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Science Text Attempts to Reconcile Religion and Science
terrymaster69 writes "The New York Times reports that the National Academy of Sciences has just published their third book outlining guidelines for the teaching of evolution. 'But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.'"
Public education, science education in particular, should not mention gods at all. This may be an attempt to bring a god into the classroom.
I once used to think that making concessions to people who oppose this branch of science because of their religious sensitivities was a decent and reasonable thing to do.
Public figures like Sam Harris help me realise that they simply don't deserve it. Their position and the means they used to arrive at that position have no merit what-so-ever.
Logic is something mostly objective, and provable in a mathematical sense.
Faith is subjective, mystical, and can have the appearance of utter hogwash to someone not participating therein.
The casual observer of one of my more meaningful experiences would have said: "Dude: you were parking the car".
Yet, at that time, in that context, I got a very deep message out of it.
The trick to peaceful existence is to keep a weather eye on the line of demarcation between faith an logic, and be respectful, if not accepting, of both sides.
And don't try to use elements of one to assail the other. Such is a quick trip to unhappy land.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Who's the hypocrite?
The problem some religious people have with Evolution is that it allows disbelief in god. Without Evolution, you need the watchmaker, and this is one of the best arguments for the existence of a creator. Logically, there is not much different between the spontaneous creation of simple and complex mechanisms (if its creation, there is a great difference when we're talking about evolving mechanisms), but in the human mind there is a great difference. Many might accept the Big Bang with no creator, only few would accept spontaneous creation of earth as it is now. So, although Evolution "does not require abandoning belief in God" it allows it, and this is bad enough for those who choose religious dogma over scientific discoveries.
Public education *should* include the limitation of science. Too many lay people see scientists as modern priests, and take our models as gospel. It is important to realize that unlike fundamentalist interpretation of religious texts, scientific laws and theories are mutable (they change whenever conflicting observations are made) and limited in scope (they are only really trustworthy within the scope of the measurements they are based on).
Much of the creationist/ID nonsense is due to people not understanding how science should be hold to different standards than religious texts. "The theory of Evolution" is very much different today than what Darwin proposed. This would have been a weakness in a religion, but is a strength for a scientific theory.
> So what's left in the god basket?
Every question asking for meanings ("why") rather than mechanisms ("how").
I'm an atheist, I believe the only meaning that exists is what we create ourself. But that is a philosophical position, not a scientific position. There are excellent philosophical arguments for why I'm right and the theists are wrong. But they are philosophical, not scientific. Those who believe science can disprove God is as delusioned as the ID people who believe science can prove God.
Those religions that has a well-educated clergy, such as the Catholic Church, have long ago decided to leave the Emperor (science) what is his, namely the mechanisms, and leave God (religion) what is his, namely the meanings. Only, Those churches that mainly consist of in-breed hillbillies, mostly some US Protestant groupings and some Arab Sunni-Islamic groups, still want religion to describe mechanisms, despite the overwhelming evidence that religion sucks at mechanism.
In science class, don't ask why it rains, ask how it rains. Mechanism, not meanings.
It's not evidence, it's anecdote. If we'd apply the same standard of proof to god that we would apply to a shoplifting then religion would be out of business pretty quickly. The funny thing is that religion should be held to a *HIGHER* standard because of all the outrageous claims they make and the wisdom they claim to profess.
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Don't kid yourself, religion and science use entirely different standards to decide what is true. Science uses logic and evidence, religion uses faith and dogma. Dogma is defined as "a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof."
Science may not have an answer for everything, science has made mistakes, not every accepted theory can be 100% proven. But religion does not even try to prove anything, religion requires you to accept what is proclaimed without any attempt of evidence, or logic, what-so-ever. With religion, it's true just because somebody said so - no other reason.
Don't let yourself be fooled by an argument of ignorance. Don't think "if science doesn't have every answer that proves religion to be true." Because that is just illogical.
What is known about science is backed by hard evidence - religion has no such standard.
Which God are they promoting as being compatible with their science curriculum? Because I'm pretty sure that they can't be claiming all religions are compatible with it - there are sure to be some which just aren't.
Odds are that they're only promoting one (or a handful of) major religions. Aren't there laws against that sort of thing?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Or as the old Pope hold, science provides a description of how God created the world, while religion provides a description of why God created the world. So we take something very complex like the Earth or the universe, and we explain its origins by something even *MORE* complex.
Does that make any sense?
I see logic and faith as two totally opposite concepts. One relies on rational thinking while the other relies on two thousand year old myths. One of the memorable parts of Neil deGrasse Tyson's speech on Beyond Belief 2006 was the fact that 15% of scientists believe in God, and he thought that this 15% was the biggest worry of science. Because he, and many other scientist can't reconcile the belief in God with science because explaining something complex and unlikely by something even more complex and even more unlikely doesn't make any sense.
Yes it does, in the "God waved a magic wand and it appeared" sort of way. Science is an attempt to explain the universe without resorting to wand-waving. Science by definition MUST rely on a logical, open debate about verifiable and repeatable evidence. At it's essence, science is simply an effort to be as convincing as possible. Religious arguments ultimtely rely on citing the authority of various religious texts or traditions and exclude new or different evidence.
Overall I think science education has done a poor job of differentiating between science and faith. This has been exacerbated by the exclusion of any discussion of religion in public education, as you need to talk about religion and faith to understand the difference.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Oh, please stop. God does not exist. Religion is bullshit all the way through. Religion contains nothing worth of respect whatsoever. What, the "do unto toers as you would have them do to you" part? As if our evolved group-survival trait of altruism was not enough to take care of that.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
If you believe that somehow the thoughts in our head caused by our neurons and synapses reach God then he must be in contact with nature somehow. If God sends his magical wishes into our world to be written down in a book then it must also be so. If you claim that God affects our world then he must be part of nature or extend somehow into the physical world and science is the only possible successful method at discovering it. If you reject science you reject the only possibility of ever truly finding a god.
