Tars Tarkas, I’m not sure how you arrived at “atheist persecution” from Ben’s statement. Care to elaborate?
As I read it, Ben is challenging (as I do) Libertarian’s continued fascination with the supposed persecution of religious beliefs by scientists. I feel the aforementioned “persecution” exists primarily within Libertarian’s subjective experience, and is therefore lacking much in the way of objective evidence. Atheists may use “scientifically based” arguments to advance ideas about the nonexistence of a supreme being, but peer-reviewed scientific journals are resoundingly silent on this issue.
Anyway, I think that God is not necessarily outside of science’s realm. If there is a Prime Mover, then perhaps there is evidence for one. If so, then the scientific method applies. Certainly, creationism makes predictions, and if you try to follow them through you see they are based on incorrect understanding of physics, math, astronomy, biology, etc. But creationism is but one of thousands of flavors of religion.
Bad Astronomer: Nope, sorry, I’m not a Mars person–I work on Saturn’s rings. But Heinlein didn’t write any Saturn stories, per se, so I’m stuck with Poddy.
By the way, my one-word reply to people with questions about that vile Fox moon hoax show is, “Badastronomy.com!” You’ve got the most accessible point-to-point rundown I’ve seen. Plus, if they wander around your site, maybe they’ll learn a thing or two.
sigh It’s so sad to see a Great Debates thread degenerate into a hugfest. ; )
Um … I do some astronomy too! (Hey, everybody, pay attention to meeeeeeeee!)
Unfortunately, the astronomy I pursue is more of the stellar than the planetary variety. I built and maintain a website I call “the Internet Stellar Database” at http://www.stellar-database.com, which serves up just about everything you’d want to know about most nearby stars (including how far they are from each other). It’s running entirely on one server in my den, honest!
Did I take an improper inference from the quote above? Here it is again for your convenience:
“Religion is just an ordinary conviction in the mind and it is enfeebled when we accumulate knowledge, because it is essentially based upon ignorance.”
Bad Astronomer
As I understand it, the scientific method, as an epistemology, applies solely to things that are repeatable, and not necessarily to things for which there is evidence. That is, it is strictly tautological and can prove only what is hypothesized. The implications of its results, however, might be evidence of something else besides just the hypothesis, since evidence can be interpreted non-tautologically. For example, if scientists succeed in producing life from non-life, it can be argued that that success is evidence that God might have done the same thing! To test for a Prime Mover, it must not only create a universe out of nothing — repeatedly — but it must somehow “create” a Prime Mover that has always existed.
Libertarian, your quote from Joseph McCabe supports my point. This was a man born in 1867 who was a well-known Atheist, not a scientist. If you intend to portray him as somehow representing the field of Science attacking the realm of Faith, I think you are sorely missing the mark. He may have tried to use logic and “scientific evidence” to bolster his argument, but this can hardly be said to indicate an “Inquisition” against Faith waged by Science. Joseph McCabe was nothing more than an atheist who promoted his beliefs, and did so quite a long time ago.
The data so far (such as they are) do not support the notion that there exists a gap between the religiosity of physicists and biologists. I’ll email Chronos, tell him that this thread is here, and ask him if he wishes to contribute. However, if he doesn’t show up soon, nobody produces evidence that physicists are less likely to be atheist than biologists, then the debate topic, namely the reason for the difference, is moot.
Mods, please don’t let the sun rise on this thread without someone, anyone, producing substantive evidence that we have a genuine debate going here.
I think you’re right. As I began to search for evidence to back my suspicion, I uncovered very little of it, but I uncovered a lot more that indicates I have held an exaggerated estimation of the contempt that scientists might have for people of faith. Apparently, I made two errors in reason: (1) I extrapolated the specific to the general, and (2) I synthesized an undistributed middle.
One of my first encounters with an atheist here was with one who said that if he encountered my God he would rip out His heart with a sword (or some such), which was pretty familiar stuff in my dealings with hand-stabbling atheists. I attribute my number one error perhaps to my own skittishness which I ought not to hold because of the many counter-examples among the atheists here, like you and Gaudere, for example.
As to my second error, I likely distributed the 90% of exalted scientists who are reported to be atheists into a population of atheists who hold religion in contempt, when it is entirely possible that the scientists do not hate religion, but merely do not practice it. Sort of like I don’t hate homosexuality, I just don’t do it. Nor do I hold homosexuals (or homosexuality) in contempt.
All I can say in my defense is that it is hard sometimes to see where we ourselves are unreasonable. But that’s one thing that’s good about this place. We get to see how others see us.
