Science, Religion, and the Surrounding Confusion.
 

So I'm backsatge with the church band in between sets, and we're talking about how military technology has changed throughout history. And somebody says "I wonder who were the first people who were farming their fields, and then one day decided that they also wanted their neighbor's land, so they went and took it? Because that is essentially what war is."

So I replied that a really early example of that was when we pushed the neaderthals out of central Europe and into colder climates where they weren't able to adapt and survive. I didn't think anything of this other than it being as example of the "I will take my neighbor's land" scenario.

An interesting conversation ensued, that I honestly wasn't expecting. A few people were quite confused, and one person told me that "they don't believe that." Someone asked me how long ago I was talking about. Someone asked me what "we" were and I said, you know, Homo Sapiens. Pretty soon the whole room was talking about dinosaurs, Adam and Eve, and carbon dating. I stopped talking at this point and was just listening, fascinated. I really didn't think that mentioning the colonization of Europe by fully modern Homo Sapiens would have anything to do with evolution, which is, I think the hot button that was triggered.

Someone mentioned that dinosaurs weren't mentioned in the Bible. I wondered, then do dinosaurs not exist? Someone mentioned the iceman that was found, who was 5,000 years old, and some discussion about his origins followed. I made a mental note that the Earth is only supposed to be 6,000 years old. The merits of carbon dating, and the fact that it is a decades-old technology were discussed. One sensible person was clearly trying to tell the others that the "debunking" of the precision of carbon dating has already been done by the scientific community itself, who have subsequently devised more accurate methods (I don't think they followed this line of reasoning).

I found myself in the middle of a shocking display: otherwise intelligent people acting out of utter confusion regarding the difference between their spirituality, their religion, and the culture of man-made attachments which masquerade as religious elements. Specifically, the fact that religious people still feel the need to attack science as an enemy (and with such misguided and easily dismissed talking points no less). What the hell does the existence of dinosaurs or neanderthals have to do with your religious faith? People, why are these stupid ideas still in circulation?

Religion and science are different, but complementary methods to interpret our perceptions of the world. There isn't any compelling reason for them to be opposed, unless one simply misunderstands the scope of their application. In my way of thinking, they, and in fact all disciplines, should be completely intertwined.

Do you think that religion trumps science; science trumps religion; one should pick and choose qualities from each depensing on the situation; or that religion and science are not in conflict at all?

That's one cause of war (wanting your neighbor's resources). Another is wanting to impose your beliefs on someone else.

And don't knock the Neanderthals. They run some of the biggest companies on earth.

Like General Motors.

Yeah, thanks for focusing on that part.

You need to become a self-actuated motivationalized self-toucher.

Out of curiosity, what was the age range for those in the discussion? My guess is that those actively involved were between 27 and 36. In the late '80's there was a bit of a craze in the churches. Youth pastors had already been sucked into the "metal is from the devil" BS and it had kind of run it's course. There was only a short lull before youth pastors started hearing about the horrors of evolution. They were taught a handfull of talking points to combat the evil ideas. They accepted the talking points as gospel because very learned men, ahem, had told them about them. Next thing you know youth pastors were telling kids that carbon dating didn't work. (the story was of the carbon date reading that came back @2000 years ago, but it was really a HAT MADE IN 1958!!!) They were told that dinosaurs didn't exist and as proof they were given the story about a particular dinosaur that had been debunked when it was discovered that bones from a number of animals had been combined to form the creature.

Christians who grew up in youth groups during that time heard these stories and some are too intellectually lazy to have ever given them a second thought. So they walk into a conversation with someone who has thought about the issue with their "facts" all lined up unchallenged and ready to go.

Oh, and to answer your question, I don't think one necessarily trumps the other. People with a religious faith line their thoughts and beliefs up with known science all the time. I think for that to happen though, scientists and believers have to be willing to know that they don't know everything.

One time on "This American Life" I think it was, they featured a guy who was mixed race: his father was black, but it was a time when the nice white high-school gal getting knocked up by a black guy was totally unacceptable. So his mom said she got pregnant by this other white guy, which was plausible, and everybody bought it.

