Religion Persists In The Face Of Science. It's More Natural

Roughly 500 years back, the science-versus-religion debate took a special turn in the West because of the existence of a monopolistic doctrinal religion that made the pivotal mistake of meddling in empirical matters of fact. The Church’s meddling provided science historians with a long, official list of pronouncements about cosmology and biology, supposedly carrying the warrant of divine revelation, and all proven wrong. Every time the Church has offered an account of how the world behaves that conflicts with science, science has proven it wrong.

And the conflict goes beyond the reliability of the respective bodies of empirical data. Science is a self-correcting system of gathering information whereas religion rests on the suspension of skeptical methods of inquiry. Science has shown religion to be flawed as a reliable method of gathering information about the world.

But religious concepts take up the resources of mental systems that would be there, even were there no religion. Religion is a likely thing given our cognitive dispositions. In contrast, scientific activity is unnatural. Acquiring a scientific database and scientific literacy or sophistication is far more difficult than assuming the representations of religion.

What makes scientific knowledge-gathering special is is not just its departure from intuition or faith, but also the special kind of communication it requires. Scientific progress draws on novel motivational systems, its value misunderstood or belatedly recognized and it some “New Age” quarters, scorned. In other words, scientific activity is both cognitively and socially unlikely, which is why it has only been developed by a small number of people, in a small number of places, for what is only a miniscule part of our evolutionary history.

Exactly!

Hi RicDemian,

You wrote: “The Church’s meddling provided science historians with a long, official list of pronouncements about cosmology and biology, supposedly carrying the warrant of divine revelation, and all proven wrong,”

Could you please detail the list concerning cosmology? I am particularly curious if your list includes Galileo and the Copernican Model.

Sure Ed3. I have a tome called the Routledge Companion To The History of Modern Science, with essays on every major scientific finding and, Church reaction when there was conflict. Give me a chance to skim it and I’ll list the conflicts. The Copernican Revolution was obviously the first and most shattering until Darwin. I’ll either get back in a new post or edit this one tomorrow.

Religion wasn’t always called “religion”.

Science wasn’t always called “science”.

Back in the olden days,
They just called it “truth”,
And forgot about it,
Lol.

Just think back
Thousands of years…

Hi RicDemian,

The reason that I was inquiring about the Copernican model was because I believe that it is a good example of how scientific models go wrong and evolve.

As the chief apologist for this model, Galileo wrote “Dialog Concerning Two Chief World Systems” with its’ erroneous proof of the Copernican model.

The model was first falsified, when it was observed that a body falling from a tower does not move away from its’ base. (It was only later, when vector mechanics were introduced, that this falsification could be removed)

Later, when the predicted positions of the Copernican model were compared with the Ptolemaic model and the observed positions, the Copernican model was by far the worst predictor. (This was primarily due to Copernicus’s assumed circular paths. Latter when the paths were assumed to be elliptical was this falsification was removed).

When Newton developed his theory of Gravity, the equations, using specific simplifying assumptions, finally yielded an elliptical path for the planets with the sun at one of the focal points*.

This means that for over 100 years a comparison of the church’s Geocentric model was preferable to the Copernican model.

With the current model of General Relativity as a back drop, we can note that all reference frames can be considered as valid. I think that one can reasonably question whether or not Copernican model should be preferred.

Pope Urban VIII’s plea to Galileo that he provide a balanced view was probably the most reasonable position.

Personally, I think that the scientific models of gravity are still screwed up (with dark energy and all).

*As a final and incomplete thought, I believe that the Newtonian equations, in and of themselves, do not require a preferred (other than inertial) reference frame.

Or has science proven it right (http://messianic.nazirene.org/science_proves.htm)?

All jokes aside-- the conflict is mostly imaginary, that is, scientists tend to imagine their work upsets the foundation of a religious universe, and the religious tend to see their beliefs as fundamentally at odds with a skeptical analytical truth-procedure.

