I browse Polling Report from time to time. Opinions are fine, but seeing them in the aggregate can be especially revealing. Take this one:
“Do you feel like Christianity is under attack in the United States today?”
11/29-30/05
Yes No Unsure % % % 59 37 4
Yep, a majority of Americans think Christianity is under attack. From? … a minority of the population. Martyrdom has always been a part of Christianity; nice to see they’re keeping it up.
Now here’s a serious one, same page:
“Which comes closer to your view about the relationship between science and religion? They generally agree with each other. They generally conflict with each other. OR, They are not related to each other in any meaningful way.”
9/8-11/05
Generally Agree Generally Conflict Not
RelatedUnsure % % % % 24 35 36 5
That first column is interesting. I think this response is a good-hearted one. It seems to come from religious people who nonetheless accept science, and don’t see anything contradictory about doing so. It’s a thread that runs through Mormonism as well, as in the phrase “All truth can be circumscribed into one great whole.” A liberal Mormon would probably say that we know some things about spirituality and we know some things about science, and when all truth is known, they’ll match. In the meantime, we should avoid drawing dogmatic conclusions about either one.
As a former liberal Mormon, I used to take this view myself (and I congratulated myself mightily on how broad-minded I was), until I realised just how badly religious views fail. I’ll pick on the Old Testament. It contains statements about the origin of the earth and history that are just plain counterfactual or, at best, unsupported by evidence. Creationism. Tower of Babel. Noah’s Ark. People living for 900 years. Every religion makes unsubstantiated claims about the origins of humankind or the afterlife. Good stories? Yep. Literal fact? Not according to the evidence we have.
The only way you could think science and religion generally agree if
a) you’re unaware of what religious views actually are, or
b) you somehow exclude “discredited religious notions” from the category of “religious notions” because they’re not what the religion “really believes”, or
c) you decide to work it out later.
The second and third options in the poll — science and religion are incompatible, or unrelated — are the only really honest and well-informed ones there. (Besides ‘unsure’, of course.)
You could take the third option and say that religion and science are talking about completely different areas and both could be equally valid and they don’t relate. It’s a tempting position. Try something like:
“Science deals with observable facts, religion is about unobservable (but nonetheless true) facts.”
Or “Science generates testable and falsifiable hypotheses, religion doesn’t.”
See? They’re just different. And isn’t it true that many scientists believe in God? There you go.
But wait a minute. Let’s remember a key scientific principle: Science tests hypotheses against observable data. If the data doesn’t square with the hypothesis, you reject the hypothesis.
How does this relate to religion? A belief system is a theory. If a belief system posits the existence of a god, we examine the claim with regard to the observable evidence. Is the god selective about who he appears to and how? Then it’s not observable. Got a supernatural theory about how the world came to be? Well, if we can explain the world using a natural theory, then that’s a better theory. Got ideas about what happens after death? That’s interesting, but if it’s not testable, it stays in the storybooks.
For this reason, I say that if a scientist believes in an unseen creator, then something has gone terribly wrong with their scientific training. They are accepting a theory without adequate evidence, and in fact despite loads of disconfirming evidence. Whether they grew up with it, or they defer to popular belief, or for whatever reason, they are giving religion a huge pass that it hasn’t earned.
Science is (and scientists should be) eternally opposed to the acceptance of any belief that is unsupported by evidence. Here’s an example from my work. Let’s say I have a theory about dialogue — perhaps that the words in an utterance are a sufficient indicator of the speaker’s intention in making that utterance. I can test my theory using samples of real dialogue. If my theory is correct, I should be able to classify the text accurately using only words as data. It turns out that this isn’t so. If I run this kind of a test, I get only so-so scores. There’s not enough evidence to support the belief.
Now what do I do? If I’m honest, I’ll have to accept that I need to change my belief, and find a theory that works better. That way I can get better results and maybe find something that works. But if I’m too attached to my theory — if it’s too painful to give it up, or too much work, or I’m worried about what people will think — I may ignore or even fudge the data and keep the false belief, evidence or no evidence. I may insist that my science is the true science and complain that the language tech community isn’t accepting my work because they’re too biased. I’ll have to get good at argumentation and marketing to get anyone to believe me. It’ll help if there’s a political element that believes basically the same thing I do. Then I can ingratiate myself with them and maybe score some funding.
