Are Scientific And Religious Explanations Incompatible?

[Warren Stupidity]

This final idea brings us to the second prong of my distinction. Let's move away from scientific and religious explanations, and instead consider explanatory practices in science and religion. For example, what counts as evidence for a scientific explanation versus a religious explanation? What would lead you to revise a scientific explanation versus a religious explanation?

When we shift our focus to the practice of generating, evaluating, endorsing, and revising explanations, then I think the answer is "no" — scientific and religious explanatory practices are not compatible. That's because it's a hallmark of scientific explanations that they're responsive to evidence, and as a result, they can change over time. To the extent that religious explanations aren't similarly responsive to evidence, then there's a very basic incompatibility that won't be easy to reconcile.

This is one reason Dawkins is so hostile to reconciliation. Speaking at a debate in 2007, he warned: "If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment."

Could religious explanatory practice change? That is, could religious explanations become appropriately responsive to evidence?

I think this is possible. But what we'd end up with would look very different from mainstream religion today. In this "defeasible" religion, religious explanations would answer to science, and they would change over time.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/04/13/399309391/are-scientific-and-religious-explanations-incompatible

I started out thinking this was going to be yet another apologetic for why we should all just have a group hug and sing kumbaya around the campfire, but then Tania Lombrozo got all interesting about this well worn subject.

[jeff47]

1. Her proposal looks a lot like "God of the gaps". (nt)

[Warren Stupidity]

4. interesting, I don't find that in her text at all.

it must be hidden in there.

[jeff47]

5. Well, what happens when you "disprove" a chunk of the religion?

The resulting rewrite shrinks God - he is no longer involved in that part which was just disproven.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. that isn't a god of the gaps argument.

GoG claims that god is lurking in the unknowns of scientific knowledge, the fact that the unknowns are shrinking is a feature of the argument but is certainly not essential. For example, a scientific discovery could increase what we don't know - for example the discovery of dark matter and energy - and the Gog-ers are right there putting the god all over that new surface area.

[jeff47]

10. Except science never just leaves it at "I dunno"

We don't know what dark matter is now, but we will know what it is.

That's the reason the religious generally reject God of the gaps theology. They realize it is an ever-diminishing God.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. again, diminishing "unknowns" is not essential to a gaps argument.

Nor does a gaps argument require an ever-diminishing god. Scientific knowledge might tend toward decreased unknowns, but at times it moves in the other direction, increased unknowns, due for example to paradigm shifts that upend conventional wisdom. Gaps arguments simply require "some" unknowns in which to fit gods.

[jeff47]

17. Really. God creates the sun with a wave of his hand.

Immense, massive power to create the light that sustains us all.

And then we figure out it was a slightly more dense knot of hydrogen in a nebula. Leaving god to....what, exactly? Move a couple atoms closer together?

[Warren Stupidity]

19. Again the point is that all that is required is a gap, not diminishing nor increasing gaps.

We aren't getting anywhere.

[jeff47]

20. That's because you appear to not want to think about changes over time.

It appears your position is "If it works at any particular moment in time, it will work forever".

[cleanhippie]

2. I have a problem with the use of "Religious Explanation."

From where I stand, Religious Explanation = 100% grade A bullshit, while a Scientific Explanation is based on observable fact and evidence.

[bvf]

6. Exactly what I was going to say.

The term is borderline oxymoronic.

"Explanations" like "It's a mystery" and "What Paul really meant by that..." are for the backward.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. explanations of values are difficult to put into a scientific framework.

As she points out, such explanations are not exclusive to religion either, there is plenty of secular philosophy that covers this area.

But what she is saying is that a religion that allowed that evidence could revise doctrine would be vastly different than what we commonly think of as religion today, and I find it hard to disagree with that assertion.

[Binkie The Clown]

9. You beat me to it. Religion does not "explain"

in the strict sense of the word. It makes up stories. Nothing more.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. explain "the good" using science.

