the category of objective truths about the universe, albeit one that is not susceptible to scientific enquiry. (I would also put the questions of "What is 'the good'?" or "What is 'love'?" in that category.)

That is one of the things that I would suggests divides the religious mindset from the secular mindset: that religion suggests that there are true, contant and objectively knowable things that nonetheless are ideals (in the Platonic sense) rather than material things, and thus cannot be investigated scientifically.

Sastra-

But Dawkins really does believe that atheists are smarter than theists and that one can be "too intelligent" to be a theist. He has said so.

But Dawkins really does believe that atheists are smarter than theists and that one can be "too intelligent" to be a theist. He has said so.

Whereas Dennett, to my knowledge, has not. It's not like they're ideological twins, even if they may agree on many things.

Ed-

Even if Dawkins does believe that atheists are smarter, it is probably more along the lines of "smarter on average". Which means that there will be (and are) very intelligent theists (Ken Miller, yourself, etc). But people like you are not representative of the norm. Nor are there a great many Ken Millers out there, so far as I know.

You guys aren't among the vast swarms of idiots shelling out millions, probably billions, of dollars of your (collective) hard-earned money to televangelist scam artists and superhuman leg-pressers with magical protein drinks. You aren't among the anit-intellectual, anti-science crowd. You aren't sending death threats to Michael Schiavo, or murdering doctors, or trying to pass laws that discrimminate against gays. And so on.

These are not movements of intelligent people, these are the movements of bigoted, religious morons, and they are a lot closer to the norm than, say, you are.

...

On the topic of Brights- I assumed it was a play on "Enlightenment". In that context, and in the context of the anti-intellectual ferver so common among (although not limited to) the deeply religious, I don't think the distinction the names make is entirely offbase. I do think it's a bit silly though- I personally wouldn't describe myself that way.

Leni wrote:

Even if Dawkins does believe that atheists are smarter, it is probably more along the lines of "smarter on average". Which means that there will be (and are) very intelligent theists (Ken Miller, yourself, etc). But people like you are not representative of the norm. Nor are there a great many Ken Millers out there, so far as I know.

For the record, I'm not a theist, I'm a deist. And a very tentative one at that (it's just my best guess and I don't pretend to know it's true). But Dawkins said quite bluntly that one could be "too intelligent" to believe in God; that's not a statement about averages.

I certainly agree with you about the kinds of people who send money to televangelists and the like. I criticize such people on a daily basis.

Ed wrote:

But Dawkins really does believe that atheists are smarter than theists and that one can be "too intelligent" to be a theist. He has said so.

As far as I know, the only time Dawkins has come out directly with something to that effect was during an interview, when he said that his daughter was "too smart" (or intelligent) to fall for a particular form of mainstream Christianity when a reporter asked him a hypothetical. I suppose those could be his "true" feelings coming out, but I'm not so sure that what one says when one is getting defensive about one's children should necessarily tip the balance against more carefully written works and statements, where -- as I recall -- he grants theists intelligence, but argues against their frequent inconsistency or the irrationality of faith as a method.

I tried to find a quote, but best I can come up with right now is a statement that he wanted his daughter, "as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her *what* to think." Dawkins is very much against childhood indoctrination -- either for or against belief in God.

I suspect that someone who really sees atheism as simply a matter of being "smarter" wouldn't be so sensitive in that way.

Sastra wrote:

As far as I know, the only time Dawkins has come out directly with something to that effect was during an interview, when he said that his daughter was "too smart" (or intelligent) to fall for a particular form of mainstream Christianity when a reporter asked him a hypothetical. I suppose those could be his "true" feelings coming out, but I'm not so sure that what one says when one is getting defensive about one's children should necessarily tip the balance against more carefully written works and statements, where -- as I recall -- he grants theists intelligence, but argues against their frequent inconsistency or the irrationality of faith as a method.

I don't buy the notion that he was being "defensive" about his daughter - there was nothing to defend. She wasn't being insulted, he was simply asked how he would feel if his daughter became a theist. Nor do I think the statement you cite about not wanting to indoctrinate his daughter conflicts with the other statement; both can be true. He could want her to make up her own mind and think she's too intelligent to become a theist. Given Dawkins' vitriolic attacks on religion and religious people over the years, I don't think my perception of his beliefs is the least bit unreasonable.

DarwinCatholic wrote:

That is one of the things that I would suggests divides the religious mindset from the secular mindset: that religion suggests that there are true, contant and objectively knowable things that nonetheless are ideals (in the Platonic sense) rather than material things, and thus cannot be investigated scientifically.

