Which is more truthful: science or art?
On its face, this question presents a false choice. Science and art belong to two separate realms. Both express deep truths about existence, but in very different ways. Science uses the symbolic form of mathematical equations to describe the mechanics of reality. Art uses paint, the written word, film and sculpture to depict the human condition and our relationship to the world around us. The scientific method is a rigorous "left-brain" activity. Art taps into our deepest emotions; its creation comes from a "right-brain" intuitive perception.
At the same time, these realms can overlap. The sciences of color theory and perspective have influenced artists for centuries. New technologies, like photography and computer graphics, have spawned new artistic mediums. On the other hand, many of our greatest scientific discoveries were conceived through sparks of creative insight. Astronomers and physicists often use terms like awe and beauty to describe the universe.
If we change the question to science versus religion, however, people flock to either pole of the debate. Some religious fundamentalists close their eyes to the scientific laws that make our 21st century lives possible in the name of preserving the literal words of scripture written down millennia ago by men who had a different understanding of how the universe worked. On the other extreme, scientific atheists look down their noses at those who hold religious beliefs as simpletons belonging to a different age.
The core problem in this debate stems from both sides overstretching their perspectives. A religious worldview that denies scientific knowledge will ultimately be doomed to irrelevancy. A scientific worldview without a larger philosophical, metaphysical or religious system in which to anchor itself strands one like a shipwreck survivor adrift in an ocean of meaninglessness. Neither science nor religion, on their own, can hold all of the answers to existence, but maybe together they can complement and strengthen each other.
Without the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, we wouldn't have cell phones, the Internet, cars, fresh food in our stores 24 hours a day, air conditioning or medicine. Would you fly in an airplane if the laws of aerodynamics didn't work every time? Our life expectancy has doubled in the last two centuries because of the advancement in our scientific knowledge.
Science excels at explaining the mechanics of how our universe works. In centuries past, humans filled in the gaps in their scientific knowledge with supernatural explanations: The sun moved across the sky because the earth was the center of the universe and Apollo pulled it in his chariot. Storms were vengeance from the gods who lived above. Humanity came into existence because a god formed us out of clay. Mental illness was seen as demonic possession. Scientific knowledge has now supplanted all of these supernatural explanations.
But as good as science is at explaining the how and the what of existence, it falls short with the why and the should. Science better describes mechanics than it does meaning.
Not withstanding The Big Bang, quantum theories of spontaneous creation of matter and energy, String Theory and concepts of a Multi-Verse, our vast scientific database still struggles to answer the most fundamental of all questions first posed by the Greek philosopher Parmenides in the fifth century B.C.E. and repeated by others through the ages: "Why is there not nothing?" On a personal level, this desire to understand the meaning of being may come out as "Who am I, and why am I here?"
Critics of religion enjoy pointing out how many wars and how much suffering has been caused in the name of religion. But only science has given us the tools to kill each other in ways never before imagined. Biologists have produced viral and bacterial weapons; chemists have developed gunpowder and ever more destructive explosives; physicists have given us the power to destroy our very existence with nuclear weapons. Scientific advances in mechanical and chemical engineering have made our businesses more productive than at any time in history, bringing us comfort and prosperity. These same advances have also polluted our environment to the point of endangering our planet.
We must also be careful not to overstate the infallibility of the scientific method. Scientific knowledge has inherent limitations. Science is not truth; it's an approximation of truth. Math has a beauty, an elegance, to it. But at its heart, math is nothing more than a symbolic representation of an underlying reality, just as language is a symbolic representation of ideas and concepts. Sometimes, we have a tendency to confuse the symbol with the underlying truth it represents. An ancient Chinese saying cautions that "the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon." Math, language and scientific theories are merely fingers pointing us toward greater truths.
The philosophical limits of math are no surprise to mathematicians. In 1931, Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems showed that an arithmetical proof cannot be both complete and internally consistent within itself. In other words, the axioms of the system cannot be proven within the system. For any mathematical system to work, it must begin with certain assumptions.
Another limitation with the scientific method is that all scientific theories rely on human conception, interpretation and evaluation. The history of science shows that the process of one scientific theory supplanting another is a bumpy one. Twentieth century philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn used the term paradigm shift to describe the upheaval that often accompanies a change in scientific perspective.
The Catholic Church's reaction to Galileo is often held up as an example of the conflict between science and religion. Not only was Galileo required to recant his writings that argued for Copernicus's heliocentric solar system rather than an earth-centered one, but the Church didn't officially admit it was mistaken until 1992! However, Kuhn explained that much of the early resistance to a Copernican view of the universe came not from religious sources, but from other scientists. Bias, preconceived ideas, academic politics, ego and resistance to change are ever-present in scientific and academic communities and often result in institutional opposition to new theories, especially ground-breaking ones. Many scientists initially resisted Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo because they presented a new paradigm of the universe.
