Knock three times for ‘yes’
Michael De Dora said in a comment on Falling at the first post
Scientific claims are probabilistic explanations based on observation and empirical evidence, and are subject to disconfirmation. The God claim is nothing of the sort. We can’t scientifically measure God or God’s interaction with the world, and the God claim is not falsifiable.
Why can’t we scientifically measure God or God’s interaction with the world? One reason could be because god is not there. Another reason could be because god is especially hard to measure for some reason. If it’s the latter we just need better instruments. I think the reason De Dora is suggesting is that god is in principle incapable of being measured. But if that’s the case, De Dora needs to explain further – how he knows that, why it is the case, what it implies for claims about god, and similar.
It’s not at all clear to me that we can’t try to scientifically measure god or god’s interaction with the world – and of course people have made such attempts, as with the intercessory prayer study. If we try, and find that it isn’t possible because there is nothing to measure, then it would seem fair to conclude that there is no reason to believe there is such a god, and that therefore there are good reasons to believe there is not such a god.
In other words if god is so spooky and weird and ineffable that we can’t measure it or its interactions with the world, or investigate it in any other way, then we have zero reason to think it exists, and a lot of reason to think it doesn’t exist, or at least to think that we can’t possibly know anything reliable about it. If god is immune to all empirical investigation, then that means we have no way to know anything about it, so it is in effect non-existent, as far as we’re concerned.
Doesn’t it?
Update: Or to put it another way, as Ben reminds me –
inference to the best explanation.
That clears that up.
I don’t think these people actually read what various religions actually say about God and the miracles they perform while among us.
I fully agree that we can’t scientifically measure God or God’s interaction with the world. I mean, we’re already told that the guy’s supernatural. How can we expect our methods for studying nature to be useful? We certainly can say that there is no evidence for supernatural agency, which means that belief in same cannot be justified to a scientist. But if someone wants to say, “You can’t prove scientifically that God is not present,” I have to agree.
What science does is strip away the previous physical arguments for the existence of the Gods of theism. These were the suggestion that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, the argument from design and finally the evidence from miracles. Science has torn down these points whenever it has the chance to examine them, leaving theism with two choices. These are first, that their God works in ways that are absolutely indistinguishable from the scientific laws of nature or, second, that their God purposefully covers up his tracks to make it appear as if he doesn’t exist. Massimo Piggliucci sometimes uses a version of the latter description – last thursdayism – to argue that atheists are wrong to use science to attempt to show there is no evidence for God. To me, this sounds like the FSM argument where He uses his noodly appendages to change the results of scientific measurements to make it appear that he doesn’t exist. We are left with either a God that is indistinguishable in any measurable way from no God at all, or we have a sneaky God who is hiding out and giving us false answers that make it appear he doesn’t exist.
Neither answer is good news to theists.
It’s really quite simple. If a deity has any effect whatsoever on reality, it’s open to scientific examination. For said deity to not be open to scientific examination, it would have to be completely incapable of ever having any measurable effect on the universe, which is functionally identical to non-existence.
Very well said. The central problem remains: either you have a god that is useless because it doesn’t do anything anyway, or it does something but then it is at least in principle possible for science to detect its interference in the world. Some people like to conflate the two to claim that the second cannot be refuted because the first indeed cannot.
After long and tiresome discussions I seem to have finally grasped the strongest argument for the science cannot examine god camp: yes, so it goes, science could examine the effects of god’s interference, but it could never accept divine intervention as a possible explanation for these effects because it would be too far-fetched and/or forbidden by definition. However, divine intervention only seems far-fetched to us in our actual world now because we have always found more plausible non-supernatural explanations in the past, not because supernatural forces would somehow have been implausible when we knew nothing about the universe and set out to study it for the first time; and for the second, maybe, if that is your definition of science, but seriously, what would your inference to the best explanation be e.g. in the hypothetical case of catholic clergy (but not that of other sects) reproducibly being able to heal all kinds of cancer by laying on hands if you are forbidden to postulate the only sensible tentative explanation? Seems rather silly to restrict science in that way.
It must be remembered that believers start with the premise that there is a supernatural realm inaccessible to scientific inquiry. If we attempt to address religious claims scientifically, they conclude that we are demonstrating ignorance of the world as they know it. Consequently, Terry Eagleton resonates with believers when he opens his review of The God Delusion with the claim that Richard Dawkins is theologically illiterate. (Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?) One could cite numerous examples of the same line of thinking.
There is simply no way around this, which is why I would never think to address religious claims scientifically. These are folks who are convinced that they know more than we do because they possess knowledge of what does not exist.
Sure, but we already know that (I and other have already said that many times here), and it wasn’t the question anyway. The question was whether or not god is a scientific hypothesis, or to put it another way, whether god is subject to scientific (or generally empirical) investigation. That’s a different question from ‘can science disprove the existence of god?’ – which is a rather dull question with a dull answer, really, because it leaves almost everything untouched. No, we can’t prove god doesn’t exist, but we can do a lot of other stuff that is more relevant and useful.
“Supernatural” doesn’t mean “unmeasurable.” Poltergeists are considered supernatural phenomena, but if they do exist, then presumably they really do toss furniture around rooms (if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be poltergeists after all). That requires a little bit of F=ma.
By the way, our “methods for studying nature” is not some box of tools that we found on our doorstep one morning. It is a host of techniques that are continuously being revised and supplemented. One might have honestly said that we could not expect our “tools for studying nature” to be helpful in learning about the behavior of electrons in the early nineteenth century, but things have changed somewhat since then. And folks of that time would no doubt have considered electric lights “supernatural.”
The whole “supernatural” thing is a ruse to throw people off the fact that as soon as you decide what God actually is, it’s either unfalsifiable by definition (like Russell’s Teapot) or falsifiable in principle (like Yahweh of Genesis). And so far, all the falsifiable in principle ones have been falsified, always yielding to ever more subtle, undetectable Gods in the process.
Ken – sure – but they’re wrong. It’s possible to explain why they are wrong, and some of them will see the point. It’s always a mistake to assume that no one in group X will ever listen to reasons.
If God exists, and he has interactions with the world, science definitely can put probabilistic limits on how big or obvious those interactions can be. They’d have to be extremely tiny and subtle, otherwise science would have noticed them by now. God may still exist, and maybe he’s hiding, but his effect on the world must still be minimal and getting smaller all the time, given what we know about how the world works.
And if God doesn’t exist, then of course we can’t measure God or his interactions with the world. After all, you can’t measure what doesn’t exist.
And if De Dora wishes to define “supernatural” as “can’t be measured or observed”, that’s basically the same as saying that the supernatural is irrelevant. And that’s what science has shown God to be as well: he was not necessary for the diversity of species, or for the formation of our planet, sun or galaxy, for rewarding prayer at rates expected by chance alone, for making his believers no more moral than unbelievers, for the brain to produce thought, etcetera. The only gap that realistically can be thought to be left for a God is the formation of the universe as a whole – but there is little reason to believe that this won’t go the same way as all the other formation questions. So science may not have ruled out God, but it has made him all but totally irrelevant.
I’m just tempted to ask: which god?
If gods cannot be proven scientifically, does that mean they co-exist without knowing about eachother, without interfering with eachother, and without inflicting on their respective omnipresence, omnipotence and all that jazz since that would also be possible if they are all omnipotent? (Well, that’s how I view it anyhow; each god or set of gods only exist in the respective believer’s mind, and nowhere else.)
Various versions of Allah exist for muslims, various verisons of YHVH exist for jews, various versions of Jesus exist for christians, and son on, all at the same time? I guess you could picture it like a “hyper trinity”; to borrow from the Council of Chalcedon “recognized in multiple features, without division”?
And, well – if gods cannot be proven scientifically, then what roles do they play in our lives? (Other than, obviously, as a threat/promise to what is supposed to happen in the unknowable-if-exists after-life)
And what about this big gap between religious believers who on one hand claim that their god is acting in all imaginable ways in this world, where on the other hand you have the almost-atheist-like theologans who talk about the scientifically unprovable, abstract god? Who gets to decide which of these camps we should listen to?
What fun! Let’s see now. First, let me assure you that I’m on the side of the angels here–oops, can’t do that, no such things as angels. Anyway, i’m just playing devil’s advocate–oops, no such thing as the devil. Ahem. Start again.
I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church, and I remember the Sunday School lessons from the Old Testment in which there was once a competition between the priests of Jehovah and the priests of Ba’al (whoever wrote the Old Testament *really* had it in for Ba’al) to see whose god was more powerful. And since the priests of Jehovah didn’t believe Ba’al existed, this was a kind of primitive test to see whether god was real, via divine fire (as they hadn’t yet invented the scientific method).
The idea was that each would build an alter for a burnt offering, but they wouldn’t be allowed to light it. They had to pray instead, and whichever god was capable of starting the fire for them would be proved to be real. The priests of Ba’al prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing happened. The priests of Jehovah, as I recall, soaked their firewood in water and did all kinds of things to make the fire hard to light, but–hey, presto!–it lit right away, ergo, Jehovah is a real god, and Ba’al isn’t.
But it always bothered me that the supposition was that whatever god is in charge, s/he’s sitting around waiting for people to ask for a light, y’know? Like a celestial barman, or maybe a member of the divine coat check counter staff.
The arrogance is pretty staggering, because it wasn’t a matter of whose god was real, or stronger, but (assuming a supernatural realm, etc.) proving who had the ‘pull’ to get their god to do a party trick.
So when I read that there are
> … two choices. These are first, that their God works in ways that are
> absolutely indistinguishable from the scientific laws of nature or, second, that their God
> purposefully covers up his tracks to make it appear as if he doesn’t exist.