I found this in my search that really impressed me. Some guy was really ripping into the Creationists, but he disclaimed himself with what I considered to be great aplomb:
Now, all that said, be forewarned that, when dealing with people of faith who have had disproportionate exposure to the hand-stabbers, it might help your cause to be empathetic. Tell them what you told me, that atheism is not a science, and what the fellow I quoted said, that when you attack Creationists, you aren’t attacking their faith, but their perversion of science.
Thanks. I found a most interesting site, The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. I’m reserving an opinion for the moment until I dig deeper, but so far, I must say I’m very impressed. It gives tons of history and context on the Theory of Evolution, along with how creationism evolved. I believe (again, so far) that this is the most well-balanced and informative site I’ve seen yet. Their mission statement is short and sweet: “CTNS strives to bridge theology and the natural sciences through research, education and public service.”
As summoned, I arrive. Ya gotta love the SDMB: Any offhand comment in any old thread can be dissected and analyzed in excrutiating detail. And yes, that’s a good thing.
I was basing that comment on an article I had seen in Scientific American, which seems to have been based on the same data as the Nature article that Podkayne linked (by the way, Poddy, congratulations. That’s the first time I ever saw vB break a URL in two places). I recalled that the belief rate was higher for physicists than for biologists, but either the SciAm article didn’t mention the specific numbers, or (more likely) I didn’t remember them. I’ve also found, in my personal experience, that there seem to be a good number of religious folks in physics (although I have little to no firsthand knowledge of biologists), so it seemed reasonable to me. It’s certainly possible that I was wrong, or at least, not as right as I thought.
Since this is GD, I might as well say a few words more. I, personally, am a physicist, and I believe that God created the world. I don’t, however, that His methods resembled those outlined in Genesis in anything other than the most superficial manner: I believe that the entire act of Creation took less than a Planck time (how much less, I’m not willing to say), and occured somewhere in the neighborhood of 10[sup]10[/sup] years ago. I’ve never seen any sort of inconsistancy between science and religion, and in fact, I consider science to actually reinforce my beleif. But then, that’s just me.
Here’s another excerpt from that site I mentioned above that deals with that ICR thing about the human eye. It’s worded so perfectly that it’s ending is almost, well, surprising!
Despite his comments about how he’s rethought his views on scientists, I have found other recent comments of his to be so slimy that I thought a Pit thread was in order.
jab1, I guess I missed it, because I didn’t even notice that he had posted to this thread; nevertheless, I really like the site as a suggested read for a creationist, due to its simplicity.
Libertarian
I kinda have mixed feelings about the CTNS site. One of the first items I opened was this, and there’s Duane Gish giving his “evolution is not a science – evolution is a great evil” speech. Almost like listening to someone scrape their fingernails across the blackboard, though I must admit to watching with a “train wreck” sort of fascination. It’s easy to see why so many are seduced by his folksy, Southern Baptist preacher type of delivery.
At least the side of Science was well represented, with Eugenie Scott and others getting equal time at this particular gathering. And the representatives from CTNS did seem to come down firmly on the side of science, though obviously positing a supreme being behind it all.
Where did you get the idea that I had that idea? Because I said the ending was surprising?
Hardcore
Believe me, it’s better to put Gish and company on display in a forum like theirs alongside reputable scientists of faith. That way, people can see for themselves who makes a better argument. Pretending they don’t exist might raise a whole set of questions of its own.
Ben
Please stop hijacking Great Debates to advertise your Pit rant. You already linked to it in your own thread. That’s called cross-posting around here.
One possible explanation for physicists believing in God more than biologists is the subject matter in question. I would describe the current state of biology and evolution as classical, in the sense that it embodies an elegant underlying mathematical model which is clearly consistent, intellectually satisfying, and apparently complete. As a result, biologists may be likely to say, like Laplace, that they have no need of a hypothesis regarding God. Some may disagree , but I believe there is no evidence that any explanations needed for the diverse and complex fields of biological study can’t be found within the current theories of biology. In other words, we believe we’ve got the big picture, and the rest is just details.
With physics, you’ve got an unsatisfying situation where we basically don’t have the big picture. We do have 2 medium-sized pictures (i.e., the quantum & classical levels), but they don’t appear to fit together easily.
Then there’s the fact that quantum physics is profoundly weird. Biology doesn’t have anything weird like this. There’s a variety of possible reactions to this weirdness (hey, Frank Tipler), and for some, it may lead them to religious belief.
Side point: You might get the impression that physicists are more spiritual than biologists by browsing the popular science books at the bookstore, but I suspect this method of surveying beliefs is quite skewed.