There's not necessarily a conflict between something being 'objective' and something being 'relational.' You can have objective truths about relationships. A 'secular mindset' would I think have little problem agreeing that there could be consistent and objectively investigatable truths about love, beauty, and goodness - when seen as facts about the common needs, values, and preferences of human beings, instead of free-floating essences existing prior to and outside of our minds.

From what I can tell, what appears to divide the religious mindset from the secular mindset is a tendency to reify abstractions.

Given Dawkins' vitriolic attacks on religion and religious people over the years, I don't think my perception of his beliefs is the least bit unreasonable.

Oh, I'll grant that he thinks religious belief is stupid. But I don't think he thinks religious believers are themselves stupid. On the contrary, Dawkins finds it frustrating and bewildering that so many otherwise brilliant, intelligent, and insightful people seem to fall down or apart when it comes to belief in God, and he spends a lot of time trying to pick apart why they do so.

Maybe it's just my own experience here, but those few atheists I've met who blatently and openly insist that theists are "stupid" and atheists are "smarter" don't really bother with analysing the social, psychological, scientific and philosophical reasons why people believe in God. Why should they? It's because they're dumb. Duh.

Ed wrote:

For the record, I'm not a theist, I'm a deist.

Theists are desist, no? Insofar as they think a deity got the ball rolling.

In any case, I've also heard Dawkins blatantly say that he doesn't think religious people are stupid. He used Ken Miller as an example. I think he does think that religious people are by and large stupid, but he happily admits some of them are not. Which is why I think it's something less extreme than what you are saying.

I guess Krause wasn't paying attention last year when Sandefur wrote something similiar in an exchange with Matzke on PT.

I find myself atypically in disagreement with mr brayton whom I understand to be saying that there are questions such as original origins whose answers are unknown - possibly unknowable; science and religion are two "methods" of attacking these questions; and since we don't know the answers, either is a reasonable approach worthy of respect.

my concept of the scientific methodology is: identify a question, pose a hypothetical answer, and seek enough evidence to support promotion to an accepted theory. mr brayton acknowledges that if a religion's formally stated belief contradicts a scientific theory, the latter wins his vote. but then (if I understand him correctly) he continues by suggesting that if the question appears to be unanswered (possibly unanswerable), a religion's "speculative" answer is as worthy of respect as a scientist's hypothesized answer.

but the religions that are causing problems (more precisely, their spokespersons and dogma) typically don't speculate, they pronounce, and essentially mandate that everyone accept their pronouncements. clearly, there is a huge gap between this "truth-seeking methodology" and science. the equivalence implied by mr brayton isn't there. the irritant that leads to intolerance among thoughtful secularists isn't religions that offer different speculative answers to difficult questions, it's those that assert definitive answers and demand that everyone accept them.

Evolution in particular and science in general are or are not compatible with religion depending on how you define terms like "g/God", "deism", "theism". These religious terms are very slippery; especially when used by moderately intelligent people they become very slippery indeed, so slippery as to be devoid of any real meaning.

Anyone who has a modicum of rational thought knows that there's no objective basis for being a fan of a particular football team. It's not that rooting for a team is irrational per se, it's just that there's nothing real to be rooting for; as Seinfeld notes, we're all just rooting for the shirts.

To the extent, though, that one is a fan of a football team is a social pastime, enjoyed for its own sake, there's nothing at all "incompatible" with science, logic, and rationality. To the extent, however, that someone takes fandom seriously and asserts any sort of knowledge or reality, one is being ridiculous.

When pressed carefully (and respectfully), it's been my experience that intelligent, sophisticated, scientifically literate people who also self-identify as religious (deists, theists, Buddhists, etc.) are usually engaging in exactly the same sort of social behavior as benign football fandom.

The only exception to this observation are those intelligent religious people who propagate their ordinary rational humanistic ethical beliefs onto the word "god" simply because that's how people have been trained to think about ethics.

Now there's nothing wrong with either of the above. There's nothing at all wrong with saying, "I believe in God," in exactly the same way that there's nothing wrong with saying, "I'm a fan of the San Francisco 49ers." Yes, I'm rooting for the shirts; so what? If it gives me pleasure to do so, why not?

The trouble comes when you start taking your religion at all seriously, when you start saying that you know religious beliefs, or that it is meaningful to talk about the actual existence of the objects of those beliefs. In this sense, religion is utterly incompatible with science.