I think “No, there’s a third possibility.” Because god could be there, and not give a flying spaghetti-O (UK: spaghetti hoop) about our request for proof. Surely a Supreme Being has better things to do, and probably hasn’t checked in on our little corner of the galaxy for a few millenia– or else s/he has, and is still laughing…
Mary Ellen said:
“I think “No, there’s a third possibility.” Because god could be there, and not give a flying spaghetti-O (UK: spaghetti hoop) about our request for proof.”
There is a specific term for what you are describing – the god of deism. This type of god could, in theory, create the universe, laws of nature intact, and then not interfere with it from that point on. It would, theoretically, be immune from scientific enquiry (although we have found out in the past that its probably a mistake to assume science cannot answer particular questions). The arguments against a deistic god tend to be more philosophical in nature rather than scientific.
If science manages to whittle the current god claims of theism down to the deistic god then I would be happy – a deistic god makes no demands on how we run our lives (or more importantly, tells us how to tell other people how to run their lives).
This argument – that ‘god’ can’t be measured scientifically – is the silliest, weakest excuse in the theist’s arsenal, and I’m always left slack-jawed when I see a certain type of atheists defend it. Perhaps they need to replace the word “scientifically” (as they have an exceedingly strange reaction to that word. . .one might almost suspect they long to corral its meaning) with a phrase such as “able to be perceived by ordinary human senses, and not just idiosyncratically in one’s own subjective thoughts.” Because, really, that’s what we’re talking about. Science, in this sense, is just shorthand for “that which can be perceived and confirmed by the usual senses and demonstrated to others.” It’s not an “inappropriate” “construct,” that can’t be brought to bear. It’s the word we use to describe what we can know of observable reality.
Saying “the supernatural can’t be studied or disproven by science” is just a cheap linguistic game. It begs the question by presuming there is such a thing as the supernatural. We have no reason to believe there is, and, by definition, we cannot know if it exists if it is defined as “that which cannot be observed/measured/confirmed by the senses.” As others have pointed out, such things can be dealt with as if they don’t exist – what sense does it make to say something exists about which nothing can ever be known or perceived? That’s not deep, it’s a deepity a la Dan Dennett. And the only reason this conversation exists at all is because it’s culturally acceptable (though deeply embarrassing) to act as if ‘god’, in this sense, is less unlikely than any other similar claim. That is only true because great numbers of people act as if that is the case. To say “God cannot be proven or disproven scientifically” is on a par with:
– “The Greek Pantheon cannot be proven or disproven scientifically, since it is by fiat definition supernatural, therefore science can say nothing about it.”
– “Banshees cannot be proven or disproven scientifically, since they are by fiat definition supernatural, therefore science can say nothing about them.”
-“Leprechauns fearful of having their Lucky Charms stolen cannot be proven or disproven scientifically, since they are by fiat definition supernatural, therefore science can say nothing about them.”
This is not original to me, obviously.
It’s amazing how many people – even self-described rationalists – actually believe (or affect to believe) that those nonsense statements are different in kind from the same claim about ‘god.” They are not. At all.
An obnoxious commenter in . . . other places. . .gets all sniffy and stuffy over this, but he’s fixated on “the virgin birth.” By definition, he claims endlessly, the “virgin birth” is a one-off miracle, so how could we all be so steeeyuuuupid as to think we could possibly subject it to scientific scrutiny? Really. He says this. Apparently I can make any absurd claim I want – at midnight each third Thursday I transform into the lost duchess Anastasia Romanov but change back before anyone can see me – and simply stipulate that it’s a temporary suspension of the ordinary laws of physics, therefore science can say nothing about it.
Did I break the formatting tool? The word “fiat” in my post above should be shown in strikethrough, and it did when I composed the comment before submitting it.
It is. I just think it unlikely that they will listen to scientific reasons, because that would require them to have already conceded that beliefs must be justified by evidence. In that event, scientific arguments will be unnecessary.
Except they could have an ‘aha’ moment while listening to (or hearing) scientific reasons. It happens. Not often enough, but it happens.
There! Took three four attempts, but I fixed it, Josh. No idea why it didn’t work the first three times.
Thanks, Oph (Is that pronounced “Off,” “Oaf,” “Ooof”?). Looks like it’s still broked good, though. Maybe it’s the Leprechauns.
Josh, I am one of those atheists who is quite willing to defend theists who claim that their God is ineffable. The problem comes when they want an ineffable God AND they want political influence based on their ineffable perception of what this ineffable God ineffably tells them.
In your examples, while I would of course disagree with the existence of the Greek pantheon, banshees, or leprechauns, it really wouldn’t bother me to find someone who believed in any of these things. What would bother me is a Greek Pagan Theology League that had the power to force Persephone-abduction theory onto the school syllabus as an “alternative” explanation for the seasons.
Chris,
I agree that those who want to exert political power based on their superstitions are more objectionable. But why would you be “quite willing to defend theists who claim that their God is ineffable.”? Remember, I’m not talking about people being allowed to believe these things. Of course they’re allowed to believe them, and any attempt to not allow them to believe would not only be presumptuous, but impossible.
That’s not the issue. The issue is, do you believe these claims are intellectually defensible? If so, why?
Chris, what about when ineffable-theism is so widespread that people who don’t subscribe to it become an outgroup, perhaps the last outgroup it’s ok to despise? And there is an unwritten but very powerful law that all aspirants to high political office have to be ineffable-theists? And the newspapers and airwaves are packed to the rafters with people invoking the ineffable deity?
You stepped on my lines, Josh!
:- )
The problem may be that people have a tendency to confuse what is ineffable with God, first, with Spinoza’s God, who is merely the ineffable and not really a “who” , but soon shifting into God-God.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10313875.stm People or lots of people like to use the word “God” whenever they get the chance. Maybe “God” should be placed on Orwell’s list (Politics and the English Language) of words that have been so overused that they should be retired from circulation. Spinoza himself could have used another word.
In principle, we can get evidence for or against the existence of a goddy entity in just the same way as we get evidence of very small entities (quarks), very distant entities (neutron stars), or entities that existed only in the distant past (trilobites). If these entities interact with the world of the senses and leave traces in some reasonably consistent way, we can infer their existence. If they fail to act as predicted, we can infer their non-existence and look for a better hpothesis. We could easily have evidence for or against the existence of certain gods, ghosts, or ghouls.
What we can’t do is make progress when the believers in these things claim that they exist but that they act capriciously, or deliberately act so as to elude us, and so on. If someone wants to go on believing in goddy or ghostly entities using these resorts, we can’t prove otherwise, but we can be very suspicious about what is really motivating them.
I don’t understand what’s so difficult about this. I’ve been abused on my own blog for pointing out that this is how it works, and have had a vendetta conducted against me across the internet by one person for saying it. But it’s perfectly logical. There seems to be a head-in-the-sand dogmatism around regarding the in-principle immunity of religion to scientific scepticism, and most of it seems to be coming from the people you’d least expect.
*hypothesis
Personal god is just an excuse for covering fear and the hidden need for security blanket, a sign of immaturity perhaps?
If this god cannot be measured/tested/proven of its existence, why bother?
Those of us who have had some scientific training, and those who have read some history, know that we have been here before. This is a replay of a scientific debate of (about) 1875-1910.
It was then thought, and “believed” as well, that for light to propagate through space, there HAD to exist something called “The luminiferous Aether”, which filled all of the universe. Unfortunately, the Michelson-Morley experiment showed (by demonstrating that there was no universal reference frame w.r.t. Earth’s movement through space) that there was no trace of said Aether, which caused enormous pother among the physicists and philosophers of the time.
In the early years of the C20th, uncle Albert published the first (Special, meaning limited-circumstances) of his Relativity theories. In it, he specifically included the claim that “The Aether is not detectable”, because large numbers of people (in the field) were still looking for this undetected “thing”. At the same time of course, others were making the first steps in QM theory – rememebr that Einstein’s work (excepting that on the photoelectric effect) was then always in what is now called “Classical” physics, with smooth transitions.
After a time, the “believers” in the lA either died, or gave up the fight. It was noticeable that the literary/religious/philosoper types were the last to abandon the struggle. Well, so “god” is not detectable? It is just more of the same, isn’t it, except that the dispute is likely to last a little longer? Russell Blackford’s point is also very familiar – if we can detect down to the neutrino, and up to dark matter and distant supergalaxy clusters, why can’t we “see” god? I know, the religious say “oh, but it’s different” – well HOW different?
If “god” exists inside this universe why can we not see him/her/it/them? If god exists in another/different universe, then why bother? I note, as I expect everyone else has, that religious believers always dodge or refuse to answer that particular di-lemma.
No, no, no. This is all wrong. You see, “God” does not “exist” in the ordinary sense of the word, and religious people do not really “believe” in the literal “existence” of “God,” as if God were a person. The word “God” is not a symbol for some specifiable being, but rather is a gesture, a reaching out or pointing towards that that which we cannot understand or conceive, but nonetheless yearn for – transcendence itself. It’s not that God moves in mysterious ways – it’s that we are moved by the mystery of God.
/end Karen Armstrong impersonation/
Of course, if the double-talk and empty poesy of those who claim that the existence of God can in no way be addressed by evidence and reason stopped right there with my Armstrong-channeling paragraph, they’d still be dead wrong: There is ample evidence that such vague and fluffy accounts of how religious believers conceive of God have little or nothing to do with how the vast majority of religious believers actually do conceive of God, and that evidence is not hard to find in believers’ words and deeds. Most religious people clearly do believe in a God that does literally exist as a psychological-if-not-physical person, complete with a point of view and quite specific moral convictions (which always prove remarkably identical to the believers’ own). For just one example, I seem to recall that Southern Baptist Convention bigwig Richard Land publicly dismissing Karen Armstrong’s apophatic theology as no more than gussied-up atheism – and there are a helluvalot more Southern Baptists than Karen Armstrongs in the world.