The kid comes out dark-skinned, and she comes up with a convenient story about, I dunno, some darker Italian heritage or American Indian in her background; everybody buys this and that becomes the story.

The guy looks in the mirror and sees black features. He IS half African-American. All his friends ask him about it, sometimes people say right to him: "hey dude, you're half black!" And sometimes he wonders WTF? But the importance of maintaining the story, in his head, is so powerful that he shuts out those thoughts. I think it took him 30 years for him to finally ask his mother, at which time she revealed all.

It doesn't even have to be right in front of your face. It can be your face! Maintaining your story is so important that you will find a way to shut out every contradictory fact.

So, what fake things do YOU believe?

I had a guy make a snide comment once, that outed him as a creationist.

This was a bit awkward at the time, because he was commenting on a script we were recording for a science curriculum.

That he wrote.

He works for a textbook company, and is personally responsible for large parts of the science curricula that regularly get adopted by states across the nation. But he's a closet creationist, doesn't believe a word of what he does, every day. It was so weird.

That is strange, Clod. I wonder how he comes to terms with the fact that he is, by way of his belief and profession, a lifetime liar. Is it OK to deny your beliefs if denying them is your way of making a living? I don't think Jesus would have thought so.

It made me think of my friend, a wonderful person who, like me, doesn't mind a good party. She's Catholic (and I am teh artist formerly known as Catholic) and we were talking religion one night and she mentioned she figured it was better to believe because if you don't believe and find out you're wrong you're in big trouble. I wondered if that makes any sense for the religious: default believing just in case you're right? That, to me, is not really faith, and therefore no more valid than my agnostic wonderings. I did not say as much to her.

Where's the confusion?

Science is about what is empirical, religion is about what isn't.

I'll never get why people can't resolve that. If there's evidence for something it is no longer a faith issue.

Isn't this in the bible?

these people don't believe in Neanderthals?

I'm surprised sometimes by how believers and non-believers have a penchant for disproving the other. They really seem to go for the throat too.

I do see a conflict between religion and science. Science and religion give conflicting views for the nature of some very basic things about our world.

On the other hand I don't see how a guy or gal who can understand the Copenhagen interpretation of the gold foil experiment could possibly discount out of hand spirituality in the universe. (Shit, anyone who understands any interpretation of the facts of Quantum Mechanics for that matter.)

I don't understand it. In fact I have never heard of it.
I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Well played. What the non-spiritual amongst us would say is that spirituality has been the explanation for every single phenomenon of nature that we didn't understand, why the sun comes up every morning, why a woman gets pregnant... right up until we did understand it. So the existence of things we don't have an explanation for is no evidence of anything, other than we're still in the process and there are things we don't know.

If we've moved the bar all the way up to particle physics being the bit we don't understand, it would be a cop out to just fill in the blanks with a God.

Edit, but I think I can still see room for spirituality in this very scientific viewpoint - if the last piece is "now who set all this into motion, and why?"

Ooh, better watch out, that's like two small steps away from clapping your hands to the hymnals and telling LJ that God wants you to have a new PT Cruiser. :)

Exactly, everything is the way God made it, often through his helper, Mother Nature. :D
Humans are slowly unraveling the mysteries of how it all works. But the fact remains, it worked the same before, and after, we figured it out.
Darwin's theory of evolution, always a bone of contention, simply means Darwin is generally credited with being the first, (he wasn't) to figure out how it works. He didn't cause it folks, just figured out how it works, that's all.
I don't see any conflict, except with the Jewish mythology of the old testament.

When I was in college taking geology, people didn't quite believe in plate tectonics, either. Oh, they espoused it as a theory, but wouldn't go far enough to actually commit.

and i'll be damned if i buy into that crackpot theory, cloud.

'xactly. It's Poseidon Earth Shaker!

It was weird, because you could tell the professors believed in it, but they weren't allowed to teach it as accepted scientific fact; they had to teach it along with --- whatever the hell the theory was before then--magma displacement?

. . . No, that's Hunt for Red October, darn.

Agreed.

Where the hell did you go to school, Cloud? Pangea?

Science and faith are mutually exclusive. Some people are just so frightened that they put blinders on themselves and cannot or will not see anything outside of their own narrowly based view of things. When I was in junior high, my parents made the mistake of placing me in a school run by a branch of the Luthern church. The pastor blithely told us that God created the fossils. End of discussion.

