anyone see dawkins on uk TV last night

[Thomas]

Hi Devadatta - nice post.

If I were to p[lay devil's advocate, and if we're going to be precise, then should not "... Defending religion, which makes a special study of the irrational ... " be disqualified?

The point here is polemical postitions are often taken, or positions polarised, when one side determines the ground of a debate and presents the other with an a priori determination - eg religion being irrational.

Aquinas among others has presented rational evidence, if not proof, for a belief in God, and I feel sure that these 'proofs' are no stronger nor weaker than the scientists' approach to some of their own findings.

And if the 'belief' that science will find a cure for all humanity's ills is not a leap of faith, I don't know what is.

Evolution after all is still a theory, it has yet to be proven.

Dawkins stands perilously on the threshold of becoming a caricature of himself, religion has become, it seems, his bête noir, and he pursues it with gusto. I would be interested to hear his response to his own community on issues such as multiple universes, which although way beyond proof, are almost a 'given' in some fields of Quantum mechanics.

Then again, even science proceeds by faith, the process of believing something to be the case, and then working towards it. Einstein's rejection of the emerging Quantum mechanics was founded in a belief in his own system and a rejection of theirs, even when the 'evidence' was coming down in their favour. I was a stance that left him increasingly isolated towards the end of his career.

I think the argument boils down to whether or not 'proof by empirical means' should become a baseline test by which everything is either accepted or rejected as 'real', or whether we allow for the possibility that there's more to this world than meets the eye.

Might I suggest, in closing, that we add 'evolution' to the Dawkins 'Index of the Irrational' (if not Dawkins himself)? It's been around centuries (the theory, not Dawkins), and yet still no-one can prove it, worse still, we are obliged to assume that if one element works (survival of the fittest) then we have to buy the whole caboodle (a species changes into a different species), made more difficult, as I understand it, as we learn more and more about DNA?

Sounds like a decidedly dodgey theory to me ...

Thomas

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Devadatta

But the either/or world is hard to break down. We must always be defending one ideological order as against another. Totalitarian thinking must be religious, or it must be secular. Terrorism must be exclusively powered by modern ideology, or it must be a purely religious phenomena. And to point to an underlying identity in these modes of thinking is usually to invite little more than flames - or silence.

I think that a quote posted not long ago by lunamoth will help to provide some balance to this polarizing issue:

Faith, without depending on reason for the slightest shred of justification, never contradicts reason and remains ever reasonable. Faith does not destroy reason, but fulfills it. Nevertheless, there must always remain a delicate balance between the two. Two extremes are to be avoided: credulity and skepticism; superstition and rationalism. If this balance is upset, if man relies too much on his five senses and on his reason when faith should be his teacher, then he enters into illusion. Or when, in defiance of reason, he gives the assent of his faith to a fallible authority, then too he falls into illusion. Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more. (Ascent to Truth)--Thomas Merton

Originally Posted by Thomas

I think the argument boils down to whether or not 'proof by empirical means' should become a baseline test by which everything is either accepted or rejected as 'real', or whether we allow for the possibility that there's more to this world than meets the eye.

Where logical deduction and induction breaks down, there is still the Principle of Reciprocity, or The Golden Rule can still be applied as a diagnostic test as to an otherwise intangible concept can be tested both in its content and in its application as to whether it will be beneficial or harmful. This should provide some reasurrance for those who have an irrational fear of the irrational...

[Devadatta]

- Some very good points. I won't take issue so much as offer supplements.

- When I talked about religion specializing in the irrational I was only trying to state the obvious - which is my specialty, blowhard that I am. Religion polices the irrational on the everyday level of superstition and ordinary craziness - this is particularly noticed when that policing breaks down, in cases for example like suicide bombers or the KKK. And then it specializes in the Irrational in the larger sense of ultimate realties beyond reasoning, which science on principle excludes (a compelling reason for this I hope to show below). That's the well-known division of labour.

- So of course that doesn't mean reason has no place in religion, but again it's obvious and admitted in all traditions that you can't get there from here, that reason is useful in building doctrinal systems, among other practical social & political tasks, but that the God that can be logically demonstrated is not God. (The Book of Job makes the cognate point: the God that requires justification is not God.)

- I appreciate the quote from the great Thomas Merton, but here I think we need to keep it in context. He's speaking out of the Catholic tradition and its idea of Natural Reason, which I guess they would contend comes from God and so naturally tends toward belief in God. As a non-Catholic I might agree that one can find belief in God reasonable through natural reason, but that one is not compelled to belief in God through reason, i.e., there is no compelling, universal demonstration through reason of God's existence. Catholic theology, in fact, finally holds as much: all reasoning in the end is so much straw. I guess the difference would be in how much one feels reason really "tends" to make belief reasonable. My feeling is that various kinds of reasoning are only helps to particular sorts of minds in need of them; indirectly, they clear the path.

