I might as well give the most popular, most well-supported rebuttal, in order to save others the time….
— But don’t you know that there have been scientists with religious beliefs?
— (blank stare, crickets chirp)
— Famous ones, too!
— Harrumph
— And don’t you know that such highly-esteemed people can’t have beliefs that don’t make any fucking sense?
— (another blank stare, a bird passes quietly overhead)
— So what were those guys doing then, eh?
— Checkmate.
John Moralessays
A silly claim; not all religions are supernaturalist.
StonedRangersays
John Morales @2 “A silly claim; not all religions are supernaturalist.”
So we should just not pay any attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of religions are supernaturalist? Care to name some religions we can reconcile with science?
John Moralessays
StonedRanger, you imagine religion is limited to organised religion? But fine: Raëlism.
As for “the overwhelming majority of religions being supernaturalist”, even if I granted that, it would not be in conflict with “not all religions”, would it?
Remember, the original claim is about “religion”, not about “most religions”. Only takes one counterexample to show the claim is not universal.
Pierce R. Butlersays
How to reconcile science with religion: uncover replicable, measurable, unambiguous gods.
consciousness razorsays
A silly claim; not all religions are supernaturalist.
A silly counterargument. A religion doesn’t need to posit supernatural stuff in order to be in conflict with empirical evidence (or with “science” so to speak), because there are of course many other ways of doing that.
You already offered one example, so I’m happy to use it: Raëlism.
It’s also the case that lots of other (much more popular) religions make other false claims about non-supernatural stuff, in addition to their claims about supernatural stuff. As institutions, many are just not committed to adhering to beliefs which are consistent with empirical evidence. That is simply not how they operate.
Rob Grigjanissays
cr @1:
And don’t you know that such highly-esteemed people can’t have beliefs that don’t make any fucking sense?
Pretty much everyone I know, or know of, has beliefs that don’t make any fucking sense, at least on superficial examination.
Maxwell felt that his faith gave him the freedom to pursue any investigation without constraint, religious or otherwise.
Hoyle thought that people who bought the Big Bang theory had been brainwashed by the Genesis story. To him, the spontaneous creation of matter as the universe expanded made more sense.
Weinberg agreed with Hoyle until the data and the theory convinced him. Of course, Weinberg also thinks that boycotting Israel amounts to antisemitism. And this is the bloke who wrote
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”
Mano Singham thinks that a cartoon demonstrates a profound point about the irreconcilability of science and religion.
There’s nowt as queer as folk.
It’s actually very simple. If your beliefs do not constrain or impede scientific investigation, there is no conflict. Obviously, Hoyle’s beliefs did impede his investigations.
John Moralessays
cr:
A religion doesn’t need to posit supernatural stuff in order to be in conflict with empirical evidence (or with “science” so to speak)
Are you suggesting that it is not possible, even in principle, for any religion to be in accord with science (or, as you put it, with “empirical evidence”)?
Point being, one can exclude any religion which posits the supernatural ab initio analytically, but one cannot so for all other possible forms of religion.
consciousness razorsays
John Morales, #8:
Are you suggesting
All you had to do is read what I actually wrote. No, I obviously wasn’t suggesting that.
Come up a good example (since you know Raëlism won’t do), and we can talk about that. If you can think of anything in any culture at any time in history, I’m expecting it will be rather tendentious to claim the thing is a religion. But I’ve been surprised about plenty of other things in my life, so give it a shot if you want.
Point being, one can exclude any religion which posits the supernatural ab initio analytically
No, I don’t think you can.
What happened to empiricism? How is a person supposed to pull that off “analytically”? The meaning of the term supernatural implies no contradiction. It’s only that such things don’t exist, which we know inferentially, by using our available evidence. So, I think you’d have as much luck trying to conjure up a god via the ontological argument as you would “excluding” one with the same methods.
Or if you’d like to hear essentially the same take from Hume: “Now whatever is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori.”
John Moralessays
cr:
No, I obviously wasn’t suggesting that.
Well, then; you don’t dispute my contention that it is possible (at least in principle)
What happened to empiricism? How is a person supposed to pull that off “analytically”?
Simple. Science is restricted to the natural domain — remember that cartoon by Sydney Harris?
(“Then a miracle occurs”)
John Moralessays
[Oops — Sidney Harris]
consciousness razorsays
Simple.
Or stupid?
Science is restricted to the natural domain
Sounds like “non-overlapping magisteria.” Is that what this is?
A definition, for your consideration: supernatural things are mental things or properties which don’t reduce to non-mental ones. For instance, I have a mind which does reduce to non-mental physical stuff/events, so that not a supernatural thing. If it were the case that it is supernatural (obviously, some do think this), it could nonetheless be something that is studied scientifically. And indeed they already are doing it, whether or not it is in fact supernatural.
Likewise, if there were supernatural gods or forces, angels/demons, magic/psychic powers, etc., then people in the sciences would be able to study them, just as they study the natural things that we know exist.
