Posted by Al; on March 17, 1999 at 07:07:55 {MWbp7CDcBo4Qg}:
In Reply to: Fusion of Science & Religion posted by Tallyman on March 16, 1999 at 11:04:59:
Hi Tallyman- This is a thoughtful topic. Science and religion were fused a long time ago, I mean even prior to the Dark Ages. Science was the attempt to find out or to explain and so was religion. They were both in there with philosophy. I think that John Locke (1632 to 1704)though, may have been the first to use the term "science" in anything like it's modern meaning.
I do not think that religion will be eliminated anytime soon. As I have remarked before, it appears to be adaptive. I recall some remarks made here about the world being mostly Secular Humanists within fifty years or so. I don't think so. According to a 1996 Gallup poll, 96% of American adults believe in God, 90% in heaven, 79% in miracles, and 72% in angels. To attempt to eliminate belief in a higher power, life after death, etc., we are "butting up against 10,000 years of history, possibly 100,000 years of evolution." Even Martin Gardner, apparently, classifies himself as a "philosophical theist."
Something else I have posted before is John L. Casti's three possibilities of the relationship between science and religion.
1. Two realms: Science and religion have two different spheres of
jurisdiction.
2.Concordance: Religious and scientific explanations of Nature can be brought together on the same plane.
3. Partial views: Science and religion each illuminate the same reality (whatever that might be), but from
different perspectives.
He goes on to comment that "Only the last makes any sense whatsoever.. The first leads to the all too depressing territorial disputes of the kind that so much blood has been shed over through the years, while the second is self-defeating since scientific views are always changing. As a result, a theology that attaches itself to one scientific family today will surely be an orphan tomorrow."
I think the factor that confuses so many about the fusion of science and religion is the existence of "pseudoscience", which has been developed, I think unnecessarily, to defend religion against science. I think the simple adjustment that can be made is just don't base religion on specific facts of science or history, which science can address to a certain extent. Drop the dogmas and stick with the principles and hope.
Frank Tipler is famous for his "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" and "The Physics of Immortality." Skeptic magazine's Michael Shermer compares him with Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire's "Candide" who kept asserting that we were in the "best of all possible worlds." But I don't think that there is a practical consequence even to the acceptance of Tipler's ideas. They don't change laboratory procedure, statistical analysis, or the value of double-blind tests. The scientific method and peer review must proceed as always, without commitment to particular beliefs. Even basic laws will be questioned if anomalies start appearing. But they will be questioned according to the scientific method.
Pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy merely serve to justify the liars assertions who has something to push on others.
Pseudophilosophy is the attempt to get logical standards to be dropped to get your baseless assertions on an equal footing with workable science. "You never can tell." "Everything is a 'leap' of faith." We might call it a "leap of faith"
to drive our car. The overgeneralist of the philosophical or scientific genre would have us believe that we, therefore, should be able to leap from the roof of one building to the next, with no particular assistance, when the buildings are
two hundred feet apart. But take him up to the building to test his assertion. Suddenly the pseudo-scientist-philosopher knows the meaning of the term "practical" with absolute certainty. Any such practical test will flush out the double
standard of the "leap of faith" people. They simply want to control the thoughts of others because the thoughts of others make them feel insecure. They really need more "faith" in the universe or God. Whatever hope there is does not depend
on us to do more than make our best testable practical efforts.
Al