On April 20 I gave the keynote speech the Humboldt State University Philosophy Forum "Science & Spirituality: Falling Awake to Diversity." The next day four other presentations were made on Confucianism, Sufism, Christianity, and Atheism. Before these talks, I was asked to summarize my presentation of the previous evening and respond to some of the issues raised in the Q&A. The following is based on that summary:
The basic point I was trying to make is that science has found no need to include non-material elements, such as "soul" or "spirit," in the models it uses to describe observations of the world.
So, what exactly is matter? Matter is what kicks back when you kick it. It has inertia.
One clarification: The word energy is often used in ways that suggest something separate from matter, such as with the term "spiritual energy." Energy is one of the quantities used in physics to describe the inertial properties of matter. These properties are momentum, energy and mass. Mass is equivalent to the rest energy of a body by E = mc^2. In short, energy is a purely material concept. When you talk about energy, you are still talking about matter.
I tried to make it clear that we put our trust, not faith but trust, in science because it works. If it didn't work, we wouldn't do it. Sure, if we didn't have science we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we have today: global climate change, pollution, overpopulation, the threat of nuclear war, and so on. But imagine a world without science. I mentioned electricity. Think about what the world was like before we had electricity. Reading by candlelight. No TV, radio, cell phones, laptops, iPads, cars, planes, dental drills, and so on. Imagine all those teenagers texting with smoke signals.
Think abut what life was like before modern medicine. A large fraction of women died in childbirth and many children died before reaching maturity. While this still happens today, it's very rare. I'm old enough to have lived before penicillin and the polio vaccine. I had two cousins die in childhood of bacterial infections who would not have died today. A playmate died of polio.
But what is science anyway? And here's a point few people realize. It really isn't anything different from what we do in everyday life. We all learn about the world by observing it and we all make up models to describe what we experience. The only difference is that science carries out that program more systematically by following certain rules we call the scientific method.
Thousands of years of human experience have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that observation, with our senses or instruments, is our most reliable source of knowledge about the world. Come up with a better source and scientists will be happy to use it. Divine revelation, however, is for sure a total failure.
Now, another issue on the science-religion front is the position of individual scientists themselves. Most scientists don't believe in God or the supernatural. Only 7 percent of the members of the NAS, the elite of American scientists, believe in a personal god. Among all scientists, perhaps may 30-40 percent are believers, but still a minority.
Now it's true that the great founders of modern science--Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler--were devout if unconventional believers. And actually, only Galileo tried to separate his science from his religion, to make a distinction between the two. Newton and the others tried to incorporate God into their theories.
But gradually science separated from religion, and from philosophy for that matter, to the point where today the three are clearly distinct. Those scientists who are believers have compartmentalized their brains into separate science and religion modules. They leave their critical thinking skills at the door when they go to church in Sunday, and leave their religion at home when they go back to work Monday morning. God never enters their equations.
Finally let me elaborate further on the New Atheist position of confronting religion rather than trying to get along and accommodate religious belief. The new atheists think religion is unnecessarily being given a free ride, with people avoiding criticizing it. Why should people of faith be treated with such deference? Why are clergypersons consulted on moral issues? How can believing in something without evidence provide any insight into anything?
This position is severely criticized not only by theists but by many atheists as well. After all, opponents of New Atheism say, religion provides people with comfort, does good works, and, besides, it is not going to go away. Furthermore, what right do you have to tell people what to believe?
Well, of course we have no right to tell people what to believe. But we do have a right to speak out against religion when it tries to tell other people what they can do or think, as with the recent attempts to suppress birth control and the ongoing battle against abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research.
Religion has always been a negative force in society, with its inquisitions and holy wars. The ancient Greeks and Romans were well on their way to science when Christianity took over the Roman Empire at set back progress of a thousand years. Think of where we would be today without Christianity.
Critics of the New Atheism also fail to understand why we do not try to work with moderate Christians, who after all say they accept science and, in particular, have no problem with evolution.
But when surveys ask moderate Christians what they really believe, they all say that evolution is God-guided. Well that's not Darwinian evolution. That's intelligent design. There's no guidance in Darwinian evolution. It's all accident and natural selection. In particular, and this is what is unacceptable to all Christians and just about every other religion: humanity is an accident. Start up life on Earth all over again and humans would not evolve.
