the difference between the question How and the question Why

any thoughts on what the difference between the two questions are?

I have an unrefined idea that why should always presuppose some kind of consciousness (exact definition of this conciousness/sentience I have not defined yet) in it’s answer and that if you use it incorrectly then you get into problems - such as the current belief in the incongruity between science and religion.

Science for me only ever answers How

Religion tries to answer the question Why (hence it always ending up with some form of god like being)

(do not think that I am in anyway religious in any orthodox sense) My ultimate goal is to try and show the the question why is actually an unimportant one

Why is another way of saying how. Why and how are the same. Example why is the world ? because god made it. so god is the first cause, so how did the world exist, by god, how ? by him creating the world.

There is really no difference between the two concepts of why and how, they are all descriptions, paintings, quirk cause and effects, quirk symbols, prisoners of language.

“why” is asking for reason…

“how” is asking for method…

sometimes they are the same… sometimes they are not.

“Why did you hit me in the face?” is asking for a reason…

“how did you hit me in the face?” is asking for method…

science does in fact ask “how”… because science presupposes the non-existence of god… and therfor there is no reason behind the way things work… they just work that way… end of story… so all that is interresting is “how”…

thanks for the reply, interesting

i like the reason/method distinction, I think the term reason is too loaded with previous philosophical baggage to be usable (without a dissertation’s worth of definition) but is a good starting point.

i’m not sure i agree that science presupposes the non existence of god, here we fall into the science as religion problem (science being held up as some way to dismiss or build up the idea of religion). the true scientific method would remain neutral to the idea of whether a god exists.

I don’t think that that is true. What would be your evidence for that?

Actually it’s not a matter of agreement… the scientific method as a rule presupposes the non-existence of god… otherwise why would scientists give darwin a second thought? if the “god” theory was accepted?

the key in science which in the ultimately makes “god” utterly unscientific is “Occam’s razor”. There is no phenomena human kind has ever observed to which the simplest explination was “god”… nor can there ever be such a thing…

science vs. religion is false though… because science does not outright “disprove” god… it simply will not take god for granted in it’s theories… and as stated before… it could never propose god as one either… so god is effectivly excluded from science from the begining.

Some religions will wish to argue against scientific theories, however, in an attempt to justify their beliefs… but science will never get involved in a religious discussion… since god has no place there… god, in essence, does not exist in science… until proven otherwise.

how did you eat?
why did you eat?

these are two different questions

:unamused:

  1. That Creationism is false does not entail atheism
  2. Ockham’s Razor does not apply - I’ve never met a theist who thought that postulating God was multiplying entities beyond necessity.
  3. If science really does presuppose the non-existence of God, I reckon it would be written down in good philosophy of science articles. Yet, it isn’t.

I think what you getting at is that if we always ask why, then you would not funtion as a biological creature, you would be imprisoned by reason. If you ask how, it does not require a moral justifacation, which is why relgion always really ask how because you cannot justify the existence of god.

hmm, I’m not sure I am asking that

I’m trying to get at the fact that asking why is a fruitless task (unless you are asking for a psychological explanation of somebody’s behaviour), and that any answer to it ends up with some form of consciousness (I use the term consciousness due to our constant anthropomorphisms, as we only have human consciousness to extrapolate from we naturally just superimpose some form of human thought onto the structures of the universe, where in fact there may be some completely alien [and by alien i just mean different as opposed to from a different world] process going on)

I think that religion came about much in the same way as when a child learns the question why, to every answer the parent gives the child reasks the question but why. It gets to the point where the parent has to say - it just is, or because I say so

Back in the mists of time, leaders of groups would attempt to explain phenomena and then other group members would ask why, so they had to come up with a concept that could stop these questions - an all knowing and all seeing God - which naturally was anthropomorphised into a human type consciousness.

Thankls for your replies to this, I am finding it very interesting and a useful debate.

