[Vision2020] Does Science and Religion Conflict?

[Art Deco]

Thank you for your response.

First, the writing I posted is not mine; it came from someone's blog.  It was forwarded to me in a discussion on logic and epistemology.

I have commented on this issue before in depth and before you were a V 2020 poster.  If you like, I can repost a long Word document that looks at the nature of knowledge claims of which both many religious, scientific, ethical, political, etc statements are.

Time constraints do not allow me at this time to give you a detailed response.  However, I will give you something to think about when relying on the Same Worlds Model.

At one time (and for many, even now) mental illness was thought by some of the religious to be caused by possession by the devil.  Even in this day we do not understand yet all the different causes of mental health problems, but progress has been made, and thus many mental health problems are treatable/mitigatable by various therapeutic strategies.

Even realizing this, some who believe in devil continue to claim that all mental illness is still caused by the devil.  Only we are now figuring out ways to outsmart the devil.  Like Descartes "little demon," this theory is sometimes called "the ghost in the machine" (not to be confused with Gilbert Ryle's different use of the same phrase) for obvious reasons.

However, unlike testable knowledge claims, there is no way to test the possession by the devil theory, hence it is a pseudo knowledge claim -- an empty fantasy.

Another well known example from a previous post:

... 
Just because words can be strung together in an apparently syntactically correct sentence doesn't mean the sentence has a comprehensible, literal, testable meaning.

In your quest for "the truth" you might watch out for these kind of assertions.  Religion, philosophy, politics, etc. are rife with such statements.  These assertions are generally recognizable by the practical impossibility of being neither unequivocally confirmable nor falsifiable or for the establishment of any significant probability of their truth.  The latter two cases is often especially the case.

A parable derived from an example written by an apostate Catholic disciple of Wittgenstein intended to illustrate the point of Occam's Razor may be helpful as an illustration to you.  


Neighbors A & B were having an over-the-back-fence discussion:

A:    I heard you have a new kind of powerful watchdog or something.

B:    Yes, it is called the Odg.

A:    What does it do?

B:    It watches over us continually and protects us and our property from harm.

A:    I haven't seen anything.  Where is it?

B:    The Odg is invisible.

A:    I have heard any barking or anything.

B:    The Odg makes no sound.

A:    You don't have a fence.  How do you keep the Odg in?

B:    The Odg stays with us always.  It is the loving nature of the Odg to do so.

A:    Your lawn is immaculate.  I don't see any Odg droppings at all.

B:    The Odg never eats.  Consequently, it makes no droppings.  It doesn't slobber or have bad breath either.

A:    Tell me again what it does.

B:    It watches over us and protects us from all harms.  It requires only unquestioning belief and adulation on our part in return.

A:    But wasn't your home robbed of everything of value, weren't you badly beaten up, and wasn't your wife taken for and enjoyed a month-long sexual romp by a motorcycle gang a few months ago?

B:    Yes, but it must of been good for us, else the Odg would not have let it happen. 
   
    
Can you do anagrams?



Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Paul Rumelhart 
To: Vision 2020 
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Does Science and Religion Conflict?


Art Deco wrote: 
  (2) The Same Worlds Model. This model says that science and religion are not in conflict. They are different ways of looking at the universe but they both are valid. Since "truth" cannot contradict "truth", they cannot be in conflict. Any apparent conflict then is due to our lack of understanding what the real "truth" of at least one of those views is.


I pretty much agree with this model when it comes to most things supernatural.  Darwin's Beagle (not sure if that's you or not) doesn't touch upon this one much except to say that theists tend to believe it.  For example, I see auras.  Not all the time, but often.  I assume that there is some natural explanation for this, even as I learn how to improve upon the ability.  Science has come a long way, but I imagine that there is still a much, much longer way to go.

Even an active, omnipotent god doesn't break this model.  Science can only pertain to what is measurable.  If a god can tweak the system, then science is worthless for studying that god.  For example, the world might have been created a week ago, but created such that all the evidence was in place, including our personal memories and all measurable data, of a much longer timescale.  It's basically a variation of the "brain in a bottle" hypothesis.  Science is not wrong in this case, because it correctly describes this newly created universe in terms of what can be measured.  That is still Truth, even if it can never uncover the fact that all it's answers are bogus.  Science can only test the self-consistency of the universe in this case.

So the Book of Genesis could be correct, just not testable by science.  The God of the bible could have taken seven exact 24-hour days in the exact order described to create a self-consistent universe that appears to be much older than it is.  I don't see any reason to believe this over any other creation story in which the same can be said to be true, nor do I see any reason to believe this for any other reason.  But it could be true and wouldn't invalidate the Same Worlds Model.

Paul



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