So nobody has any good reason to follow this “restriction” of yours. If I’m supposed imagine that it tells scientists about the kinds of things they should study, they should simply disobey it and tell the self-appointed arbiters to fuck off with their bullshit which only interferes with understanding the world they happen to live in, with whatever kinds of entities it may turn out to have. If I’m supposed to imagine it’s some other kind of “restriction” that isn’t prescriptive, you probably just need to explain what you think that is about.
aquietvoicesays
Yeah, I’ll bite too -- similar-ish argument as some of the commenters, in support of the idea that religion and science are compatible.
Most people use different thinking tools for different situations -- and the most common uses of religion include setting aside time to reflect, bonding with people, and practicing emotional states so that they can be used later (eg. “Lord give me strength”). Oh, and for stupid in-group out-group bullshit too.
Using those tools to describe the natural world isn’t really effective, sure. Science has a fundamentally accurate description of when and how eclipses occur, for example, and have displaced old superstitions (aka early guesses) as to what caused them.
Buuuuuuuuuuuut these religious tools still remain useful for lots of common, day-to-day emotional labor.
So in short, religion and science are compatible -- both are very different tools people can use if they want.
So you hold that so far, science includes supernatural explanations?
I think there are just explanations. When you write it down or speak it or whatever, that is not a supernatural event.
(You do know that what we now call science was once called ‘natural philosophy’, right?)
It doesn’t matter what it was once called. I think it’s nice that people do occasionally learn new things and have new ideas, although it can take a long time for them to spread. Maybe try giving this one a chance to spread, instead of clinging onto old ones for no particular reason.
John Moralessays
cr:
What are you trying to tell me? Use your words.
I did, but you clearly did not get it:
Point being, one can exclude any religion which posits the supernatural ab initio analytically
No, I don’t think you can.
What happened to empiricism? How is a person supposed to pull that off “analytically”?
Again: if science excludes supernatural explanations, then science can’t be reconciled with belief systems that include supernatural explanations.
That’s an analytic truth, similar to saying that if bachelorhood excludes marriage, then it can’t be reconciled with being married.
So you hold that so far, science includes supernatural explanations?
I think there are just explanations. When you write it down or speak it or whatever, that is not a supernatural event.
Heh. So you can’t dispute that you hold that science includes supernatural explanations, since all explanations are the same thing, and supernatural explanations are “just explanations”.
It doesn’t matter what it was once called.
Well, not to you, clearly.
consciousness razorsays
John Morales:
So you can’t dispute that you hold that science includes supernatural explanations, since all explanations are the same thing, and supernatural explanations are “just explanations”.
Uh, yes. Why would I want to dispute that? If the explanations explain, what’s supposed to be the problem?
Maybe this will help…. The world excludes supernatural stuff by not having any such things in it. (Not for you to do a priori.) So, scientists won’t actually be explaining any real things by appealing to supernatural entities, since there are none. Is that better?
They haven’t done so yet, as we both know, and I predict they will not do so in the future. If you ask me, it doesn’t seem like something you’ll ever need to worry about, and I honestly don’t get why you’d be worried in the first place…. At worst, we’ll have learned something important about the world and discovered that we were wrong. That doesn’t sound so bad to me.
If that’s not satisfactory, then I guess I just don’t understand what you’re expecting.
John Moralessays
cr:
Why would I want to dispute that? If the explanations explain, what’s supposed to be the problem?
Thor’s Thunderbolts are an explanation for lightning. Quite explanatory.
Gravity elves are responsible for what appears to be the force of gravity. Quite explanatory.
Two unproblematic explanations, right there.
The world excludes supernatural stuff by not having any such things in it. (Not for you to do a priori.)
Oh, the irony.
anatsays
Explaining physical reality isn’t the main purpose of religion. Its main purpose is to give people a shared identity, create an in-group whose members support one another and everything that follows from there. Thus you can have religions that don’t make any supernatural claims such as Humanistic Judaism -- it is basically humanism for a group of people with some kind of Jewish identity. Or Secular Buddhism -- that at most can be said to claim that dharma practice can help reduce one’s suffering in life.
Now, some religions make the identity of the participants dependent on accepting specific beliefs and seek to exclude members who deviate from those beliefs, but liberal versions of theistic/otherwise supernaturalistic religions leave their members enough wiggle room to take any item of faith symbolically enough such that one can maintain the religious identity and the community membership without holding any counter-reality belief.
consciousness razorsays
Two unproblematic explanations, right there.
If you like Thor and gravity elves, then wait until you hear about the better explanations of those phenomena that people have made. Those will really get the explanatory juices flowing, let me tell you.
But if not, then … ?
John Moralessays
Ahem. “I think there are just explanations.”
Look, cr: you were trying to avoid conceding that science excludes supernatural explanations, and that was the way you did it. Fine, but then… well, if explanations are just explanations.
And now you want to claim there are explanations and better explanations.
(Should I keep bloating the thread to get you to concede that there are also scientific explanations and supernatural explanations, and that those are disjunct sets?)