It's not that science doesn't yet know about the existence of a supernatural god. It's that the question of the existence of a supernatural god cannot be posed in a scientific manner. That's what "supernatural" means: unable to be evaluated scientifically. If you're just repeating slogans about god because it gives you pleasure to do so, your position is entirely compatible with the science of psychology. If you're saying that a supernatural god actually exists, you're saying something that's incompatible with science by definition.

(As a side note, there's nothing whatsoever definitionally (analytically) incompatible with science about intention, design, teleology or that sort of thing. Such hypotheses can be made scientifically meaningful. Of course, false statements are meaningful, and hypotheses about design either in the universe or in terrestrial biological life are demonstrably false on the evidence.)

Science rejects supernatural explanations, because supernatural means "inexplicable". An inexplicable explanation is no explanation at all.

Science is "silent" about the ultimate origins of the universe simply because no matter what explanatory framework you use, you have to stop somewhere (even if you stop at a meta-explanation of an infinite series of explanations). No matter what explanation you stop with, no matter what criteria you use to identify that explanation as a stopping point, you can always ask, "Why that explanation? What causes that state of affairs?"

If you're honest, you'll just say, "Well, that's just the way things are, it's a brute fact." If you're dishonest, you'll try to hide your stopping point in theological or philosophical bullshit.

I have some sympathy both with the compatiblists and the incompatibilists. At the philosophical level, yes, of course any meaningful and nontrivial form of theism or deism is absolutely incompatible with science. Science is belief only on the basis of evidence, nontrivial faith is believe in the absence of evidence. They are analytically incompatible.

On the other hand, the religious faith of many is, by and large, simply a matter of fandom, of sloganeering, towards which they have a deep and sincere emotional attachment. While perhaps not completely benign (religious people seem somewhat loathe to criticize any but the worst excesses of their wingnut co-religionists), such philosophically (but not emotionally) meaningless faith is nowhere near the worst problem that we face today.

While it certainly may be that some very intelligent people have an attachment to a particular religious identification which amounts to little more than an emotional 'fandom', it hardly sounds like such a person's approach to religion could be labelled as 'intelligent'. A religion is generally composed of both a body of beliefs/doctrines and a set of recommended practices or modes of behavior believed to be the proper everyday response to those beliefs. To espouse a religion without believing its tenets would seem as intellectually irresponsible as wandering around saying "I am a monarchist" simply because one liked the sound of the word, but without actually having given any particular thought as to whether monarchy is a good political system. Thus, religion as fandom sounds to me like a specifically anti-intellectual way to approach the topic, since it means endorsing a set or beliefs without intellectually examining them.

At a deeper level, however, I'm trying to understand PNP's description of theism as being 'incompatible' with science. It sounds like what he's saying is that questions about God and morality could not possibly be investigated by the scientific method. This is clearly so. So one could say that the fields are incompatible in that one cannot apply the methods of the one field to the other successfully. But could not a single person both do solid scientific work by applying scientific methods and reasoning to questions about the physical universe and also on separate occasions apply philosophical/theological reasoning to religious questions?

Are you saying that the methods of the two fields are compatible (which, exept to the extent that both should be based on logical reasoning, is certainly the case) or are you saying that it is incompatible for a single person to make use of both methods, ableit to solve different problems?

DarwinCatholic-- The comparison was of sports fandom to belief in God, not membership in a religion. Religions are composed of a body of beliefs and practices, yes, but belief in God can really mean anything you want. Of course, you might take the alternate tack that an intelligent person would not claim god-belief because of that fact (its sheer ambiguity), but that's another issue.

Earlier I wrote:

Theists are desist, no? Insofar as they think a deity got the ball rolling.

Which makes absolutely no sense (trying to watch Lost and think at the same time...).

It should read "Deists are theists..."

Gretchen

I think one could actually extend the analogy to cover both religious practice as well as the mere fact of belief.

DarwinCatholic proposes the following criteria:

A religion is generally composed of both a body of beliefs/doctrines and a set of recommended practices or modes of behavior believed to be the proper everyday response to those beliefs.

But football fans have a body of beliefs and doctrines: the fan-worthiness of their team, the belief that their team winning is somehow "better" than their team losing. The recommended practices and modes of behavior include watching the game on Sunday, purchasing paraphenalia, knowing the players' names, having definite opinions about the performance and activities of the team and its management. One could probably extend the analogy even further.

I want to repeat that all of the above is, whether with football or religion, is benign, unobjectionable and not in the least incompatible with science, rationality or common sense. At this level, just that it pleases someone to be a 49ers fan or the practitioner of some religion (assuming ordinary standards of secular civility) is sufficient rational justification for pursuing the activity.

