Creation, Evolution, and faith

As always, religious types constantly prate of "non-scientific evidence", but run and hide when asked to produce any.The metaphysicist has no laboratory, but refuses to admit it.

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I do think though that it is deeply inconsistent for a scientist to hold religious beliefs. To hold one set of scientific beliefs which are logical, reasoned and evidenced, whilst simultaneously holding beliefs that are devoid of logic, reason and evidence will always be inconsistent and contradictory.

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How is this inconsistent? I don't see inconsistency, but difference. Is it inconsistent for someone to believe that a chemical analysis and a literary analysis of the same book are both true? This is the same sort of thing. There is no fundamental conflict in what the two are saying, they are just different approaches dealing with different data in different ways.

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Yes, science can only address the natural world, not the supernatural. But this doesn't mean the two approaches are incompatible, it just means that they are different. They use different methods and ask different questions.

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This would be true if religion limited itself to the metaphysical or philosophical. It doesn't though. Religion blithely makes claims about the natural world, mostly without evidence. That is incompatible with a scientific approach.

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Religions DO make some silly, indefensible claims from time to time, as do scientists (e.g. Dawkins). But can you give a specific example of "claims about the natural world" which are central to Christianity but are "incompatible with a scientific approach?" I can't think of any. I believe any perceived incompatibility is due to one of two things:
1) misinterpretations of either nature or Scripture, making them say more than they should, or
2) an a priori metaphysical position which is really the source of the conflict (i.e. the incompatibility is not with "a scientific approach" but with the metaphysical position #2 that I outlined earlier, i.e. that the universe is self-generated, self-sustaining and self-operating according to built-in inviolate laws)

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Perhaps they are orthogonal to one another, but not incompatible.

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They are not orthogonal. Religious claims about the physical world overlap with science's area of utility. If religion were to drop these claims, perhaps you would have a point, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

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Yes, there are areas of overlap. Just as the chemist and literary scholar overlap one another when they analyze the same book. But I don't see how this is incompatible. Can you explain it?

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A scientist can be religious without any fundamental conflict between these two approaches to truth.

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Yes. By ignoring the contradiction and just not worrying too much about it. Like I said, cognitive dissonance.

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I deny that there is any cognitive dissonance in my views of science and religion. Absolutely none. Can you explain where you think I have cognitive dissonance? Or Newton, Kepler, Boyle, et al? As above, I believe there is no inherent "cognitive dissonance." Any that appears is due to misinterpretations or to an a priori metaphysical position.

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But I don't see how this implies incompatibility. For example, a chemist can analyze the paper and ink of a book and describe it in as much detail as desired. A literary scholar can describe the content and meaning of the same book in as much detail as desired. Both are describing the same book, but in different ways with very different approaches. They are asking different questions about the same book. Their approaches are different and orthogonal, but what is "incompatible" about this?

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Well for a start, it's not a valid metaphor. As I have said, religion makes physical claims. Your example would be valid only if the literary critic attempted to tell the chemist how literary criticism had led him to understand features of the chemistry of ink that the chemist had missed.

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Actually, I think it's a very good metaphor. I first saw it used by Donald Mackay, and John Lennox has also used it. It may be due to C.S. Lewis, but I'm not sure about this.

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Further, the two approaches you present, literary criticism and chemistry are absolutely incompatible. No amount of literary criticism is ever going to help us better understand the chemistry of ink. No amount of chemistry is ever going to illuminate a narrative. The methods employed by literary criticism (a branch of the arts or humanities) could never be accepted in science. Nor would scientific methods benefit the literary world. Art is not science. The two are completely incompatible.

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It appears that you and I are using the words "compatible" and "incompatible" differently. I agree with the gist of what you say here, but I would call this a difference rather than an incompatibility. So let's avoid the word "incompatible" and use the word "contradictory." What I mean is that the two approaches do not contradict one another. They can both be held without contradiction or conflict.

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Another major problem is the claim to accuracy and reality that religion makes, a claim that is not made on anywhere near the same scale in the arts. Religion makes great claims to truth. Literary criticism can only ever offer opinion.

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Yes, I agree.

