Good work, and good cites. Sometimes I wonder where all this ID and young earth and creationism comes from.
It seems to me that if you believe that a supernatural being sent a supernatural son who to earth to be cruicified as a proxy to save the sould of those who accepted the son as the savior; if you believe that supernatural son was in fact crucified, dead and buried; and if you further believe that supernatural son rose from the dead three days later, then in my opinion your belief system is in conflict with science.
Nope, it’s not in conflict with science, it is simply outside the scope of science.
You are making the same basic error of application that Creation ‘scientists’ make. They claim that since science can’t provide evidence against a supernatural God creating life then such a belief must be intrinsically scientific. Of course it isn’t, it simply falls outside the scope of science.
You are claiming that since science can’t prove that a supernatural demi-god was able to die and get resurrected to atone for our sins it must be in conflict with science. It isn’t, it simply falls outside the scope of science.
Science has a very narrow scope over which it is applicable. It can’t adress issues of spirituality or morality because those things are untestable because they are entirely subjective. And it can’t adress issues of the supernatural or miracles because those things are also untestable.
There’s no conflict in most of these areas, simply different ground. Science, ethics, law and religion are all different wasy to arrive at a ‘truth’. All have their own methods of arriving at that truth and at times they will all have conflicting views concerning the ‘truth’ of very specific points. That doesn’t mean they are in conflict, it simply means the decisions are arrive dta in ways that fall outside the scope of the other disciplines.
So long a speople aren’t representing religion or law or ethics as science then there is no need for any conflict with science.
Spoken as someone who has absolutely no clue regarding faith as it has been taught and practiced in many religious trraditions for thousands of years. I know of no religious group (outside a few local churches or religious teachers ignorant of their own traditions) where beliefs cannot be questioned. The entire book of Job (and a good number of the Psalms) are devoted to questioning belief. Many of the most famous Christian saints questioned their beliefs.
I am sure that you will still object to the ways in which those religious traditions encourage people to deal with doubt, but your statement, as posted, is ignorantly false.
For starters, the “truths” of religion arise from simple faith and that is in conflict with the scientific method.
And, by the way, what are some of these religious truths?
Saying that someone is God Incarnate is beyond the scope of science. Saying that one particular woman was conceived without “original sin” is beyond the scope of science.
But saying that a particular person was born without his mother ever having had sexual intercourse, or that that person was dead, then came back to life, are in principle verifiable claims. You may object that as a practical matter at this point there’s no way to test those claims with respect to Jesus of Nazareth and his mother, but that raises the question of where do you draw the line? If I said “This woman right here, who as you can see is pregnant, is a virgin”, then certainly whether or not the woman is actually pregnant is not a “faith claim”; it can be medically confirmed–or disproved. (“Hey, she’s got a pillow stuffed down the front of her shirt!”) Medically confirming virginity would be a lot more difficult, especially since you could probably get tricky with syringes or turkey basters or whatever in some way that wouldn’t leave the traditional evidences of sexual intercourse. However, we could use modern techniques to show that the woman’s baby is, genetically speaking, the son of her husband Joe, or of the Rev. Brother Billy Bob, as the case may be. Now, saying “this child is the miraculous Son of God” is probably not really scientifically falsifiable, but if some sect is saying that Sister Mary Sue’s son is the new Messiah and is the “miraculous Son of God”, and genetic testing shows that the kid is in fact not the son of Mary Sue’s husband Joe, but is the son of the Rev. Brother Billy Bob, I think all of us skeptics, whether atheists or Christians or other believers, would react in pretty much the same way. (I’m using “skeptic” here in the narrower “debunking astrology and ESP” sense, not in the broader philosophical sense.)
Similarly, the claim that the New Messiah Billy Bob, Jr. is dead is certainly medically confirmable, as is the claim that he’s come back to life in some fashion–“Quick, get the video camera!” If some sect claims that Billy Bob, Jr. is dead, but they won’t let anyone examine they body–maybe they let a few people see him, or someone, lying there under a sheet not moving, but no actual medical examination–then, three days later, “It’s a miracle! He’s been resurrected!”–Well, I think the widespread reaction from both atheists and believers at places like this message board would be :rolleyes:
So, if these things were claimed to be happening right now, they would not be beyond the scope of science. So, how far back do you go before you make this radical paradigm shift and say, “Oh, that’s a matter of faith, not science”? Last year, somewhere in the Philippines, some guy came back from the dead? Hey, I know this guy who died for a couple of days and then came back in the 1960’s? The 19th Century? (Are the claims of Mormonism about golden plates and the true ancestry of the American Indians beyond the scope of science?) Would it be beyond the scope of science if I claimed that Julius Caesar, the Son of God, died but was then resurrected and was seen by a bunch of people before ascending to heaven?
Of course, if a claim can be scientifically falsified, it can also be confirmed, or at least fail to be falsified. Someone who claims to be the Messiah could at some point be confirmed to be clinically dead–not just his heart stops beating for a few minutes, but he’s lying there all night on the slab in the morgue with zero signs of life; then in the morning the body’s disappeared from the morgue and the person in question can be seen, perhaps videotaped, walking around talking to people, and maybe he lets his fingerprints be taken to prove it’s really him and not an imposter. No doubt everyone would be sore amazed.
And finally, even if this death and resurrection were scientifically confirmed, to as much certainty as you ever get regarding the truth of a scientific claim, that doesn’t mean you could have a scientific answer to the question “Is this the Son of God”? All you could scientifically say is that he appeared to be dead by every test we came up with, and now here he is, walking around and talking and eating and doing other stuff dead people don’t do, and we’ve run every test we can think of to confirm that this is the same guy who was stone dead yesterday.
