Can Science and Religion Get Along?
at 9:32 am on Tuesday, 8 March 2011
“WASHINGTON, D.C.—Can pastoral warnings of fire and brimstone be redirected toward a heating planet in the interest of preserving God’s creation? Or are those who build creation museums hopeless ideologues whose Stone Age ideas should be buried once and for all?
“Those were among the topics of discussion at a seminar here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . . .”
So opened an online Science NOW article of 19 February 2011.
read the article
Can “Supernatural” phenomena be scientifically tested?
at 9:56 am on Tuesday, 2 November 2010
A recent article on the Cosmic Variance blog has a very nice description of how science might go about responding to claims of the supernatural. This article adds, significantly, I believe, to the discussion of the relationship between religion and science.
Cosmic Variance, 11/10/2010. http://bit.ly/dkhqKG
Who Are the Science Deniers?
at 9:28 am on Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Hopefully without sounding angry, I would like to briefly explore a rough categorization of people who deny either Darwin, Einstein, or global warming. It appears that they disbelieve for similar reasons, and can be divided into three rough groups.
1) They don’t understand the science or they are simply not interested enough to think about it themselves and they accept the word of someone they consider an authority.
2) They can understand most of the science pretty well, at least in general, but they deny it because they don’t want to believe it. Their reasons may be religious, economic, or political.
The religious denier of evolution, for example, believes evolution theory contradicts the word of God. The same person may believe that God created the earth for mankind to dominate and would not let us harm the earth by our activities. Or they may believe that it is irreligious hubris for humans to presume to want to control the climate.
The economic denier is likely to have an interest in fossil fuels, manufacturing, the stock market, or other issues that might suffer if global warming theory interferes with commerce or the economy in any way.
The non-professional political denier might not want government messing with their life-style by making a bunch of regulations, rules, and limits on things they think ought to be free.
3) There are surely some deniers who understand the science pretty well in general, and who understand it well enough to know that it is probably true, but have ulterior motives for denying it. A preacher might not want to affirm global warming in a sermon to avoid offending or frightening his flock. A politician might deny it because s/he knows his/her constituents don’t believe global warming or are hostile to the idea for other reasons. I believe there are a lot of politicians who understand global warming pretty well, but who are denying it now that we are about to have an election where the lines are solidly drawn around global warming. We have senators and congresspersons who have supported and even introduced bills for energy policy based on global warming, who now deny the science and are voting against bills they previously supported. It looks suspicious when nearly all Democrats appear to believe in human-caused climate change, and nearly all Republicans are deniers.
Opinion-makers are hard to figure. Many of them simply want to stir the pot. Their business thrives on controversy and if there is not a controversy going they will invent one. Some of them have literally millions of avid followers. The climate change controversy was practically invented by them and they restir this pot on a regular basis, using the same old, solidly refuted propositions they started out with. They don’t give a damn about the science.
Voltaire on Religion
at 12:21 pm on Friday, 27 August 2010
On reading what our founding fathers thought on the subject of religion and government, one is constantly finding references to the great rational and “Enlightenment” philosophers and thinkers. One of the favorites is Voltaire, and their favorite work by Voltaire seems to have been his Philosophical Dictionary ( Downloadable for free, in English, from Project Gutenberg.)
I am reproducing the most often quoted section, used in the writings of nearly everyone who took a serious interest the Constitution, from Adams, Jefferson, Madison, to Paine, who quotes large chunks of Voltaire’s “Sect” almost verbatim.
SECT
SECTION I
Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms.
There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an Archimedean.
When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon.
The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among astronomers.
In England one does not say—”I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan.” Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in France; that is solely because Descartes’ system is a tissue of erroneous and ridiculous imaginings.
It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well established. The records of the Tower of London having been authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it occurs to no one to combat this collection. In it one finds neither contradictions, absurdities nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer’s records are worthy of belief.
[Pg 268]
You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore you might well be wrong.
What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds were necessarily in agreement.
Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all time—”There is a God, and one must be just.” There, then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout mankind.
The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false.
“My sect is the best,” says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of the world to laugh at you and your Brahma?
When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say—”Let us worship God, and let us be just,” nobody laughs; but everyone hisses the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one is holding a cow’s tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of one’s prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men’s bones one carries under one’s shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which one buys at Rome for two and a half sous.
Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which everyone sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of one of Sejan’s secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book entitled—”The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts”?
This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send on earth several sibyls one after the other;
[Pg 269]
for He had no other means of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, for the word sibyl signifies God’s counsel. They had to live a long time, for it is the very least that persons to whom God speaks should have this privilege. They were twelve in number, for this number is sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their Books from an old woman for a hundred crowns. “What incredulous fellow,” adds the secretary, “will dare deny all these evident facts which happened in a corner before the whole world? Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the first examples of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety must be silent before such proofs.” Thus did Houttevillus speak to Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.[20]
“What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it,” says a fanatic; “and it is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by so many peoples, if it were not divine?” It is precisely like the Alcoran which the Sonnites say has an angel’s face and an animal’s snout; be not scandalized by the animal’s snout, and worship the angel’s face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a fanatic of another sect answers—”It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel.”
Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is not that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and justice; in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does not think he is the angel.
[Pg 270]
SECTION II
Sect and error are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I Platonician; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only because his fantasies have revolted you, and I am alienated from Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of the one or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of Pythagoras.
When you say that the blood circulates, that the air is heavy, that the sun’s rays are pencils of seven refrangible rays, you are not either of the sect of Harvey, or the sect of Torricelli, or the sect of Newton; you agree merely with the truth demonstrated by them, and the entire universe will ever be of your opinion.
This is the character of truth; it is of all time; it is for all men; it has only to show itself to be recognized; one cannot argue against it. A long dispute signifies—”Both parties are wrong.”
FOOTNOTES:
[20]
Reference to the Abbé Houtteville, author of a book entitled—”The Truth of the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts.”
The Constitution vs Religion
I recently had reason to read what John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and others wrote about freedom of (from) religion. (My reading included the obvious Constitution of the United States, Constitution of Virginia, and the Constitution of New York, for a few examples. Sources of much of their thought on the subject came from John Locke, Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, and other members of the “Enlightenment”.
They were all keenly aware that nearly every country in Europe had a “state” religion that was abusive and coercive. There were ecclesiastical laws that were often brutally enforced by whatever church could wield enough power. People were required to give a certain amount of their income to the “established” churches, no matter what they believed. Churches ran schools in which they not only educated their students, they indoctrinated them in their religious beliefs. Believers in various sects fought bitter wars over what one was supposed to believe.
The founding fathers thought that, by not endorsing any church at all, there would be hundreds of sects and each sect would be small enough that it would be unlikely to take on the others for power and influence over government. They did not imagine that one species of religion, Reformation Protestantism, could become dominate enough to begin eroding the freedoms guaranteed by their Constitution.
There were many long and heated arguments over this at the Constitutional conventions, not only of the U.S. but of several states. Jefferson wrote a lengthy piece on the subject that became part of the Constitution of Virginia, and James Madison did the same for the Constitution of New York.
In America, largely as a result of the terrors of the French revolution, we had what was called the “Great Revival” (late 18th Century) in which old-line Protestants of numerous stripes, primarily in the South, declared that the French revolution happened because God had been left out of government. They immediately tried to redress this by insinuating religious doctrine into government documents and laws at every opportunity.
That they were successful is shown by the success of the religious right even today, who can influence law about marriage rights, abortion, stem-cell research, teaching of science, “In God We Trust” on our money (did not become official until 1956, it supposedly proved we were not communists), the pledge of allegiance itself, (In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge of Allegiance for *Youth’s* *Companion*, a national family magazine for youth published in Boston. In 1888 the magazine started a fund-raising program in which they sold american flags to schools, along with the pledge of allegiance. Very few schools even had a flag until then.[http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur10.htm], and especially onerous is the insertion of “under God” (by Eisenhower in 1954, with the explanation that it was a quote from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — where the phrase “under God” does not actually occur in any manuscript copy.” to name a few instances.
Not only are we very fortunate that we are not governed under the laws of Islam (for an extreme example) — we are very fortunate that our founding fathers fought so hard to try to keep religion completely out of governance.
They could not have expected that their hard won nation, built on rational philosophy, with no supernatural references except to some great force they usually called simply “Providence”, could have succumbed so much to organized religion and what they correctly called “superstition”.
Religious Accommodation: Heidegger’s cats?
at 10:31 am on Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Science (or statistics?) meets religion half way.
“I [Had] A Dream”: Religion and Social Justice
at 9:39 am on Wednesday, 25 August 2010
In an August 25 Washington Post op-ed, Martin Luther King III discussed Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally planned to take place on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Lulther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Writing that “it is clear from the timing and location that the rally’s organizers present this event as also honoring the ideals and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr.,” he stated, “I would like to be clear about what those ideals are.”
Read article here:
Government vs Islam: Treaty of Tripoli
at 11:58 am on Tuesday, 24 August 2010
In 1797 the US Senate unanimously approved (only the third unanimous vote out of 339), a treaty with the Barbary pirate state (Treaty of Tripoli). The Treaty was signed by President John Adams and Sec. of State Timothy Pickering. It was published in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, and never raised even a letter to the editor in protest. Our nation seems to have been pretty comfortable with it, including Article 11:
“Article 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
What do you reckon would happen if the Senate made bold to vote on such a statement today? (“senate make bold” is a joke)
Creatures of Cambrian May Have Lived On
at 6:21 am on Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale outcrops in the Canadian Rockies have presented scientists with a cornucopia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginning some 550 million years ago.
The fossils, all new to science, were at first seen as little more than amazing curiosities from a time when life, except for bacteria and algae, was confined to the sea — and what is now Canada was just south of the Equator. In the last half century, however, paleontologists recognized that the Burgess Shale exemplified the radiation of diverse life forms unlike anything in earlier time. Here was evolution in action, organisms over time responding to changing fortunes through natural experimentation in new body forms and different ecological niches.
(New York Times, May 17, 2010)
Read the rest of the entry here.