But they rarely stop there. Most of the God-is-beyond-science believers (including Armstrong herself, but more on her below) use this ultimately mysterious definition of “God” only when it is convenient. It’s a transparent bait-and-switch: When subject to criticism based on reason and evidence, believers trot out the definition of “God” immune to reason and evidence. (I’m suspicious that this might not really qualify as a definition or conception of “God” at all, but is just empty hand-waving nonsense – but I’ll grant for the sake of argument that it’s actually meaningful in some way or another despite all appearances to the contrary.) After the criticism at hand has been pooh-poohed for its lack of theological sophistication, most believers go right back to making claims grounded in their more traditional theistic conception of God (which is just as vulnerable to criticism on the basis of reason and evidence as it ever was), tossing aside their brief flirtation with sophisticated theology – until that more ineffable “God” is needed again to avoid another criticism of the plausibility of the altogether effable God they actually worship. Whether they are willful bait-and-switchers or are simply engaged in a self-deceptive shell game, believers think they can have their Armstrong/Tillich/Niebuhr God-cake and eat their traditional theism cake, too. Sorry, but no: One definition of “God” per argument; anything more is equivocation.
Having gone to all the trouble of learning at least enough modern theology to parrot it if not understand it, why don’t more believers keep the ineffable God around? He’s awfully inconvenient, for two reasons: Firstly, a God so thoroughly indescribable or attenuated in character that it can have no discernible effect on the world should not even have an effect on the believer. That is, a conception of God that is content-free and ultimately inexplicable renders belief itself content-free and inexplicable. What does God want from us? Trick question: To answer it would be to have a specific belief about God, which is a no-no for those who have declared God to be completely ineffable. The moment they start attributing properties to God, even very vague adjectives or adverbs like caring about humanity, they open themselves to tough questions: “I thought God was completely ineffable and can only be gestured towards and all that? If God is so super-mysterious, why do you think God cares about us?” Those who claim to embrace such theologically sophisticated conceptions of God cannot intelligibly make any claims about that thoroughly ineffable God, including any and every claim that could conceivably explain or justify or ground or inspire their own religious impulses, behaviors, and beliefs. There’s simply no way to connect a content-free conception of God to any specific religious belief or practice — no way to get from apophatic theology to Christianity or Islam or Zoroastrianism or Hinduism or…
Which, of course, leads directly to that second reason why the super-ineffable God is so inconvenient: It never had anything to do with how believers conceive of God and the world in the first place. No matter how much theology-babble people spew about God being outside of the world in some sense or another, believers would not be believers if they didn’t conceive of God(s) as the sort of being(s) they can engage with – worship, pray to, obey, etc. One can only engage with something that one conceives of as being a part of one’s world – that is, as a being which exists in something very close to a traditional sense, apophatic or existential or other “sophisticated” theological metaphysics be damned. Moreover, the desire to engage would be incomprehensible unless that being were conceived as having some particular properties: One must conceive of God/the divine/etc. as some being an agent or person of some sort to pray or otherwise communicate with it, or to think that it has desires/expectations/attitudes of approval and disapproval of one’s actions, etc.
But where does that leave those who claim that their conception of God really is one of these vague, theologically sophisticated ideas which cannot be undermined by any appeal to mere evidence and reason? Are they all just willful bait-and-switchers? Of course not: Some people really are consistent deists and don’t switch back and forth at will. But even those who are inconsistent may not be willful, they may just be self-deluded.
So, still allowing for the sake of argument that an Armstrong-like conception of God actually is a conception rather than just hand-waving balderdash, most who embrace such concepts tend to give the game away whenever they talk about religion; that is, they say things that reveal a much more substantial and traditional conception of God lurking just under the veneer of existential or apophatic or whatever theology. Take, for example, the relentless insistence by Karen Armstrong (and many others) that religion is “really” all about compassion or moral enlightenment or similar fluffy/positive things: If “God” is conceived of in terms of gesturing/transcendence/yearning towards something unspecifiable and inherently beyond our capacity to comprehend, rather than as a being with properties that we can at least in some way understand and articulate, whence the positive content? If, as Armstrong claims, “God exceed[s] our thoughts and concepts and [can] only be known by dedicated practice,” then on what basis does she limit her discussion of dedicated religious practices only to the warm and fuzzy practices aimed at enlightenment and compassion? Even if we limit ourselves to religious practices involving Armstrong’s other favorite buzz words like “ecstasy” and “transcendence,” real religious practices include bloody sacrifices and torturous exorcisms and all manner of rites that both participants and observers describe in terms of religious ecstasy and feelings of transcendence, but are anything but compassionate and enlightened.
Moreover, Armstrong cannot conceivably say that practices A and B are “real” or “true” religious practices but X and Y aren’t, at least not without doing something she doesn’t want to do: On the one hand, she could bring in moral standards that have nothing to do with God – in which case, such judgments wouldn’t be about what makes “true” or “real” religious practices at all, but about morally better and worse religious practices, and her insistence that all religious practice is inherently or intrinsically about compassion/love/warm fuzzy good things would be exposed as bullshit from the get go. On the other hand, she could bring in moral standards that are rooted in her conception of God – in which case, all her blather about apophatic theology and God being beyond our conceptions and so on would be exposed as bullshit from the get go, because she was smuggling in a traditional conception of a moral, loving God all along. I suspect she’s actually doing some of both, but I doubt she’s self-aware enough to recognize it. Whatever’s going on in her head, in her writing it appears that Armstrong avoids the genuine dilemma characterized above by simply ignoring all current and past religious practices that fail to meet her preconceptions, just like she ignores historical evidence that fails to support her agenda. Not that I expect better from a theologian.
The God claim may or may not be falsifiable but God claims certainly are, and even if we cannot directly measure His interaction with the world (for whatever terribly convenient reason) the forensic evidence doesn’t support the hypothesis of His intervention.
Josh and Ophelia.
By defensible, I mean I have no particular objection to someone having a belief that they recognise as unsupported by rational thought. Where someone has insight, I don’t really object. I still disagree with it, of course, and think of it as a weak argument. And I’d very happily argue against it. But the fact that some people have these beliefs does not bother me.
Martin Gardner was a brilliant skeptic and a theist who believed in miracles (but insisted they could never be demonstrated empirically). Do I think Gardner was wrong? Yes, I do. But his belief in miracles did not poison his belief in rational thinking. The problem is not with the insightful believers of ineffability, who make up only a tiny fraction of all believers anyway, but those who believe very strongly in their moral view and use ineffability as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their claims.
The objections you raise, Ophelia, are far more serious than mere appeal to ineffability. And in those cases, I share your objections completely. And I am happy for the ineffability argument to be thrown back in the faces of its proponents, e.g. “If god is unknowable, how can you know he hates homosexuality?”
It’s the use of ineffability to deflect analysis that I despise; the idea of ineffability itself is quite possibly a very realistic appraisal of our capacity to understand the universe at this time and maybe forever.
I would think it is incumbent upon anyone who thinks that religion is “all about compassion or moral enlightenment or similar fluffy/positive things” to strongly reject the sacred texts of the three monotheisms, for a start.
Thanks for the rest of it, too, George.
What we sometimes call bait-and-switch can be expressed in the opposite way, as George did when he said there is “simply no way to connect a content-free conception of God to any specific religious belief or practice.” Maybe that’s part of the difference between the “genuine” and the “willful” indulgers in this practice. One has a single idea, but doesn’t mind misrepresenting it to confuse opponents, while the other isn’t really quite sure what to think, but feels there can’t be so much religious smoke without any divine fire, therefore leaning towards whichever end of the spectrum is more comfortable at that moment and under those circumstances.
Sometimes I think we should call their bluff.
The ‘sophisticated’ theology with its ineffable God is actually far closer to pantheism than theism and pantheism itself is pretty close to a scientific view of the universe – dressed up in waffly language. It follows from this that there should be large areas of agreement between ‘new atheism’/scientific rationalism and ‘sophisticated’ theology. Sure, there are large areas of disagreement but, for a second, lets focus on the areas of agreement. These should include the various miracles described in holy books – we both agree that these should not be treated as actual physical events – so no virgin birth, no parting of the red sea, no horse flying to Jerusalem. The idea of a God revealing His wishes to humans should also be dismissed – we both regard it as unfeasable (for different reasons, for sure, but we should be agreed that there is no communication from on high to individual humans).
Removing revelation and miracles is basically a case of strictly applying one aspect of the NOMA theory – the part that says that the ‘religious magisteria’ does not overlap with the non religious magisteria – and for the sake of argument I think we can remain agnostic at this point about the existence of a religious magisteria.
At the same time I doubt that the likes of Karen Armstrong and Terry Eagleton would react with anything other than horror to such a suggestion of agreement which suggests that their is a strong element of politics in their position. Still, it would be interesting to watch them squirm as they are forced to reject their own oft-stated positions.
Scientific analysis is ill-equipped to deal with something or some event that is unique. It readily jumps from unique to assurred non-existence because the reality of the unique would have to be captured by idioms that apply to nothing else. See Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary.
Must something be scientifically measurable to exist? Why are so uncomfortable admitting science, like any respectable field of study, has its limits?
*Why are people.
Sorry, I’m only just finishing my morning coffee now!
Or, must something be scientifically measurable to not exist? That is, is absence of scientific evidence, evidence of absence?
Michael – that’s just glib and unhelpful.
