\"Bleached Faith\" (Religion)

by dhw, Monday, October 12, 2009, 11:10 (5316 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt: The only times a reconciliation needs to happen between the two, are either when science implicitly challenges a religious claim, or when a religious claim challenges science. Otherwise they coexist.-The challenge is often explicit, but yes, we've reached agreement. Just a few brief comments to clear up the remaining twiddly-bits. The fact that religion and science study different things is not a rigid division. I can think of very few subjects of study that don't overlap with others, which is why interdisciplinary studies are now so essential to many forms of research. My objection was to the Gould concept of non-overlapping magisteria, to which you had agreed. They have to overlap if religion is to maintain its credibility. I didn't object to your use of "complementary" (though your colour example was an interesting use I didn't know about), but to your rejection of "compatible".-I certainly shan't disagree when you say that religion steps in to help with the problem of suffering, though I think it does a great deal more than that. The point I was making was that if its God were toppled, religion could not fulfil any of its tasks ... alleviating suffering, establishing moral codes, giving purpose to life, and believe it or not in some cases actually providing a source of joy. That is why a scientific threat to the "authenticity" of God has to be met by a scientific response ... but we have already agreed on that too. (N.B. I'm not saying that you need God to accomplish those tasks, but that religion needs God to accomplish them in its own way.)-It's interesting how many of the discussions on this forum (not just those in which you participate) revolve around difficulties of communication. Even with seemingly clear terms like evolution, abiogenesis, paranormal, natural, agnostic, we find huge areas of uncertainty opening up, because they mean different things to different people. Words are, of course, an indispensable tool, but no-one should be fooled into thinking that they're anything more than symbols. In similar vein, I love Magritte's painting of a pipe, entitled "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" [this is not a pipe]. It's worth a hundred pages of philosophy.