And this is why science and religion are forever incompatible. They have totally opposing views of the world and the role that humans play in that world.
A bit OT, but, why isn't science taking consciousness (in all of it's various form) seriously? They just write it off as "mechanics of the brain". Really? Not so fast. Consciousness is obviously much more than that as their are many biological creatures/microbes which exhibit conscious behavior with no brain. And can you imagine a universe without consciousness? No? Neither can I.
So, when I look at scientific approach, I see something that is lacking full scope of understanding. Investigating little bits and pieces here and there to try and paint a picture via a bunch of smaller pictures. But, science ignores the canvas on which it is being painted. Fully aware of the tools used. But, not caring where the tools or canvas came from. Science = materialism/objectivism. This is an incomplete view.
Consciousness is now the elephant in the room. And it's quite obvious to me that consciousness has a definitive metaphysical aspect to it that science refuses to acknowledge. They refuse to address the "hard problem of consciousness". So I am forced to appreciate their findings in the material realm, but, turn to the spiritual endeavors of philosophy and sometimes bits and pieces of religious thought to help me understand consciousness.
Indeed it is disturbing to know that some of the greatest Scientists of our time are having conflicting views on this all important subject of Consciousness, particularly its relationship with intelligence and understanding. According to Stephen Hawking, Consciousness - unlike intelligence - is not a quality that one can measure from the outside, and in the evolution process – by Darwinian natural selection – the quality selected for was the ability to escape enemies, and to reproduce, not the ability to do Mathematics, whereas according to Roger Penrose, the quality selected for was a general ability to `Understand`, which as an incidental feature, could also be applied to mathematical understanding.
In my view a proper – and scientific - understanding of what is consciousness could go a long way in bridging the gap between Science and religion.
Please just type in "consciousness" in google scholar.
1. The idea of a super-natural (spelling intentional) element to existence is philosophically necessary to give meaning to existence. Without some element of creation out of nothing every thought, emotion, and action are either the result of preconditions or random chance--no reason and no free will possible.
2. Since Einstein's theory of relativity there is a new way of understanding a Supreme Being's interaction with his creation. Since time is just one more aspect of creation, such a being is outside of and superior to that aspect of creation, thus predestination and free-will are not at odds. You cannot congugate God, who foresees, is seeing, has seen everything that will happen,is happening, has happened. All of eternity is one enormous moment to God, and already having seen what someone is going to freely decide is not the same as having made it happen. Note this does not preclude God from interacting with his creation. I end this for space reasons.
3. String theory may very well be describing The Voice of God and the possible avenues free will can take.
So, got game?
The article may have been written and published in good faith, but I have recently pointed out the absurdity of the paper to the AJP, which is so far refusing to publish a retraction. I also sent an email to Prof. Stenger about it, but he has not acknowledged receipt of the email.
The only theory that explains evolution is intelligent design. There is, however, no evidence for this theory. Advocates of ID are irrational and promote the scam that ID is a better theory than natural selection. Atheists go along with this scam because they don't want to admit the limitations of natural selection. Likewise, I suspect, Prof. Stenger doesn't want to admit a peer-reviewed article that explicitly criticizes creationism is nonsense.
Good luck on getting that retraction of a 4 year old article. Mebbe you'll get one before Jeebus gets back but I wouldn't bet on it.
The scam is that natural selection is an attempt to explain the complexity of life. Only non-biologists think such a thing. Biologists use the word "adaptive" to qualify the word "evolution." Atheists are quite right to say there is no evidence for ID. Many advocates of ID have PhDs in biology. Do you really think there is a disagreement between them and atheist PhDs about biology?
"I have understanding, no I need to tell thousens of scientists that they are all wrong."
We humans are faulty in our thinking, thats why critical thinking, reason, evidence etc become so important to guide us in our daily life. And out of that understanding we got the scientific metod.
It is not a cognitive problem, it is a moral problem. When it is pointed out to them, anyone who has even a basic understanding of thermodynamics can see the article is absurd. It takes moral courage for an atheist to say the article should be retracted because fellow atheists will get upset over the creationist victory. I'm as against atheism as I am creationism, so it takes no courage for me to say it.