But what is one capable of saying about something that cannot be measured or observed? One can imagine something, sure, but what has that to say about its existence? Nobody in this camp is claiming scientific disproof is possible, as Midgley more than implied they have been. I also don’t think anyone is stating that science has no limits, but those who like pointing its limits out are overwhelmingly those who wish to have something believed on grounds far more deficient than ever underlay any seriously proposed scientific theory.
That question is beside the point. I haven’t suggested that “something must be scientifically measurable to exist.” The point is, if the something in question is not capable of any kind of scientific or empirical investigation (“measurable” is your word, not mine), then what reason do we have to believe it exists? If we have no reason to believe it exists, why should we believe it exists?
That’s the question. Not the silly alternative you suggested.
I’m not “uncomfortable” agreeing that science has its limits. That, again, is not the question.
An interesting question might be: what do you, as a self-defined atheist, think is the best reason that could be advanced for the existence of a god? I, as a self-defined atheist, can’t think of any good ones.
Why are some people unwilling to admit that religion is not a respectable field of study.
Why are some people unwilling to admit that science, despite it’s limitations, is the best tool we have for understanding reality.
To deliberately pretend that that religion offers any insight into how the universe works is to willingly cripple ones self. Knock your self out if that’s your form of masochism but don’t get upset it you get laughed at in public.
It’s not strident to point this out.
What gives Michael the confidence to suggest that detecting the physical effect of God on the world is beyond the limit of science?
As Mary Ellen pointed out in #13, theists have tried tests in the past. 1 Kings 18, from v 22: Elijah on his own versus 450 prophets of Baal. When Baal failed to perform, Elijah taunted “Cry louder – maybe he’s musing, or has gone off to check a recipe for fire, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” Then Elijah had the wood well flooded with water, and called on YHWH. YHWH’s fire descended, and burnt the wood, the stones, and the water too. So Elijah, with the compassion all the big religions are famous for, killed all the prophets of Baal.
Nowadays the Roman catholic-so-long-as-you’re-a-celibate-male church claims to investigate miracles sort-of scientifically. They can prove lots of people’s terminal cancers went into remission because of YHWH (though they don’t call It that any more). They can even tell who had a quiet word in heaven to bring the matter to YHWH’s attention. They don’t explain why YHWH’s interventions are so rare and capricious.
They could also, but I guess won’t, easily do a double-blind test to see if believers are differently affected by a cracker that has been magically turned into the substance of Jesus’s flesh by a real priest, and a cracker over which a fake priest has intoned the approved spell, which, ex hypothesi, is still just a cracker.
As has already been pointed out, it’s not that understanding evolution disproves the existence of YHWH (or any other of them); it just removes differentiation of species from YHWH’s job description. And, as Darwin noted, the habits of the Ichneumonidae (and innumerable other wastes and horrors) demonstrate that if there are any bigtime supernatural entities in business, they are either cruel or bungling or both.
So far, the only “limits” proposed to scientific reasoning are a) entities that systematically hide from us or b) systematically unsystematic (utterly capricious) phenomena. Since such entities also defy investigation through any non-scientific means (I’m still not sure what that means — looking out the window or asking if anyone else in the room hears a ringing noise are perfectly scientific means of investigation), one wonders what sense one can make of the assertion “entities defying scientific means of investigation exist.”
What does it take for something to qualify as “something”? Can something with no effects whatsoever possibly be deemed “something”? Certainly, we could never investigate such a thing (by assumption). But does that mean we’re actually talking about hypothetical entities? Then again, hypothetical entities correspond to subjective states, and we CAN study those.
Basically, Michael, take the proposition “X exists.” If the counterfactual, “X does not exist,” is indistinguishable in any way from “X exists” then X doesn’t exist. If there is in principle no measurement or observation we could make to determine the truth value of “X exists,” then quite simply it doesn’t have a truth value, and I would describe it as being meaningless in a strong though not absolute sense. Quite simply if the existence of something is indistinguishable in principle from its non-existence, in what sense can it be said to exist in the first place?
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a God who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
This is just asking us to believe without evidence. If you cannot see the problem with that, then I am at a loss to understand how you managed to rise to such prominence within the CFI.
There is no doubt that science has its limits, but it is the only way that has ever been found to work for addressing questions about the existence or non-existence of phenomena and objects in the universe. Philosophy could show that something is logically inconsistent, but you can philosophize all you want and you will still not know if there is life on Mars. Math and logic can build fantastic edifices of coherent concepts, but you can produce mathematical proofs all you want, you will still not know for certain if the Higgs bosom exists unless you do the scientific experiment to test it, and a mathematical dissertation about the behavior of certain elements in 20-dimensional space does not tell you whether 20 dimensions actually exist anywhere in the universe. The point is, any supernatural that is of any practical relevance whatsoever and actually distinguishable from being non-existent – see all the comments above and in the previous thread – is a question about the existence of phenomena (god’s actions, resurrections, faith healing, special creation) and objects (deities, souls, spirits, demons) in the universe. Far from being not be the right way to examine the question, science is self-evidently the only demonstrably useful way to do it!
Which does not mean that philosophy can’t have its say, of course, if that is any comfort for you. If a certain concept of deity is logically inconsistent, science does not even need to start looking for it.
For certain cases, obviously yes. If I postulate something that should have an effect and the effect cannot be observed, what else is that but a disproof of my idea? Happens all the time in physics, or so I am told.
Meanwhile, at last, a sign! Baal has woken up, or found that recipe, or something.
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_north_cincinnati/monroe/king-of-kings-statue-destroyed-by-fire
Michael, I think the discussion would be a little clearer if you would simply clarify two points:
1) What do you think is good example of a limit to scientific reasoning?
2) What do you think is a fair necessary condition for the existence of an entity? That is to say, not some hypothetical entity whose existence can’t actually be ascertained, but an explanation of what it actually means metaphysically for something to exist.
Or those who care about the marked differences between science and philosophy. I find it odd that anyone who cares about such differences is automatically lumped into the theologians’ camp.
I don’t see how my questions are irrelevant to this point. I asked whether scientific evidence is the only barometer for determining whether something exists.
Of course, I do not think we should believe without reasons. But I think reasons can be found outside of science, or at least, reasons can be found that are informed by science but not scientific themselves.
Another candidate for being not subject to scientific investigation is subjective experience – what it is like to be oneself, and so on. But even if that’s true (and as neuroscience and cognitive science progress it may turn out not to be), it’s still not a spooky mysterian hidden thing like “god” – it’s more a fuzzy vague complicated thing that we can talk about, attempt to depict in novels and memoirs, and so on. It’s not absent – it’s subjective. There’s a difference.
Of course lots of believers claim that subjective experience of god is itself evidence for god – evidence that god isn’t absent at all. But they’re wrong.
I wonder what non-empirical reasons De Dora would accept as good reasons for determining that something exists. He claims that there are some, so let’s hear them. How about voices in your head? The assurances of an ancient book? The authority of somebody like the Pope, or Joseph Smith?
And what if these methods (as they have) lead to conflicting results in different cultures, or among different people.
I’d love to see De Dora provide a short list of these “reasons to believe”, but somehow I don’t think that’ll be forthcoming.
1. Because people are religious?
2. Because people are religious/irrational/uninformed?
3. I never once argued here that religious explanations offer insight into how the universe works. However — and this might be stretching your point — I would note that our study of religion and its influence on life on Earth absolutely does offer us insight into how the universe works at the level of human behavior and interaction. I don’t imagine you would disagree with me.
No you didn’t. You asked whether something must be scientifically measurable to exist. Those two questions are different. One is ontological, the other is epistemological.
Such as ? Show that something exists without using evidence. Unless you can do that, you are just spouting rubbish.
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Jerry. I suspect you’ll just get a bunch of goal-post shifting, which seems to be De Dora’s preferred mode of “argumentation” in recent conversations around here. Or, he’ll claim he didn’t write what he wrote, and then scratch his head over why the reader finds that frustrating.
No has been arguing that religion is not worth studying as an anthropological, historical and sociological phenomenon. However theology is not such study. Theology examines the nature of god, having first assumed he exists.
Well of course. If that’s all you’re claiming, there is no disagreement. The reasons are a mix of scientific and philosophical.
Unless what you mean by that is “reasons can be found that are informed by science but not scientific themselves and they exclude reasons that are ‘scientific themselves’ [I’m not sure what that means]” – in which case I don’t agree.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean there either, but it doesn’t seem like we’re working on very big differences here.
Indeed. Theology clearly is a load of bunk. There still might be a bit of value in studying some of it, though, for the same reasons as we find for studying religion.. but that’s really beside all the points in this thread.
De Dora,
Since you think that we can know things exist without having evidence for them why not give an example of something that exists, and show that it exists without using evidence.
Michael, what is it that makes it clear that theology is a load of bunk?
Perhaps if instead of talking about “scientific evidence, we talked about “empirical evidence”, this discussion would be clearer.
Surely I would see a problem with that, but that it not what I am putting forth.
I am asking whether all of your beliefs have been scientifically proven beyond a reasonable doubt, or whether you have beliefs that are informed by scientific knowledge but depend largely on your critical reasoning about the implications of that scientific knowledge. In short — obviously there are ways of knowing (with a small k) without having science observe and test, correct?
The starting assumption — God exists — which I believe is philosophically unsophisticated and indefensible.
Michael – in comment 56 – can you explain your reasons 1 and 2? Why is the fact that people are religious (and/or irrational or uninformed) a reason to be unwilling to admit that science, despite its limitations, is the best tool we have for understanding reality? Is the idea that, because people are religious etc, it is rude to admit that science is the best tool we have for understanding reality? Or am I misunderstanding.
Of course there are, but since that is so bloody obvious it was not at all clear that is what you meant.