[Binkie The Clown]

14. "the good" is

what natural selection chooses as the most beneficial behavior for the species in question.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. seriously? And how did you arrive at that ethical edict?

Ignoring how you could scientifically decide that 'the good' is determined by "the most beneficial behavior for (a) species" -

there is no ethical issue, as far as you are concerned, with human caused extinction of, for example, orangutans, as long as that extinction increases the number of humans the planet can sustain?

[Binkie The Clown]

16. In the long run

human caused extinction is a symptom of ecological degradation that could also cause human extinction. In small bands of humans, those bands whose members recognized that fact would behave in a more "ethical" manner, which is to say, a manner more likely to insure their own long-term survival as a species.

The survival of a species requires that the species not overshoot the carrying capacity of its environment. The problem today is that the choices and the effects are global in nature, and natural selection has no scope for action upon isolated groups. Selecting for "ethics" in an isolated group does not enhance the survival of that group if the global effects of other groups' "unethical" behavior cancels out the "ethical" behavior of the isolated group. Our own "unethical" behavior (i.e. behavior inimical to the long term survival of the species) has swamped the power of natural selection to correct. There remains, however, the possibility that man might consciously select "ethical" behavior, although that possibility is remote in the extreme.

And, for the record, "maximizing population" and "long term survival of the species" should not be conflated as you have done. Nowhere did I mention unrestrained growth as a symptom of "ethical" behavior. That's a straw man of your own invention.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. Fine, but again if our species "benefits" from the wholesale slaughter of other species,

that would be "the good" in your system. And yet I am missing how you determine that one species' benefit is "good" in any objective scientific sense. Instead you have to rely on some other non-scientific reasoning for declaring these outcomes, fully predictable within scientific forms of reasoning, to be "the good". So you have succeeded in noting something that could be an evidenced based metric for "the good" but have not managed to demonstrate how you have used evidenced based reasoning to determine that what this metric is measuring is in fact "the good".

Suppose, for example, that it could be demonstrated beyond a doubt that the human species would be better off genetically if all anglo-saxons were culled from the species. Would you still claim that this course of action, the extermination of all genetically anglo-saxon humans, was a "good"?

[Binkie The Clown]

21. Short run "benefit" is not long range survival. Therefore,

short range benefit is NOT "the good" in my system. I do wish you wouldn't put words into my mouth and twist my meaning to serve your purpose.

As for culling Anglo-Saxons, that would not be "the good" from the Anglo-Saxon perspective, but might be "good" from the non-Anglo-Saxon perspective. So you can't say "good" without stating the frame of reference. Right now, what would be the greatest good, for planet Earth, would be to cull all humans from the planet. What's good for the planet is obviously not good for the human species. Just as what is good for a cancerous tumor (in the short run) is not good for the host organism, or for the cancer itself in the long run.

However, since the human species depends on the planet, (just as the cancerous tumor depends on the host) what is good for the human species in the long run is to be good for the planet. (And what is good for the cancerous tumor, in the long run, is to be good for the host. Which is why cancerous tumors are every bit as stupid as humans, because neither does what is good for its own long term survival.)

[Warren Stupidity]

24. In the specific example, according to you, it would be good to slaughter all anglo-saxons

as in 'good for homo sapiens' - the species - as you described the good as what benefits the survival of the species, and in my example it is assumed that because of some genetic characteristic isolated to anglo-saxons, long term survival of homo sapiens would be enhanced by slaughtering all anglo-saxons.

Your scientific explanation of the good as simply whatever benefits the survival of the species is a pretty rotten ethical system and seems to not match up well with our intuition of 'the good'.

[Binkie The Clown]

28. There's no point in my responding

if you are not understanding what I post. You are not debating what I said. You are debating with your own made-up version of what I said. It's clear you are more interested in justifying your position than in actually discussing the issue. The big problem I'm facing is that you don't even see how it is that what I said and what you said I said are not the same thing at all. Further discussion of the matter is, therefore, pointless.

BTW: You are free to use my refusal to debate the issue further as rationalization to tell yourself that you were right all along.