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The best you can claim here is that the two strands of thought, religion and science, are mutually complimentary. But what exactly does religion bring to the table? Any value that religion might have as a guide to philosophy is fatally undermined by its ridiculous truth-claims, its constant attempts to overstep its bounds and its complete lack of any visible logical grounding. It is, at best, an irrelevance, in practise, a hindrance.

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What does does religion bring to the table? How about the motivation to do science at all?! Christian faith was a primary motivation for the development of modern science. Nature was deemed worthy of study because God created and maintained it, and because a consistent God would run His universe in a consistent way, describable by "laws."

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Again, I must ask; do you consider serial murder to be compatible with Christianity? There have been Christian serial killers. Is serial killing "orthogonal" with Christianity? Just because a person is capable of practising both does not mean that they should be considered complimentary. Some things are just not a very good fit for each other.

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I don't see how this relates; it's not the same. I was referring to two different approaches or bodies of knowledge. You are asking about a specific action and a religion; these are different categories. Is the belief that serial murder is a good thing compatible with Christianity? No. Can one practice both? Yes, but not without serious internal conflicts.

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If by "set aside" you mean "not appeal to in scientific explanations", I agree. But if you mean "not believe" I disagree.

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I mean the former. Although I can't help but see a gaping logical hole in the practise of basing one set of beliefs about the physical world upon reason and observation, only to cast that reason aside when it comes to religious beliefs. It is that gulf between the two different ways of thinking about things that I feel lies at the heart of the incompatibility.

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Religious belief does NOT cast reason aside, as I thought you had agreed; look back at the earlier pages of this thread if you have forgotten this.

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How are religious scientists practicing "cognitive dissonance" or believing "mutually exclusive" ideas any more than a person who does both a chemical and a literary analysis of the same book?

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Because they are holding two sets of beliefs about the universe, one based on evidence, the other based on... whatever it is that you religious chaps base your ideas on... that you refuse to tell me about...

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How is this any more "cognitive dissonance" that believing the chemical and literary analyses of a book? Can you explain more clearly where you see the "dissonance?"

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Placing two sets of ideas on roughly level pegging (as religious scientists such as Francis Collins do) despite the fact that one is evidenced and the other is not is cognitive dissonance.

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Have you read Collins' book The Language of God, where he discusses the evidence that led him to believe? If not, I recommend it. If so, perhaps YOU are the one evidencing "cognitive dissonance" in denying that he had any evidence?Can you explain exactly where you see "cognitive dissonance" in Francis Collins' position?

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Of course, you will say that the religious beliefs are supported. But you won't say what by, so I can only conclude that religion is not supported by logic or reason.

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You just mentioned Francis Collins; if you really wanted to understand the logic, reason, and evidence for faith, I suppose you could start by looking at what Collins says about it.

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2) The theistic metaphysical position that I outlined earlier doesn't try to place God in the "gaps" of our scientific knowledge, but it does the opposite; it puts Him in the science that we do understand! The more we understand about the laws of nature, the better appreciation we have for how God actually operates His universe on a minute-by-minute basis. Scientific advances don't push God into the corner; they bring Him more into the open.

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Hi KBertsche,If God is in the science and operating the universe then God is interacting with the physical world. You're actually making a particularly strong statement here about the nature of the physical world, namely that it is directed minute to minute by God.This must be a God of the gaps! The only way God can play this role is in some aspect of the physical world. He can't be playing this role in a purely spiritual domain.For example, if he is directing the universe minute by minute, he must be intervening in the events that take place in the universe. He can't be doing this in areas where we understand the physical laws that apply and where we are making observations at the time, or we'd notice. Are you really saying that God is only doing this when we can't see him do it?I'm not sure whether you believe that God is the source of and upholder of physical laws (sorry If you mentioned this upthread - I haven't read the whole discussion). If so, then this also is a God of the gaps argument. It's only possible to hold this view because we don't know the origin of physical laws. I think it's an open question as to whether we will ever discover understand this scientifically but we cannot rule out the possibility.