Dauphnisays
Now, some religions make the identity of the participants dependent on accepting specific beliefs and seek to exclude members who deviate from those beliefs, but liberal versions of theistic/otherwise supernaturalistic religions leave their members enough wiggle room to take any item of faith symbolically enough such that one can maintain the religious identity and the community membership without holding any counter-reality belief.
I call bullshit. You only have to look at how supposedly liberal congregations treat their queer, and especially trans, members to see what kind of lie that is. Sure, they’ll accept you if you’re just another butt in a chair, but as soon as you try to advocate for yourself you’re gone.
sonofrojblakesays
Any religion that is 100% reconciled with science isn’t a religion according to any definition of that word any normal person would use.
Rob Grigjanissays
sonofrojblake @23: We could call that the Sonofrojblakene Creed.
Dauphni @22: Is that all liberal congregations? And is it because of their religious beliefs? Do all atheists treat queer and transgender folk properly?
anatsays
Dauphni @22: Not being a member of any kind of congregation I wouldn’t know what it is like on the inside, but when I participated in advocacy against the attempts to get ‘bathroom initiatives’ on Washington state’s ballots we got support of plenty of religious leaders. For many years the support and advocacy group for transgender children and their families held events at a local church.
Or you get declarations like this one. And there are religious spaces that are entirely LGBTQ such as this one.
anatsays
sonofrojblake @23: Only if your ‘normal person’ comes from a background that centers belief in religion rather than praxis and community. Christianity (especially its various Protestant branches) makes believing specific things a pre-condition to belonging. Judaism does not -- if you were born into it or converted, nobody asks you what you believe, as long as you practice as your specific community does. You can get even Orthodox Jews who identify Judaism as a commitment to follow the 613 commandments (as interpreted by your local rabbi) rather than anything to do with believing one thing or another. Now, what would motivate anyone to live like that without belief? Who knows, people are complicated. I’m guessing it has to do with seeing themselves as part of ‘something greater than themselves’ (a phrase I find somewhat puzzling, but it gets used a lot, and seems to be important to a lot of people).
Marja Erwinsays
Trying to reconcile science with pre-scientific creation myths hasn’t worked out. And probably can’t. Trying to reconcile the creation myths with science hasn’t worked out either.
And these creation myths have been important parts of some religions. Paul’s comparison between Iesus and Adam assumes an actual Adam and an actual Fall of … Humankind.
But I don’t think you can extrapolate from that to all aspects of all religions.
I realize this is neither repeatable, nor independently observable, nor unambiguous. But I had been struggling with sex dysphoria for years, and had begun praying for help with it, when a series of seemingly-unlikely coincidences such as hearing from a long-lost friend who had transitioned, helped me accept my transness and begin transitioning.
Deepak Shettysays
What does “reconcile” mean in this context?. Reasonable definitions of “exist together ” or “be practiced by the same people” are ofcourse outright rejected by people who want to justify their apriori conclusion. But if you switched out religion to something else like “Can politics be reconciled with science?” you’d probably be able to easily tell that this question is not a very good one.
It looks like atleast some people believe that “reconcile” in this context means every single claim that the religion makes must be proven to be true or atleast not yet disproven by scientific means -- But I have yet to meet a believer who makes the claim that every single religious claim must be true (And obviously science itself has made many claims that have turned out to be not true and in some cases outright false).
I’d also probably ask (for the non believers)- Is the way you live your life reconciled with science (in all aspects) -- if not , then whats the problem if religion can’t be either ? Do your life or your beliefs crumble to pieces when you realize that many decisions and beliefs and actions that you yourself perform are non-scientific ? Or is science to be limited to I believe in evolution, climate change and I take vaccines etc?
It is also odd to me that these arguments are phrased as science v/s religion. The natural enemy of religion is Philosophy -- which also unlike science is actually equipped with the tools to destroy religious arguments.
Allisonsays
If you don’t take the religious myths[*] literally, or whatever statements about reality that your beliefs make, then there’s no conflict.
Scientific, or “objective” knowledge, amounts to statements about the world (actually, people’s experiences of the world) that don’t involve the observer (the person experiencing it.) E.g., one’s experience of the speed of light should not depend upon what kind of childhood one had, or what language one speaks, or one’s race or sex (however defined!) [**]
But for people trying to get through life, those aspects of experience which “objective” knowledge excludes are huge parts of their lives. Religion (and not just religion) can provide beliefs and stories that help many people feel like their lives and their sufferings are more than just “a tale told by an idiot” and that there is a reason to not just give up and die or a reason to try to be a decent person. My aunt, who died of cancer last year, was religious, and though she didn’t talk about it that much with us, it was clear that she believed in God and that God had a purpose for her and her life, and I’m pretty sure she believed that dying was just her returning to God. I think it is what helped her to face her inevitable end with some degree of equanimity. Does it really matter whether, if someone could go back 2000 years ago in a time machine, they would find a flesh-and-blood person who was actually doing all those things that the New Testament says Jesus did? If anything, focusing on whether the stories are “literally” true ignores the purpose of telling them.