Centuries later, when Einstein proposed another fundamental shift in understanding space and time, his theories were also at first doubted by the physics community. In a twist of irony, Einstein himself later rejected the weirdness of the other great scientific breakthrough of his day, Quantum Mechanics. Declaring that "God does not play dice with the universe," he never accepted the inherent randomness and unknowability of what has now become the most tested and verified scientific theory in history. These scientific disagreements continue today. Go to any research university and ask the theoretical physicists about the ultimate theory of existence, and you will hear heated debates.
As crucial as scientific knowledge is to our lives, it is not itself enough. We need a system of meaning that science alone does not provide. We need meaning not just to supply us a moral code to live by in our communities. We need meaning because humans crave meaning and purpose as worthy goals themselves. Religion doesn't have to be the system that supplies meaning to our scientific understanding of the world; philosophy can also serve the same purpose. The point is that we need something more than science.
That science cannot provide all of the answers we seek should not, however, open the door to a religious fundamentalism that denies scientific theories like evolution. Nor should we assume that just because we do not understand an occurrence that it was miraculously caused. For someone who believes in a God-created universe, wouldn't resisting scientific models of the universe be tantamount to resisting God's creation? Why can't our religious theories evolve with our understanding of the world, just as our scientific theories do? Must our religious doctrine be frozen in time from a different age thousands of years ago? What is truly infinite and ineffable will never be fully understood or articulated in its entirety. If we think of God not as static in history but immanent throughout, revelation will be an ongoing process -- one we can and should participate in ourselves.
Many religious systems do not inherently contradict science. Buddhism, for example, does not depend on a deity for its path to salvation. Its meditation techniques are being studied in universities for the neurological changes they produce along with the corresponding health benefits. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, where much of the science versus religion debate takes place, we have modern theologies fully compatible with a scientific worldview. Twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich described God not as a supernatural being but as "the ground of being." Tillich's God is like the infinite ocean out of which each of us is but a wave, arising briefly and then falling back. Process theologians, beginning with Alfred North Whitehead, write of God as that creative power within the universe, a power that is both the source of existence and its boundary as well. They ask us to imagine that we are like cells in the divine body, each having influence over the other.
Atheist critiques of religion, like those from Oxford Biologist Richard Dawkins and Cambridge Physicist Stephen Hawking, are only valid in that they disprove a certain antiquated image of God -- the grandfather in the sky who created the universe like a potter or a watchmaker might and who governs it like a cosmic chess master. If we allow our religions to evolve, we might find that science and religion can complement each other: each may open a different window into reality, just as art and science do.
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Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Relationship between religion and science - Wikipedia, the free ...
It's all part of the evolution of the methods of finding truth and understanding. Not necessarily as a direct result of each other.
I am an atheist.
I find meaning and purpose in my life, and both come from the idea that I like being alive. I am neither afraid of, nor looking forward to my death, when my brain-derived consciousness ceases to be. And I have a natural urge to procreate and ensure enjoyable life for myself and my family. All these things plus an awareness of how my wellbeing and the wellbeing of my family are completely inextricably attached to the wellbeing of the rest of humanity and the world itself lead me to want to work towards a world of sustainable development in harmony with human and non-human nature. That is my purpose and meaning.
I think that there are quite a few intelligent religious persons who have been mistakenly led to think that a stories written by humans hold some intangible truth. Does that make these religious persons simpletons? No. Most people, including myself, have ideas that they have no ground for and have not questioned, but except as truths all the same.
The frustrating part of religion is that not only is it full of these unquestioned, ungrounded ideas, but also one of those ideas dictates you should not question it or demand grounds. I don't consider people who fall into this "faith" trap simpletons, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Would you agree in this interpretation: You object to the use of beliefs derived from faith to judge or override beliefs that are derived from evidence.
Interesting. I imagine this approach puts a much softer spin on proselytizing, as there is no way to demonstrate your beliefs to anybody else. No evidence.
Scientific theories require testable evidence to support them. With the lack of any testable evidence, religions must rely on faith and fear alone to exist. They are incompatible.
Knowledge is limited intelligence is infinite. Science has always been concerned with knowledge and there lies their religion.
I suspect neither of these statements will ring true to your thoughts process.
speaking of temptation I once visited a hindu temple to pick up a gift for a friend and they had a god idol there with four arms. the devotee stated that when he went to heaven he would have four arms.