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Things that are collectively agreed to exist within objective reality.
-there is always a scientific test that can be done, and has been done, to show that the idea in question actually exists within objective reality
-mountains, trees, animals, planets, stars, cars, computers, scientific theories... all manner of things that are the same for everyone, regardless of personal belief

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I reject this position. You are making science the sole determiner of "objective reality." This is much too broad. Science is limited first to the natural world, and second to scientific investigation of the natural world."Objective reality" is a broader concept and can include more than the natural world, e.g. the spiritual world. If the spiritual world is objectively real, your definition would try to make it part of science, which violates methodological naturalism. Fields such as history deal with the natural world using methods other than scientific investigation. Your definition would try to include history as part of science.

I don't think you understand, my category has nothing to do with what actually is "objective reality". That may be something that we can never fully understand.My category is about what we collectively agree to exist within objective reality. I tried to make it bigger in case you accidentally missed it.You cannot refute my category by simply saying you don't like it. I don't really care about what you like and don't like. There is a very simple, easy way to refute it, however. All you have to do is think of one, single idea that is "collectively agreed to exist within objective reality" that cannot be tested by science. I agree, it could. But it certainly isn't collectively agreed upon. In fact, most of the agreement is coming from your imagination. Most people cannot even collectively agree on what a "spiritual world" would actually contain... let alone whether or not one actually exists. Sounds a lot like active imaginations to me. "Objective" is defined by being the same regardless of different people's perspective. If so many different people have so many different perspectives of the "spiritual world"... how are you possibly calling it objective in any way?All you need is one idea to refute such a classification. Can you think of any single idea that is collectively agreed to be a part of objective reality, and yet cannot be tested by science?I don't think you can.
(Hint... "objective reality" is what science was invented to identify...)

It seems to me that many people would agree that mathematics is part of objective reality, yet is entirely non-empirical (i.e. cannot be tested by science).

"Many people" agree that the Christian afterlife exists as well.However, neither idea is collectively agreed to exist within objective reality.Is math truely objective?
Is math objective rules based upon subjective initial axioms?I do not claim to have the answers (I am not a mathematician). I just claim that the answer to such questions is not collectively agreed upon. In fact, I believe that the vast majority would agree that math is not "actually objective" and is more a set of objective regulations that forms from an initial set of subjective axioms.Like judicial laws. Laws are objective in the sense that we all (vast majority) agree to them and they make sense... but they're all based upon initially-agreed upon subjective axioms.

That all depends on what we mean by "collectively agreed". And that depends on what we actually mean by "objective".I was mainly making the point that, in trying to distinguish religion from science, we should be careful to avoid throwing out mathematics, which many scientists find of value.In terms of the thread title "Creation, Evolution, and faith", mathematics does not at all depend on faith. Some (including me) would argue that objectivity is just shared subjectivity anyway.

If lots of people have the same dream has that dream been "objectified" in your view? As a starting point I would suggest "the same for everyone"?

How could two people (never mind "lots of people") have the same dream? But what does "the same for everyone" even mean?

Shared subjectivity?What does it mean to whom?

Yes, I agree. That is "the same for everyone" can really only mean that people all agree, which is to say that they share their subjective judgements.

Well that is the crux of the question here is it not? Why cannot people share experiences like dreams? What is it that makes us think such experiences cannot be objectified? How are they fundamentally different from our expereince of physical reality? You and I can both commonly and independently identify the colour red (ignoring the unnecessary complication of shades and possible colour blindness for one moment). If we did an experiment where we were each given a box of a 1000 coloured cubes and asked to remove all of the red ones we would expect both of us to independently get the same result. We can similarly commonly and independently confirm the wavelength of light this "red" label pertains to.Thus "red" is objective despite the fact that our individual perceptions of red are wholly subjective and unavailable to each other.No?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well they can. However, when we talk of sharing dreams, we are saying that people discuss their dreams with one another. We are not suggesting that they have the same dream. Sure. But that only shows that we can agree on the public use of the word "red". It says nothing about whether we have the same experiences. I have not suggested otherwise. However, your reasoning for this illustrates why I consider "objective" to refer to a shared subjectivity.

But why can they not have the same dream in the same way that they can both consistently identify "red"? What is the difference between the two types of experience? Why can we consistently share "red" but only share our dreams by relating them? It tells us we are consistently talking about the same aspect of reality that exists external to our own minds.