Science vs. religion (Introduction)

by John Clinch , Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 12:49 (5526 days ago) @ dhw

Er, what's with all the ad hominems - rude, presumptuous, sarcastic? (I refer here to this and other other posting.) Anyways, undaunted, I shall press on...! - Actually, my "sarcastic comments" merely echo Bertrand Russell's perfectly valid point that, philosophically, there were limits to what you could disprove with science and formal logic. However implausible it is, it's impossible to disprove that the world was created five minutes ago complete with memories and fossils. Perhaps old Bertie was being sarcastic about his religionist critics - I wouldn't put it past him and, in view of their pompous absurdity, I'd like to think so. - Accordingly, my response to your comment that "science cannot disprove that life was not the result of a deliberate act" is entirely on the point, is it not? In any event, it is incumbent on anyone making a claim like that to explain what kind of deliberate act they are positing. Failing that, you're into teapots orbiting the Sun territory. If you have theory, let's hear it. If it's just the possibility that "Godunnit," then it wouldn't be much of a theory would it? - You continue with the ad hominems. I actually consider myself to have a relatively sound understanding of agnosticism and, indeed, consider myself an agnostic for reasons you've probably forgotten (and which I have absolutely no reason to expect you to have retained). My point was that, with all due respect, I think yours is/was an "agnosticism-of-the-gaps" (and thus a sitting duck for the explanatory power of future science) whereas I think my agnosticism is ontological and therefore, in principle, concerned with matters forever outside the magisterium of science. It's not built on sand with the tide of science coming in. - You have justifiably, if a little pedantically, reminded me that "abiogenesis" is formally different from other theories on the "origin of life" and, at the risk to resurrecting a stale debate, I will simply restate my hunch/ understanding/ belief (in the non-relious sense, of course). I think that the scientific method will one day explain, imperfectly but infinitely better than we now do, how life arose from inanimate matter. This not scientistic, a common if a misguided and irritating charge - it's just a hunch! But just because we may never properly understand the process in detail doesn't alter the reality. Because it concerns the behaviour of material, it is firmly within the magisterium of science. - Anyway, there isn't a scientist worth her salt that wouldn't qualify her theory with the sort of caveats you require (I don't quite follow your point here). Good science is, after all, a humble and honest occupation, based on an awareness that knowledge is inherently provisional and implicitly accepting of its own limitations and the possibility of error. That's why it can be trusted as the best way we have of determining truth claims. Darwin was keen to ensure that all the objections he envisaged to his theory were included with the Origin. There aren't many religionists who are similarly humble about their beliefs. The world would be a rather more pleasant place if they didn't strut about pretending their preposterous transcendental realism provided ready-made answers to the complexity and wonder of life. I daresay you agree. - But I still say your position, as previously stated on these pages, is/was best characterised by the summation "science can't explain this so science never can do so". It is not an adequate answer for you to reply that you never said that. I know you haven't said that in terms: I extrapolated this meaning from your various postings. However, curiously, you now say "I am not sceptical about the ability of science eventually to find the combinations that led to life." It looks like you've shifted your ground. That was my view and we disagreed! If I've got you wrong, what's yours then?