If I do these things, I am showing that I value my belief above the truth. I am not doing science. And yet this is exactly what purveyors of religion do when
- they insist that evidence points to an intelligent creator when it does not
- they tout the healing power of prayer when studies show no such effect
- they say that secularism causes social problems when this is demonstrably not so
Why do people think that accepting some false ideas along with the well-supported ones is okay? This isn’t like having a snack once you’ve had your vegetables. Unwillingness to dump counterfactual or unsubstantiated theories is not good science. It’s par for the course in religion, though. They’re incompatible opposites.
3 July 2006 at 5:24 pm
This is the hurdle you are going to have to help me with. Andthis may have alot to do with my liberal mormon father. You say:
Science is (and scientists should be) eternally opposed to the acceptance of any belief that is unsupported by evidence.
Metaphysics and logics are two seperate fields of inquiry within the field of philosophy as I understand it.
Also, I have a problem with Science being opposed to anything. Science isn’t a beleif or a creed or a dogma or a religion, its a tool, it is a set of rules and procedures for answering questions about the physical world. (the only one we know exists) How can it be opposed to anything. Isn’t that kind of like saying my hammer is opposed to screws or my ipod is opposed to lp’s?
6 July 2006 at 1:09 am
Your hammer is good for nails. Your screwdriver is good for screws.
Science is good for generating testable hypotheses that explain facts about the world around us, while controlling for cognitive bias.
Religion is good for fooling yourself and being wrong.
It’s not ‘different tools for different jobs’. Science is better.
And yes, I did wonder whether I should say ‘science opposes’ instead of ‘people who are using the scientific method oppose’. In the end I tried for both. But search and replace, and you’ll get the idea. I was anthropomorphising.
I do realise that not all areas of science use the same bag of tricks, and the process isn’t black and white — in particular, deciding how valid certain evidence is. But there are some core scientific principles, and there has to be observable, reproducible evidence for the ideas we hold. ‘Science’, as you know, does a good job at this. Religious theories, not being based on good evidence, get it wrong.
6 July 2006 at 2:13 pm
See, the funny thing is I agree with you, so we are not really on different sides here, but (and let me know if this is just left over baggage from my liberal mormon upbringing) I’ve always thought that science has nothing to say about the supernatural being a tool to study the natural world. I am not saying that there even is any supernatural world, only wondering if it is demanded that I close my mind to even the possibility of it just because I can’t use this tool I have to explore it. And just so you know this is all academic, I don’t actually beleive in the supernatural world. I am a “I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter” kind of person.
6 July 2006 at 3:09 pm
So it sounds like what you’re saying is: Because we don’t know everything yet, there’s a sliver of a chance that a Supreme Being may exist, even though it hasn’t been demonstrated in any really scientifically valid way. But more evidence may come to light in the future, and if it does, we need to accept whatever conclusions it points to, which just may include the existence of a Supreme Being.
Am I getting close?
6 July 2006 at 7:01 pm
Your hammer is good for nails. Your screwdriver is good for screws.
What the hell is religion good for? (sing your own chorus here):)
No, I guess my real point is…if a supreme being did really exist he/she/it would be by nature supernatural. since science is a tool for explaining the natural world how would you ever be able to use it to prove/disprove something that is supernatural. Just like I don’t want religion encroaching on science, why should, could science encroach on religion?
7 July 2006 at 1:16 am
Good point. And for that matter, why do religious people want a mixture of church and state? They want that bad old incompetent government to be dishing out religion? They’d just muck it up!
Oh, wait. They don’t want it working both ways, do they. They just want untrammelled influence in government.
And the other good point you made was that you can’t use science to prove or disprove most religious statements because they’re unverifiable. That’s why the ‘wait and see’ approach works well for the existence of coelocanths, but not God. It’s the difference between ‘not yet verified’ and ‘completely unverifiable’. Which is why I said that ‘science’ opposes such a belief. Whatever ‘science’ is.
7 July 2006 at 2:27 pm
I know this doesn’t really have to do with the post but I’d like to know more about your political ideas.
7 July 2006 at 5:01 pm
Good gracious; you need more?
27 August 2006 at 3:36 pm
Hmm. Interesting thoughts, although I don’t see the point of the discussion here.
Religion isn’t about science, neither is science about religion. There is a likelyhood that at some stage, one may be able to intertwine both when the “spiritual” world is able to be understood “physically”.
Why do people spend so much time attempting to pick religion apart for the sake of science, or pick science apart for the sake of religion?