- The Buddhists have a word for this: upaya, or skilful means. In parallel with theistic traditions, the Nirvana, which can be logically demonstrated, is not Nirvana. Nagarjuna rigorously deconstructed all the philosophical positions of his day, not to end in nihilism, but in support of the core Buddhist doctrines of the Four Noble Truths & Eightfold Path.

- Similarly, Descartes employed radical doubt in the service of revealed truth.

- On the science side of the equation, the ideal is that all theories are provisional, and I agree with others here that when a scientist falls into dogma he's fallen off the wagon.

- I guess the problem comes in when theories become so well established they're taken for granted.

- But here I'd like to make a distinction between fact and description, which I think get easily confused. Take a really common example. We continue to say the sun rises & sets, though we're well aware that there are more accurate ways to describe these phenomena. We continue to use the old descriptors out of habit, because there's no pressing need to be more accurate and - most importantly - because it would screw up a lot of songs & poetry.

- I think the same applies to scientific descriptions, right through to the most sophisticated mathematics - which after all are only more rigorous types of language.

- So the issue is not the facts of electricity or gravity, say, but how they're conceived & described. I think this applies to even the most basic relations & functions. For example, the formula "the force of gravity varies in inverse relation to distance" depends on a certain conceptual order, and a certain understanding of gravity - which the last I've heard we still don't fully understand. A better understanding of gravity will likely dislocate - without disproving - current descriptors and bring in others.

- So here we've come to the core reason for mainstream science excluding the irrational. The party line is of course that scientific method by definition cannot be applied to these questions, and of course this consideration can't be discounted. But here I'm suggesting that there's a deeper problem of description. If we look at scientific writing, data & research as a kind of canon, then it's a canon that must remain open. The universe is the same but our descriptors must constantly evolve.

- Of course a distinguishing feature of Abrahamic religions in particular has been a closed canon, which has made the perceived conflict more acute in the West than anywhere else, but probably all traditions suffer from a degree of "closedness".

- But I guess the difficulty comes from the side of science as well, not from all scientists, but only those that suffer from a bigoted idea that it's their duty to dispel "myths" or "disprove" the bible.

- As I pointed out above, properly speaking, new descriptors only dislocate - which may be upsetting enough - but never in my view disprove the old ones.

- No myth is ever dispelled. The Bible remains true, the Vedas remain true, the Pali Canon is in full force, especially as expressions of the human condition, but may be located differently.

- Saints preserve me from all dispellers of myths. How can you understand anything that's been dispelled?

- Put me down for the opening of all canons - it will collapse the false distinction between religion & science, and lead to better policing & cooler concepts.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Evolution after all is still a theory, it has yet to be proven.

...

Might I suggest, in closing, that we add 'evolution' to the Dawkins 'Index of the Irrational' (if not Dawkins himself)? It's been around centuries (the theory, not Dawkins), and yet still no-one can prove it, worse still, we are obliged to assume that if one element works (survival of the fittest) then we have to buy the whole caboodle (a species changes into a different species), made more difficult, as I understand it, as we learn more and more about DNA?

Sounds like a decidedly dodgey theory to me ...

Thomas

Hi Thomas, I wonder if these quips above are part of your game of devil's advocate, or perhaps a flourish of rhetoric?

Let me flip this on its head. The point of having a theory is not so much to prove it as to try to disprove it. Each time we fail to disprove the theory it gets stronger, each time we find a weakness in the theory we then seek to refine the model, again ultimately making it stronger. Evolution is the strongest theory modern science has to explain the phenomenae we see in the variety of species, in the fossil record, in the genetic code. As scientific theories go it is far far from "decidedly dodgey."

Even the Vatican tells us that there is no need to try to refute the ToE, that evolutionary science is not at odds with our Creation by God.

But I agree with all points above that Dawkins, in his zeal, becomes the mirror image of those religious fanatics he attacks.

peace,
lunamoth

[Thomas]

Yes. I was being something of a devil's advocate (a catholic delight, methinks)

By every stretch an amateur, yet I delight in the sciences, and the wonders they reveal to us (although I do think Darwin will come in for some revision). I recall a scientist talking on TV with regard to Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' - which I did read, and like, (its underlying metaphysic is more in accord with Scripture than the 'Big Bang',) but can only accept in faith - his comment was that a 'good' theory has two qualities; its appears beautiful in its simplicity, and it ties up a number of unrelated loose ends. Sadly, apparently, Hawking's hypothesis causes more problems than it solves, which mars its beauty...