Where the religionists go wrong is when they insist that everyone has to find comfort and meaning in the same set of beliefs and stories. We all (well, most of us ☺) recognize that different people will find different books, or music, or paintings meaningful, but sometimes people forget that that also applies to expressions of religion.
By the same token, anti-theists go wrong when they assume that people only believe the religious stuff they believe because they’re deluded fools. They miss the fact that, for some stories, whether they are “literally” true or false is irrelevant.
[*] I don’t mean “myth” in a disparaging sense, but rather in an anthropological one. For anthropologists, “myths” are stories that carry meaning for members of the culture that tells them.
[**] BTW, this is where racism, sexism, etc., can creep into scientific knowledge — if the scientific knowledge is being created by people, all of whom share a particular prejudice, the scientific knowledge will be assumed to be “objective,” but actually depend upon whether the observer is a member of that group or not.
In 1941 [Julian] Huxley published a tract Religion without Revelation, a work reprinted in 1945. This manifesto for “a socially founded humanist religion” appeared in a secularist series, the Thinker’s Library, the first volumes in the series being works by Darwin, Haeckel and Herbert Spencer. Huxley argued for a humanist religion which would be life sustaining on the basis that mankind had outgrown old superstitions, and had evolved to a stage when a new religion was needed. Religious feelings like grace were natural experiences, and that a reverent approach to reality was needed to make the most of life: Huxley concluded “I believe in the religion of life”.
mnb0says
“This cartoon shows how at some point …..”
Nope, it doesn’t. It shows that one particular interpretation of two stories (that contradict each other) from one particular Holy Book cannot be reconciled with science. Pastafarianism at the other hand shows that it’s always possible to construct some supernatural story that doesn’t contradict scientific conclusions. It’s actually the point of this religion.
Ramen!
@6 consciousness razor: “A religion doesn’t need to posit supernatural stuff ……”
A brilliant example of moving the goal posts. MS claimed that “there is no way”. JohnM gave one; I gave another. Claim busted. End of discussion. Your comment is not even wrong; it’s irrelevant.
Except when you reject certain empirical facts, of course.
@18 JohnM: “Thor’s Thunderbolts are an explanation for lightning. Quite explanatory.
Gravity elves are responsible for what appears to be the force of gravity. Quite explanatory.”
Nope, they aren’t explanatory as Herman Philipse argued in God in the Age of Science. What’s more, that’s the point: a religion that makes up stories that don’t have explanatory power, don’t contradict scientific conclusions, don’t care about Ockham’s Razor, aren’t testable and possibly a few more have a big fat chance of being compatible with science. It’s exactly because in such stories anything goes. As (counter)apologists should understand since Kierkegaard only one thing is necessary for accepting such stories: a leap of faith.
@23: sonofrb: “any normal person would use.”
And of course you will be the one who decides which persons will be normal and which ones not.
Brilliant thinking, worthy a staunch creationist
@29 Allison: good to see that I’m not the only one to understand it.
Disclaimer: I’m a 7 on the scale of Dawkins. But indeed I recognize that for many a believer (like my female counterpart, who happens to be a muslima) religious belief is about faith, not about truths, falsehoods and knowledge. I think it sad that smart atheists so often are too narrow minded to understand this and hence only can imagine believers being literalists.
consciousness razorsays
John Morales:
well, if explanations are just explanations.
And now you want to claim there are explanations and better explanations.
You interpreted way too much into the word “just.” Here’s roughly how this has been going: You claimed science is restricted, without supporting your position. I think that’s incorrect and gave my reasoning, which you still haven’t engaged with in any serious way.
I never implied we can’t evaluate our explanations, concluding that some are better or more explanatory while others are worse. I’m only claiming there’s not a type of thing out there in the world which is somehow unstudiable by scientists because science should (supposedly) adhere to a rather dogmatic and arbitrary restriction that only seems to provide cover for apologist wankers. I think you can still do better and worse jobs at studying/explaining such things, if there are any to study, because this isn’t about throwing out any important scientific values/standards like you seem to think it is.
And the fact is, we could talk about all of these issues without reference to supernatural stuff. Just look at the context of what you want to call “natural explanations”: there have been many better and worse explanations for all sorts of phenomena which only entailed the existence of “natural” things (in the sense defined in #12). Science simply has not been confined or restricted somehow to only the most “successful” ones that you’re apparently interested in keeping. There are tons of examples of naturalistic theories which turned out to be incorrect or inadequate in one way or another. Those involved didn’t fail to be “scientists” who were doing “science,” and I remind you again that such failures had nothing whatsoever to do with appealing to something supernatural. Those explanations just had problems, and scientists have since improved on them, which will almost certainly happen again with regard to some of our current best theories. That has been a completely routine situation in science throughout history.
