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Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? |
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Published: 2003-04 |
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 A good primer on the science/religion debate
Nearly all the essays in this collection are either transcripts of papers read at a "Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?" conference or reprints of essays that originally appeared in either the "Skeptical Inquirer" or "Free Inquiry." As such, they're addressed to an educated, nonprofessional audience. But for the most part, they're rigorously argued pieces that challenge the reader to take a close look at the relationship between scientific and the religious worldviews.
The minority opinion among the authors, most famously expressed in Stephen Jay Gould's essay (pp. 191-203) defending his NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria) thesis, is that science and religion aren't incompatible because they ask separate questions, science dealing with facts and religion with values. Paul Kurtz argues (pp. 351-59) for a different kind of compatibility, one that recognizes that religious language is aesthetic but wholly mythical, and thus offers no serious challenge to religion. But most of the authors collected here tend to agree to one degree or another with Jacob Pandian's ("The Dangerous Quest for Cooperation between Science and Religion") suggestion that academic departments of religion be renamed "departments of superstition (p. 171), or Steven Weinberg's ("A Designer Universe?") claim that he's "all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment" (p. 40).
The overriding reason for dismissing the truth-value of religious claims is the authors' commitment to methodological naturalism, and the merits of that methodology is defended again and again in their essays. Part I uses the method to deny the cogency of design and cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Part II uses the method to criticize ID and creationism. Part III offers the most explicit defenses of naturalism found in the volume. Part IV focuses on the NOMA thesis. Part V applies the naturalist/physicalist method to questions of after-death existence. Part VI offers natural history explanations for the popularity of religious belief. Part VI offers essays that find great meaning and purposefulness in looking at the world through the lens of methodological naturalism.
As one would imagine, the quality of the articles is uneven--the contributions by Feynman and Lovelock, for example, are so flimsy that one wonders why they were included in the first place--but overall quite good. Especially noteworthy are the essays by Victor Stenger on the anthropic principle, Quentin Smith on big bang, Dennett on scientific method, the debate between Gould and Dawkins on NOMA, and Morton Hunt on the biological roots of God-belief. Editor Paul Kurtz's introduction to the collection is excellent.
My only reservation about the collection is that none of the authors really do a critical meta-analysis of methodological naturalism. An argument could be made that such an inquiry is outside the volume's scope. But it seems to me that an essay devoted to an explicit scrutiny of the strengths and limitations of naturalism as a method--and perhaps also a comparison of it methodological to ontological naturalism--would've been helpful.
 Outstanding collection
This is an all star collection of essays by some very eminent scientists and others, including Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, James Lovelock, Daniel Dennett, etc. Thrown in for "balance" or fairness are essays by some others who espouse views decidedly not congenial with those of Editor Paul Kurtz, who is the founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
Most noticeable among the latter is William A. Dembski a mathematician and a well known proponent of Intelligent Design. I want to start with his essay which is entitled, "Skepticism's Prospects for Unseating Intelligent Design."
Immediately in the title we see employed one of the familiar tactics of the now discredited creationists, namely a statement presented slyly as "a given" about something that is in fact untrue. Dembski has skeptics (or actually evolutionary biology) attempting to "unseat" Intelligent Design. This is bit like the tail trying to wag the dog. The main thrust of Dembski's argument is that more Americas believe in design than in evolution. This "counting heads" sort of argument is obviously not science. It is an attempt to politicize science, to make what is true dependent upon what a majority of people think is true.
Dembski writes, "To allow an unevolved intelligence a place in the world is, according to skepticism, to send the world into a tailspin. It is to exchange unbroken natural law for caprice and thereby destroy science." (p. 91)
This is insincere since what Dembski really is saying is "To allow God a place..." Science would be glad to allow God a place in the world if it were somehow established that God exists. So far, after many, many centuries of trying, no one has been able to provide any evidence that God exists. Furthermore if God should become scientifically manifested, the skeptic's world would not be thrown into a tailspin. Rather skeptics would have a little less to be skeptical about!
What Dembski is really asserting here is the simple statement "If God exists, then skeptics think science will be destroyed." It's really laughable how the euphemistic expressions for God that the Intelligence Designers contort themselves into tend to turn their prose into babblelese.
Dembski finishes with some bogus claims for ID, some satirical "action points" for skeptics, and then returns to his main theme: "Poll after poll indicates that for most people evolution does not provide a compelling vision of life and the world." (p. 97)
Well, science move aside! The people have voted! Reminds me of the bumper sticker, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."
More typical of the profound thought and expression in the book is the brilliant essay by Steven Weinberg entitled, "A Designer Universe?" This essay includes the famous statement: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." (p. 40)
Another nice Weinbergian expression is this as a kind of comment on the idea that God gave humans free will as a way to account for evil in the world while maintaining an all powerful and benevolent God: "It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be murdered in order to provide an opportunity for free will for Germans, but even putting that aside, how does free will account for cancer? Is it an opportunity of free will for tumors?" (p. 38)
Still another is this as a counter to the idea of God the Designer: "if...you believe in a God who is jealous, or loving, or intelligent, or whimsical, then you still must confront the question `Why?'" (p. 38) Consequently, such a God is not the entire answer and really begs the question, "Who designed him?"