#50
Andrew Sullivan’s take is pretty good: God the Father, it seems, has good taste.
I’m a step behind! Probably two or three by now. In reply to #67 –
Science doesn’t prove anything. Beliefs that are informed by scientific knowledge necessarily rely on centuries of scientific investigation – they may look more independent of science than they really are just because we ourselves are not the ones who did all that groundwork. There are no ways of knowing that are radically different from and alien to science. You’re using a peculiarly narrow definition of science in order to exclude it from the rest of our thinking.
I’m about to cast a kitten! First De Dora says that “reasons can be found outside of science, or at least, reasons can be found that are informed by science but not scientific themselves.” And then he says that theology is a load of bunk because believing in God’s existence is “philosophically unsophisticated and indefensible.” Pray tell us, Mr. De Dora, since the reasons for believing in God aren’t good, what are the nonscientific but good reasons for believing in something?”
We’re waiting. Come on, you said such reasons exist, so please provide just a couple of examples.
That narrow definition threw me as well. I had assumed De Dora was using science to mean an empirical, evidence based approach to knowledge.
There isn’t a bright strip of neon dividing those beliefs of mine which are informed by scientific knowledge and those that depend on my critical reasoning about the implications of scientific knowledge. Can YOU give me a sufficient condition to tell them apart?
I appreciate that you came to comment here to try to engage on these issues, but I’m not actually seeing much engagement. So here are my two questions again, and a third:
1) What is an example of a limit to scientific investigations, or an indisputably “real” phenomenon that scientific reasoning cannot be used to study?
2) What do YOU think it means for something to exist in a metaphysical sense? My own version is this: if the implications of a thing’s existence are identical to the implications of its nonexistence, then it doesn’t exist. Is there some problem with this definition that I’m not seeing?
3) Where is the boundary around science? You keep writing as if it’s OBVIOUS that science and philosophy are distinct, but I certainly don’t think so and a few others here would be likely to take issue as well. Not only that, but the quote above seems to imply that there’s some difference between observations made by scientists in the lab and those made by humans in the real world. I don’t buy it. When I look at something, photons are bouncing off it in very particular ways, and by intercepting those photons with my retinas, I can infer things about that something. When I look at something, I am literally making a measurement — or really several — even if I’m not consciously doing so. I don’t think it’s obvious at all where to draw the line between science and everyday life. So where do YOU draw the line?
Jerry, when you cast the kitten, can I have it?
You know, I should clear up something else that I read in the other thread. Josh Slocum wrote:
I absolutely agree here. Evolution can strongly put to rest specific ideas like intelligent design and young earth creationism, and for that I think all atheists are thankful. But those ideas stick around because theists claim God works in all of these mysterious ways — for instance, “God made it look that way to fool you!” or “God still had his hand in evolution somehow.” The list goes on. And we know these comebacks are crap, but not because we refer back to science alone. Rather, we know they are crap because of our philosophical analysis of things like the theist’s claim, the sort of God being posited in that specific instance, the scientific data, common sense, and more. In that regard, we are in the land of philosophy, in the land of critically analyzing several different ideas, scientific or not, and trying to make sense of them.
Now, one can make a specific claim about the way the natural world works, and science can go observe, test, experiment, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt (just as evolution has rejected ID and YE creationism). But while scientists might be able to test specific theist claims about God’s interaction with the world, science cannot rule out God per se, nor can it treat God like a scientific hypothesis. I think there are at least two reasons why: God is a non-nonsensical idea (God is poorly defined, and with every bit of scientific data that comes in, it seems God becomes even more poorly defined); and God is a supernatural idea (even if he intervenes from the heavens, it’s not on a regular and testable basis).
That doesn’t mean science has nothing to say about God. Clearly there are theist claims, including ones about God, that science can study. And clearly scientific data has its implications. Science is essential to the atheist. But it is my contention that philosophical analysis of science and surrounding claims is just as essential, perhaps even moreso, in putting God to rest. Remember, atheism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.
Perhaps I just need to parse the difference between science itself and the scientific outlook here. Would that help?
Point of clarification: I did not write the comment to which you’re referring in your number 77.
Well nobody claims (nobody I know of anyway) that science can “rule out God per se” – but again, that wasn’t the question. The question was whether science can investigate god-claims, and you seemed to be claiming it couldn’t.
It’s no good telling us to remember something we haven’t agreed to, something that is the very point in contention! I don’t agree that “atheism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one,” because I think that’s an oversimplification, and one that has become political because of the uses made of it by Chris Mooney, the NCSE and others. I think atheism is both, so I’m not going to ‘remember’ that it’s one to the exclusion of the other. You seem to think so too, since you say science is essential to the atheist. If that’s the case, how can it be true that atheism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one?
Yes it was Eric who wrote that passage. Eric MacDonald. He’s an Anglican minister, Michael! Also an atheist.
I have a feeling some people above are correct in desiring that we draw a line between scientific evidence and empirical evidence and analysis. But still, surely you’ve heard of the term a priori, Jerry? I have very good nonscientific (or, non-empirical) reasons to believe 2+2=4, do I not?
If we are speaking specifically to scientific evidence, I could probably rattle off a long list about my beliefs regarding the fine job Obama is doing or my feelings for my girlfriend. I would never charge these reasons are without merit, however. Clearly they are based upon analysis of my observations. But they are not scientific. And yes, I am speaking about science in a very specific manner, and the scientific outlook in a broader way. I see nothing wrong with that.
Whoops, sorry about that!
In the same sense that a guided tour of Bedlam, The Bethlem Royal Hospital, notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment of the insane, would provide insight into human behaviour.
There are ethical ways of understanding human behavior, ones that do not involve using human beings as lab rats in some cruel cosmic experiment conducted by a psychotic sky fairly.
But that’s just overcomplicating the issue. All God/gods “claims” (other than deistic ones) are scientifically testable hypotheses. Philosophical analysis and “common sense” are completely unnecessary.
A line between? Not at all! That would be insane. “Empirical” covers more territory, but not different territory.
Michael:
Yes, Massimo writes similar things, but I never get an answer to: how can science be science if you say that the rejection of unsupported, ad-hoc justifications is no part of it (but of philosophy instead)? That would surely not be any science a scientist like myself would recognize, nor could it ever work in practice. It is like saying that accounting is no part of economics, it is math instead. What I never get is why we are unjustified to say science can reject an undetectable god if it is justified to reject an undetectable luminiferous ether or abominable snowman. Massimo’s standard answer seems to be “the supernatural is different, I will not say how, but the difference is obvious!” Well, it sure isn’t to me.
As for “we know it because of the sort of God being posited”, this is also quite useless. Just relax one of the omnis, and all purely philosophical problems with god that I am aware of disappear, most prominently the problem of Evil.
Strong atheism maybe, but there is hardly anybody on the planet who holds that position. But atheism as a tentative position taken because of lack of evidence for theism is very much part of the state of science, part of the scientific worldview, the fact that many individual scientists inconsistently do not apply scientific reasoning to their personal religious beliefs notwithstanding.
But you have no non-scientific (non-evidential) reasons to believe that two or four of anything exist. The question is god’s existence, and for that you use science. That’s the point.
Great, now the next step: where’s the dividing line? Where does philosophy stop and science start? Why am I constrained to believe there’s some discontinuity between philosophy and science? Can you provide a single reason to think such a discontinuity exists?
The truth of “2+2=4” depends entirely on the axioms of your particular theory of numbers. It’s “a priori” in the sense that it’s determined by a set of rules determined by presupposition, but the rules themselves are arbitrary if you insist on separating the axioms from their real world inspiration.
Imagine human beings communicated and gathered information about the world primarily through sense of smell. I can imagine such organisms having sophisticated mathematics dealing with ratios and pressures, various hydrostatic and hydrodynamic physics problems, but I have trouble imagining such creatures concluding that “2+2=4” or even conceiving of the number “2” in the first place. Such creatures, it would seem to me, would be constrained to doing mathematics on the open unit interval.
Depending on your definitions and the axioms of your number theory, you could have “2+2=5” or “2+2=1” or whatever you wanted. The fact that the most commonly used number theory is widely applicable to real-world phenomena (which is how we ended up with it) is in fact an a posteriori result.
Not exactly a knock-down argument, but it is a good-sized hole in the only example of a priori knowledge I’ve ever seen a philosopher give.
@Alex SL:
Great minds, what?
Michael,
Your beliefs about Obama and your feelings for your girlfriend may not be based on science (though they probably are partly based on some kind of evidence), but they are also not radically different from science. They don’t just float free of facts entirely; not unless you’re mentally ill. You seem now to be saying (or admitting) that you define science in a very narrow way for the purposes of this discussion. Well, I think most of us disagree with that.
Also, strictly speaking, your feelings for your girlfriend are tengential to this discussion. The issue should be your belief that she exists. You don’t claim that your belief that she exists is based on reasons that are radically different from scientific investigation do you?
To clarify the “2+2=4 is not a priori” thing, what I am saying is that there is an uncountable infinity of different number systems implying different mixes of theorems, some largely congruent to our number system and many that are quite different.
The truth of a statement WITHIN any such number theory is a priori. But we only know which number system “fits our universe” (really should be “fits our phenomenological experience”) a posteriori. So while “2+2=4” given the axioms of set theory, for example, the applicability of this result to real-world situations is a contingent fact about the universe that had to be discovered through experimentation and observation.
I was gonna post that 2 + 2 = 4 is definitionally true in a certain number system, but Dan L. beat me to it. And I was also gonna post that if one thinks Obama is a good president or that somebody loves somebody else, there must be good empirical reasons for it; otherwise these are delusions. But Ophelia beat me to that point too.
