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Science Forum Index » Medicine - Cardiology Forum » Does science make belief in God obsolete?
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Message |
| Phobos |
 Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 4:23 pm |
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Guest
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Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white
lab coats.
Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain
the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the
basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be
moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we
probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we
live, the less reason there is to believe in God.
Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can
maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and
assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day
and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract
role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces
the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle
"Where did God come from?"
What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of
design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to
explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed
how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural
selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication
itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist
propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA,
the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and
physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).
For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But
neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of
intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain.
True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner
experience‹some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open
scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of
human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional
space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds
nothing to our understanding.
People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience.
But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such
as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and
cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they
evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.
This leaves morality itself‹the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and
improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense
cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not
just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery,
rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be
grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts
moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we
take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal
to those reasons directly?
Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be
found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent
social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of
perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a
certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason),
I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I
want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically
consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.
For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have
experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric
practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the
mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and
scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has
waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and
we are the better for it.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of
psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books, including
The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and most
recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. |
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| Richo |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 4:23 pm |
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Guest
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On May 2, 7:23 am, Phobos <phobos....@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Does science make belief in God obsolete?
The answer rather depends on the version of God believed in.
It depends on what God is and what's it for.
Quote: Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white
lab coats.
Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain
the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the
basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be
moral?
That is one thing God is for.
I don't think its even the most important function of God in peoples
lives.
Its the one Richard Dawkins talks about for example.
A major purpose/function of religion is to give people a moral compass
- some moral ideals to strive for.
Another major purpose of religion is to give people a sense of purpose
and meaning.
Another major purpose of function is to give people a sense of
beloning to a community united in their sense of belief and purpose.
So science can do damage to only one of these 4 reasons why people
belive - so it does dammge to 25% of the reasons to believe in God and
leave the other untouched or actually emphasises that science is
useless for anything other that explaning what and how things are.
So in summary Religion/God fulfils the following functions:
(1) Explanation - where do we come from.
(2) Moral guidance.
(3) Sense of purpose - the "Why" of existence rather than the what or
how.
(4) Sense of belonging - fellowship.
Science is a challenge to (1) - and leaves the other untouched or
makes it even more obvious that they are needed.
Cheers, Mark.
--------------------------------------------
Mark Richardson. m.richardson61 AT gmail.com
Member of SMASH
(Sarcastic Middle-aged Atheist with a Sense of Humor)
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| monkfish |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 5:19 pm |
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Guest
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Phobos wrote:
Quote: Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and
white lab coats.
Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to
explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from?
What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why
should anyone be moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we
probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we
live, the less reason there is to believe in God.
Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person
can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago
and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities
like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a
more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick
simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the
equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?"
What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of
design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer
to explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of
natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how
replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding
creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming,
including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth,
and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to
fluff up long-vanished fur).
For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But
neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of
intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our
brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner
experience‹some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an
open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a
limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize
four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with
the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding.
People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a
conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental
faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary
psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions
work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.
This leaves morality itself‹the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and
improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense
cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's
not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide,
slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that
morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why
did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but
divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have
reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be
found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent
social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of
perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a
certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no
reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat
you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is
logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no
role in it.
For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have
experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric
practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the
mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and
scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has
waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete,
and we are the better for it.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of
psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books,
including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and
most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human
Nature.
Is psychology really a science?
Can it even tell us what sanity is?
What does it mean for self to exist?
He seems to think science can tell us
all the modes of existence there is or can be.
What kind of existence does freedom of speech have?
When was it invented?
Do our lives have any meaning?
What is the mode of existence applicable to the meaning of life?
Does it even exist?
Can science really tell us how to live well?
--
monkfish * alt.atheism is removed from the header because atheists there
consider quoting the Bible proselytizing and as such it is prohibited by
their undebatable policy.
--
The best way to handle spams is to ignore them. But if you must reply to
them, you should at least set the followup-to header to something other
than your own newsgroup. |
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| Phobos |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 5:43 pm |
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Guest
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On Thu, 1 May 2008 18:11:47 -0500, J A wrote
(in message <dIidnREcpNyg3YfVnZ2dnUVZ_ruqnZ2d@earthlink.com>):
Quote: This should get the losers shrieking...  )
And so will this
Once upon a time there were a number of strong scientific arguments for the
existence of God. One of the oldest and most prevalent is the argument from
design. Most people look at the complexity of the world and cannot conceive
of how it could have come about except by the action of a being or force of
great power and intelligence.