More recently, I happened to encounter a woman who is a member of the Pentecostal faith. She described with much enthusiasm how God sends unbaptized infants to burn in hell. That brand of "spirituality" makes me sick. I was challenged to explain my own point of view, but I wasn't going to touch that one with a ten foot burning bush. I merely said to her, "I respect your belief, but I do not share it." Even that statement was incendiary. Shereplied angrily, "Its not my belief, its God's own truth."

Whatever.

If you want to stop her in her tracks just ask her to show you the scripture that crap came from. This doesn't invite an argument about the truthfulness of THE faith, it only asks her to support her faith with evidence from the basis of her faith.

there is a lot of "christian" theology that has no basis whatsoever in the Bible. so where does it come from?

Continental drift! that was it!

hey, i vaguely remember that.

From the same place that the stuff that IS in the Bible came from. Somebody thought it, somebody said it, somebody wrote it down.

But I understand your point. I don't think that the Bible says an overwhelming majority of what I hear people describing as the basis for their faith.

OK, point taken Flint. You don't believe in the Bible as the God authored, man written word... yadayadayada. but the people you are having the discussion with DO. If they believe that the Bible is the word of God and they further believe that man's ideas are of no significance next to God's, ask them to show you where their theological points come from - chapter and verse.

Yeah, I understand. I diverged from your point, but it's a good point. And that is how you should do it. If someone is speaking with something as their specific basis, then they should be able to answer in those terms. If they can't do that then the problem isn't the book or the religion, it's that the person is a sloppy thinker.

But it isn't just an innocent mistake--where did these ideas come from? Which was your question.

It's funny, I'm pretty open about being an atheist, even fact to face.

People will ask me (usually rather loudly and shrilly), "Why do you hate God?"

I tell them, "I don't have a problem with God, it's you I don't like."

It's an easy mistake for them to make.

They've so wrapped themselves up in dogma that they forget that faith is an internal revelatory event. Faith isn't up for debate, everything else is though.

Not true, it depends on what your faith is in. I might go along with, Science and the church leadership are mutually exclusive, though.

I would think that the religious community's negative knee-jerk reaction to scientific ideas stems from way back when those type of ideas seriously threatened the 'Church's' power...for instance, when Galileo proposed that the earth revolved around the sun. The Church didnt play around...threats like these were handled.

It is mind-blowing to me, that, people who are now so thoroughly exposed to science, can still discount it in favor religious dogma.

I've finally come to the realization that the human race isnt really all that evolved yet. And may never be.

Pico, the reaction to Galileo by "The Church", although I think you're right, refers to one religious community.

Just a point of order, but the church's reason for the Injunction against Galileo was that he was teaching and gathering evidence (with his shiny new telescope) for Copernicus' heliocentric theory, not that he proposed it himself.
:)

Bruce : I know, but isn't that the church that 'fathered' a lot of our current religious communities? (Here in the States, I mean). This was just a thought that occurred to me as I was reading the posts in this thread. I'm still always baffled...just like Flint is, by how difficult is to get people off religious dogma even when it cant be substantiated or goes against what is considered common knowledge now (like that the Grand Canyon is only 4,500 years old).

Jinx: I stand corrected..:o . I was close...though. :p

Hey ya'll I must recant. I've made a grave error, the experiment that I had in mind in my post is the "Double Slit Experiment."

My apologies. I'm getting old, and have been blown up one too many times.

Hi guys! It's been a long time.

I really must disagree with the sentiment that religion and science can peacefully coexist. They are mutually exclusive. The reason is, they both speak to the same thing: to answer questions about the nature of the universe. This is the reason they are so frequently at odds.

The only reason for religion is to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. The so called "God of the Gaps". Anytime there is a gap in knowledge, just plug in God.

Even the existence of God himself is a scientific hypothesis that could be proven if he actually existed.

To those who would suggest that God created everything, I would ask, who created God? Any being powerful enough to create a universe must necessarily be more complex than that universe himself. So, where did he come from? If the universe must have been created because it's complex, well God would have to be complex to, so who created him? All this does is attempt to answer a mystery with a mystery. Why not just say you don't know, or fill the gaps in your knowledge in with provable facts?

