tension_on_the_wire wrote:
> On May 1, 2:23 pm, Phobos <phobos....@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Does science make belief in God obsolete?
>>
>> Yes, if by...
>> "science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
>> (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and
>> white lab coats.
>
> I'm not sure if the poster IS Dr. Pinker, or is quoting Dr. Pinker.
> However, I think it is im****tant to examine the question being posted
> a bit more carefully. Does science make belief in God obsolete?
> Obsolete means "no longer in general use, fallen into dismoded type,
> out-of-date, etc." (Random House) You have given many reasons why you
> think that the belief in God is irrational, but you have not proven
> your statement that belief in God is obsolete.
>
> In truth, belief in God is at an all-time high right now as noticeable
> trends in cultures and countries around the world including the USA
> are showing a return to religious life in the last couple of decades
> by people who were at best nominal members of their religions. By
> definition, this is not obsolescence. It seems to suggest, in fact,
> that progress in science and technology has failed to dispel belief in
> God, and maybe even has added to the tendency to search for a
> supernatural explanation to current conditions on Earth, and in our
> societies, all of them, though of course it would require an un-doable
> study to demonstrate cause-and-effect. The fact that so many people
> are turning to religion right now, or remain steadfast in their belief
> is in itself proof that belief in God obviously satisfies a deeply
> felt need in humans throughout the planet, in which case it is
> impossible to call belief in God obsolete. However, perhaps the
> poster meant to ask "Does science make belief in God irrational?".
> And this is a very different question, to which the answer is also no,
> but for different reasons, of course.
>
>>
>> Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to
>> explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come
from?
>> What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why
>> should anyone be moral?
>>
>> Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper
we
>> probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which
we
>> live, the less reason there is to believe in God.
>
> Again, an assumption is being made here. It may be that for you, a
> belief in God could only be of use for explaining origins of the
> world, life, etc. However, I would suggest that for many members of
> religions throughout the world, the largest attractor for belief in
> God has nothing to do with conditions in this world at all but is, in
> fact, the explanation it holds, and promises it makes, about death,
> and life-after-death. There is absolutely nothing in science that
> addresses this issue, therefore there is nothing irrational about
> looking to religion, or any other type of philosopy to explain what
> happens to human consciousness, mind, soul, whatever you want to call
> it after the moment of death.
>
>> Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person
>> can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago
>> and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities
>> like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a
>> more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This
>> trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?"
>> with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?"
>
> In this paragraph, you make it quite clear that you are no longer
> arguing about belief in God, but belief in the Bible, which refers to
> a much smaller subset of believers than the ones you were originally
> referring to. If your issue is with Christian theology, you need to
> be more specific about that since more than three quarters of the
> world believe in God without believing in Jesus Christ as God, or the
> Earth having come into existence over a period of six days.
>
> As far as the abstract role of God that you referred to, I'm not sure
> what your point is. It seems to me that you are eloquently pointing
> out that science cannot, in fact, explain where God came from. So how
> is it that you think science answers all questions? Please, don't get
> me wrong, I am posting here as a scientist, but the question of using
> science to observe God, or God to contradict science is much more
> complex than your sentence implies, and I'll be happy to address that
> later on in this post.
>>
>> What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of
>> design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine
designer
>> to explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
>> showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process
>> of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick
showed
>> how replication itself could be understood in physical terms.
>> Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is
>> overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of
>> life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose
>> bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).
>
> In this paragraph you make it sound as if "evolution" is an accepted,
> uncontested fact, but you have not demonstrated (nor has anyone else)
> how evolution could be the cause of the origins of life itself.
> Science has yet to satisfactorily explain how "replicators" came into
> existence in the first place. What is commonly referred to as
> evolution is, in fact, the process of random mutation (of already
> existing genes which came from where?) and natural selection in the
> creation and origins of species. That is the name of his book "Origin
> of Species", not origin of life. In his appendices, Charles Darwin
> goes, himself, into some details about the areas of study that break
> down in his hypothesis, including the troublesome concept of
> irreducible complexity in the eye, and makes it very clear that he is
> not trying to explain the origins of life, only species.
>
> James Watson and Francis Crick were the first to describe the double
> helical structure of DNA. That is all they did, though it was no mean
> feat, but they did not show anything else that would have bearing on
> the existence of God. I'm sorry that you think "creationist
> propaganda" is the only current argument against evolution being the
> be-all and end-all of genetic processes. There is a strong scientific
> component that has everything to do with *****sment of probabilities
> (which are considered infinitesimal in the case of the eye and the
> blood coagulation cascade) of certain changes being able to be made in
> a step-wise process without losing the "utility" component of each
> mutation which is absolutely essential to the validation of the theory
> of evolution. This is a huge scientific obstacle and it cannot be
> minimized by labelling it as creationist propaganda.