So where is your reasoning supposed to lead? You were able to construct a bad explanation in the form of “gravity elves” (supernatural ones, according to you). So what? We all know that’s dumb, and nobody is required to think it’s a good explanation. But how many failed naturalistic theories do there need to be, until you start claiming that scientists aren’t permitted to study natural things either? And why would you do that? Or maybe I just don’t get it…. If I scoff enough at phlogiston or caloric or whatever, then what happens to all of science?
consciousness razorsays
MS claimed that “there is no way”. JohnM gave one; I gave another. Claim busted. End of discussion.
You are a very silly person.
(And yes, that claim doesn’t contradict science. It ticks all of the boxes.)
sonofrojblakesays
“of course you will be the one who decides which persons will be normal”
Nope. No need. Normal people have a simplistic definition of religion, because normal people don’t really think about it much. You can’t tell me someone like you, who will litigate the definition to the nth degree, is by any standard normal.
Deepak Shettysays
@sonofrojblake
You sort of seem to think that the “normal” religious people agree on what they call religion . If you want to go by what normal people do and think then the answer for “IS religion reconcilable with science” should be fairly obvious , no ?
John Moralessays
So, anyway, leaving aside consciousness razor’s quibbles about whether or not belief that rely on supernatural agency are compatible with science, my personal opinion is that religion is for other people. A sort of existential crutch.
There is no need to ascribe meaning to life — I mean one can, but it’s shoehorned on.
Same for purpose — after all, purpose only makes sense in reference to a goal.
I know some people need meaning and purpose — it’s sad, but I accept that.
The rest of us don’t.
On the other hand, science is useful. It elucidates the workings of nature, and informs technology.
I might as well give the most popular, most well-supported rebuttal, in order to save others the time….
— But don’t you know that there have been scientists with religious beliefs?
— (blank stare, crickets chirp)
— Famous ones, too!
— Harrumph
— And don’t you know that such highly-esteemed people can’t have beliefs that don’t make any fucking sense?
— (another blank stare, a bird passes quietly overhead)
— So what were those guys doing then, eh?
— Checkmate.
A silly claim; not all religions are supernaturalist.
John Morales @2 “A silly claim; not all religions are supernaturalist.”
So we should just not pay any attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of religions are supernaturalist? Care to name some religions we can reconcile with science?
StonedRanger, you imagine religion is limited to organised religion? But fine: Raëlism.
As for “the overwhelming majority of religions being supernaturalist”, even if I granted that, it would not be in conflict with “not all religions”, would it?
Remember, the original claim is about “religion”, not about “most religions”. Only takes one counterexample to show the claim is not universal.
How to reconcile science with religion: uncover replicable, measurable, unambiguous gods.
A silly counterargument. A religion doesn’t need to posit supernatural stuff in order to be in conflict with empirical evidence (or with “science” so to speak), because there are of course many other ways of doing that.
You already offered one example, so I’m happy to use it: Raëlism.
It’s also the case that lots of other (much more popular) religions make other false claims about non-supernatural stuff, in addition to their claims about supernatural stuff. As institutions, many are just not committed to adhering to beliefs which are consistent with empirical evidence. That is simply not how they operate.
cr @1:
Pretty much everyone I know, or know of, has beliefs that don’t make any fucking sense, at least on superficial examination.
Maxwell felt that his faith gave him the freedom to pursue any investigation without constraint, religious or otherwise.
Hoyle thought that people who bought the Big Bang theory had been brainwashed by the Genesis story. To him, the spontaneous creation of matter as the universe expanded made more sense.
Weinberg agreed with Hoyle until the data and the theory convinced him. Of course, Weinberg also thinks that boycotting Israel amounts to antisemitism. And this is the bloke who wrote
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”
Mano Singham thinks that a cartoon demonstrates a profound point about the irreconcilability of science and religion.
There’s nowt as queer as folk.
It’s actually very simple. If your beliefs do not constrain or impede scientific investigation, there is no conflict. Obviously, Hoyle’s beliefs did impede his investigations.
cr:
Are you suggesting that it is not possible, even in principle, for any religion to be in accord with science (or, as you put it, with “empirical evidence”)?
Point being, one can exclude any religion which posits the supernatural ab initio analytically, but one cannot so for all other possible forms of religion.
John Morales, #8:
All you had to do is read what I actually wrote. No, I obviously wasn’t suggesting that.
Come up a good example (since you know Raëlism won’t do), and we can talk about that. If you can think of anything in any culture at any time in history, I’m expecting it will be rather tendentious to claim the thing is a religion. But I’ve been surprised about plenty of other things in my life, so give it a shot if you want.
No, I don’t think you can.
What happened to empiricism? How is a person supposed to pull that off “analytically”? The meaning of the term supernatural implies no contradiction. It’s only that such things don’t exist, which we know inferentially, by using our available evidence. So, I think you’d have as much luck trying to conjure up a god via the ontological argument as you would “excluding” one with the same methods.
Or if you’d like to hear essentially the same take from Hume: “Now whatever is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori.”
cr:
Well, then; you don’t dispute my contention that it is possible (at least in principle)
Simple. Science is restricted to the natural domain — remember that cartoon by Sydney Harris?
(“Then a miracle occurs”)
[Oops — Sidney Harris]
Or stupid?