It is only when the religious attempt to make assertions about truth that they run into an incompatibility with science and rationality. To be honest, I'm not even so sure that being incompatible with science in some ways is all that bad. Sure, it might be "intellectual bigamy", but so what? On the other hand, if a philosophical incompatibility gets Sandefur's knickers in a knot, why shouldn't he say so? After all, he is right: As far as truth claims go, science really is incompatible with faith.

DarwinCatholic

To espouse a religion without believing its tenets would seem as intellectually irresponsible as wandering around saying "I am a monarchist" simply because one liked the sound of the word, but without actually having given any particular thought as to whether monarchy is a good political system.

This is not really where I'm going with the football analogy. The word "monarchist" has a moderately well-bounded public meaning; "God" by itself, however just doesn't have any sort of public linguistic meaning, either descriptively or proscriptively, by virtue only of the variance in its actual use. I cannot tell anything about a person knowing only that he affirms the statement, "I believe in God." Scientists, pseudoscientists and anti-scientists; liberals, authoritarians and anarchists; saints, sinners and ordinary people; all types of people affirm this statement. The only conclusion I can come to is that someone who affirms belief in God will affirm belief in God. It tells me nothing about their beliefs about knowlege, existence, ethics, economics; I can't even tell anything about their theology, I can't tell even if they have any theology!

But could not a single person both do solid scientific work by applying scientific methods and reasoning to questions about the physical universe and also on separate occasions apply philosophical/theological reasoning to religious questions?

Of course. But to subsume both modes of thought under any single category is the sine qua non of "intellectual bigamy". I personally find this cognitive disconnect disconcerting; if you don't, good for you. But keep in mind that the disconnect is precisely the disconnect between public and private beliefs; You can get any answer you want (or no answer at all) out of theological "reasoning" depending on your privately chosen premises. To apply the word "reasoning" (or "truth") to a process (or its outcome) that can yield any answer at all, even mutually contradictory answers, seems to stretch the words beyond usefulness.

Ed Brayton: But I don't think the belief that the world was created by something, absent contradictory claims about the nature of that creator, is an irrational belief.

It's not an irrational hypothesis, but without any way of it being tested, that's all it can be. In the absence of reliable information, agnosticism - declining to embrace any "belief" - is the only literally rational position.

To form an emotional attachment to a worldview (my informal definition of what "believers" do) on the basis of it feeling more comfortable, or the way you would like things to be, is literally to surrender to emotional thinking. In my experience, that's often a recipe for problems and nasty surprises: in what way does the word "irrational" not apply here?

Of course, I'm approaching this as if the choice to "believe" is made rationally, rather than as is the usual case, inherited and indoctrinated from infancy. In practice, some process or sudden event brings individuals to a degree of doubt, if not alienation, concerning basic premises, before they change their beliefs. As both the catalyst and the ensuing estrangement tend to be painful, it's not at all irrational for believers to continue as such unless even greater penalties are clearly linked to the status quo.

DarwinCatholic: Rather, people usually turn to religion to answer questions like: What is the purpose of life? What is 'Good'? What is 'Justice'? What is 'Love'? Is there an afterlife?

Other than possibly the last, the items on your list are too vague and abstract for science, but history demonstrates that religions haven't done too well with them either. Here, agnosticism is inadequate both intellectually and in daily practice, but we have at least one feasible alternative: learning from experience. Though much more work urgently needs to be done, we have some decent ideas about how to maintain a viable social order, and the means to analyze (some) actions and consequences so as to improve our situation.

Those are good questions you raise, but they're human questions - not cosmic - and in the absence of more successful guidance from divine influences than we've seen so far, it's up to humans to create the answers. This concept is sometimes called humanism: it dovetails well with science and with deism, theism, and the less prescriptive theologies (such as those of Crom and the Flying Spaghetti Monster).

I don't think that Ed Brayton's sentence, "I don't think the belief that the world was created by something, absent contradictory claims about the nature of that creator, is an irrational belief," even deserves to be called an hypothesis. I'm not even sure it even qualifies as a belief, if we're going to differentiate between statements that have at least some semantic content and those that are purely emotive. Is "Go Niners!" a belief?

I'm not trying to play semantic games; I'm just trying to find out if deistic statement actually mean something, anything at all. What does it mean to say that the world was created by "something" if you refuse to characterize that something in any way? I'm utterly at a loss to locate any semantic meaning there at all.

Darwin Catholic said:

It seems like one of the key differences between theists and atheists (at least, those in both camps above a certain intellectual level of sophistication) is that the two groups often expect religion to explain (or fault it for not explaining) different things. The key contention of several of my atheist friends is that "With science we don't need religion to explain anything -- and religion's explanations were wrong anyway."