Oh! And just to hit on Flint's point on the Neatherthals, I don't think there is concensus among Physical Anthropologists that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens ever came into contact. Although their fossils are found in the same regional area within the same timeline, the dating method they use only has a certain time resolution. So, when the weather changed, the Neatherthals could have moved north on their own, and then the Homo Sapiens could have moved in a few years later. As far as I know, it wasn't proven that they ever saw each other. It's only circumstantial evidence. Interesting nonetheless.

Not "could be proven if he actually existed"

But "would be proven if he actually exists"

That, I think, would be a proper statement of the scientific method. Otherwise, you're putting the conclusion into the hypothesis.

Well, I didn't mean to say I was stating a hypothesis, just that one could be formed.

OK here's the hypothesis: "God exists".

Go to it!

Ya, too bad he doesn't exist. If he did, there'd be evidence of it and it could be proven.

In any system there are statements that are true that can not be proven.

Such as?

Yer a Pooopy Head !!

cchttp://www.research.ibm.com/people/h...n00-goedel.pdf

r.j I've read that paper, and I think they made a fundamental error in using the "0" symbol. See here for further discussion.

Well you can't prove a negative, so you can't prove God doesn't exist.

We appear to be no further along this problem.

:corn:

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Yes, but through the reformation and subsequent splits, the church isn't The church anymore.
Probably lack of education and laziness.
Coberst expounded on the value of a "quest for disinterested knowledge". There is a whole lot of people that aren't interest in learning anything besides the sports scores, or what time Wheel of Fortune is on, if it doesn't relate to their job.

There is the problem that scientific knowledge is a moving target, constantly being updated, often changing what they previously thought was true. If you just catch the headlines, it can lead to confusion and mistrust of the scientific community.
For example, I'm hearing a lot of that about Global Warming. People saying, hey they said global cooling was a problem, then warming is a problem... those scientists don't know shit.

Oh, and juju works for the devil itself. :lol2:

Quite so, and as HLJ points out here, that problem will be with us forever. Its just really discouraging when even our government encourages it as has happened with the Bush administration.

Hmmm. Good point. Another aspect of that problem is that its hard to trust the motivations behind the people or organizations that are coming up with all these 'new knowledge' bits and pieces....for instance how one day a group of food is considered bad for you, and then the next day its great for you - you just wonder how much that particular food lobby paid for that bit of reporting. Just like the fundies would assign motive to the people who espouse evolutionary theory.

Impeccable, irrefutable, logical, self-actualized reasoning. Who can argue with that?

Well, at the risk of arguing semantics, I disagree. Faith is jumping right in and believing something without any proof that the belief is valid. Science, on the other hand, demands proof. I can say that I place my faith in science, but what I'm really saying is that logical reasoning leads me to accept the conclusions of science.

Absolutely. Scientists are only human and the quest for funding can be desperate. Its always interesting to see who funded the latest and greatested scientific study and what that study "proves". When I went to grad school, one of my favorite courses was one I came to call "Lying with Statistics." The University called it "Biometry." I was very impressed how a change of sampling technique or statistical model could completely skew the results of a study 180 degrees from what a different method would show. Its no wonder that the public is skeptical.

So what's the problem? Are you incapable of determining where faith vs proof should be applied?
I will grant you, some people seem to have that handicap, but it's not by any means mandatory. Therefore I disagree with juju's assertion that science and religion are mutually exclusive.

The problem is that there is no way to determine a situation where faith *should* be applied, ostensibly because there isn't one.

Faith-based people and proof-based people start out thinking in similar methods. They observe the present (lets say we are looking at a bird), and both attempt to determine the reason for its existance.

A faith-based person concludes that God made it, while a proof-based person attempts to deduce a chain of events which would bring about such an end result. The proof-based person requires that this chain of events have clear causation between them, while the faith-based person requires no evidence.

At this point the problem with the faith-based approach becomes painfully clear. If proof is not required to conclude God is responsible for the bird, it is equally valid to conclude that the bird was brought into being by a cinder block. A faith-based approach is in essence the decision that answers do not matter, and fantasy is as equally valid as reality.