Really, De Dora, if you can’t come up with something solid, perhaps you should hie yourself back to your other websites and ponder a while. We’re wasting entirely too much time on your inchoate and vague arguments.
Since the other thread seems to be winding down, I’ll respond to Michael’s last one over there here at this one. There is a reason people have been spending time dealing with you here and it has a lot to do with your position at CFI. I’m sure I speak not only for myself when I say people are concerned that someone with the mouthpiece you can use should both think and speak clearly. You’ve been modest enough to admit you may be doing neither and you mention other people’s higher opinion of your abilities as a reason not to pack it in. I can feel the frustration among the commenters here because the discussion is getting bogged down less in actual disagreements than in than in your seeming not to have carefully read and understood what others are saying, as well seeming to turn around and change the meaning of what you wrote retroactively. No, you’re not a troll; yes, you are someone considered worth reaching out to, but taking the time to consider the real meaning of what people are writing (based on the words they actually use to convey it) is the only way that connection can happen. If you really think B&W has a high level, please grasp the opportunity to express yourself at that level.
Neither do they represent knowledge that can be shared with us. At best, these are a sort of “self-knowledge”, for which we don’t ask justification. I accept that you admire Obama and love your girlfriend, but if you claim that space aliens are monitoring your thoughts, I’m going to ask to see the wires.
A person who claims to be monitored by space aliens may be completely harmless, so I wouldn’t bother asking to see the wires unless it went further than that. You may assert that you admire Obama and love your girlfriend and most of us will probably believe you, having no good reason not to. But if we do believe you, you’re not going to cite these (probably) unchallenged assertions as a reason for dictating what we may eat or what sexual positions we may employ, are you? And if nobody did that (and far, far worse), based on claims about what gods want, we wouldn’t need to have this discussion at all, because the philosophy would never meet the real world. But it does and this argument has repercussions far outside the realm of philosophy. People get hurt and killed because of this on a daily basis all over the world, which is why we bother raising our voices when we see any strengthening of the religious side, particularly coming from someone who could be perceived as representing the side we are on.
As the person who suggested above changing the discussion from one about scientific evidence to one about empirical evidence, I agree with Ophelia that empirical evidence is broader and includes scientific evidence. According to the dictionary, empirical evidence includes experiment and observation.
Well, I never did say otherwise.
Right, but Jerry, you asked for scientific reasons, not empirical or observation- and experience-based reasons.
“Please inform me as to how a scientist might go about setting up and then scientifically testing a God hypothesis.”
Before the “how,” there’s the “why.” If the scientist had observed or discovered something for which “god” seemed to be the strongest explanation, she/he would have a reason to go in that direction at all. Otherwise, why bother? And if such a god hypothesis came from somewhere outside science (which, let’s face it…), there would also be no point unless the god hypothesised was somehow defined… and I suppose even then the definition would have to be one that didn’t make people laugh or facepalm.
You’re doing it again. You’re using an unnecessarily narrow, idiosyncratic definition of “science” that excludes empirical observations. Why are you doing this? It’s as if you don’t actually read for comprehension when people respond and object.
Just to clear this up: yes, I am an advocate for the organization and its mission. But I am not paid to be a professional philosopher. I am paid to be executive director for the New York City branch. This means I should be generally informed about our issues (I think I am), but it otherwise requires a rather different skill set. Further, that blog I run on the CFI site — that’s something I do completely outside of my work duties at CFI. This is not meant as any sort of excuse. It’s just to make sure you all know my role at CFI.
Tough question. This might help:
Josh beat me to it! Yes, De Dora–you are the only one on this discussion who sees a substantive and meaningful difference between the methods of science and the methods of empirical, evidence-based reasoning used by nonscientists. It’s the SAME procedure. When a plumber narrows down where a leak is, when a mechanic diagnoses a car problem, when a doctor performs differential diagnosis to pinpoint a disease, they’re all using the same methods that scientists use to rule out alternative explanations.
You’re making a distinction without a difference, and that is maddening. The entire debate (except, apparently, the one you’re engaged in) centers on using reason and evidence to find things out versus using other methods like dogma and revelation.
Never mind. I find it quite disturbing that someone working for the CFI doesn’t recognize similarities between methods of inquiry—and also engages continually in backtracking, clarifying, and apologizing for what he said. Some voice of reason!
I never said there weren’t similarities between science and philosophy, nor did I say there exist differences between the two that are jarring. But there are qualitative differences between philosophy and science, and Jerry, quite honestly, I know you must know that.
Josh, how would science go about testing the assumptions with which I judge Obama’s presidency?
Jerry,
what is maddening is that professional scientists like you apparently don’t get very simple epistemological points about how science works and on which metaphysical assumptions it is based. You are equating science with reason, they ain’t the same since science is a subtype of rational thinking. In fact, sometimes science works a-rationally, as shown by the long history of scientific discoveries that did not follow any rational path (in philosophy this is known as the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification – look it up, you might learn something). Not only is your example of the plumber a non sequitur (never heard of supernatural plumbing), but by your own standards plumbing then becomes a science. Really??
Ophelia laid it out very clearly in her post and various commenters have as well. The God that most believers follow/worship is one who, they claim, actively interacts with the world through miracles, etc. If that God indeed does interact with the world, there should be ample empirical evidence of that. As it stands, there is none. Either miracles are real or they’re not. Prayer either works or it doesn’t. Catholics actually turn bread into Jesus’s dead flesh or they don’t. These are testable and falsifiable claims.
What in tarnation are you asking? Are you asking about your assumptions, or about verifiable facts about Obama? Why do you think the existence of a God is the same thing as the subjective opinion one holds about the worth of a public servant?
One may hold any opinion one likes about the merits of a politician. That opinion may or may not be reached by sound consideration of the evidence. It may or may not be based on demonstrable facts about the politician.
But that is not the same as positing the existence of an entity for which there is no evidence. Why can’t you see that?
Et tu, Massimo? Simply declaring, by fiat, that there is such a thing as the supernatural, and that any alleged example of it is, by definition (um, just because, like, someone said so), not knowable or amenable to observation? You actually take that seriously?
Michael, thank you for being a little more explicit about where you’re trying to draw the line. I still don’t agree, of course, but at least now I have something concrete to argue against:
This is precisely the Big Thing that science does: uses reason to explore the nature of reality. Any philosopher discussing metaphysics that doesn’t START with scientifically grounded empirical facts about the nature of reality is doing it wrong.
I think it’s really arguable whether philosophy has made any definite progress on these questions. Ultimately, we don’t have a model of cognition that grounds concepts like “rational,” “thinking,” “belief” or “justified belief,” ‘understanding,” “knowledge,” and without such metaphysical grounding, we can’t be sure these phenomena are phenomena as such, or merely epiphenomena, or perhaps simply the phenomenological experience we have of the operation of a deeper structure. Without some empirical facts about mind, philosophy of mind is about on par with theology — constructing a castle out of clouds and then checking for structural defects.
And philosophy itself won’t be able to tell us whether we have it right. The only way we can be relatively sure is when brain science gets to the point that we can use it to answer these questions.
Again, without some understanding of social dynamics in other species and without a cognitive model for ethical reasoning, it’s difficult to see what genuine conclusions one can draw on such questions if one refuses to admit continuity of philosophical and scientific inquiry.
Scientific investigation is absolutely relevant to aesthetics, for similar reasons as the above. See here: http://discovermagazine.com/2001/nov/featpollock. Pollock probably didn’t know anything about fractal geometry, but amazingly his drip paintings really did exhibit fractal complexity. This seems to point to something important about the sorts of patterns human beings find aesthetically appealing, and that something is evidently subject to scientific investigation.
This is the most difficult to counter assertion in here — it’s difficult to bootstrap scientific epistemology without some recourse to philosophy, but then I really think of science as a subdomain of philosophy, so there is no part of science that is not philosophy, and there may be only a very few parts of philosophy in which science isn’t relevant (actually I’d argue there are none, but again, long conversation). There’s a conversation to be had here, at least, about whether there are purely philosophical questions. I think it’s clear that none of your other questions qualify as purely philosophical — science has very important things to say about each of them, or will once brain science is more fully developed.
As does science. If you refuse to accept dialectics and logical argumentation, then you must conclude that, for example, Einstein’s paper on special relativity does not count as science. Which, to me, is an absurd conclusion.
As a matter of ontological necessity or administrative convenience?
Again, if you define science in terms of empirically based hypothesis testing and refuse to admit reason-based logical analysis, then you are redefining a lot of legitimate work on scientific theory as “philosophy” rather than science. The special relativity paper is one example; you’d also have to conclude that no string theorists are scientists.
Philosophy also depends on empiricism. As I’ve already pointed out, the validity of our number system is an empirical fact, not a philosophical conclusion. That goes for the laws of logic as well — Boole himself pointed out that you can use his derivation to derive more complicated laws of logic involving more value than “true” or “false,” but that such systems simply don’t make sense to us (despite being mathematically valid under some set of premises).
This does not imply at all that they are separate domains of inquiry. In fact, quite the opposite.
Massimo,
No, what is maddening is certain philosophers refusing to engage with arguments to the contrary.
But you just said it’s a subtype of rational thinking! If it’s not necessarily rational, then it really CAN’T be a subtype of rational thinking.
Jerry is trying to express something that is intuitive to a whole lot of us taking this line of argument: that the very same principles of logical thought applied by philosophers in their line of work are also applied by scientists in their line of work and plumbers in their line of work. That scientific reasoning is different at most in degree and not in kind from everyday logical reasoning. I didn’t think it was a non sequitir at all — I understood exactly what he was trying to get at. I’m a little troubled that you seem so mystified.