I eventually hope to base my PHD on this question so do please contribute.

  1. Agreed… but irrelevent.
  2. yes… Ockham’s Razor applies in science… always.
    as for theists postulating god… he might be a bit biased… [-X
  3. you will never read anywhere that science presupposes the non-existence of god, because that would set science as opposed to religion. which it is not… it’s seperate. like i said before… science will not argue against god… nor will it argue for him… but the LACK of god in science makes the whole affair atheistic… how could it not?

I don’t think you truly understand what a presupposition is…

if science were to presuppose the existence of god it would need to decide which god… if we were to say that it chose the christian god, that would result in the theory of evolution being thrown right out the window… whatever we might dig up would be more easily explained by simply postulating that god made it that way from the begining and that it looks like it’s old is mearly because that’s what god wanted…

the earth is no more than a few thausand years old… and we’re all decended from adam and eve…

all evidence to the contrary rests on the fact that science PRESUPPOSES that there is no god and then tries to identify phenomena independent of the “god” theory… if not… no amount of physicle evidence could ever disprove the adam and eve theory… since the evidence could have been placed there by god to test us or whatnot…

you don’t need to examin the scientific method very closely to witness the utter lack of god.

science is atheistic… there is no god in science.

P.S. that does not mean that there are no scientists who believe in god… only that god is seperate from their work.

without a why we would all be found guilty until explained innocent, that would paint a picture of a terrifying world. A why is just a better way of saying not good enough, the other side of Ockhams razor. Sure I might be biased in postulating that your wrong, but then again so are theist. Both are needed to come to the bottom of anything discernable. By asking how a why exist is doing nothing more than saying I can explain anything, kind of like a carne. Seems to me like someone caught up in a lot of academic “I’m better than you” and to answer your question “no your not”. Any true how asker would be developing can’t dos into can dos. Anyways the postulate of the existence of a self would inherently refute god, there just no room for god, unless of course your a polytheist, and if so why not just be a humanist, probably because it is too humbling. college drop out, so what good is my opinion anyways

I just have an issue with this given the number of scientists that argue that their work either proves or discovers a proof of God’s existence empirically.
Newton believed that his discovering of the laws of physics was uncovering God’s perfect beauty in the universe, the intelligent design debate hinges on the fact that God is necessary to show evolution is possible, current quantum physics shows a random order to the fundamental forms in the universe giving rise to God’s mechanism for control in the universe. Some science has been done in an effort to either prove God or to uncover God, how much is a mystery to me but the two of them historically and currently are connected in some situations.

That said, how many of you are familiar with Stephan Gay Gould’s Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). NOMA is basically the postuate that science and religion do not intersect in their quest for truth, they seek two fundamentally different truths which do not either conflict or contribute to eachother. This has been refuted by many, notably Richard Dawkins (although I share Terry Eagleton’s views on Dawkins) but I have found much comfort in it as a Kierkegaardian. It might be worth a look if you are interested in how science and religion might not be the end of one or another. (Find “Rocks of Ages” by Stephan Jay Gould)[/list][/list]

Good point… but irrelevent.

When we talk about science as an independent (of the people who practice it) agent… we must conclude that it is atheistic, since it does not presuppose god… nor make claims to proving god true in it’s set method.

what you are doing is equate science with the scientists who practice it which has nothing to do with my point.

that said… your examples are unscientific connections between scientific discovery and god.

The laws of physics say nothing about god… they simply explain behavior in our universe. To tie this discovery to God is at best unscientific.

Evolution does not require intelligent design. Also it might be interresting to point out that evolution is not perticularly intelligent. it’s random mutation coupled with natural selection. what happens from there is at best unpredictable.

And using quantum physics, which no one truly understands yet, to prove god is at best an argument from ignorance. which anyone could tell you is not worthy of notice. nor very scientific.

that people try to use science to fight religion or prove it true is irrelevent to the tool which on it’s own remains atheistic.