This certainly approaches my position. I'm one of those people who's technically agnostic but in practice strongly atheist. In terms of the observable world, it's undeniable that science is pushing God into the inaccessible cracks - beyond the singularity, making quantum choices and so on. This has two main consequences - a) the Biblical God and the vast majority of organised and unorganised religions' takes on God(s) become untenable, and b) what remains doesn't seem worth caring about. So an atheist like me sees that every single religion which makes empirical claims turns out to be wrong on at least one of them and usually many, while the ones that don't make empirical claims, almost by definition, seem pointless.

However religious believers, except perhaps those of the less educated or more fundamentalist stripe, generally don't turn to religion because they're seeking answers to questions such as: How did mammals evolve? Does the blood circulate? Is the brain the center of the nervous system? Does the Earth orbit around the Sun?

Rather, people usually turn to religion to answer questions like: What is the purpose of life? What is 'Good'? What is 'Justice'? What is 'Love'? Is there an afterlife?

Sure, except no atheist expects science to answer "What is the purpose of life?" or "What is justice?". Yet we don't need to posit some completely unknown entity with unparalelled powers to come up with answers to those questions. That's what the whole "Bright" thing is about. It's not about saying atheism is better, although I agree it's a stupidly chosen word. It's about saying that since all these conflicting religious claims about metaphysics and ethics cannot be true and cannot be tested, why not ignore the religious claims and base our thinking on things that we can agree on or disagree about on a rational, mutual basis? For example, if you're going to say that one man loving another man isn't as good as a man loving a woman, then you'd better be able to justify it without using your interpretation of God's will.

It might be good to come down to earth and remember that the actual political argument concerns two things: 1) the results of several particular sciences such as biology, paleontology, anthropology, astronomy; and 2) the Bible, interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of its sentences in modern English. Do these two offer equivalently valid explanations of the material world? Of course not.

Ginger Yellow

Sure, except no atheist expects science to answer "What is the purpose of life?" or "What is justice?".

I don't know about you, but this atheist certainly does expect science--in a loose sense of the word which includes any rational inquiry on the basis of evidence--to answer such questions.

Science teaches us that there's no extrinsic purpose behind human life, indeed all life. We're just here, along with all the other life on Earth, the result of the laws of physics, the initial conditions of the universe, and no small few accidents. All the purpose we know about in the universe is within ourselves. We're not here for anything, we're just here.

Some label this view a counsel of despair, but why? Why should I "despair" because I'm not the pawn of some mysterious sky-fairy? I like my life, and I like it better because it's entirely my own.

"Justice" too, if it is to mean more than the arbitrary cultural constructs of Iron age goat... herders, will be found in the sciences of psychology and sociology.

For too long we atheists have ceded inquiry into ethics to those least able to conduct rational, scientific inquiry.

I don't know about you, but this atheist certainly does expect science--in a loose sense of the word which includes any rational inquiry on the basis of evidence--to answer such question.

Under the "rational inquiry" definition, I absolutely agree. I was referring to the stricter definition.

Some label this view a counsel of despair, but why? Why should I "despair" because I'm not the pawn of some mysterious sky-fairy? I like my life, and I like it better because it's entirely my own.

I think this is the other key dividing line/point of tension between atheists and theists. As an atheist, I agree with PLP that far from provoking despair, atheism is far more appealing than subservience to a creator-God. How mundane for all mankind's ingenuity, life's variety, and the majesty of the cosmos to be merely a God's plaything. most theists I talk to feel that atheists must have an impoverished spirit, usually because they lack a moral grounding, or a proper sense of awe, or a desire to unweave rainbows. Yet for us atheists, the more we unweave the rainbow, the more awestruck we are by what we find. The idea, for instance, that life itself turns matter into meaning and purpose is truly exhilerating and, again, so much more interesting than Goddidit.

What I don't understand is how Sandefur can even propose (honestly) that science and religion are incompatible in the way he thinks. I've written a little abou this here but the jist of it is that I quote two, and there are undoubtably many more through the ages, influential early Chrsitian writers who taught that studying and doing science is worship. Specifically that understanding the laws and ways our Universe is constructed is worshipful behavior. As the 4th century predates this particular debate by a bit, it can't be waved away as a "publicity ploy".

Sandefur can certainly quite reasonably claim that "this" particular theological point of view and "that" particular philosophical underpinning of science are incompatible. Not "any" theology and "any" understanding of basis of scientific inquiry.