I think it is also worth stressing that the deist god is also mildly antiscientific, since it postulates a beginning to the universe (which is contrary to what is known).
Sigh. It all boils down to definitions again, it seems. What is science?
If it is defined as dealing with nature only and the existence of some ill circumscribed “super”natural realm that needs no evidential justification is simply assumed, well duh, then science is by definition unable to examine the supernatural. However, the question then is: what other methodology can examine the supernatural, whatever it is, in a way that leads to internally consistent and universally acceptable results (= knowledge in the only meaning of the word that makes any sense at all, or justified beliefs)? Is there any reliable way of generating knowledge about the existence (!!!) (i.e., not only logical consistency, but actual existence) of something in the universe that is not science? If so, Michael, Massimo, please tell. I would be glad to learn of it.* Until then, I must assume that science is the only way to demonstrate existence of something, including souls and deities, and if it fails to demonstrate the existence of those, they can be assumed not to exist. Not because I want to be arrogantly scientistic, but simply because no other method apart from science can be shown to work.
If it is only chaps in lab coats conducting double-blind pharmacological studies or physical experiments, you leave out a lot of research that is actually being conducted by people who are currently under the perhaps naive impression that they are scientists. What are they, then? What is an archeologist, a phylogeneticist, a taxonomist, an ethnobotanist or a linguist, for example? Artisans perhaps, or theologians? And I hear hypothesis testing all the time. Sure is important, no doubt, but many of my colleagues also use other ways to infer the best explanation, like model selection. The important point is not to follow some conceptually pure but unrealistically exclusive prescription that grants the label scientist basically only to pharmacologists and physicists, but to use evidence, to ask yourself how you would know that you are wrong, and to reject unnecessarily complicated or ad-hoc explanations. In that sense, a plumber is not a scientist, but not because the scientist has somehow acquired an arcane, esoteric way of doing things differently, but because they are doing basically the same thing as a plumber only with a few added layers of stringency and statistics, and because they try to find out things of more general relevance than where the leak in this specific conduit is (like what the best material for constructing a durable water conduit would be).
Then there is another fancy trick I have seen, only alluded to in this thread so far with the atheism-is-a-philosophical-position argument, which is to say that science is but a method, but not a worldview. At which we could ask ourselves, what good is a method for generating justified beliefs about the world if not for constructing a worldview out of those beliefs? Not for nothing do we speak of the state of science on a certain topic. And if we put all our current scientific knowledge together like a big puzzle, we will find that there are some pieces still missing, and in some pretty important places even, but none of them has a shape that could be convincingly filled by a deity that is actually of any use to anybody. We are not talking the need to disprove god in future scientific projects here, we are talking already disproved: souls and free will are out (neuroscience), no special creation (biology), no creation of the universe (astrophysics), illnesses are not caused by demons (medicine), etc. Disproved in all cases to the exact same degree and with the same reasoning as, and I hate to mention them again, von Daeniken’s alien visitors in antiquity: beyond reasonable doubt, which is all anybody ever claims or gets. You could ad-hoc about the aliens that they were here but we just can’t find any actual traces, and you could ad-hoc about the creator god that he diddit but we just can’t find any actual evidence for it. There is no conceptual difference. If science can reject the first, it can reject the second; if it can’t reject the second, why the first? Massimo says because the supernatural is allowed to behave capriciously, and the aliens, as natural entities, aren’t. Why not? Ad-hoc is ad-hoc.
* If the method you suggest uses evidence, avoids confirmation bias and tries to find the simplest explanation, I would consider it science; see next paragraph.
It seems fairly clear which people repair their own plumbing and which don’t. Plumbing is a trial and error process, a fine example of empirical reasoning, although not exactly one which anyone enjoys doing.
Well, competent plumbing is based on scientific knowledge about hydrostatics, corrosion etc. And there appear to be supernatural aspects: holes know whether humans want them or not. A hole in the sink drainpipe can choose to become blocked, and a tiny leak in a radiator valve can choose to get bigger. Actually, these apparently supernatural aspects can be shown to be natural by further study. Just like, so far, all rainbows and thunderbolts and miracle ‘cures’.
It’s not up to scientists to ‘set up’ a god hypothesis, but we can test the gods believers say they believe in. YHWH, for example, when It was on earth in human form, promised that faith can move mountains, and that the meek will inherit the earth. Get some faithful together and see how much mountain they can move. Check whether the meek have inherited more of the earth than the brazen. Notice, notoriously, that there are abandoned walking sticks at Lourdes, but no abandoned artificial limbs. Ask Karen Armstrong to explain why the big religions are empty of compassion.
Massimo, your view of the matter is not the only view of it, even among philosophers. Susan Haack for instance says exactly what Jerry said – that science is continuous with other forms of inquiry. Read Defending Science – Within Reason; “you might learn something.”
Yes and no. Re the “no”: To oversimplify so as to illustrate, one who generally values freedom over equality is more likely to think Obama a poor president and vice versa. Those values are presuppositional. Re the “yes”: We can do empirical analysis to determine if in fact , say, an intended wealth redistribution actually happened and to what extent.
Say, for example (contra Cashmore), volitional freedom.
Plumbers don’t do controlled experiments and aren’t subject to peer review. They (in my experience), work based upon what they’ve been taught and seen, tinker to determine what adjustments to make, and experiment when confronted with something new. These efforts are surely related to the scientific method, but to (effectively, at least) equate them to science is so simplistic as to trivialize both.
Science is both more and less than critical thinking. Moreover, how does science tell us what to value? To continue my prior example, some of us will place value on the freedom/equality continuum differently and make our political, economic and ethical choices accordingly. Once we make such a commitment, we can use science to evaluate how successful we’ve been. But how does science provide the prior commitment of what to value?
I am trying to understand Massimos post above but it still makes little sense the way he worded it.
“sometimes science works a-rationally”
I get the feeling that we have different definitions of the word “science”.
Most of us here are treating the word “science” as meaning “the scientific method” – in which case it ALWAYS proceeds rationally by empirically testing ideas about the natural world to see if they are wrong. The hypothesis to be tested can come from anywhere – a scientific prediction based on previous models, an irrational hunch, a religious story or a drug trip but the method of testing must be rational if it is to be called science. And whats with the silly snide remark about plumbing as a science? Jerry merely pointed out that the methods for finding out things about the physical world are universally recognised and applied techniques that are not unique to the laboratory.
Michael – 103 and 104 (to cite only two) are just empty. You have to do better than that. A snappy one-liner isn’t good enough.
Please give me a list of controlled experiments performed by Albert Einstein. Or detail the lengthy peer review process for Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Or is your assertion that these gentlemen were not scientists?
Why do people keep insisting that scientists ONLY do controlled experiments? It’s simply not true! There are a lot of theoreticians out there who are essentially doing philosophy (metaphysics mainly). There are a lot of folks who go out and describe species, still — natural historian and natural philosopher would both be totally applicable titles for this sort of work. It does not involve controlled experiments. Astronomy — no controlled experiments. Evolutionary biology, limited in that respect. Archaeology (well, I guess this doesn’t fit the super reductionist definition of science any day of the week) seems perfectly scientific to me, but it studies one-off historical events. Linguistics is an interesting one — most of the languages ever spoken by human beings have gone extinct, and a few isolated hunter gatherer tribes suggest that the amount of variability in allowed concepts and constructions is much larger than anyone reading Chomsky would expect. They’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of just a handful of isolated cases of non-verbal children, ones that “missed the boat” by not learning a language by four or five years old. Linguists can’t do controlled experiments, at least not without grave ethical repercussions, but their conclusions are constrained by empirical evidence and are subject to peer review (except for Chomsky).
Can we please just admit that Popperian falsificationism and controlled experiments aren’t the whole story? I’d love it if we could talk about science as a contingent, historical phenomenon (which it is) instead of its own distinct ontological category.
And plumbers do peer review, if you’ve ever hired one. “What kind of idiot hooked this sink up?” That kind of thing.
There are perfectly good reasons for believing something exists that are not distinctively scientific. E.g. I might just see this thing and touch it. My knowledge that my cat exists is not based on any distinctively scientific practice.
But science is just a set of distinctive practices within the larger field of rational inquiry, and it’s not even that distinctive at its boundaries, where it’s continuous with history, philosophy, and so on. All of these can borrow freely from each other. Science is not “limited”, because it can use logic or whatever else is required and can call on logicians, or whoever else is required, to assist as needed. No area of rational inquiry is “limited”, since all can call on each other as needed. Indeed, much of the way we divide up the field of rational inquiry into the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and so on, is just a matter of pedagogical convenience: no one can master and teach everything.
We need to be careful at each point whether we’re talking about science, narrowly conceived, or about the methods of rational inquiry in general. But there’s also a sense in which this doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that rational inquiry, armed with the distinctive methods used by science, can, in principle, investigate claims about the supernatural. Religionists get out of this by saying that their god is capricious or deliberately elusive, etc. That is the problem with investigating the supernatural, not that it’s off-limits, in principle, to rational investigation. If the supernatural interacts with the world of the senses in ways that are clearly defined and exhibit regularity, then science/reason can investigate it, just as it can investigate things that existed in the past, very small things, and so on. There are plenty of successful scientific investigations of supernatural phenomena, invariably concluding that they probably don’t exist.
And when the religionist invoke the capricious, etc., character of their god … well, that’s when you have to start thinking that they are motivated by a wish to evade rational investigation and that they’re making the whole thing up.
Dan – plumbers’ peer review brilliant!
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Yes, really. Since most of the relevant investigative work has already been completed, it now falls under the category of applied science or engineering, but that does not make the words “science” and “plumbing” mutually exclusive.
The reason why you have never heard of “supernatural plumbing” is that the science of fluid dynamics works.