[Warren Stupidity]

31. Your words:

"the good" is what natural selection chooses as the most beneficial behavior for the species in question.


When given the example of extinction of other species for our benefit, you ran away from that by claiming that it wouldn't be in our long term interest,

In the long run human caused extinction is a symptom of ecological degradation

but of course it could be, and most likely has been exactly that in our past. While such acts might be a symptom of other undesirable behaviors within your framework, they need not be, and so elimination of competing species can be "the good" within your definition, and, at least to me, morally reprehensible.

When given the example of intra-species genocide that increases the survivability of the species you have simply avoided explaining how that would not meet your ethical requirements, and in fact you downgraded your original claim:

As for culling Anglo-Saxons, that would not be "the good" from the Anglo-Saxon perspective.

now it seems that 'the good" is derived from units less than "the species", that instead 'the good" can be derived from what benefits a sub group, without any explanation of how competing sub-group "goods" don't wreck your proposed ethical system.

I really don't think your position is defensible, which is why you are now off claiming I am making up your position.

But there are other huge flaws with your original statement. How can "the good" being wholly derived from "what natural selection chooses as the most beneficial behavior for the species" actually function as an ethical system? For example, why shouldn't I murder the person next to me? How do I run that through your generator of "the good" (what natural selection chooses as the most beneficial behavior for the species) and come up with an answer? It might very well be the most beneficial behavior for the species for me to murder the person next to me, and if so, according to your system, that is what I should do.

[Binkie The Clown]

32. Let's discuss something more productive. So, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? n/t

[AlbertCat]

22. "the good"

Is a judgment call and different for every individual. It is made by the interactions of neurons in the brain.... as it categorizes phenomena as beneficial or not beneficial to some goal or notion. It's different for everyone (even tho' we may "all" agree that something is good.) because the categories are informed by our personal experiences.

How's that?

[Warren Stupidity]

23. "It is made by the interactions of neurons in the brain" - is not an explanation of "the good"

it is an explanation of the process of consciousness. And "the good" isn't different for everyone, in fact we humans appear to have broad agreement on what constitutes "the good" in many cases. Even if we accept that "the good' is "informed by our personal experiences" that is again simply a description of how we each arrive at a concept of the good, not a scientific explanation - which has to go beyond mere description and provide a theory with a testable model that can be verified through repeatable experimentation.

[AlbertCat]

25. a testable model that can be verified through repeatable experimentation.

You could see what "lights up" when you present things that most people find good....over and over.....and that would be what happens when you feel, "the good". Then you could artificially stimulate the "good" sequence and see if the subjects felt "the good".

As to it being different for everyone....

If I say "dog" then we all agree on what a dog is. But we each have different experiences of "dog" and go to that each time we encounter "dog".... sufficiently similar but not the same.


Y'know.... it's like: "When your brain does this.... you feel like this...." "How" do you feel like this? well.... your brain does this!

"Why" it feels good is not a scientific question. Science is about "how".

The trouble is it's hard to study something you're also in the middle of.

[edhopper]

27. The problem here

is the religious explanation would come down to God's will, and since there is no God, that explanation is invalid.

[Warren Stupidity]

29. sure. But there is an entire 2500 year history of ethical philosophy

much of which does not rely on religion, that is not "scientific", but that does attempt to understand "the good".

[edhopper]

30. Replace "Religious" with "Philosophical"

and I agree. Religion and Science are incompatible.

[Arugula Latte]

3. There has been nothing in human history that has required a supernatual explanation.

If we ever get to that point where science just breaks down for a particular conundrum--fine, I'll go with "gawd did it." But we have reached and are reaching plausible explanations for all sorts of phenomenon in the universe--all of it based on evidence. Do we know everything? Of course not. But there's no reason to say, "well, there must be a magical being behind this stuff 'cuz science is hard!"

[Warpy]

11. Nothing shuts down scientific inquiry

any faster than saying god did it.

[edhopper]

26. I think examples of both

are in order to see.