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Ask Dr. Robert Bakker About Dinosaurs and Merging Science and Religion
With his trademark hat and beard, Dr. Robert Bakker is one of the most recognized paleontologists working today. Bakker was among the advisers for the movie Jurassic Park, and the character Dr. Robert Burke in the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park is based on him. He was one of the first to put forth the idea that some dinosaurs had feathers and were warm-blooded, and is credited with initiating the ongoing "dinosaur renaissance" in paleontology. Bakker is currently the curator of paleontology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Director of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado. He is also a Christian minister, who contends that there is no real conflict between religion and science, citing the writings and views of Saint Augustine as a guide on melding the two. Dr. Bakker has agreed to take some time from his writing and digging in order to answer your questions. As usual, ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
He is also a Christian minister, who contends that there is no real conflict between religion and science, citing the writings and views of Saint Augustine as a guide on melding the two.
Really? Surely as a paleontologist, you must realize that we are but a blink in time compared to the Earth's age let alone our Universe's age. Take, for the purpose of discussion, the Christian creation story written by God through man. So Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc proposed that the six days of creation were merely a loose framework for what actually happened in the creation of where we are now. How is it that you dig up these fossils of massive beasts easily more impressive than humans in every feature save the brain and yet you never wonder why God didn't tell whoever wrote the Book of Genesis about this amazing history of the Earth and Universe? Why was everything described only the present day stuff in a seemingly random order? Why weren't things that would advance medicine like viruses and bacteria described by God instead of the obvious stuff? Why was something as trivial as the moon described as one of "the two great lights" in Genesis 1:16 while something as important as black holes, dinosaur killing asteroids, super nova, etc didn't even deserve a foot note? Doesn't this vex you endlessly? That an all powerful all knowing being decided to serve us up the stuff we already knew in His codex of life and then to give us a convoluted framework? The skeptic in me feels like you could pull a random paragraph from a Sears magazine and it would do an equally good job of providing a framework creation story for our actual creation.
My work here is dung.
Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods. Since there is no evidence gods exist and science is based on fact and evidence religion, by default, is bullshit and is therefore incompatible with religion.
No, the argument is as old as human thought.
What governs the world? Magic or mechanism?
Science assumes that mechanism defines how things are the way they are, and how things change.
Religion assumes that magic defines how things are the way they are, and how things change.
The two thoughts are completely oppositional.
Magic fortunately, will not win this war, because only mechanistic thinking has the theory of information behind it. Mechanism defines that in order for anything to happen, or be changed, information is required to do it. Magic on the other hand requires no information beyond a "vague idea" about what occurs.
Consider for example a great and powerful "Oz" that can summon powerful things to happen at the drop of a wand. Perhaps a mighty "castle" simply appears at the top of a mountain, seemingly out of nothing.
Actually creating a castle requires a huge amount of materials, tools, a huge labor force, lots of time, and especially lots of thought. Using information theory we can show that it is perfectly inconcievable that anyone, including a "great wizard" could weild such power with such little thought ahead of time. Unless the wizard already has "pre-packaged" castles at his disposal, it would need to be thought out completely "on site". Doing an "on site" creation would require an assessment of exactly what kind of casle to create, and anyone who has ever had a house designed knows, we don't always know what we want, when we want it.
Extending this example a bit, with "the castle" now in existance, we walk in and find a trap door. We ask the great wizard "What is this trap door for?", and "For what reason was it made "1 meter by 1 meter?", and "Why use oak to make it with?", and "Was it nailed or glued?", and "How long did the tree live from whince it came?", and "What is that bit of gravel stuck in the middle of the timbers?", and on and on, and on the questions come.
Reason requires that we understand everything in our environment, and how it works. Magic on the other hand does not, and seems to invent information from nothing. Information from nothing is an absurd idea, as much as energy or matter from nothing is. We rightly understand that we already have matter and energy, and vast amounts of information floating around just ready to be picked up and changed.
In essence religion depends upon magic, and the religious have a kind of mental retardation that will prevent them from ever truely understanding information theory to its final inevitable outcome of thought, which is "There can be no being that could ever prevent the universe from existing. The universe must always exist, although it can change forms over time, and the first line of the judaic bible is completely and utterly false."