This point is generalized by asking "Why is this theory compelling and not another? Why quantum mechanics and not Newtonian mechanics?" Weinberg concludes, "So there seems to be an irreducible mystery that science will not eliminate." (p. 33) This mystery, this uncertainty, is what creationists would like to eliminate. But I believe the mystery is part of the human condition and something to revel in, not something to sweep under the rug with authoritarian certainty.
Another outstanding essay is by Victor J. Stenger, "Anthropic Design: Does the Cosmos Show Evidence of Purpose?" He concludes with this beautiful view of the cosmos: "The hundred billion galaxies of our visible universe, each with a hundred billion stars, is but a grain of sand on the Sahara that exists beyond our horizon, grown out of that single, original bubble of false vacuum. An endless number of such bubbles can very well exist, each itself nothing but a grain of sand on the Sahara of all existence. On such a Sahara, nothing is too improbable to have happened by chance." (p. 45)
One of the most straightforward and appealing statements in favor of science is this from David A. Shotwell in his essay "From the Anthropic Principle to the Supernatural": "If you admit the supernatural into your calculations, anything goes. That is why a supernatural explanation is useless to a scientist, however pious he may be on Sundays. It provides no direction for research, suggests no testable hypotheses, and gives no reason to expect one result rather than another...." (p. 49)
I'm running out of space, but be sure and read Daniel Dennett's profound and witty homage to science entitled "Why Getting It Right Matters: How Science Prevails." Here's a quote: "Alongside our tools for agriculture, building, warfare, and transportation, we have created a technology of truth: science." (p. 156)
Here's another about "a standard of truth [from Plato] to be aspired to by all truth seekers." This standard is "heavily relied upon, even in matters of life and death--by the most vigorous opponents of science. (Or do you know a church that keeps track of its flock, and their donations, without benefit of arithmetic?)" (p. 157)
 Sincere effort, but illiterate in theology
This book is a collection of essays on the compatability of science and religion. This is an important subject, which we need more intelligent discussion of. The editors of the book are obviously sincere, and obviously trying to give a balanced discussion. A number of the contributors are promient scientists.
None of the contributors, however, are prominent theologians. The editors are well educated in science, but know next to nothing about religion. Thus, a great deal of the book consists of straw-man arguments, where a very intelligent and well-prepared scientist will define religion as extreme irrational fundamentalism and then (big surprise) conclude that it is inferior to the rational wonders of science.
Here is an idea. If you want a real debate, invite the A Team from both sides. If you are going to have Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins from the science side, try to get Cardinal Ratzinger from the religion side. There are many highly educated and very rational American Evangelicals. They are not represented here. The editors of this book, well-meaning as they appear to be, have not troubled themselves to ascertain who the important thinkers are in religion. To be blunt about it, our editors are basically illiterate in religion. They know nothing about either Catholic or Protestant theology.
A number of the essays discussed the proofs of the existence of God. Almost all of them focused exclusively on the Argument from Design, the argument that, since the Universe is extremely complex, it must have been intelligently designed. This particular argument is used frequently by fundamentalists, and the anti-religion crowd is very used to shooting it down with Darwin.
The Argument from Design is not the only proof of the existence of God. In fact, it is a relatively weak and recent proof. In its present form, it dates back to the 18th century.
You want the real proofs of the existence of God, you go to Aristotle (5th century B.C.) and then St. Thomas Aquinas (with a stop over with St. Anselm for the intellectually adventurous.) Aristotle proves the existence of God from the First Cause Argument. Everything is caused by something else. Logically, the chain of causality can not go on forever. Thus, it is has to stop somewhere. Where the chain stops is with that which is not caused, but causes all else. The unmoved mover. This is God.
One or two of the essays acknowledge Aristotle's argument. What was the response? They basically said THIS is not religion; this is too rational. Religion is flat-Earth fundamentalism. This unmoved mover stuff is far too abstract and philosophic to be real religion.
Sorry, guys, you do not get to pick your intellectual opponents. You can not say that I, as a scientist, have just demolished all religion, showing it to be irrational mumbo-jumbo, and then say, but, hey that St. Thomas Aquinas guy, he is not religion; he is too smart. The fact that his name begins with "Saint" ought to tell you that he is on the religion team, and it is not intellectually honest to pretend otherwise. In the end, this book is deeply flawed by its refusal to take religion seriously on its own terms.
Fabulous........
A MUST READ for anyone interested about magisteria of science and religion. Well written essays (as one would expect with Kurtz as the editor) presenting both sides of this discussion. Never more relevant than today when religionists are making the claim about "biblical science", "creation science" (an oxymoron) ad infinitum. America can be a strange land where mythology and fact are allowed to mingle in some minds. This book will make you THINK.
 My goodness
Yeah this is not a biased approach at all!! My eyes are rolling up in my head from the massive quantity of sarcasm....
This is not a good approach at all.....
Money is a valuable thing... don't waste it on this book.
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