The author tries to organize all types of belief in God, showing that even the most remote God still contradicts science
The most common foolish thing is to passionately believe that something tangible is not true. It is the greatest occupation of mankind.
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The relations between science and religion, and even between skepticism and religion are heating up. At the very least, this is the feeling of those who carefully observe recent events, from the publication of books and articles in popular magazines about the "discovery" of God through scientific methods, or the crazy activities of the Templeton Foundation "for the promotion of religion". Two scientists - Paul Davis, and recently also Freeman Dyson received an award of one million dollars from the Foundation for the "Promotion of Religion", the largest amount of money in history in cash. The struggle between science and religion is not only hot, it is boiling.
Therefore, it is time for a skeptical analysis of the issue, which seems to be fueled by two sources of confusion. 1) We need to separate the logical-philosophical arguments from the practical ones or those that concern freedom of speech. 2) We must understand that the possible positions in the debate between science and religion are more numerous than is commonly thought, and that a mutual understanding of the whole complex is important to reach any progress. This article presents an analysis of the two sources of confusion and presents an attempt to describe a schematic diagram of the possible positions. Since this is an objective debate, I will also defend my position.
What is not debatable
Lest I be accused again and accused of being infected with the accusation, I want to make it clear: I am an atheist in the sense that I do not think there is a good reason to believe in a supernatural being who created and somehow oversees the universe. I don't know if such a being does not exist, but until there is extraordinary evidence that provides unequivocal evidence for an extraordinary claim, I treat God the same as Santa Claus.
I am not offended, if this means only an irrational attitude of adherence to accepted doctrine but I have examined the matter carefully. My interest in religion comes from a personal journey of discovering reality as it is; Since I am an educator and believe that teaching people to think critically will result in a better society, I also have to defend myself against other people who try to infringe on my freedom of thought and speech.
I will give three short examples of debates between science and religion and try to separate them as clearly as possible.
1. The interrelationship between religion and science is a possible area for philosophical investigation which must be recognized by both theology and science.
2. Science-religion debates, especially in the US, lead to actual results that do not affect science or religion equally.
3. A discussion on the science-religion relationship made waves in everything related to freedom of speech for scientists, skeptics and religious people.
The first point is only a point that needs to be raised before the discussion, because it must be seriously examined in a free inquiry and reach general conclusions (regardless of whether such conclusions are accepted by the majority). Unfortunately, it is always confused with points 2 and 3 by both believers and non-believers.
Section 2 boils down to the fact that attacks on religion are considered politically incorrect, evidenced by the fact that Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura's comment caused his popularity to drop 28 percent at once.
The scientists are aware of the fact that their funding depends almost entirely on the public through a variety of government agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Medicine. Since federal funding is controlled by politicians, who in turn have to report to their constituents on every decision, this means that whatever your opinion as a spiritual scientist, it would be wiser to keep your job and avoid upsetting your prince and funder.
This is especially annoying because the vast majority of them do not believe in a personal God (60 percent of all scientists and 93 percent of all senior scientists), but the reason they became scientists is to pursue questions where science is a particularly good tool. Most of these questions are more mundane than the existence of God.
The result of this volatile mixture is that most scientists do not believe in a personal God due to their understanding of science and its implications, but they appear in public with conciliatory statements as if there is no connection between the two issues.
The result of point 2 is that there are philosophical, if not scientific, disagreements between science and religion, but scientists have no interest in starting an unholy war in which they will lose (given the political and religious climate in the US). Therefore if they are asked, they can answer with the universal evasion "no response" and live in peace with their parents.
Point 3 comes up in the debate between science and religion, but it hides behind some of the reactions you get when you talk or write about it. I will try to make it as clear as possible: no self-respecting scientist or educator - believer or unbeliever - will try to limit the freedom of speech or writing of the other side, including pro-religious and creationists. This is fundamental, even if sometimes it is not fully appreciated, distinguishing between open criticism and a position is the very existence of freedom of expression, and an attempt to oblige people to believe what you believe, or to limit the ability to believe and do what you think is wrong.
While religious extremists often do not respect this distinction, most enlightened religious people, agnostics and atheists do. Therefore, it must be clear that the debate about science and religion, or evolution and creationism, is discussed in a free inquiry, and in no way causes a restriction of the other party's freedom of speech. The request to limit what will be taught in science classes so that it fits what is relevant to science is education policy, not censorship.
The many aspects of science and religion
In order to continue the debate on legitimacy from the philosophical, scientific and religious aspects of the debate, we need a framework to guide us. What I offer here is an adaptation of a sorting chart proposed by Michael Shermer. Shermer suggests that there are three views, or "models," that people can adopt when talking about science and religion. According to the model there is only one reality, and science and religion are two different aspects to look at. Finally, both will merge into the same final answers, within the limitations of human beings' ability to evaluate such basic questions at all.