The question doesn't seem to be whether or not one can use belief in God to inspire a quest for scientific answers (sure you can, easily): it's that belief in God isn't itself the result of a quest for scientific answers. And some of us find that inconsistent.

There is a long and revered history of assertions and explanations for why God shouldn't be a science theory. I've never found them convincing. Most of the arguments seem to be based on bad analogies. The concept of God doesn't really seem like something which should be placed in the same category as Love, or justice, or asking the purpose of life. It seems more like something which should be placed in the same category as Cupid, or chi, or disembodied minds.

Could a physicist believe in vitalism and still be a good physicist? What if he tells himself and others that his belief that there is a "life force" really isn't scientific at all, it's very different, very personal -- it gives his life meaning, and does not impact or interfere with his work in any way?

Mark Olson

What I don't understand is how Sandefur can even propose (honestly) that science and religion are incompatible in the way he thinks.

You're apparently more familiar with Sandefur's general position than I am (or considerably more skilled at mind reading), because even on the third reading I can't find any details on precisely why he thinks that that science and religion are incompatible.

I know why I myself consider science and religion to be incompatible: To the extent that religion makes truth claims, it make truth claims in the absence of evidence whereas science makes truth claims only in the presence of evidence. I just don't see how you can be more analytically incompatible than that.

To the extent that the religious do not make truth claims on the basis of faith, there's no incompatibility; perhaps some religious people are comfortable with an entirely emotivist interpretation of their religious faith, but many are not.

PLP wrote:

To the extent that the religious do not make truth claims on the basis of faith, there's no incompatibility;

Exactly.

There's no discord if the belief says nothing of any value.

(Which is exactly why deism strikes me as a disingenoues out. It doesn't say anything of value. I don't see the point of bothering to actually believe... it's like believing in magic that doesn't do anything... Sorry Ed. I do love you (in an abstract kinda way) but I am utterly baffled by your deism. Why?? Whhhhyyy? )

In the case of Christianity/Judaism/Islam (for example), there is no discord so long as one completely disregards what scripture actually says. Or neuters it by reinterpreting is as some more palatable metaphor.

This is also why Dennett's insisting that Scott is being disiengenous isn't entirely wrong. Science and religion are incomapatable. The only times they aren't is when the religion says A) zilch about the natural world (in which case it's probably not even a religion and is more like deism) or B) when the believer just disregards or reinterprets what scripture actually says. Or perhaps makes up a new religion that just so happens to coincide with science.

None of this means people can't reconcile or separate the two- it just means there is no rational reason to bother.

Internet evangelism is perhaps one of the most rude and futile activities possible, so I want to avoid any appearance of filling up Ed's comment boxes with annoying attempts to convert people. Nonetheless, if only for the sake of making the (or perhaps I would better say "a") religious mindset a little more clear, I wanted to comment on the following.

PLP said:

But keep in mind that the disconnect is precisely the disconnect between public and private beliefs; You can get any answer you want (or no answer at all) out of theological "reasoning" depending on your privately chosen premises. To apply the word "reasoning" (or "truth") to a process (or its outcome) that can yield any answer at all, even mutually contradictory answers, seems to stretch the words beyond usefulness.

It's true the theological reasoning can produce any outcome you like, if you provide it with suitable premises -- but then, that's true of any form of reasoning. An experiment can prove nearly anything you want, if you sufficiently contort either your data or your mode of evaluating it. However, in science, people can readily reproduce your results and examine your frame of interpretation to correct you. American religiosity (perhaps because of the emphasis on 'personal interpretation' common to much of its Protestant background) has a strongly anti-intellectual tendency to assert that "I've found it to be true, and foo on you if you disagree". (The theological partisan in me would say that's why Protestant theology tends to be either vacuuous or very basic.) This is, however, far from the only way to go about things. To take a very basic example, another Catholic might say to me, "Violence is always wrong." To which I might reply, "In that case, then either Jesus sinned, or the story of his driving the money changers from the temple is wrong. If you can't show one of these to be compatible with the rest of your beliefs, then your claim is false." Now, obviously, this sort of conversation takes a number of things as given which someone else might flatly deny. But none of the elements of such an argument would be internal to the participants. It's a very basic use of reason, but then, one does have limited space...

Pierce Butler said:

Those are good questions you raise, but they're human questions - not cosmic - and in the absence of more successful guidance from divine influences than we've seen so far, it's up to humans to create the answers.