The design argument received perhaps its most brilliant exposition in the
work of the Anglican archdeacon William Paley.
In his Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature, first published in 1802, Paley
wrote about finding both a stone and a watch while crossing a heath. Though
the stone would be regarded as a simple part of nature, no one would question
that the watch is an artifact, designed for the purpose of telling time.
Paley then proposed that objects of nature, such as the human eye, give every
indication of being similar contrivances.
When Charles Darwin entered Cambridge in 1827 he was assigned to the same
rooms in Christ's College occupied by William Paley seventy years earlier. By
that time the syllabus included the study of Paley's works, and Darwin was
deeply impressed. He remarked that Paley's work "gave me as much delight as
did Euclid."
Yet Darwin ultimately discovered the answer to Paley and showed how complex
systems can evolve naturally from simpler ones without design or plan. The
mechanism he proposed in 1859 in The Origin of Species (inferred
independently by Alfred Russel Wallace) was natural selection, by which
organisms accumulate changes that enable them to survive and have progeny
that maintain those features.
But, as Darwin recognized, a serious objection to evolution existed based on
the known physics of the time. Calculations by the great physicist William
Thomson (Lord Kelvin) estimated ages for the sun that were far too short for
natural selection to operate. However, at the time, nuclear energy was
unknown. When this new form of energy was discovered early in the twentieth
century, physicists estimated that the energy released by nuclear reactions
would allow the sun and other stars to last billions of years as stable
energy sources.
Prior to the twentieth century, the simple fact that the universe contains
matter also provided strong evidence for a creation. At the time it was
believed that matter was conserved, and so the matter of the universe had to
come from somewhere. In 1905 Einstein showed that matter could be created
from energy. But where did that energy come from?
This remained unanswered for almost another century until accurate
observations with telescopes determined that an exact balance exists between
the positive energy of matter and the negative energy of gravity. So, no
energy was required to produce the universe. The universe could have come
from nothing.
Independent scientific support for a creation was also provided by a basic
principle of physics called the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts
that the total disorder or entropy of the universe must increase with time.
The universe is growing more disorderly with time. Since it now has order, it
would seem to follow that at some point in the past, even greater order must
have been imparted from the outside.
But in 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble reported that the galaxies were moving
away from one another at speeds approximately proportional to their distance,
indicating that the universe was expanding. This provided the earliest
evidence for the Big Bang. An expanding universe could have started with low
entropy and still have formed localized order consistent with the second law.
Extrapolating what we know from modern cosmology back to the earliest
definable moment, we find that the universe began in a state of maximum
disorder. It contained the maximum entropy for the tiny region of space,
equivalent to zero information. Thus, even if the universe were created, it
retains no memory of that creation or of the intentions of any possible
creator. The only creator that seems possible is the one Einstein
abhorredÑthe God who plays dice with the universe.
Now, such a God could still exist and play a role in the universe once the
universe exploded out of chaos. We no longer have total disorder; but
disorder still dominates the universe. Most of the matter of the universe
moves around randomly. Only 0.1 percent, the part contained in visible parts
of galaxies, has any significant structure.
If he is to have any control over events so that some ultimate plan is
realized, God has to poke his finger into the works amidst all this chaos.
Yet there is no evidence that God pokes his finger in anyplace. The universe
and life look to science just as they should look if they were not created or
designed. And humanity, occupying a tiny speck of dust in a vast cosmos for a
tiny fraction of the life of that cosmos, hardly looks special.
The universe visible to us contains a hundred billion galaxies, each with a
hundred billion stars. But by far the greatest portion of the universe that
expanded exponentially from the original chaos, at least fifty orders of
magnitude more, lies far beyond our horizon. The universe we see with our
most powerful telescopes is but a grain of sand in the Sahara. Yet we are
supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every
particle, while listening to every human thought and guiding his favorite
football teams to victory. Science has not only made belief in God obsolete.
It has made it incoherent.
Victor J. Stenger is emeritus professor of physics and astronomy, University
of Hawaii, adjunct professor of philosophy, University of Colorado, and the
author of seven books including God: The Failed HypothesisÑHow Science Shows
That God Does Not Exist. |
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| monkfish |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 5:46 pm |
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J A wrote:
Quote: This should get the losers shrieking... )
"Phobos" <phobos.iam@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C43F9EFB0011EDA3F0407530@news-server.rgv.rr.com...
Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and
white
lab coats.
.... .... ....
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of
psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books,
including
The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and most
recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
Ask psychologists whether they know what self is.
They don't even know what sanity is.
Does sanity exist?
If so, what would be its mode of existence?
Why don't you ask him?
When scientists try to do philosophy,
they usually make fools of themselves.
So, most of them run away
saying they have better things to so.
--
monkfish * alt.atheism is removed from the header because atheists there
consider quoting the Bible proselytizing and as such it is prohibited by
their undebatable policy.
--
The best way to handle spams is to ignore them. But if you must reply to
them, you should at least set the followup-to header to something other
than your own newsgroup. |
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| J666 |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 5:47 pm |
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Guest
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On Thu, 1 May 2008 18:11:47 -0500, J A wrote
(in message <dIidnREcpNyg3YfVnZ2dnUVZ_ruqnZ2d@earthlink.com>):
Quote: This should get the losers shrieking... )
"Phobos" <phobos.iam@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C43F9EFB0011EDA3F0407530@news-server.rgv.rr.com...
Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and
white
lab coats. ......
I am sure some will use circular reasoning and use the Bible to prove the
Bible. |
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| monkfish |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 5:55 pm |
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Guest
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Phobos wrote:
Quote: On Thu, 1 May 2008 18:11:47 -0500, J A wrote
(in message <dIidnREcpNyg3YfVnZ2dnUVZ_ruqnZ2d@earthlink.com>):
This should get the losers shrieking... )
And so will this
Once upon a time there were a number of strong scientific arguments for
the existence of God. One of the oldest and most prevalent is the argument
from design. Most people look at the complexity of the world and cannot
conceive of how it could have come about except by the action of a being
or force of great power and intelligence.
.... .... ....
Victor J. Stenger is emeritus professor of physics and astronomy,
University of Hawaii, adjunct professor of philosophy, University of
Colorado, and the author of seven books including God: The Failed
HypothesisÑHow Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.
Another confused scientist.
Just ask him what is magnetism.
Does it even exist?
If so, what is its mode of existence?
You might as well ask what makes him so sure
that he knows of all the modes of existence
there is or there can be.
Does he even know
how many modes of existence there are?
--
monkfish * alt.atheism is removed from the header because atheists there
consider quoting the Bible proselytizing and as such it is prohibited by
their undebatable policy.
--
The best way to handle spams is to ignore them. But if you must reply to
them, you should at least set the followup-to header to something other
than your own newsgroup. |
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| J A |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 6:11 pm |
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Guest
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This should get the losers shrieking... )
"Phobos" <phobos.iam@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C43F9EFB0011EDA3F0407530@news-server.rgv.rr.com...
Quote: Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Yes, if by...
"science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge
(including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and
white
lab coats.
Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to
explain
the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is
the
basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be
moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we
probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we
live, the less reason there is to believe in God.
Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person
can
maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and
assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like
day
and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more
abstract
role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply
replaces
the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent
puzzle
"Where did God come from?"
What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of
design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer
to
explain it all. No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed
how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of
natural
selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how
replication
itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist
propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA,
the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy
and
physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished
fur).
For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But
neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of
intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our
brain.
True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner
experience > scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a
limitation of
human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional
space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul"
adds
nothing to our understanding.
People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a
conscience.
But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty,
such
as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and
cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they
evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.
This leaves morality itself > improve our moral intuitions. It is true
that science in the narrow sense
cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's
not
just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery,
rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot
be
grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some
acts
moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should
we
take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not
appeal
to those reasons directly?
Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be
found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent
social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of
perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a
certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no
reason),
I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I
want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically
consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.
For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have
experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric
practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the
mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and
scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has
waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete,
and
we are the better for it.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of
psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books,
including
The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and most
recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
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| Father Haskell |
| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 6:50 pm |
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Guest
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On May 1, 5:23 pm, Phobos <phobos....@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote: Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Most certainly, as the pharmacology field has made
positive strides in treating mental illness.
"My religious conversion was a symptom of a mental
illness for which I now take a drug called lithium
carbonate." -- Larry Flynt. |
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