Science vs. religion (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 26, 2009, 09:55 (5545 days ago) @ John Clinch

In my post of 23 February at 12.09 I had said I thought science and religion were compatible if religion was not used to twist scientific facts, and if science was not used to promote claims it could not substantiate. In this context, I wrote: "Science cannot prove that life was not the result of a deliberate act, and it is not the scientist's place to say that it was the result of an accident, since science has no objective evidence for such a theory." - Your sarcastic comments on the first part of this are irrelevant, as I was trying to explain why scientists should be able to live with religion. Concerning the second half you write: "It is very much the scientist's place to say that, on the basis of the evidence presented thus far by our world, life on Earth is likely to have arisen accidentally [...] Remember that science deals with likelihoods and probabilities and is constantly being revised. It is a method, not a set of facts." Where do you get your authority ... or where does your scientist get his ... for making such a pronouncement about life on Earth? Of course scientists are perfectly entitled to express their opinions, but on the basis of the evidence presented thus far by our world, any scientist with the least respect for the objectivity of his profession would have to qualify "is likely" with "I think". However, once again you have missed the point. Along with my own caveat ("I think"), if your fictional scientist acknowledges that his subjective opinion does not constitute a set of facts, and everything he says is liable to revision, I see no reason why science and religion should not co-exist. In my view, only fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist atheism are incompatible, since they allow for none of the reservations you have listed. - You write: "We have different views about abiogenesis, and you take the pessimistic view that science will never be able to explain it." We seem to have a different understanding of the word "abiogenesis", which is defined in all my dictionaries as a theory or hypothesis ... namely, that life can come into being spontaneously from non-living materials. I think you take it only to mean the origin of life. I am sceptical as to whether science will ever be able to prove that life on Earth arose spontaneously (i.e. by accident), though I am not sceptical about the ability of science eventually to find the combinations that led to life. You quote me as saying: "Science can't explain this so science can never do so." I have never said that. - Your final paragraph emphasizes your faith that science will one day prove atheism to be correct, and since I don't share your faith, you conclude that I "want to leave room for God" and am a "wannabe theist". You clearly haven't a clue what agnosticism means.