But I do think the borders between science and religion (at least actually existing religion in the Western monotheist tradition) are not so neat as Stephen Jay Gould thought they were.
This statement bespeaks a misunderstanding of what science is; it’s a very very common misunderstand, though.
Science is little more that a catalogue of observations and speculations about what is true. In the effort to be at least vaguely useful, the practical study and application of science restricts itself to things that are true over and over again, preferably for most or all people or situations; this does not make one-off or historic events unscientific, or worse, “outside the scope of science”. Nothing, or at least nothing real, is outside the scope of science.
Suppose for a moment that God exists, and interacts with humans in some way. This interaction may be observed, noted, and tracked. God’s habits and behaviors can be examined and patterns discovered. We may never be able to render him entirely predicatable, any more than we can render you entirely predictable, but God (assuming he exists) can indeed be studied in a scientific manner. Just because most religions are extremely unscientific about the subject doesn’t mean it’s unassailable; it just means that the religions aren’t being scientific about the matter.
If God doesn’t exist, of course, then one can reasonably argue that he is outside the scope of science; science has no interest in the unreal, other than to distinguish it from the real. (There’s really far too much that’s unreal to go around listing it all.) We still can pass the time by studying the actual causes of events commonly attributed to god, and maybe every once in a while do a study on why so many people believe in this God guy anyway.
No, I think it’s you who misunderstand what science is.
If God is supernatural, he can’t be studied by science, because he needn’t obey natural laws. You couldn’t reproduce your findings, and you couldn’t make predictions from them (two requirements for something to be science). If God isn’t supernatural, and can be studied by science, then He is just another physical being-- basically an ET-- and is not God.
But if God exists, he is not “supernatural.”
Why?
But his supposed actions, and their effects, can be studied. If Uri Geller could really bend spoons, that could be considered to be supernatural and out of the reach of science. However we can tape him doing the bending and show that it is a trick and purely natural. This doesn’t prove he never did anything supernatural, but that’s the way to bet. Likewise, scientifically showing that all of God’s supposed interactions with us either did not happen, best we can tell, left no trace, or are explainable naturally doesn’t disprove god, but points that way. That can be done without examining god directly, and is all perfectly scientific.
Because the word “nature” encompasses whatever actually exists. If ghosts exist, ghosts are part of nature. And the same is true of God.
You might be able to observe it, but you couldn’t do “science” with it-- ie, you couldn’t apply the scientific method to it. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t make any sense to do so.
BG: I’m not sure I agree with your definition, but maybe that’s a topic for another thread.
So examining strata for traces of the flood - and not finding any of course - is not scientific? How about an expedition to the Sinai looking for left over manna - or Israelite poop, at least?
True this would be like cosmology where you can’t do experiments, only observations, but it is certainly as scientific as a fossil hunting expedition to a place where geology tells you that fossils from a certain eon should be present. Course we find what we expect to find, but failed experiments, done right, are just as scientific as ones that “work.”
I will agree with you that it’s a waste of time, there being no independent evidence this stuff ever happened.
Sure he could be. There is a level of tautology in the way that this argument gets posted (by people of widely differing perspectives) that requires us to change the definitions applied to “natural” and “supernatural” for thousands of years.
You can pursue this train of thought to some conclusion, but it is a conclusion that you have determined by definitions–and the changing of definitions away from their original meanings.
Those are some examples of writings from a particular one of the world’s many religions. They are not universal truths.
For example, for everyone, everywhere, and at all times if you are on the surface of the earth and hold a stone in your hand and let it go it will fall to earth. Furthermore for everyone, everywhere, and at all times it will fall for the first 10 ft or so with and acceleration so close to 9.8 m/sec that measuring the difference between its actual acceleration and 9.8 m/sec will be exceedingly difficult.
The things you cited are not true for everyone, everywhere and at all times. For the majority of the world’s population they are probably not true at any time.
This comes perilously close to trying to define you way to a win.
Just “looking” for mana or fossils is not science. “Science” means you are applying the scientific method to something in the natural world. If part of that “something” is outside the natural world, you’re not doing science. Does that not make sense? If I say: I found mana in the desert, and therefore it came from God I am not doing science. If I look for mana and show that if actually is the product of the “mana tree”, then God isn’t part of the equation.
Here is an easy way to describe science.
Two scientist claimed to have produced cold fusion in 1989. Their research was published to peer reviews so other scientist could try to reproduced their results. No researchers has yet to reproduced their initial results.
That is basically science - a theory that is testable, provable and falsifiable.
That is why ID is not a science. The only thing ID proponents have done is to poke holes into the evolutionary theory.
ex. They claim that the dating techniques are wrong and that the world was created between 6 000 - 12 000 years ago. However no creation “scientist” has developed or submitted another form of dating dating to prove the young Earth theory. I have yet to see any creationists disprove the half life of carbon-14 is 5730 years.
Evolution is just a theory so it isn’t a fact but it at least it was developed through scientific means. Creationist need to do the same thing.
They need to theorize how only 2 animals (after leaving the ark) can repopulate the entire world without subjecting to inbredding and eventual extinction and submit it into a scientific journal. Some creationists believe that fossils, dinosaurs and early human-ape like creatures, are fake. Well, just submit a theory on how the fossils ended up into the strata of rocks and why the microscopic structure of fossilized bones resemble fresh bones.
If creationists want their ideas to be taught in science then they need to provide it in a scientific context without using the Bible. You cannot write a scientific paper using only one untestable reference.
That would like saying earth quakes occur because too many people farted all at once. Source: my mom.