Victor mentions advances in medicine. Compare it's effectiveness to prayer and you'll have to admit one clearly works, while the other doesn't.
Naturalistic science is still progressing. Faith has gotten us nowhere.
The real problem is that science is amoral. The belief that all things are merely physical objects, having no soul, spirit, sacredness, or divine purpose, leads to exploitation, which is immoral. A society of users, where things and life are used, exploited, consumed, and then discarded as waste.
Cows can be used for food, how about dogs? How about people? How about using aborted fetuses or cloned stem cells as medicine or research? Killing and torture is bad - except when it produces useful medical or scientific research which can be exploited for commerce and benefit millions of people.
Amoral scientific logic isn't logic at all.
As to your new argument, you're right that science by itself is amoral (not immoral, but amoral - we agree here). But how does naturalism lead to exploitation? You're just asserting that.
I agree that there is exploitation, and that it's a bad thing. Note though that it's religion that has actually (directly) lead to great exploitation (for example, of about half the population - you know which one I mean) and mass murder. You say "killing is bad". Naturalism doesn't dictate murder, religion does. Evolution tells us that we're not too different from animals, which makes me feel compassion for cows. The Bible tells us that animals are here for us to exploit however we like: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
As to your questions about what to eat or, more broadly, how to live our lives: That's where humanism, ethical philosophy and compassion (which we all have) come in. Naturalism has nothing to say about this.
tl;dr: a) your argument is fallacious. b) religion makes the world a worse place, not naturalism.
So if science & religion conflict, guess which one is going to prevail? Just take a wild guess.
Perhaps you speak a bit too soon. Within the last decade or so, physicists have added a seeming new descriptor to the nature of quantum particles--namely "information". For instance, photons are no longer just bundles of energy that curiously displays mass-like properties in certain conditions; they are increasingly being described as containing "packets of information".
"So what?" you say, "Energy, information--still nothing like a "soul" or "spirit".
But wait! This "information" behaves *very* strangely in experiments often appears to move faster than the speed of light. For instance, the first such experiment I read of a few years ago involved firing individual photons at a target. What did the researchers find? That "information" about that photon arrived at the target *before* the photon; even more fantastically "information" about the arrival of that photon at the target was detected at the photons' source before the photon arrived at the target! In other words, the target was aware of the arrival and had relayed information regarding that arrival to the source before the arrival ever occurred! While the content of the information was not directly mentioned, the implication was that it contained, at least in part, the nature of the photon. Dare I say the "spirit" of the photon?
The core ideal of science is understanding. It's not good enough in science to simply see and accept. One must investigate, theorize, experiment. One must work to understand what one sees, and not rest on the self-evident truth of it. This is where both religious fundamentalists and Stenger's "New Atheists" fail their promise. Both assert that they 'know'; both fail to understand the perspective of the other side, or the extensive philosophical and sociological complexities of the issue. Note how blithely Dr. Stenger asserts strict Darwinianism as the one and only correct answer to any question about evolution. He's forgotten about the *science* of evolution (where Darwin's theory currently prevails because of understandings created by a mountain of convincing research and evidence), and taken up the *banner* of evolution (where everyone knows that Darwin's theory is true, except for those poor fools caught in the mindlessly negative force of religion).
Dr Stenger knows science, no question. I do question whether he understands it.
The Roman empire was a brutal society which, for entertainment, forced people to fight to the death in stadiums, or engage in brutal sports in which there were fatalities at every playing. The measure of poverty was that a man was too poor to own a slave.
Christianity started out as a Jewish cult that became popular among slaves and the gentile lower classes. It was pacifistic and accomodating to earthly rulers. However, the Christian refusal to offer Roman emperors the sacrifices and honors of gods led to bouts of persecution by Rome.
Christianity did not become invoved in the bloodshed of the ancient world until it became the official religion of Rome and was coopted into another pillar of support for the empire under Constantine.
I challenge anyone to look at the history of the empire prior to Constantine and find any movement toward scientific enlightenment.
And there are many early natural philosophers that tried to explain nature. Even christian and jew beliefsystems without any afterlife. Rome was not much interested in understanding nature, more about ruling.
That most of us do not know this say something about what was lost in christianity after year 500-700. Rediscovering some of these old books in 1100-1200 from muslim/arabic sources startet the new philosophical prosess the made the modern world possible. Our "spiritual" understanding are locked in a god-beliefe that will not understand or move.