But you’ve got to admit there’s no logically necessary conflict between faith in science and faith in God. The only conflict is one that occurs in the field of social fantasy, in the political realm where abstract ideas have real consequences. And while there’s enormous pressure to believe in the dominant fantasy, there’s no reason we can’t assert both (a) that the universe follows laws which can be approximated by rules which make sense to human beings and (b) that there exists a supreme being.

Interesting, because both science and religion see themselves as serving important social roles, it does often seem like they’re obliged to try to say: “Look at me! I’m explaining this better!” Which seems like a rather meaningless pissing contest: the better explanation is not necessarily the one that’s more true, it’s that one that’s the most useful. Try as we might to attain “objectivity,” eventually we have to come to grips with the fact that all our thought is immediately politicized.

I think this is a-historical. Why would science be in any way unnatural? This is to presume that humans are not part of nature–that we’ve got man AND nature. That conjunction seems illogical; perhaps just as illogical as the division between man AND God?

Back to the notion of an explanation-system’s worth being in its usefulness rather than in its inherent truth-value, I’m going to argue that both God and the Universe (as abstract totalities) are the labor of the unconscious-- our minds construct the universe without being fully aware; we don’t see what’s real, we see what we think is real. The difference is critical, because it means that no experience is pure or unmediated: all experience, all culture, all sensation has to be interpreted. Science is no different. It’s just as natural as religion, moreso because their aims are so remarkably similar (understanding and improving the human world,) and thus their justifications are just as “universal”…

Why can’t we view science and religion as mutually exclusive world views which lead to different types of knowledge and have different standards of proof?

Because everyone either explicitly or implicitly knows they use the same logic and are similarly dependent on ritualistic behaviour.

Science has progressed since the earliest discoveries. The scientific method incorporates a self-corrective, whereby a theory is received and retained as truth as long as it withstands challenge. How has religion progressed? Religion is not a body of tested knowledge, but rather articles accepted on faith, or purported divine revelation. Science has provided cures to diseases to mark as part of its progress. What progress can you credit religion with?

Science has progressed since the earliest discoveries. The scientific method incorporates a self-corrective, whereby a theory is received and retained as truth as long as it withstands challenge. How has religion progressed? Religion is not a body of tested knowledge, but rather articles accepted on faith, or purported divine revelation. Science has provided cures to diseases to mark as part of its progress. What progress can you credit religion with?

Take contraception as an example. Tne birth control pill, a product of scientific research, is proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church. Denied of reproductive freedom, the talents of half our polulation might go unfully realized. Science unleashes the potential, but religion erects barricades.

Now please tell us what in the world you mean by science and religion “explicitly or implicitly sharing the same logic…” Science does indeed employ logic, and it had better be explcit, because a scientist’s subconscious mental processes are of no interest to the scientific enterprise. If religion uses logic it is only incidental, because religion is premised on the suspension of reason and the acceptance of the illogical, unprovable, often stupid, on faith and the delusion of divine revelation.

[b]“Fantasy Persists In The Face Of Reality. It’s More Natural.”~

“Propaganda Presists In The Face Of Culture. It’s More Natural.”~

“Death Eventually Presists In The Face Of All Efforts To Live. It’s More Natural.”~

“Nature Presists In The Face Of The Unnatural. It’s More Natural.”~[/b]

:laughing:

When a toddler throws a snow-ball at your truck,
He’s gathering empirical data.
Carefully observing the results from repeated tests and experiments, on various subjects, until a stable theory can be formulated.

:laughing:

Religion does not have technological invention as its goal, dude.
As far as christianity is concerned,
You’ve made “progress” when you’ve completely conformed into specific moral paradigms.

“Progress” is the later eventuality of anything desired.

Dan and Stupidity interchangably persist in the face of science, reason, ,logic, and Ric Demian. They, like excrement, are more natural. OH yeah, LOL. ILP that was nice of you to type such lengthy verse. You have a nice little talent for an unnamed subgenre. Next time, maybe try a haiu. “Someonesatthedoor” persists in the face of Dan. They’e getting down and natural. LOL huh?