You can say that your idea of a god isn't related to science but the Christian God most certainly is and it's absurdly false.
Stop confusing your redefined vague new age bullshit god with the vengeful, jealous and petulant God of the desert.
Why didn't God just create us all as souls in Heaven? Everyone sings happily ever after, end of story.
But no, he has to create us with bodies in a material world and leave us unattended so we can fall prey to temptations we don't understand and get condemned to Hell for it, so he can show how much he loves all of us by saving a tiny, tiny fraction of us from eternal torture.
The factual errors in the bible can be swept under the rug if you're so motivated, but the theology is stupid beyond belief.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
To tell you the truth, even the Agnostics and many 'practicing' Christians have figured this out, we just don't want to talk about it.
You may not want to talk about it, but the most powerful country on Earth is electing Presidents on the basis of this stupidity. So we'd better start "talking about it."
Why people insist on giving religion a free pass in public discourse is something I'll never understand.
I guess it's just my Aspergers acting up, huh.
Mod parent up. Science has limitations, but the only way around it is more scientific research, not substitution with religion. In fact, if you view religious beliefs from a scientific view point, there is no evidence to back religious claims (including the God hypothesis) and there is no reason to believe in God more than in a celestial teapot revolving around the earth (Bertrand Russell) or in the Flying Spagetti Monster.
As HL Mencken says "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." I think it is a good thing that religious belief should be questioned in the classroom and what better forum than a science class.
Dawkins makes all these points and more in his book "The God Delusion".
Why do I have to believe or disbelieve in God? Some religious views I find repugnant, in the sense that I would not consider such a God as deserving of worship, but that is not disbelief. I don't have any personal emotional need for "meaning," nor do I have any emotional need for everything in the universe to be explained to me right now. I am comfortable with mystery, and am more interested in the process of discovery and puzzling out the answers than in what the final answers might be. If everything were explained to me tomorrow, it would spoil all the fun, like somebody telling me the end of a movie when I walk in the door. What would be left for me do?
God as a general concept is just not interesting. It is too vague too be testable, so it falls into the category of ideas like solipsism or the notion that the entire universe and all of our memories were created 10 seconds ago. It certainly could be right, but so what? It is an intellectual blind alley that does not lead anywhere interesting. It is boring. You take it as far as it goes (not very far) and then you look for something more interesting to think about.
If somebody wants to propose a testable God hypothesis, fine. I'll give it the thought that it merits. God created all of the species at one time a few thousand years ago? OK, that one's been tested and it's wrong. Next?
> So the old pope didn't believe in the bible?
It might come as a big surprise for you, but the Pope was Catholic, and it has always been the position of the Catholic Church, like it has been for all educated Christians, that the Bible requires interpretation.
This is quite unlike the certain inbreed American hillbillies, who has never read a book in their life, who therefore believe the King James Bible is God's words which can somehow be read directly without interpretation.
I think that government has got a bit religeously "top-heavy" lately, with so many "fundie" candidates in positions of power that they think they have a mandate.
Hopefully, they'll be proved wrong at the next election...
I'd recommend reading Christopher Hitchens' new book "God is not Great" for more detail, but here goes:
Credulity (or gullability, if you'd like) was probably evolutionarily beneficial because belief, in itself, can have positive health implications (ie the placebo effect). Individuals who "believe" tend to recover from disease more than people who don't. What you believe in doesn't seem to matter.
This was fine and good during most of our civilization's childhood, because frankly we didn't know anything about anything. But in the modern age, when science has far more beautiful, predicive and elegant explainations, we need to feed that desire to "believe" with analysis of facts. It is harder, for sure, but more rewarding. Religion knows it is being phased out slowly, and therefore fights science and free thought every step of the way.
Jeremy
Uh, most of Asia? Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are philosophies, not religions, as they do not really speak of Gods, or the afterlife. So I'd have to respectfully disagree that 'most' societies throughout human history have been religious. For that matter, most human societies throughout human history have been breeding grounds for disease, but we don't think of disease as something valuable. You'll have to come up with a better argument than that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oooh, a challenge! Shiny, shiney new toy. Thanks Santa!
Now let's break it, fast.
Our abilities to plan into the future, remember the past, recognize patterns, abstract thought, and infer by analogy are survival traits. Right?
Now, parallel research on split-brain patients and in AI have arrived to a similar model of the mind. It is a group of agents, each specializing in one task. What split-brain research has demonstrated is that the inference module is not accurate : it infer an explanation for anything, as long as it can apply a pattern that's been memorized before.
For example, paranoia seems to work by forcing the inference module to find scary explanations to ordinary events. Agents are interacting, but independent. A paranoid person may know full well that there isn't, say, a sniper hiding just there in the bushes, but will have to go see to be sure, even if that's several times.
Religion is an explanation for things that science has figured out by now. It appeared as primitive explanations to
But someone finally decided that they'd seen enough the pattern of "the world around me seems to work in a consistent ways" and inferred "maybe I can figure out all the rules". Now that is an other way to get the answers, and it's better, because it yields perfect results when everything is right (ie, you test an hypothese that happens to be correct). The scientific method is a better tool than religion, so it will supplant it some day.
What's frustrating is knowing there is a reason why people still believe in God : the ssurvival trait to find new ideas dangerous, weird, strange. It is a group-survival trait : if we didn't have it, the genuinely dangerous new ideas would kill us all off damn fast.
Now you know the mechanisms by which both religion and science appeared, and because of which there is a fight between them memes. Happy?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.