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He writes, and I reply in red:
A moment’s reflection reveals multiple ways in which these two great products of the human spirit can be distinguished: religion asks about the why, science explains the how [Why what? It's not religion that asks, it's people. And religion has no answers that the non-believers can use for anything]; science researches matters of empirical fact, while religion is concerned with matters of ultimate values [don't need religion for that]; scientists use empirical techniques and theories to account for the physical and natural world, whereas religionists are concerned with the metaphysical and the supernatural [which they believe exists, but that's where it ends - such belief can be used for naught]; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven.I implore you, Clayton or anyone else, please tell me what it is that religionists can bring to the table that people who aren't religious can benefit from in any way. In this article he says nothing in answer to this. It really is only huff and puff on his side.
One does not need to find all these formulations adequate (I, for one, do not) in order to doubt that science demands the death of religion or religion the death of science. Here’s the point: only when one affirms some sort of “live and let live” policy is it possible even to begin a serious discussion about evolutionary biology and (say) belief in God. [Or (say) belief in Xenu, or (say) in astrology, or (say) crystal healing, or (say) Allah, etc. etc. etc.]
When evolutionary and religious explanations are construed as fighting for the same territory, they will unleash their weapons upon each other—as today’s religion wars show. When we recognize and acknowledge their different strengths, a far more interesting discussion emerges. [All we are asking is that religionists get off our freakin' turf. You can go ahead and discuss what the two can do in symbiosis, and we'll be watching from the sidelines, during our lunch break, to see what progress you make. I trust it will be nothing tangible, as is always the case when religion is involved.]
This new debate is challenging because it requires both sides to give up certain hegemonic claims: scientists, the claim that science provides the answer to all metaphysical questions [No, that there is no metaphysics, or, equally good, that we cannot know anything about it]; and religionists, the claim that they know better than science how nature works. Yet a whole series of fascinating questions arises when hegemony is off the table: is there a directionality to evolution or is it, as Stephen Jay Gould thought, a “drunkard's walk”? [That's a question ssquarely within science, and one religionists can add nothing to.] Do the emergent worlds of culture, ideas, philosophy, art, and even religion make any irreducible contributions to explaining what it is to be human? [Is 'What it is to be human' a scientific question? If yes, then the answer is no. If no, then whatever.] How (if at all) could a divine influence on cosmic history be compatible with the scientific study of the cosmos? [Science can say nothing here. Religionists can say whatever they want, for it can never be refuted, nor will it make any difference whatsoever, unless people start banging each other on the head with it.] What kind of influence would it have it be? [sic] Will humans respond more appropriately to the global climate crisis when scientific data are combined with religious values and motivations for action? [Possibly, but only because they are already thoroughly entrenched in religion, and for no other reason.]
If you think that I don't think that "Christian theology" deserves a department devoted to it, and if you suspect that I think philosophizing about imaginary entities does not belong among academic endeavors at all, then you would have hit the nail on the head.
Here's my comment. And, full disclosure, I'm adjunct faculty at CGU. It is amazing that people with this glaring a lack of intellect can be professors at institutes of higher learning. Seriously, I fail undergraduates for this kind of rambling, incoherent, non-sequitur writing. And I understand that the red sections were added by Bjorn. Just one case in point: SJG did not claim that evolution was a "drunkard's walk". He used this metaphor as one possible model to explain progress in evolution, without coming down in favor of it, or any other explanation. If you cannot be bothered to read the actual literature, don't bother to comment it. As I said, poor undergrad stuff. Deplorable, really. These people (such as Phil Clayton, I mean), are paid? Students don't check up on this stuff?
ReplyDelete"Do the emergent worlds of culture, ideas, philosophy, art, and even religion make any irreducible contributions to explaining what it is to be human? [Is 'What it is to be human' a scientific question? If yes, then the answer is no. If no, then whatever.]"