I even like listening to scientists talk about their specialities...

And by flipping my theory on its head, you have shown the progress of Christological theology. The definitions of Ephesus through to Chalcedon and beyond were ever refinements of a general theory of the humanity and Divinity of the Son, that Jesus was He of whom the Apostles preached, true God and true man, without 'division', 'confusion', 'change' or 'separation'.

Subjectively (I have recounted this before), my favourite moment was listening to a scientist explain that the atomic structure of the heavy elements of the periodic table can only be produced in the furnaces of the stellar nebulae, and those elements are found within the human organism - we are indeed, stardust. Wonderful!

[aside - read this, it's delighful: http://origins.colorado.edu/uvconf/w...nal/node5.html
can't understand a bloomin' word]

There was a moment (sadly momentary) when I understood Pythagoras' theorem as a mathematician drew diagrams in the sand ... of the Greek mathematician who placed two sticks in the sand a mile apart, and from the angle of the shadows worked out the world was round, and roughly 24,000 miles in diameter (he was right to within 100 miles!).

... It makes me wonder if we should cease to become bedazzled of the wonders of science, and rather look in awe upon that which we call 'mind' and which reveals these wonders to us ...

Anyway ... back to my essay on The English Reformation'.

Pax,

Thomas

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Devadatta

-- I think the same applies to scientific descriptions, right through to the most sophisticated mathematics - which after all are only more rigorous types of language.

- So the issue is not the facts of electricity or gravity, say, but how they're conceived & described. I think this applies to even the most basic relations & functions. For example, the formula "the force of gravity varies in inverse relation to distance" depends on a certain conceptual order, and a certain understanding of gravity - which the last I've heard we still don't fully understand. A better understanding of gravity will likely dislocate - without disproving - current descriptors and bring in others.

Hi Deva, if I'm understanding you here (and there's always a good chance taht I'm not!), I think you have hit on an important point in the conversation between scientists and, for lack of a better term, religionists. To start the conversation, as in school to start one's education, the explanations are always simplified. And, when you get further into the conversation or into understanding, things become more complex, and often less clear. This complexity and even, at the edges of our knowledge, the lack of clarity is then taken as error. The ground is soft at the edges of our knowledge, and it can be a frightening place to be. Scientists, knowing the terrain much better, and knowing where to step in the bog to keep from sinking, try to assure everyone else that it's OK, all will be well, the ground will become firm and then we can advance even further. A grade school understanding will leave you in disbelief at the edges of scientific knowledge, where things often are turned upside down. It will seem irrational unless we trust the knowledge of the scientists, or learn about it for ourselves.

The same argument can be made from the religionist's POV. A grade school understanding of theology is going to be quite inadequate to an adult who has experienced the world and seen the limits, and depravities, of human nature or who has studied evolution and found it at odds with the story in Genesis. The theologists who spend time reasoning about God, and the mystics who spend time experiencing God, both assure us that we can trust God even when the ground seems to have fallen away. But if you don't trust them, or learn about it for yourself, it will seem irrational.

- - Put me down for the opening of all canons - it will collapse the false distinction between religion & science, and lead to better policing & cooler concepts.

I don't think it is a false distinction between religion and science, but it is a false dichotomy. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive. The problem with fundamentalists, whether science fundies or religious fundies, is in painting the picture as if they were.

blathering on...
lunamoth

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Subjectively (I have recounted this before), my favourite moment was listening to a scientist explain that the atomic structure of the heavy elements of the periodic table can only be produced in the furnaces of the stellar nebulae, and those elements are found within the human organism - we are indeed, stardust. Wonderful!

[aside - read this, it's delighful: http://origins.colorado.edu/uvconf/w...nal/node5.html
can't understand a bloomin' word]

We are stardust, and that is totally cool Scanned the article. Pretty graphs and pictures, and I didn't understand a word of it either.

lunamoth

[Ghaniel]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Evolution after all is still a theory, it has yet to be proven.

Thomas, evolution can be proved in many ways. Do a search and you'll find many goodies. And that comes from a Christian. Whether the proof is good enough I don't know.

[Thomas]

I found this 'definition' of as theory, which I must admit clarifies the position for me:

"Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced."
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

Thomas

[Ghaniel]

If you say so, Thomas. I'm just playing the devil's advocate. (Meaning, I hate evolution to bits! *cracks up*)