>
> However, taking all of that into account, even if one granted the
> possibility that evolution could at least get us from the first single
> cell to the moon itself, why is any of that proof that belief in God
> is irrational, or even obsolescent? Would you, as a scientist, not
> expect that the Creator of this Universe, as the creator of both
> Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics and whatever is missing in our
> attempt to unify the fundamental forces (which by the way, I will
> point out has not yet been done, therefore science still hasn't yet
> explained this universe completely)....would you not expect that any
> Creator would have the magnificent ability to create using the science
> that he himself put into play? What on earth would be the good of
> just saying "BE" and poof? Is it not infinitely more elegant that a
> Creator could say "BE" and hence the Big Bang itself? To me that is
> infinitely more awe-inspiring anyway. And to some extent it explains
> why science can never disprove the existence of God, though it can
> very easily disprove the claims of any given religion which is foolish
> enough to insist on an unscientific explanation of anything. It also
> demonstrates that there is no reason for religion to attempt to
> contradict science if it is honest in its desire to believe in God,
> and not just supernatural explanations for anything willy-nilly.
>>
>> For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But
>> neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of
>> intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our
>> brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner
>> experience‹some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just
an
>> open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a
>> limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize
>> four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem
with
>> the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding.
>
> Neuroscience has gone a long way to explaining the presence, but not
> the nature of, consciousness. But it still cannot explain "the mind",
> or where sentience comes from, or how it is actually generated.
> Accepting a premise of consciousness, neuroscience is now describing
> patterns of both structure and function and the intricate play between
> firing and wiring in the dynamics of intelligence and emotions, but it
> is a very long way from being able to explain not how, but WHY we
> think. You should know, however, that none of that is what is being
> re-labelled when believers refer to the soul.
>>
>> People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a
>> conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other
>> mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights.
>> Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our
>> moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented
>> within the brain.
>
> You have hit the nail on the head here with respect to my original
> statements about why a belief in God cannot be obsolescent. As you
> mention, the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental
> faculty because it IS a mental faculty. The fact that it may have
> evolved as a faculty meant to strengthen the social fabric, thereby
> strengthening the tribe and the survival of a collective gene pool
> does not change the fact that the stronger that faculty evolves, the
> stronger will be the human search for moral guidance. Especially as
> we "evolve" as a society into one of decreasingly described moral
> standards of human origin. The more lenient the society, the more
> confused are the searchers for moral guidance. If they cannot find
> moral standards generated by humans that are anything better than
> totally arbitrary, people will search for an absolute standard which
> is almost uniformly provided by every religion on Earth. It is the
> second major reason why belief in God cannot be obsolescent as long as
> there are people on Earth looking for absolute moral standards for
> guidance.
>>
>> This leaves morality itself‹the benchmarks that allow us to criticize
and
>> improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow
sense
>> cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God.
It's
>> not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide,
>> slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that
>> morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle.
Why
>> did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason
but
>> divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did
>> have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
>
> In some respects it is unfair for you to have to extract your argument
> only from the Judeo-Christian God since the only available material
> you have is grossly inaccurate as any kind of historical do***ent of
> what was actually, originally taught and done by the individuals in
> question. Therefore, you cannot really attribute an endorsement of
> genocide, slavery, rape or even the death penalty to God, Judeo-
> Christian or not. At best, if you refer to incidents which have
> corroborating historical do***entation, you can blame religion (as
> interpreted by the humans of its time) for these things, but not God.
> And it deeply confounds your attempt to describe arbitrariness in
> God's moral decree. The entire point behind obedience to that moral
> decree does not lie in understanding whether it is whimsical or not.
> It lies in the not knowing, but choosing to follow anyway, because it
> comes from a trustworthy source (and I mean God, not the Bible, the
> Torah or any such). On the whole, the morally reprehensible acts in
> human history that have supposedly been committed by religion were
> not, in fact any such thing, but acts that were committed by humans.
> Humans who, in most do***ented cases, had personal aims of their own
> that had very little to do with God or any religion, but more often
> had everything to do with power, greeed, and ambition. Humans who
> commit atrocities in the name of religion are just that; the religion
> cannot be blamed per se.
>
>> Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to
>> be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any
>> intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the
>> interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal
to
>> you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not
to
>> hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same
standards
>> to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the
only
>> policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off.
And
>> God plays no role in it.
>
> As logically consistent as this policy may be, the unfortunate truth
> is that, human nature being what it is, no one agrees with you. Or at
> least, if they do, they are most certainly not practicing what they
> preach. And as ideal as it is, in the real world, people do not treat
> others as they wish to be treated. People treat others according to
> what they can get away with, and some foolish ones don't even consider
> that much as they forget that they will come down the same ladder on
> which they are currently stepping on fingers while they scrabble for
> the top rung. This is primarily due to the slippery slope of
> arbitrary morality I mentioned earlier as established by humans.