The colliding worlds model estimates that there is only one reality, but science and religion collide head-on when it comes to designing that reality. Either of the two can be true but not both together (or alternatively neither of them). In the third model - the separate worlds - science and religion are not only different types of human activity, but they also have completely different goals. Asking about the differences and similarities between science and religion is the philosophical equivalent of comparing apples and oranges. "These are two different things," Shermer said in an interview with Sharon Bagley in the Newsweek cover story "Science Found God."
"It's like using baseball statistics to generate points in football." Using Shermer's model as a starting point for the debate between science and religion, I felt something was missing. You can't talk about a conflict between science and religion unless you define what religion or God means (usually there is less debate about the meaning of science, although some philosophers and social scientists can also disagree). So what makes Shermer's picture incomplete is the important fact that different people have different Gods. I do not mean minor variations about the idea of God between the three monotheistic religions, but rather the fact that Elon must be one of several things that are fundamentally different from each other, and that until we define which God we are talking about, we cannot make any progress.
The debate between science and religion is spread over two axes. On the horizontal axis we have the level of contrast between science and religion, starting from zero (the shared world model) or in the middle (separate worlds) to high (conflicting worlds). On the vertical axis there is the ambiguity regarding the concept of God, which extends from a personal God who intervenes in all daily human activity, to the natural God, who only established the laws of physics, and to the esoteric position of deism characterized by a God who created the universe but has not intervened in it since.
These perceptions of God come in many forms. In any case, the main and leading ones are belief in a personal God who intervenes in our personal lives, performs miracles or shows direct concern for mortals. A natural god, on the other hand, is tougher and unbiased. If he intervenes at all it will be in indirect ways through the laws of nature that he himself designed for the universe. Finally, God in the Deism system does not intervene even indirectly in the affairs of humans but simply by answering the basic questions of whether something is better than nothing.
The Big Bang, the principle of anthropology and Christian apologetics
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned how senior physicists like Paul Davis and Frank Tipler, the conservative Christian apologist Alvin Plantinga, and the crusader for the field of debate between science and religion, John Templeton, have in common, as well as what separates them. Sir Thomas Templeton is a British citizen who was born in Tennessee, and who invested 800 million dollars of his personal fortune to promote a better understanding of religion through scientific means. The Templeton Foundation financed a selection of activities expressed in articles, books and conferences whose purpose was to "discover spiritual information".
According to Sir John, science has made great progress in discovering the truth about the nature of the world. It is therefore a powerful method to be used in religion to increase our knowledge of God and spiritual matters. Templeton allocated money to several scientific projects (tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per project) as well as by giving the Templeton Prizes, which at least from the financial point of view are more powerful than the Nobel Prizes.
Examples of the connection between science and religion that Templeton imagines for himself are the warnings that his foundation gave cash to Pietro Petrini of the National Institute of Neurological and Stroke Research to study the brain structure of people who asked for forgiveness ($125); Lee Dogatkin of the University of Louisville was awarded nearly $63 to investigate the development of forgiving behavior from the Jewish origins of Christianity," Herbert Benson of Harvard was asked to help answer the question, "Does assisted prayer help sick people?", while Frans de Waal of Emory University received money to investigate " Forgiveness" among the great apes.
Templeton's efforts (though not necessarily those of the researchers who conducted the studies for him for a fee) fall into the category of scientific theism, an idea according to which the north of God's mind can be scientifically discovered. This unique position within the universe of the debate between science and religion is very ancient and respected. Its roots are rooted in the Christian apologetics of St. Thomas Aquinas, and continue today with the efforts of individuals such as Plantinga and William Craig.
If, however, someone believes in a distant type of God, but still wants to stay in the realm of science and religion, he is considered to be one for whom science and religion are one, but he is not limited to scientific theism. Two other positions are possible as well, provided that it is the God of nature or Deism. The strong anthropic principle and the weak anthropic principle. The latter is also known as the "God of the Big Bang". Of course, in the course of the debate, the actual positions of individuals within my framework may differ from those I propose here, either because the boundaries between the categories are somewhat blurred, or because I may misunderstand some people's writings.
The weak anthropic principle means that there is very little variation in the known constants and laws of physics that determine that the universe will be friendly to life, and any shift from them would create a hostile universe. Thus, this is a trivial observation in itself, but if one wants to impose philosophical implications on it, it is a small leap of faith to claim that the universe exists because it was designed to support life. Hence, there is very little logical gap to the strong anthropic principle, which requires an intelligent and intentional planner behind the whole business. A number of physicists and cosmologists have dealt with several versions of the anthropic principle, including Frank Tipler (one of the principle's initial proponents) and Paul Davis, whose exact position on the subject is more difficult to define, but a connection with Templeton's foundations and an ability to write speculatively about cosmology places him sharply in the upper left corner of my graph
The anthropic principle is difficult to examine in the philosophical field, since it asks the question and reverses the order of events (the reason comes from the observation of a possible outcome). Furthermore, the hypothesis is also not useful as a scientific hypothesis, since all it says is that we are here because we are here. The principle is attacked by scientists that in many other universes there may be these or other types of life, an attack that weakened the argument of the improbability of the life phenomenon on which the principle is based. Another fatal blow to the principle may come in the near future from the direction of the superstring theory, the theory that tries to unite the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
While all of these positions are consistent with Shermer's "same world" script, it is clear that scientists will feel more comfortable the closer they get to the upper left corner of the diagram, meaning that he accepts a more ambiguous concept of God. .
