Thread: Religion vs Science

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/BigMiscon.HTM

I've just finished reading this page, which matched rather well against my current thinking. It comes from the scientific side and, like Pratchett's "Darwin's Watch", aims to help those who are arguing against religious literalists. I believe there are some of those here, so it might be interesting :-).

It's not about specific arguments. It's a very high level attempt to give advice on how to argue this case. Specifically, you can't argue effectively without knowing your enemy, and the page claims that many people who e.g. argue for evolution don't fully understand the people they're arguing against.

It stuck in my mind because of one of the conclusions I share with the author: that if you want to argue this case effectively, you're going to have to put a fair amount of effort in. My current personal mindset I referred to earlier is that I honestly can't be bothered - it was fun reading SilverZero's eloquent defence of his literalism, but it's exhausting to challenge him and I don't expect to be able to change his mind. The most I'd be willing to do at the moment is point people at Pratchett's Science of the Discworld (1, 2 & 3), which are literally split half and half between entertainment and genteel but lucid explanations of Science.

At this point I want to tell people not to flame each other in my thread. Unfortunately I don't think this is actually possible without offending someone enough that they start a flamewar anyway (yay, paradox). So I'll just say that my atheist sole received a Christian education, so I love you whatever you think. While the page above appears to avoid namecalling, it was only written for the anti-literalist side. If you do want to join in from the other side, please follow his example and make an effort to stay off the bad words.

It's long and the outline (and content) isn't as clear as it should be. It spoke to me so I'll summarise it here, in a follow-up post for your quoting convenience.

The misconception of the title is often stated by scientists. It is that religious belief is a matter of faith, a very personal sense of truth, as distinct from scientific belief which is about acceptance of theories by virtue of the evidence and arguments that support them.

This is a misconception, because when a literalist (Biblical, Koranic, etc.) explains their belief, they are using that word to mean exactly the same thing that a scientist would in explaining e.g. why they believe in evolution.

The page then suggests that maybe the real difference lies in that when literalists take their Scriptures to be objectively factual and true, they do so with a certainty that scientists would deny is possible to apply to anything, let alone the contents of an entire book penned by human hand and passed down through generations. "There is no imaginable test that could validate the scientific literature in toto for all time. Biblical literalists believe the Bible can be so validated." This second section is difficult to summarise; if you've got questions please read it yourself first.

The middle of the page explains why the obvious simple arguments for science against literalism don't work - in the functional sense that they're not going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you - and tries to suggest alternative strategies.

The page closes by coming back to the "two core issues", Miracles and Holy Writ. The author's conclusion is that we should not try to prove that miracles don't happen and infallible Holy Write doesn't exit. The effective approach is be to explain why science can't accept either as ultimate explanations.

If there was an explicit logical trail it's kinda left hanging at the end here. Presumably it's also necessary to explain why science is valuable - otherwise theres no reason for the literalist not to react by saying "if science can't accept my beliefs into it, then I can't accept science into my beliefs".

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

-Albert Einstein

Originally Posted by sourcejedi

The misconception of the title is often stated by scientists. It is that religious belief is a matter of faith, a very personal sense of truth, as distinct from scientific belief which is about acceptance of theories by virtue of the evidence and arguments that support them.

This is a misconception, because when a literalist (Biblical, Koranic, etc.) explains their belief, they are using that word to mean exactly the same thing that a scientist would in explaining e.g. why they believe in evolution.

When we say that a belief is based on faith, we are literally saying that that belief is not based on evidence.

In order to be convinced that you know the unknowable - that is, the truth about the existence or nonexistence of a God - you need to have faith. This is simply because no one can ever present acceptable evidence in support of or against the idea of a God.

Science is made up of models of the physical world based on evidence and the results of using those models.

Unless you can show me that you do, in fact, have acceptable evidence of a higher being's existence, then you must admit that theists have faith.