So the prosess started long before we historicaly can know. Christianities rule of soceity have locked away knowledge and understanding, just like they try to do today. Power and manipulating.
This culture war isn't scientific opinion vs public opinion. (That's something else; the science communication problem)
The religio-political battle of ideas (evolution etc) isn't squabbling about facts with the mistaken, it's outrage at today's influential Abrahamic leaders who's current teachings are offensively "blasphemous" to the non-religious.
One of my favorite books is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. If you haven't read it, I hope you will. It's a short, easy read, except for the time the reader chooses to spend pondering whether it was free will or determinism that put those five people on the 1,000 year old bridge when it collapsed.
Quantum physics teaches us that there is always an element of randomness in the universe. This seems to argue for free will. But what do I know?
This is an old misconseption. Humility is a human skill and most good scientists have alot of that, also creativity. Problem is in the comunication of ideas, scientists use analyttic language to share ideas, there are no "feelings" expressed. It sounds cold. We react unconsciously to this. It often also contradict what we believed before and we are not good at changes. Educators like Carl Sagan was good to bridge the gap between "normal" language and the analytical.
"scientiffic leap of faith"
This show lack of understanding. What many people call "spiritual" are just a normal brain experience, we are all able to feel this. To bad priests and churches promote fear in humans so we lock us in and never get "enlightment". People understanding science are just as much "spiritual" as religious, and this is the danger for the capistalitsic part of churches.
Dr. Robert Jastrow PhD. in Theoretical Physics and a NASA scientist said
Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe." The dice are a figure of speech. So is God.
Einstein was another firm believer in G_d. You see, while many 'scientists' get carried away with their discoveries, some actually realize that all they are doing is mathematically describing existing laws.
Newton defined gravity, but he didn't invent it. Man didn't create any of these laws, and if man didn't create them and these laws exist, where did they come from?
At any rate, people of biblical times were probably a lot smarter than people today. Oh, not that they had the knowledge base that we have today, but they did have people and culture. What about laws by which to build cultures that would not fall apart?
Einstein marveled at the symmetry and beauty of the universe, was awed by it. And was a firm believer in G_d. What is to say that past 'genius' was not describing these laws by which cultures could become stable, survive and grow? What to call such understanding, Divine intervention, you tell me.
Your arguments are rags.
Sometimes people come to the conclusion that 'their' culture has outgrown the laws that govern human behavior. Sadly, while knowledge may increase, understanding doesn't always follow, nor 'enlightenment'. Cultures collapse, tyrants arise to bring order to chaos, and freedoms are lost.
What is nonsense is to believe that a high level of culture and technology can be maintained without the corresponding values it takes to maintain that culture.
Your other arguments are just the "god of the gaps" argument, rehashed. The need to invoke the invisible man to explain the universe will continue to shrink as our understanding increases. This trend has not worked out very well for religion over the last 400 years.
SO the cultures of ancient times should be considered as a model? Dont forget the torture, rape, sexism, slavery, genocide and other atrocities that were commonplace and accepted in society at the time. Some of these things (slavery, sexism, rape, genocide) are even condoned in that ridiculous, 2000-year old book that supposedly contains some sort of moral code: the bible. LOL
And 'G_d of the gaps", no, not exactly. That indicates that G_d exists only in the gaps, but actually what I have said is G_d exists even in the laws that we have defined. We can explain the laws mathematically, but the fact a 'law' exists is indicative of 'knowledge' in the very fabric of the universe.
We define the laws by the 'scientific method', right? We observe a phenomenon and come up with a theory on what law causes it. When we have a theory that provides a reproducible prediction of a result, it becomes a definition. So, I have to ask, what tells that rock to fall when dropped? Is it not an innate behavior contained within the very fabric of the universe?
When you think of the 'atrocities' contained in the history of religion, perhaps we should also consider the 'atrocities' of humans. Examine the religious tenants of particular times with respect to the cultures of that time. Butchery and human sacrifices were pretty much the rule instead of the exception in most cultures. And the Bible covers four thousand years, not two.
And, yes, there were a lot of abuse perpetrated in the name of religion through twisting of the tenants. Gotenburg did a lot to end that, however.