Sounds like “non-overlapping magisteria.” Is that what this is?
A definition, for your consideration: supernatural things are mental things or properties which don’t reduce to non-mental ones. For instance, I have a mind which does reduce to non-mental physical stuff/events, so that not a supernatural thing. If it were the case that it is supernatural (obviously, some do think this), it could nonetheless be something that is studied scientifically. And indeed they already are doing it, whether or not it is in fact supernatural.
Likewise, if there were supernatural gods or forces, angels/demons, magic/psychic powers, etc., then people in the sciences would be able to study them, just as they study the natural things that we know exist.
So nobody has any good reason to follow this “restriction” of yours. If I’m supposed imagine that it tells scientists about the kinds of things they should study, they should simply disobey it and tell the self-appointed arbiters to fuck off with their bullshit which only interferes with understanding the world they happen to live in, with whatever kinds of entities it may turn out to have. If I’m supposed to imagine it’s some other kind of “restriction” that isn’t prescriptive, you probably just need to explain what you think that is about.
Yeah, I’ll bite too -- similar-ish argument as some of the commenters, in support of the idea that religion and science are compatible.
Most people use different thinking tools for different situations -- and the most common uses of religion include setting aside time to reflect, bonding with people, and practicing emotional states so that they can be used later (eg. “Lord give me strength”). Oh, and for stupid in-group out-group bullshit too.
Using those tools to describe the natural world isn’t really effective, sure. Science has a fundamentally accurate description of when and how eclipses occur, for example, and have displaced old superstitions (aka early guesses) as to what caused them.
Buuuuuuuuuuuut these religious tools still remain useful for lots of common, day-to-day emotional labor.
So in short, religion and science are compatible -- both are very different tools people can use if they want.
cr:
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction
So you hold that so far, science includes supernatural explanations? Heh.
(You do know that what we now call science was once called ‘natural philosophy’, right?)
What are you trying to tell me? Use your words.
I think there are just explanations. When you write it down or speak it or whatever, that is not a supernatural event.
It doesn’t matter what it was once called. I think it’s nice that people do occasionally learn new things and have new ideas, although it can take a long time for them to spread. Maybe try giving this one a chance to spread, instead of clinging onto old ones for no particular reason.
cr:
I did, but you clearly did not get it:
Again: if science excludes supernatural explanations, then science can’t be reconciled with belief systems that include supernatural explanations.
That’s an analytic truth, similar to saying that if bachelorhood excludes marriage, then it can’t be reconciled with being married.
Heh. So you can’t dispute that you hold that science includes supernatural explanations, since all explanations are the same thing, and supernatural explanations are “just explanations”.
Well, not to you, clearly.
John Morales:
Uh, yes. Why would I want to dispute that? If the explanations explain, what’s supposed to be the problem?
Maybe this will help….
The world excludes supernatural stuff by not having any such things in it. (Not for you to do a priori.) So, scientists won’t actually be explaining any real things by appealing to supernatural entities, since there are none. Is that better?
They haven’t done so yet, as we both know, and I predict they will not do so in the future. If you ask me, it doesn’t seem like something you’ll ever need to worry about, and I honestly don’t get why you’d be worried in the first place…. At worst, we’ll have learned something important about the world and discovered that we were wrong. That doesn’t sound so bad to me.
If that’s not satisfactory, then I guess I just don’t understand what you’re expecting.
cr:
Thor’s Thunderbolts are an explanation for lightning. Quite explanatory.
Gravity elves are responsible for what appears to be the force of gravity. Quite explanatory.
Two unproblematic explanations, right there.
Oh, the irony.
Explaining physical reality isn’t the main purpose of religion. Its main purpose is to give people a shared identity, create an in-group whose members support one another and everything that follows from there. Thus you can have religions that don’t make any supernatural claims such as Humanistic Judaism -- it is basically humanism for a group of people with some kind of Jewish identity. Or Secular Buddhism -- that at most can be said to claim that dharma practice can help reduce one’s suffering in life.
Now, some religions make the identity of the participants dependent on accepting specific beliefs and seek to exclude members who deviate from those beliefs, but liberal versions of theistic/otherwise supernaturalistic religions leave their members enough wiggle room to take any item of faith symbolically enough such that one can maintain the religious identity and the community membership without holding any counter-reality belief.
If you like Thor and gravity elves, then wait until you hear about the better explanations of those phenomena that people have made. Those will really get the explanatory juices flowing, let me tell you.
But if not, then … ?
Ahem. “I think there are just explanations.”
Look, cr: you were trying to avoid conceding that science excludes supernatural explanations, and that was the way you did it. Fine, but then… well, if explanations are just explanations.
And now you want to claim there are explanations and better explanations.
(Should I keep bloating the thread to get you to concede that there are also scientific explanations and supernatural explanations, and that those are disjunct sets?)
I call bullshit. You only have to look at how supposedly liberal congregations treat their queer, and especially trans, members to see what kind of lie that is. Sure, they’ll accept you if you’re just another butt in a chair, but as soon as you try to advocate for yourself you’re gone.
