Can science and God ever get along?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/tim_hames/article4004326.ece



Emphasis Mine. More at link. And yes, I realize it's the Templeton Foundation. :shrug:

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

Faith = Belief without proof (or belief despite evidence to the contrary)
Science = Understanding based upon proof

Just about everyone who believes in god, also accepts science as a good thing (generally claiming that the science they disagree with is bad science), so most believers have to answer "Yes."

To an atheist, god doesn't exist. So, to an atheist, what does the question mean? Can science get along with a non-entity?

since it really is not a question that one person can answer for another. Everyone has their own concepts about the nature of god and every theist derives different benefits from their belief in him/her/it/them. It would have been more appropriate to ask "Does science make belief in God obsolete for you?" The responses to that question would not have created nearly the kind of splash that the Templeton Foundation fancies, I'll wager.

Victor Stenger is correct.

Dawkins explains in a few of his books how the Templeton foundation works to blur the boundary between religion and science.

My own opinion is that religion is a holdover from our superstitious past and will eventually be discarded as the world becomes more educated and prosperous. Poverty, ignorance and overpopulation help perpetuate religion.

Yeah, I stole the idea from the person who said that mixing religion and government diminishes them both. But it turns out that it doesn't take much to diminish religion.

That science is evidence and reality based, while religion is faith and belief based.
I have met some religious scientists..they generally know how to keep their beliefs out of their work, understanding that the two have nothing to do with each other.
Unfortunately most people aren't capable of this level of logic.

Schönborn repeats the standard teleological argument. I always like to think about Galileo v. the geocentric model when someone brings that up. We are not the physical center of existence, and I predict that science will eventually show that we are not the teleological center of existence, either.

I don't really see how a non-entity can do anthing, including "get along".

While one can make a theoretical case for NOMA, in practice the advance of science pushes god into an ever-shrinking corner of plausibility. Part of the purpose of religion is to explain the world.

Discussed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=173054&mesg_id=173170

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=173054&mesg_id=173541

No supernatural agencies are needed to explain biological processes. What you propose is a watered-down argument from design. Design is the one thing that is precluded by natural selection. One can have a feeling of awe and wonder without attributing it to any supernatural agency.

I think the best way of thinking about it is the way the phsyiological psychologist thought about it: certain natural phenomena will remain, within our current intellectual capabilities, epiphenomena.

But this is definitely not about "design" or "intelligent design" at all.

Interestingly, none of the scientists I mentioned refer to or believe in any concept of a supreme being either.

in the sense that religion most broadly speaking is speculation about epiphenomena beyond the purely material world (what atheists often call "natural phenomena" that explain "everything").

At the fringes of knowledge, scientists are increasingly moving toward theories in which epiphenomena play increasingly important -- even central -- roles, and in that way, science and religion are converging in terms of their subject matter.

Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that 19th and 20th century "materialism" which seemed such a dominant explanation of everything that it was triumphalist, is suddenly collapsing, and that collapse is being spurred by both edge science and various kinds of spirituality.

As a result, it means nothing.

And "materialism," the idea that the universe is made of naturally occurring stuff, is hardly collapsing.

and materialism is more than the idea that the universe is made of stuff.

Here are two good articles:

Materialism is a set of related theories which hold that all entities and processes are composed of — or are reducible to — matter, material forces or physical processes. All events and facts are explainable, actually or in principle, in terms of body, material objects or dynamic material changes or movements. In general, the metaphysical theory of materialism entails the denial of the reality of spiritual beings, consciousness and mental or psychic states or processes, as ontologically distinct from, or independent of material changes or processes. Since it denies the existence of spiritual beings or forces, materialism typically is allied with atheism or agnosticism.

http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Materialism.html

Materialism — which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism — is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things are intelligible in material terms, but mind presents problems in at least two ways. The first is consciousness, as found in the 'raw feel' of subjective experience. The second is the intentionality of thought, which is the property of being about something beyond itself; 'aboutness' seems not to be a physical relation in the ordinary sense.

...

Materialism at the fin de siècle

The materialist mood in the twentieth century has been poised between an almost triumphalist self-confidence and a more modest perplexity. The triumphalism is produced by the success of science, which makes materialism seem obviously true. In this mood, materialists are prepared to deny what seem to be the most obvious facts of mental life if their theory requires it. In a more sombre moment, however, some will confess that all attempts to tackle the problems have so far missed the mark. This more sober tendency became stronger in the 1980s and 1990s. Nagel (1974) had already declared that the mind-body problem could only be solved by a conceptual breakthrough we could not, as yet, imagine. McGinn (1991) pronounced the problem insoluble in principle because the mind cannot understand itself Galen Strawson (1994) has denied that there is any conceptual connection between mind and behaviour. All these philosophers deem themselves to be materialists, of some not-yet-quite-articulable kind. The Journal of Consciousness Studies has been set up to 'take consciousness seriously' in a way it is said science has not so far done; but perhaps this underestimates the main reason why consciousness has been sidelined and treated harshly: namely because it seems so clearly impossible to say anything constructive about it within the materialist presuppositions of natural science.



http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/MATERIALISM_MIND.html

that God created science so that we would discover that
He does not exist.

Therefore He exists.

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

- Douglas Adams