What astonishes me the most is that society functions as well as it does with large swaths of the population choosing to be selectively bat-shit crazy.

There is no faith (as in religion) without serious indocrination....or as I like to say, brain-washing.

I must disagree. I can only speak for myself. I am not a Christian, nor do I attend any religious services or formal training and indoctrination. I do have an active spiritual life, and have much in the way of spiritual experience. I am not driven to convince anyone that if they do not have what I have they will rot in any kind of a hell. My experience is what drives any faith I may have in the spiritual. Much like my parents once telling me that if I put my hand on the hot stove it would be burned, I had to have the experience to build the faith that I have today that my hand will indeed be burned on the hot stove. I need not put my hand on the stove anymore, once was enough.

It is my observation that people without faith are people with out experience to build any faith. That's ok, in my way of thinking I could not expect someone without the experience to have any faith, and I don't. How could I?

It would be a mistake though, to believe that my spiritual life detracts and is incompatible with anything I find in the scientific world. I, myself, find no conflict between the two.

I don't think I understand what you're saying here... and I would like to.

RJ, let me soften what I said a bit. Take out the words serious and brain-washing first of all (although, that is how I feel about most religion). Faith is based on experience, it does not come from nothing. Nobody ever really 'jumps right in and believes something without any proof that the belief is valid'. First there is an experience that provides a basis for the belief which reinforces the faith in it. For instance, your experience has helped to build your spirituality. However, I think that most people are basing their faith on their upbringing and, perhaps in part, societal peer pressure.

This is a classic logical fallacy, that someone who disagrees with you must only do so because they have not examined the evidence. You have just met someone who you can see has examined the evidence and arrived at a different conclusion than yours... and yet your response is that he is the exception, all the rest of the people who disagree with you still must have not actually thought about the issue for themselves. "Soften" the words all you want, you just readily admitted that you're not willing to be wrong.

But you can have a bonus point for not using the word "sheep" yet. Congratulations. :rolleyes:

I disagree.
No, I say that bird evolved from a dinosaur, because that's the way God set the system up.
No, I require evidence that the bird evolved from the dinosaur, and not a platypus, but that doesn't affect my faith.
The only thing that is "painfully clear", is you are trying to pigeon hole billions of people into the constricts that you've formed in your head, on how anyone with faith should think.

Then by your own reasoning, maybe it's you that's "bat-shit crazy, for assuming you know what that large swath of the population thinks.

So if your agree it's education, and if you don't it's brain washing.:rolleyes:

People most certainly do jump right in and believe. That's why its called faith. I'll agree that people do have spiritual experiences, but not every "true believer" necessarily has seen a burning bush. Nor do people who are raised in a certain faith always stay with it as adults. In fact, many people's early experiences with religion turn them off completely to any kind of spirituality. This was true in my case for a long time, and I have met many others who felt the same as I did. As far as peer pressure, it seems to me that modern society influences people more toward atheism or agnosticism than belief.

I also don't think that people who attempt to follow a spiritual path are "bat shit crazy." There are many intelligent, thoughtful and moral people who seek a path that transcends the self-seeking, amoral society that we live in. What's so bat-shit about that?

A crazy person believes that the cinder block created the bird. A really crazy person believes that because they know the bird came from an egg, their belief that the egg was created by a cinder block is the better for it.

The point isn’t *where* you choose to fill in reality from your imagination, the point is that you are doing it at all. There are many things in this world we do not yet know, and many more things that we will learn. Filling in the gaps in our knowledge with make-believe for no good reason is counterproductive to say the least.

Are you suggesting that large swaths of the population hold unfathomable beliefs? Or perhaps that faith itself is unfathomable and so immune to question? I don’t know what the term is, but I am pretty sure calling a logical “no man’s land” like that isn’t sound debate.

Since you're the only person I've ever heard say a bird comes from a cinder block, I have to wonder about your thought process. :eyebrow:

If I remember correctly, you are the one saying, "that large swaths of the population hold unfathomable beliefs". If they are unfathomable to you, but you choose to deride and belittle them anyway, that's not debate, that's ignorance.