Any religion that is 100% reconciled with science isn’t a religion according to any definition of that word any normal person would use.
sonofrojblake @23: We could call that the Sonofrojblakene Creed.
Dauphni @22: Is that all liberal congregations? And is it because of their religious beliefs? Do all atheists treat queer and transgender folk properly?
Dauphni @22: Not being a member of any kind of congregation I wouldn’t know what it is like on the inside, but when I participated in advocacy against the attempts to get ‘bathroom initiatives’ on Washington state’s ballots we got support of plenty of religious leaders. For many years the support and advocacy group for transgender children and their families held events at a local church.
Or you get declarations like this one. And there are religious spaces that are entirely LGBTQ such as this one.
sonofrojblake @23: Only if your ‘normal person’ comes from a background that centers belief in religion rather than praxis and community. Christianity (especially its various Protestant branches) makes believing specific things a pre-condition to belonging. Judaism does not -- if you were born into it or converted, nobody asks you what you believe, as long as you practice as your specific community does. You can get even Orthodox Jews who identify Judaism as a commitment to follow the 613 commandments (as interpreted by your local rabbi) rather than anything to do with believing one thing or another. Now, what would motivate anyone to live like that without belief? Who knows, people are complicated. I’m guessing it has to do with seeing themselves as part of ‘something greater than themselves’ (a phrase I find somewhat puzzling, but it gets used a lot, and seems to be important to a lot of people).
Trying to reconcile science with pre-scientific creation myths hasn’t worked out. And probably can’t. Trying to reconcile the creation myths with science hasn’t worked out either.
And these creation myths have been important parts of some religions. Paul’s comparison between Iesus and Adam assumes an actual Adam and an actual Fall of … Humankind.
But I don’t think you can extrapolate from that to all aspects of all religions.
I realize this is neither repeatable, nor independently observable, nor unambiguous. But I had been struggling with sex dysphoria for years, and had begun praying for help with it, when a series of seemingly-unlikely coincidences such as hearing from a long-lost friend who had transitioned, helped me accept my transness and begin transitioning.
What does “reconcile” mean in this context?. Reasonable definitions of “exist together ” or “be practiced by the same people” are ofcourse outright rejected by people who want to justify their apriori conclusion. But if you switched out religion to something else like “Can politics be reconciled with science?” you’d probably be able to easily tell that this question is not a very good one.
It looks like atleast some people believe that “reconcile” in this context means every single claim that the religion makes must be proven to be true or atleast not yet disproven by scientific means -- But I have yet to meet a believer who makes the claim that every single religious claim must be true (And obviously science itself has made many claims that have turned out to be not true and in some cases outright false).
I’d also probably ask (for the non believers)- Is the way you live your life reconciled with science (in all aspects) -- if not , then whats the problem if religion can’t be either ? Do your life or your beliefs crumble to pieces when you realize that many decisions and beliefs and actions that you yourself perform are non-scientific ? Or is science to be limited to I believe in evolution, climate change and I take vaccines etc?
It is also odd to me that these arguments are phrased as science v/s religion. The natural enemy of religion is Philosophy -- which also unlike science is actually equipped with the tools to destroy religious arguments.
If you don’t take the religious myths[*] literally, or whatever statements about reality that your beliefs make, then there’s no conflict.
Scientific, or “objective” knowledge, amounts to statements about the world (actually, people’s experiences of the world) that don’t involve the observer (the person experiencing it.) E.g., one’s experience of the speed of light should not depend upon what kind of childhood one had, or what language one speaks, or one’s race or sex (however defined!) [**]
But for people trying to get through life, those aspects of experience which “objective” knowledge excludes are huge parts of their lives. Religion (and not just religion) can provide beliefs and stories that help many people feel like their lives and their sufferings are more than just “a tale told by an idiot” and that there is a reason to not just give up and die or a reason to try to be a decent person. My aunt, who died of cancer last year, was religious, and though she didn’t talk about it that much with us, it was clear that she believed in God and that God had a purpose for her and her life, and I’m pretty sure she believed that dying was just her returning to God. I think it is what helped her to face her inevitable end with some degree of equanimity. Does it really matter whether, if someone could go back 2000 years ago in a time machine, they would find a flesh-and-blood person who was actually doing all those things that the New Testament says Jesus did? If anything, focusing on whether the stories are “literally” true ignores the purpose of telling them.
Where the religionists go wrong is when they insist that everyone has to find comfort and meaning in the same set of beliefs and stories. We all (well, most of us ☺) recognize that different people will find different books, or music, or paintings meaningful, but sometimes people forget that that also applies to expressions of religion.
By the same token, anti-theists go wrong when they assume that people only believe the religious stuff they believe because they’re deluded fools. They miss the fact that, for some stories, whether they are “literally” true or false is irrelevant.
[*] I don’t mean “myth” in a disparaging sense, but rather in an anthropological one. For anthropologists, “myths” are stories that carry meaning for members of the culture that tells them.