I agree that a question such as "what is justice" does not necessarily require turning to a deity to answer. I think some of the best writing on the topic was done by Plato, who obviously didn't base his reasoning on Christianity. However, while the question of "how do I behave justly" can be thought of as a human, relational question, I think often coming up with an answer requires making certain cosmic assumptions. For instance, before one may say that all people should be treated equally under the law, one must come up with some reason for thinking that all people are in any important sense equal, despite the fact that in physical and mental ability, it is pretty clear that not all people are equal. If one chooses to treat everyone equally anyway (or not) one makes certain assumptions about what a human being is, and how one deserves to be treated, which are essentially metaphysical.

Leni said:
Science and religion are incomapatable. The only times they aren't is when the religion says A) zilch about the natural world (in which case it's probably not even a religion and is more like deism) or B) when the believer just disregards or reinterprets what scripture actually says. Or perhaps makes up a new religion that just so happens to coincide with science.

Again, though, this very much assumes that the only topics worth commenting on (and those on which religion spends most of its time) are those having to do with the physical workings of nature. While it's the benighted ideas about the history of Earth that tend to land religion and science in the courtroom, the history and workings of the world generally aren't a topic that religion is much concerned with.

Case in point, some years back the current pope (then Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote a book dealing entirely with Genesis. It's a very good book, but it barely touches on the question of the natural history of the planet; that's not its focus.

Now, one might say, "Of course, that's because he knew the historicity of the biblical account was entirely discredited." However, in fact, it's hardly unique. Most of the commentary written on Genesis by the early Church Fathers in 200-500AD is also strictly about what Genesis says about the nature of human beings, the relationship of humanity and God, the nature of sin, and the relationship of humanity and the natural world. Writers in the period may have assumed that the history of Genesis was essentially accurate (though in most cases they dropped the ancient Hebrew flat-earth cosmology for the Helenistic model of nested spheres) but that doesn't seem to have been what interested them about the narrative.

I'm a big Douglas Adams fan, but the thing about the little men in the TV story that someone related above is that the history and workings of the world do not appear to be the main question that people have been using religion to answer over the centuries.

DarwinCatholic

It's true the theological reasoning can produce any outcome you like, if you provide it with suitable premises -- but then, that's true of any form of reasoning.

You're correct. Trying to deduce truths about the world from "self-evident" premises (axiomatic foundationalism) is a bankrupt mode of thought. Scientific reasoning, reasoning to evidence (evidentiary foundationalism plus coherentism) is more promising.

You show a good example of evidentiary reasoning yourself:

To take a very basic example, another Catholic might say to me, "Violence is always wrong." To which I might reply, "In that case, then either Jesus sinned, or the story of his driving the money changers from the temple is wrong. If you can't show one of these to be compatible with the rest of your beliefs, then your claim is false."

The obvious issue here is the implicit standard that we should take Jesus's actions and sayings as factual evidence towards which we validate our ethical axioms. There are a lot of problems with this standard, not the least that in Matthew Jesus explicitly endorses all of Old Testament law; a complete disaster in humanistic terms.

Again, though, this [Leni's comment that, "Science and religion are incompatible"] very much assumes that the only topics worth commenting on (and those on which religion spends most of its time) are those having to do with the physical workings of nature.

Yes and no. To a materialist, everything is (at least philosophically) reducible to the physical workings of nature. So, in a sense, it is true that the only topics worth commenting on has at least something to do with the physical workings of nature. My feelings and beliefs are properties of my mind; my mind is a complex emergent property of my brain; and my brain is a physical, natural object.

One of the persistent ideas about science (e.g. perhaps the "strictest sense" of science that Ginger Yellow mentions in passing) which I consider misguided is the idea that science concerns itself only with "essentials" or general universals (i.e. statements that are true about all objects of a class everywhere in the universe for all time). It is of course true that quite a lot of science works to such an end. But the tools of science are equally well-suited to coming up with generalizations concerning more accidental or historical properties, such as the actual psychological makeup of existing human beings, as much or more the product of historical and evolutionary accident as of general universal physical laws.

DarwinCatholic
Oops, I missed this point:

An experiment can prove nearly anything you want, if you sufficiently contort either your data or your mode of evaluating it.

This does not appear to be the case in practice, especially when you add parsimony as a strong evaluative criteria. We find in practice that the simplest explanations for experimental data strongly to converge on a single theoretical framework.

Contorting data or contorting modes of evaluation seem universally to both increase the complexity and weaken the falsifiability of the underlying theoretical construct, and these characteristics can be discerned by straightforward logical analysis of the underlying theory.