> There is no absolute standard. Even the age-old commandment against
> taking of human life is treated with increasing casualness as wars
> become confused with military occupation, and genocide is as on-going
> as it ever was, and killing for personal gain or for personal rage is
> rampant. The only "absolute" standard that exists for people with no
> moral code is the one that says Do Whatever you can get away with
> Under the Law. If it isn't illegal, most people seem to think it's
> alright. And God help us all if we rely on our lawmakers and
> governments to decide what is morally right or wrong. What a great
> example they set of treating others (in their foreign policies) as
> they would wish to be treated.
>>
>> For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies
have
>> experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries:
barbaric
>> practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the
>> mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and
>> scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God
>> has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God
>> obsolete, and we are the better for it.
>
> I mentioned earlier I would address the issue of how science and God
> relate. I already described the beauty of the idea that all the
> science we see in action around us is a manifestation of an incredible
> elegance that we still cannot completely understand, and my insistence
> that religion, to be true, cannot contradict any scientific facts that
> we know. But I did not explain how science can actually make it
> possible to understand God better.
>
> Until science can determine once and for all whether or not we have a
> closed universe, or, as Stephen Hawking wishes, a universe without
> boundary, we cannot ever expect science to be in a position of proving
> or disproving God. It is a crucial question because the strongest
> suggestions in favour of the existence of God come from the study of
> thermodynamics. If we are in a closed universe, then the equations
> already exist to prove that the universe was not eternal and it did
> have a beginning and it must have an end. The principles of entropy
> demand that there will be a slow winding down of usable energy in the
> universe to a state known as Heat Death, and if the universe had been
> eternal with a beginning stretching back through infinite stretches of
> time, then the state of Heat Death would have been reached long ago,
> many times over, and we would not be here. It then follows that if
> the universe had a finite beginning, it must have a prime cause. God,
> as not being limited to the four dimensional existence that we are,
> cannot fall within this subset of a finite universe. It is not a
> paradox to say that God is the prime cause of the universe, because no
> one ever claimed that God was limited to, within, or part of this
> universe. God, as a concept, is so clearly outside of existence in
> only four dimensions that it is nothing more than a party-trick to ask
> "well then, who created God?". It demands a complete understanding of
> this universe before one can categorically state that creation of this
> universe demands that there was "Nothing" before. Nothing, in terms
> of what we can detect or describe with the four dimensions we know,
> yes. But that is as far as it goes. We have six or seven other
> dimensions to contend with now. Obviously this is no explanation of
> anything to you unless you are willing to do the leg work to
> understand at the mathematical level, the principles I am referring
> to, so I won't elaborate. But I mention it to you so that I can
> introduce you to the idea that there are highly knowledgeable
> scientists who feel that a belief in God is not, as you suggest,
> obsolescent or irrational, but more and more likely the only possible
> explanation for the universe as we know it.
>
> I should point out, just to throw a wrench into the works, that String
> Theory has opened a whole new world of contemplation with regards to
> explaining even the "miraculous" characteristics of God. For example,
> the idea that there might be 10 or even 11 dimensions (which have
> absolutely nothing to do with parallel universes or multiple planes of
> existence, which remain in the realms of science fantasy) leaves 6 or
> 7 unknown dimensions currently unperceived and untestable as we
> stand. Since none of these dimensions is the dimension of time, which
> is already accounted for in the 4th dimension, it leaves one to ponder
> the possibility that "Where God Comes From" or "Where God Currently
> Exists" might be answered by any one or combination of these
> dimensions. Since they are outside of time, then the idea of
> existance in one of those dimensions makes it quite easy to understand
> how "prophecy" or the ability to see events in future time could
> happen. Future time only exists for those of us trapped within these
> 4 dimensions. It has no relevance in any of the others.
>
> At any rate, with that I will conclude by saying that it is by no
> means as clear cut as you suggest that there is some kind of absolute
> divide between Science and Religion, and that there are scientists who
> believe wholeheartedly in God precisely because of our very priviliged
> position of being in an occupation that exposes us to the most amazing
> miracles of all.
>
> --tension
>
> ps. I'm curious why you posted on a cardiology group?
Well done.
I set the followup-to header to alt.christnet.theology
and crossposted this to several other newsgroups.
--
monkfish * alt.atheism is removed from the header because atheists there
consider quoting the Bible proselytizing and as such it is prohibited by
their undebatable policy.
--
The best way to handle spams is to ignore them. But if you must reply to
them, you should at least set the followup-to header to something other
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