[**] BTW, this is where racism, sexism, etc., can creep into scientific knowledge — if the scientific knowledge is being created by people, all of whom share a particular prejudice, the scientific knowledge will be assumed to be “objective,” but actually depend upon whether the observer is a member of that group or not.
A serendipitous find find, via a hemidactylus comment at Pharyngula:
“This cartoon shows how at some point …..”
Nope, it doesn’t. It shows that one particular interpretation of two stories (that contradict each other) from one particular Holy Book cannot be reconciled with science. Pastafarianism at the other hand shows that it’s always possible to construct some supernatural story that doesn’t contradict scientific conclusions. It’s actually the point of this religion.
Ramen!
@6 consciousness razor: “A religion doesn’t need to posit supernatural stuff ……”
A brilliant example of moving the goal posts. MS claimed that “there is no way”. JohnM gave one; I gave another. Claim busted. End of discussion. Your comment is not even wrong; it’s irrelevant.
Except when you reject certain empirical facts, of course.
@18 JohnM: “Thor’s Thunderbolts are an explanation for lightning. Quite explanatory.
Gravity elves are responsible for what appears to be the force of gravity. Quite explanatory.”
Nope, they aren’t explanatory as Herman Philipse argued in God in the Age of Science. What’s more, that’s the point: a religion that makes up stories that don’t have explanatory power, don’t contradict scientific conclusions, don’t care about Ockham’s Razor, aren’t testable and possibly a few more have a big fat chance of being compatible with science. It’s exactly because in such stories anything goes. As (counter)apologists should understand since Kierkegaard only one thing is necessary for accepting such stories: a leap of faith.
@23: sonofrb: “any normal person would use.”
And of course you will be the one who decides which persons will be normal and which ones not.
Brilliant thinking, worthy a staunch creationist
@29 Allison: good to see that I’m not the only one to understand it.
Disclaimer: I’m a 7 on the scale of Dawkins. But indeed I recognize that for many a believer (like my female counterpart, who happens to be a muslima) religious belief is about faith, not about truths, falsehoods and knowledge. I think it sad that smart atheists so often are too narrow minded to understand this and hence only can imagine believers being literalists.
John Morales:
You interpreted way too much into the word “just.” Here’s roughly how this has been going: You claimed science is restricted, without supporting your position. I think that’s incorrect and gave my reasoning, which you still haven’t engaged with in any serious way.
I never implied we can’t evaluate our explanations, concluding that some are better or more explanatory while others are worse. I’m only claiming there’s not a type of thing out there in the world which is somehow unstudiable by scientists because science should (supposedly) adhere to a rather dogmatic and arbitrary restriction that only seems to provide cover for apologist wankers. I think you can still do better and worse jobs at studying/explaining such things, if there are any to study, because this isn’t about throwing out any important scientific values/standards like you seem to think it is.
And the fact is, we could talk about all of these issues without reference to supernatural stuff. Just look at the context of what you want to call “natural explanations”: there have been many better and worse explanations for all sorts of phenomena which only entailed the existence of “natural” things (in the sense defined in #12). Science simply has not been confined or restricted somehow to only the most “successful” ones that you’re apparently interested in keeping. There are tons of examples of naturalistic theories which turned out to be incorrect or inadequate in one way or another. Those involved didn’t fail to be “scientists” who were doing “science,” and I remind you again that such failures had nothing whatsoever to do with appealing to something supernatural. Those explanations just had problems, and scientists have since improved on them, which will almost certainly happen again with regard to some of our current best theories. That has been a completely routine situation in science throughout history.
So where is your reasoning supposed to lead? You were able to construct a bad explanation in the form of “gravity elves” (supernatural ones, according to you). So what? We all know that’s dumb, and nobody is required to think it’s a good explanation. But how many failed naturalistic theories do there need to be, until you start claiming that scientists aren’t permitted to study natural things either? And why would you do that? Or maybe I just don’t get it…. If I scoff enough at phlogiston or caloric or whatever, then what happens to all of science?
You are a very silly person.
(And yes, that claim doesn’t contradict science. It ticks all of the boxes.)
“of course you will be the one who decides which persons will be normal”
Nope. No need. Normal people have a simplistic definition of religion, because normal people don’t really think about it much. You can’t tell me someone like you, who will litigate the definition to the nth degree, is by any standard normal.
@sonofrojblake
You sort of seem to think that the “normal” religious people agree on what they call religion . If you want to go by what normal people do and think then the answer for “IS religion reconcilable with science” should be fairly obvious , no ?
So, anyway, leaving aside consciousness razor’s quibbles about whether or not belief that rely on supernatural agency are compatible with science, my personal opinion is that religion is for other people. A sort of existential crutch.
There is no need to ascribe meaning to life — I mean one can, but it’s shoehorned on.
Same for purpose — after all, purpose only makes sense in reference to a goal.
I know some people need meaning and purpose — it’s sad, but I accept that.
The rest of us don’t.
On the other hand, science is useful. It elucidates the workings of nature, and informs technology.