I wanted to say so bad but did not that two arms and hands have been enough trouble in this life I can only image how much trouble I would get into with four arms.
he has been living in that temple for 24 years and still thought he would have four arms someday.
atheists are made not born with beliefs like his.
Atheism isn't a "belief", it's unbelief and nothing more. We have no beliefs at birth, we're all born atheists.
Not so sure that they overlap except when science is used by religious people to debunk someone else's religion.
Oddly enough people use the rational to dismiss other people's beliefs but do not focus that rationality on their own. Funny.
Certainly agree, but that does not excuse the cheap philosophy that is religious beliefs based on insufficient evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence. There are very fulfilling ways to seek spiritual enlightenment without assuming anything on insufficient evidence, just ask Sam Harris.
It seems to me that an argument can be made that all meaning arises ultimately from the intentionality of the living organism. Our conscious experience is not what animates us. It is part of the mechanism. It is created by a brain. It is a meaning making machine, and it does so to fulfill our organism's life intentionality. But the brain is incapable of rationally piercing the complexity of life. Consciousness is an evolved virtual reality game of associations and made up protagonists which are created because they work and not because they are the truth or have any exact physical corollary.
The rationalist (Harris) makes the mistake of thinking that consciousness is running the show, quite apart from the underlying agenda of the life form, and that our experience with its attendant emotions and "intuitions" can be replaced by reason. The religionist makes the mistake of thinking that physical reality is not the ultimate basis of existence and the ghosts of our mind have some objective status beyond their usefulness to our well-being.
But for the most part it doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with the act of making meanings itself, especially if it is truly a biological function as you suggest. On some level even with that knowledge we'll keep making meanings just like we'll keep eating, sleeping, and fighting to survive.
-- Carl Sagan
I think the quote above has captured the essence of the major divide between science and religion. Science has put us in an incomprehensibly vast universe with no center and no edges. We are floating in a vast, black, vacuum with this frail little planet as our only home. This is not the most comforting of thoughts.
Religion gives people a small world with a small god and small, human-scaled ideas to cling to. This gives comfort to people but they remain willfully ignorant about the truth that science has revealed.
Is it better to cling to antiquated ideas that give comfort which is what religion does?
Or, is it better to face the vast emptiness of time and space and accept the reality of the situation, which is what science does?
There is much more to appreciate and learn if you accept cosmology, physics and biology in their entirety. We can rediscover new sources of comfort for those dependent on the afterlife fantasy.
Why wait for heaven to save us when we can save each other?
http://pigroll.com/480_god-meme-compilation.html
It says:
"made them too smart.... stopped believing in me"
However, I would argue that God is running out of places to hide. Once upon a time, God(s) was the answer to everything. Drought? Angry God. Why does the sun travel across the sky? It is a God. Or a God is pulling it with a chariot. As we learn more about the natural world, we strip God from our reality. We know a chariot of fire does not exist. We understand seismology for earthquakes and meteorology and climatology for weather patterns.
Now let us move from the physical realm to the moral. Religions have strict rules - until they don't suit the people following the religion anymore. So some Germans wanted the mass to be in the vernacular (and 94 other things). Protestantism is born.
The King of England wants a divorce and the pope won't allow it. Anglicanism.
Men and women should be able to sit together at shul. And men don't need to wear hats. Conservative Judaism. But woman should have more rights and jobs in the temple. Reform Judaism. (continued below)
The LHC is in deep water right now...
The lack of finding the Higgs Boson would merely indicate that the standard model of the universe predicted by physics is, well, inaccurate. This will mean back to the drawing board, which in itself is both horrifying and exciting at the same time. If this was the case, there would not have been any other way to prove the theory incorrect other than by using the LHC. Not knowing such crucial information would cause scientists to take the standard model purely on "faith," rather than observable and measurable occurrences.
And THAT is where the huge difference between science and religion is most evident.
Stonings aren't very common in most of the world. As we become a more modern, civil society, we do away with rules regarding what women can and can't do, what punishments are appropriate for various crimes, and what foods we can and cannot eat. No longer is God solely running out of places to hide in the physical in the world, but in the moral world as well.
Once upon a time, we adjusted our lives to fit God's/the Gods' will, according to what was written in a holy book. Today, however, we make God fit our will, our worldview. And perhaps one day, there will not be a need any longer.
Otherwise, accurate ;-)
An atheist can say, "I don't know, and neither do you."
I'm am so sick of people who tell me what God wants. How would they know?
A theist can say "I believe"