Gould, Pope and Houston Smith
When we reach the area of the graph that Schermer called the "separate worlds" model, we find there the agnostic evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould from Harvard, the non-theist Eugene Scott (National Center for Science Education), all the way to the Pope himself, through the charismatic man Houston Smith who authored the book Religions of the World and more. Let's see how this variation results in several different concepts of God.
Some philosophers, scientists and skeptics fall into the position known by Gould as NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria). The position says that scientists deal with facts, religion with morality; The first deals with what is and the second with what should be. Citing the term "the naturalistic illusion" one can deduce what should be from what is - and therefore Gold comes to the conclusion that science and religion are forever separated.
Another way of looking at NOMA appeared in Eugene Scott's article distinguishing between methodological and philosophical naturalism.
According to Scott, science embraces naturalism as a persuasive tool for conducting research in a methodological way. In order to deny the existence of God, in any case, one has to be a naturalist in the philosophical sense of the term, meaning to assume that what exists in the physical world is all there is. Therefore, science cannot give us information about the existence of God, because naturalism is not a scientific conclusion but an assumption that is the basis of scientific thinking. If science has nothing to say about God (and of course, says Scott, religion cannot provide science with the signals of the natural world), then NOMA is a logical conclusion.
Scott's causality is more sophisticated than Gould's, because they share some points in common. What they both have in common is the fact that defenders of NOMA use the concept of a distant God detached from daily intervention in nature, since both (those bravely fighting creationism) admit that a personal, intervening God is at odds with the scientific evidence. El Naturalusity is narrowly accepted by NOMA, but both Gold and Scott feel uncomfortable with the idea.
My arguments against NOMA: There are at least three reasons why this theory fails: NOMA fits the most particular concept of God that a deist would be comfortable with, and not what most people think of God. Thus NOMA cannot heal the rift in our society between the religious and the secular, contrary to Gold's claim. Second, the concept of the natural illusion can be challenged. "Why don't we use the question of what is, instead of the question of what should be? At the very least, we should treat this as an open question. In addition, science can clearly give us data about the importance of "what exists" so we can more easily discern what needs to be in order to promote our happiness, and science does exactly the work that religion is supposed to do, whose conclusions derive from an ancient authority with very little knowledge about nature, Human psychology and sociology. It is also clear that morality (or what is more correct ethics) are the exclusive property of religion, since ethical philosophy also provided us with a natural way to discuss our behaviors and their social consequences.
Scott's distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism is more valid than the Scholmo theorem's separation between science and religion. The controversy over this distinction is that methodological naturalism is an essential component of science and not just a practical tool. Since it is part of the fabric of the scientific method. For example, when a scientist uses Ockham's Razor (assume the fewest possible assumptions in any theory) or Day's Proverb (use as few extrapolations that require miracles as possible), they are using a special philosophy. Science cannot spread from such philosophies without losing its nature. This point is used to twist creationists such as Philip Johnson, who accused science of becoming a religion. In this way, science closes the gap between it and religions. Moreover, the scientific leap - unlike that of religion - created some tangible miracles, such as the portable computer or the doubling of life expectancy.
If we go down the axis of God in the graph we mentioned in the first paragraph, we arrive at what I call theistic science, as opposed to scientific theism. It's not clear how Smith falls into the category, but his position is the closest I could find to representing the terrain between NOMA and the Pope. Smith argues against scientism, an interview he defines in several ways. I would argue that scientism is the concept that science can and will solve questions or problems in all fields if it is given enough time and resources.
Smith, however, thinks of science as the idea that the scientific method is the best way to explain reality. According to Smith there are other ways to do this, including intuition and religious revelation. The important point is that these alternatives are not within science, and therefore some aspects of reality are removed from the field of scientific investigation. Smith and Alvin Peltinga from the direction of scientific theism, decided in their claim that the National Association of Biology Teachers will correct the definition of evolution by omitting philosophically charged words (and also politically correct) such as "impersonal" and unaccompanied (without intervention), when they refer to the process of natural selection .
While the territory opened up by theistic science is bounded and fenced, and involves several degrees of scientific theism and NOMA, the general idea is that according to theistic science, it is very tangible to say that God exists just as the physical universe exists. The unique point of theistic science is that God hides from the universe in some subtle ways and he intervenes through the laws of nature, so that it is impossible (or at least very difficult) to penetrate his presence and disturb him (unlike the anthropic principle, where an intelligent planner is the only possible conclusion).
To be continued
From Skeptic.com