PLP said:

The obvious issue here is the implicit standard that we should take Jesus's actions and sayings as factual evidence towards which we validate our ethical axioms. There are a lot of problems with this standard, not the least that in Matthew Jesus explicitly endorses all of Old Testament law; a complete disaster in humanistic terms.

Just so. Clearly, if one is to make arguments with the premise that Jesus' reported teachings and actions are all examples of virtue, then one would be required to (in order to justify such a premise) show that all those reported teachings and actions are, in fact, virtuous -- by whatever standards were mutually acceptable to the parties of the argument.

The basic reasoning process in science and in theology is the same -- though clearly the methods and subject matters are very different. That's why in a classical schema of knowledge philsophy/logic sits at the apex, and science and theology would simply consist of applying the same logical processes to different sets of information and laws.

DarwinCatholic wrote:

I'm a big Douglas Adams fan, but the thing about the little men in the TV story that someone related above is that the history and workings of the world do not appear to be the main question that people have been using religion to answer over the centuries.

Yet it seems to me that religious answers to questions of morals and meaning rest on the religious claims actually being true - that what religions are uniquely able to tell us are facts about a higher world which should influence our actions and beliefs in this one. Deep down, the nature of reality is mind-like; intelligence is not only a product of evolving brains, it lies behind the universe; God is a parent whose commands we must obey; there is a karmic force which imposes duties on us, etc. etc. If these are not true, do the morals and meaning derived from them still have the same authority?

The point of the story about the little men in the TV is that once you understand how to build a television from scratch, assuming that there must still be a few little men inside somewhere, somehow, some way - just becomes unnecessary. Even if thinking about them working away in there inspired you to become a better person, they now become useful stories important to understanding ourselves, not useful components necessary to our understanding of televisions.

Here is a question, then: If religion does not and has not really been about "the history and workings of the world," would the answers that a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable religion comes up with on morals and meaning still be able to make sense to a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable atheist?

If so, then we can cut out the God part the same way we cut out those little men.
And if not, then perhaps you can understand why we're concerned that an unfalsifiable hypothesis is being treated as if it were a nonscientific matter of taste or value.

DarwinCatholic

The basic reasoning process in science and in theology is the same -- though clearly the methods and subject matters are very different.

Some theists use a similar process as theists. The chief difference is, as you say, in the subject matters. Science's evidentiary foundation is the repeatable evidence of our senses. Christianity's evidentiary foundation is the Bible, a nightmare of inconsistencies, absurdities and atrocities.

Someone remind me again: Why did we cede the "magisterium" of ethics to Christianity?

"before one may say that all people should be treated equally under the law, one must come up with some reason for thinking that all people are in any important sense equal"

false premise, false conclusion. rephrase (ala the thinking of certain folks circa 1787) as:

history suggests that a society might work better if all people were treated equally under the law

no cosmic assumptions required, just education (and possibly a touch of brilliance).

same problem as "secularists can't have a moral code"; you don't need a book of cosmic truth to tell you that it's probably better for everyone if people treat one another equitably, trial and error suffices.

note the scientific flavor here: historical evidence, trial and error. works in areas other than pure science.

re "meaning in life": like PLP and GY, I and numerous friends lead full, satisfactory, engaged, etc, but "meaningless" (in a cosmic sense) lives. but I'm often struck by how much of our conversation is filled with laughter. being "meaningless" or "hopeless" (ala camus) shouldn't be confused with "empty", "morose", "despondent", etc. not only is the experienced world awe-inspiring, it's also quite amusing.

DarwinCatholic:

...I think often coming up with an answer requires making certain cosmic assumptions. For instance, before one may say that all people should be treated equally under the law, one must come up with some reason for thinking that all people are in any important sense equal, despite the fact that in physical and mental ability, it is pretty clear that not all people are equal. If one chooses to treat everyone equally anyway (or not) one makes certain assumptions about what a human being is, and how one deserves to be treated, which are essentially metaphysical.

"Metaphysical" does not automatically imply supernatural or theological: for example, the metaphysics behind physics includes assumptions such as the universe behaving in a consistent manner, the applicability of mathematics as a descriptive system, etc, etc. Different frameworks can be imagined, but so far the present system works.

Again, I refer you to the practice of learning from experience. To take your example, treating individuals as equal before the law turns out to be elegantly practical, in that it saves everybody from the endless hassles of assessing each person's relative ranking in each situation. Experience also has led to exceptions to that principle (e.g., minors, convicted felons, certain categories of the disabled), where further adjustments seem likely. Real-world experience seems a much sounder basis for such tweaking than any appeals to the supernatural - it's a better basis for anything of consequence than is superstition.