ReplyDeleteHere, I'm going to disagree ever so slightly in regards to your reply. I am not crazy about Clayton's word "irreducible", but if we must use that word, if we qualify it with "practically irreducible" (practically as in, "in practice", not as in "almost"), and if we replace "what it is to be human" with "questions about the human experience," then I'd answer yes for the worlds of culture, ideas, philosophy, and art. (As vague as that is...)
There are all kinds of aspects of the human experience where science becomes epistemically cumbersome. Music for example -- science informs a lot of our background about music, but when it comes to composing an enjoyable song, turning to science (here I'm thinking about various compositional computer programs) inevitably results in bland and uncreative results.
I said I'm not crazy about the word "irreducible", because obviously there is nothing magic going on here -- everything about what makes a piece of music enjoyable is theoretically explicable via neurology -- but in practice, attempting to employ a reductionist viewpoint when composing a song is not useful.
The reason I focus on this small point is because I feel like a lot of us atheists/rationalists get so focused on the science vs. religion debate that we start to say things like "science is the only valid epistemology." It's not. Science is the most trustworthy epistemology, of course, and when it contradicts another way of knowing, science always trumps... but other epistemologies, e.g. logic, gut intuition, even philosophy, are situationally invaluable.
Of course, religion as an epistemology is still entirely useless... But that's not because science is the One practical method to discover everything about everything -- it's because religion isn't a practical method to learn anything about anything. :)
I said I'm not crazy about the word "irreducible", because obviously there is nothing magic going on here -- everything about what makes a piece of music enjoyable is theoretically explicable via neurology -- but in practice, attempting to employ a reductionist viewpoint when composing a song is not useful.
ReplyDeleteYes, arts, etc., are (at the moment) practically irreducible, but give it enough time, and I see no reason why these ways of knowing could not be reduced.
"The human experience" is expressed through art, etc., and "questions about the human experience" can be answered with the scientific method, at least if that includes knowledge that can be shared with and verified by others. Main point is that this is far, far removed from learning though revelations and via authority, which are the ways of religion.
"Yes, arts, etc., are (at the moment) practically irreducible, but give it enough time, and I see no reason why these ways of knowing could not be reduced."
ReplyDeleteOf course none of us can know the future... but my personal gut feeling (oh noes, a non-sciency epistemology!) is that this will never fully come to pass.
By analogy, I doubt it will ever be the case that, say, quantum mechanics will usurp chemistry, even though we can confidently say that everything described by chemistry can be theoretically reduced to quantum mechanics. Reduction is theoretically possible but undesirable, because you just do a bazillion times more calculations to get the same answer. (Which is not to say that quantum mechanics cannot ever shed light on chemistry, of course!)
Of course I won't fall into the fallacy of argument by analogy, but I just use the analogy to explain my gut feeling. I doubt it will ever be desirable, for example, to employ an in-depth understanding neurology to compose an emotionally-moving novel. This is not to say that an artificial intelligence could not someday compose a good novel, but I would expect that such a system would either be heavily reliant on rough heuristic approaches (which are not science) and/or via behavior emerging from a learning system -- which I would argue, if such an entity were intelligent enough to compose a novel, we'd be forced to start acknowledging the intelligence's own epistemic experience...!
Anyway, I've blathered on long enough, since we obviously agree on the central point you are making. This is just a bone of contention for me, because I hear it asserted far too often that science is the "only" epistemology worth using -- which is so clearly false. I mean, when deciding how to compose your reply to my initial point, did you do devise a clearly-formulated hypothesis of what phrases would articulate your arguments most clearly, and then define preset criteria for measuring this? heh...
I mean, when deciding how to compose your reply to my initial point, did you do devise a clearly-formulated hypothesis of what phrases would articulate your arguments most clearly, and then define preset criteria for measuring this? heh...
ReplyDeleteNo, you could say I used my gut feeling, but I wasn't trying to learn anything about the natural world, either.
I've been meaning to write a blog post about this topic but have never gotten around to it. Maybe I ought to do that, instead of scribbling all over your comments section :)
ReplyDeleteDo both. I enjoy the comments here.
ReplyDelete