Maths isn’t science. It allows for presumed starting points so long as the conclusions are useful. Besides, your question suggests that somehow ID is science. Einstein’s equations differ from Dembski’s most fundamentally because they test out.
If competitive sniping or off-hand commentary were peer review, the ID movement would have plenty of it.
Or I might have been told it by a reliable source (a teacher, for example).
The problem being regularity, if the “supernatural” event contravenes known physical laws. As I noted earlier, science has trouble with the unique.
*sigh*
Sorry, you’re fundamentally mistaken about anything I’ve said or implied legitimizing ID. And that’s not really something I’m willing to argue about.
“The problem being regularity, if the “supernatural” event contravenes known physical laws. As I noted earlier, science has trouble with the unique.”
Hume disposed of this tedious argument over two hundred years ago in ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.’ And why the claim that science cannot deal with unique events when you must know that that is patently untrue – what about the study of the Big Bang? What about the study of the formation of the earth? of continental drift? of the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs? We cannot replay any of these events but science has ways of studying them, despite what you think.
By the way, Signal, you have some nerve mentioning peer review considering your own behavior in inviting comments on your own blog but refusing to post the critical ones. If you want to something to compare to the ID movement then you don’t need to look far from home.
Signal:
As already pointed out by others above, quite a lot of groundbreaking science was done before peer review in today’s sense was even invented, and there are many scientists working in areas that don’t lend themselves to controlled experiments. In defining science to your convenience, you exclude a lot of scientists from it who end up without a descriptor but probably miffed at what they would perceive as the typical arrogance directed at them from the colleagues in a more “exact” field of research.
You have raised an interesting issue but also already given the answer. I at least consider it a persistent myth, and nothing more, that ID/creationism cannot be science. If you are trying to be a scientist in 1600, before all the evidence was collected indicating an old earth and a sequential succession of life forms in the fossil record, what would your inference to the best explanation be for the existence of the current diversity of life on earth? If we found that the entire universe apparently did not exist before 4004 B.C., and all life forms apparently poofed into being fully differentiated at that moment, what would it then be? In those cases, ID would be a sensible tentative explanation, because a better gradual process was not yet suggested or seems completely implausible, respectively. So yes, in a way creationism is science, it has just historically been superseded by a better explanation. It is failed science, it was already tested against another idea and found lacking, it does not match the evidence now available, but just because very specifically its remaining, deluded proponents today are shifting goalposts and reformulating it in an untestable way does not mean it isn’t in general.
Ah, so this is why science completely ignores the big bang, the formation of the moon and the K/T extinction event and merely says “we cannot comment, this is the magisterium of the pope”? Oh please.
In each instance you posit, testable impacts remain and can be observed, making the lack of repeatability something that can be dealt with. But if known physical laws were violated at a particular point in the past, I am unaware of how that might be tested. We’re left with an inductive assumption (“we’ve never seen it”) to which the obvious response is, “Duh, it was a miracle.”
Then homeopathy is science….
…as you effectively concede.
Signal @ 128
You just can’t stop yourself from poisoning the well, can you?
Yes, everyone who disagrees with you is an implicit supporter of ID, homeopathy, and every other kind of charlatanism. You win. Hurray.
Happy now?
As I mentioned a couple of days ago – “Signal” has a brand-new anonymous blog, that seems suspiciously similar to a slightly older anonymous blog which has lost status as it lost control of its rhetoric. I suspect “Signal” of being a troll, so don’t pay it too much heed.
Ophelia — I have career-related reasons for blogging the way I do. But your suggestion that it’s a reincarnation of some other blog that “lost status” is false (I have no clue what cite you’re referencing) and so is the charge that I am trolling. That said, this is your blog and, quite obviously, you can control it as you choose.
» George M. Felis:
No, no, no. This is all wrong. You see, “God” does not “exist” in the ordinary sense of the word, and religious people do not really “believe” in the literal “existence” of “God,” as if God were a person.
But that’s exactly what John Lennox thinks Dog is. Is he just no true Scotsman™?
Signal, sorry, but I don’t believe you. And as for your reasons for blogging and commenting anonymously – they’re worthless, given that your project is obviously to criticize other people (who are not anonymous). You’re not a human rights activist in Iran, so your reasons for anonymity are just a pretext for giving yourself the ability to slag off people without paying any social price.
And I’m not going to advertise your blog for you, so stop putting it on the URL line.
» Russell Blackford:I don’t understand what’s so difficult about this.
+1
» Ophelia Benson:Susan Haack for instance says exactly what Jerry said – that science is continuous with other forms of inquiry.
And so says Russell (Bertrand, not Blackford) about science and philosophy:
“[T]hose questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.”
Signal, I think you’re right to emphasise that science can be distinguished from other activities. The trouble is that the distinction is very weak, because your formulation (in terms of repeatability) neglects field research, and doesn’t apply across history.
I agree with your point that a professional plumber is not doing peer review in any distinctive sense that is not shared by the homeopath. And I agree that the scientist engages in peer review that is distinctive from both the homeopath and the plumber. But that’s besides the point. Peer review is a measure of the profession, not the activity.
You can keep trying at this, of course. But at the end of the day, I predict that you won’t produce an intractable definition of science any more than you can produce an intractable definition of anything else. The best you’re going to come up with are a cluster of typical conditions (simplicity, exactness, repeatability, etc.) that are a better fit overall with science and not with other stuff.
I’m concerned about your comment about the trivialization of science. I have emphasized that the connection between science and philosophy is in that they are both about inference to the best explanation. I think your concerns can be accommodated by saying, “there are different senses of ‘best'”: simplest, most exact, repeatable, etc. But while you might think that’s scoring a point in your favor, it’s actually not. By ignoring the ways that science is just another form of inference, you risk diminishing the idea that science is a human social activity — and that would be scientismic.
And why on earth does this commenting software not allow <br> or <br /> tags?
Peter- switch to the HTML editor style (at the top left of the comment box.)
That says to me that your problem isn’t with my anonymity, but rather with what I have to say. You surely have the right to try to inhibit the speech of those with whom you disagree, but you are no less hypocritical for it.
Miranda, that’s what I always do. But that doesn’t change the fact that br tags are not accepted. Go ahead, try it yourself.
Oh no, I believe you. I was just trying to help.
That’s a fair point, though I might quibble about the strength of the distinction.
I agree.
I agree here too. The problem I have is with those who want a strict definition of science when it suites their purposes (as with homeopathy) but a lax one when it suites their purposes in other areas.
I generally agree as to this similarity, but would note that both science and philosophy have formalized structures differentiating them.
Jerry Coyne: “When a plumber narrows down where a leak is, [he is] using the same methods that scientists use to rule out alternative explanations.”
Massimo Pigliucci: “[B]y your own standards plumbing then becomes a science.”
For a philosopher, Massimo, that is absolutely shameful. Not just do you make no effort to engage with what Jerry actually said, you also wilfully contort it into something risible, of which you give no indication that you understand that underlying it is an absurdly narrow definition of ‘science’, or in any case that you are aware that the underlying definition might even play a role in assessing your arguments. Seriously, is that the standard you set at CUNY?
Miranda, I didn’t want to give the impression that I thought you didn’t believe me. It’s just that with computers, someone else might actually hit upon the solution when they try it for themselves. Or they might thus show me what I’m doing wrong. :)
.
» Michael De Dora:
In short — obviously there are ways of knowing (with a small k) without having science observe and test, correct?
Does this imply that you think that anything not done in a laboratory is not science? And further, which methods exactly do you propose to use in order to properly know something (as opposed to just assuming it is true) that are not a defining element of scientific inquiry?
(I know, Jerry, I just thought I’d try a different angle. ;>)
Signal, I’m glad we’ve gotten matters of consistency out of the way! Now I’m curious about your actual views — that is, the “quibbling” must begin apace.
Would you agree that philosophy and science are continuous in the sense that they are both cases of inference to the best explanation, and that this admittedly generic characterization is the best we’re going to come across in defining science across history and across disciplines?
You are correct in pointing out that we can be, if we like, very very exact. Hence, we can ambitiously claim that there are formalized structures for science, and try to make sense of that with our picture of what constitutes science. And we can also say that these methods of inquiry are like a very good fit with our present-day concept of science, in much the same way that “robin” is a prototype of our present-day concept of “bird”. But what we cannot say is that these formalized structures generalize across all of science, or even most of science (just as we cannot say that all birds are similar to robins; penguins and ostriches obviously aren’t).
Although this is a matter of emphasis, from our perspective that latter point is the most crucial. And that’s part of what motivates some of us to say that the distinction between science and philosophy is weak.
Signal, I don’t “try to inhibit the speech of those with whom [I] disagree.” But anonymous whoms who have a transparent vendetta against 1. me and 2. other “new” atheists, and a new blog to advertise? Well then it depends – but they’re on thin ice. I don’t respect anonymous vendetta-ers.
Who do you think is disagreeing with you? For Pete’s sake, there are lots of people who really do think homeopathy is science. If you’re jonesing to argue the point, there are more fruitful venues than B&W.
As a geologist, I deal constantly with the bizarre subset who make claims that, not only did God cause the things we’re looking at, but that he intentionally introduced volumes of mutually-reinforcing evidence all pointing to the fact that he didn’t. In short, the Young Earth Creationists and so-called “Flood Geologists” in particular very much believe in a trickster deity akin to Coyote or Loki, one who delights in making us think that things work a certain way. In this view, to detect this type of god’s handiwork, we not only need better instruments, but we’d need to learn to recognize these tricks for what they are and how to outwit this clown as well.
Russell mentioned this once or twice, but lest anyone think it’s an absurd point — well, there are a lot of very absurd people.
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