Religion is science?

[Willum]

As we find out more, we refine our theories, I think this is agreeable.

So let's roll back the clock.
Isn't it reasonable the first scientific theories were that a father-like figure created lightning and made the crops grow?
That guided our fortunes,just like when we were children?

Then as we learn more, we need to explain less with mommy and daddy gods? and more and more with fundamental particles and evolution?

Aren't gods just a psychologically driven scientific model to describe non-psychological phenomenon?

[Adam Cro-Magnon]

Perhaps it is that kind of debate that pits Milton against Pope: one will justify the ways of God to man whilst the other will assert that the proper study of mankind is man. Religion v science! Is it too presumptuous to tread such ground? I hope not.

The Enlightenment came to codify, to set out what it saw as the only valid and genuine way of thinking. It’s dictum was: Go not outside nature to understand or explain nature! In other words have no truck - when it comes to understanding this world - with any other world or realms outside. Do not drag in the supernatural to explain the natural. Let go the gods and instead disenchant nature. For example, bad behaviours, immoral longings do not occasion punishing tsunamis along the Indonesian littoral (the which explanation was well favoured by religious leaders at the time of the great tsunami, quite some years ago now); instead look to the movement of tectonic plates. A scientific explanation not a religious one does pit the former against the latter. Why? The answer surely lies in the differences between their respective epistemologies.

The scientific method makes an a priori exclusion of any other world when it comes to understand what is going on in this one. Its method combines empiricism and mechanism. Its findings are only ever provisional, that is to say only ‘as good as’ until another better explanation comes along. This method does not champion substantive truths but only endorses a particular method of enquiry whose findings will only ever be provisional. Its findings are therefore open to being falsified.

Does this method/ethic of cognition differ from a religious one? It surely does. Religions, unlike science are ideologies; they affirm values and seek to confer meaning and purpose. Their assertions are never, never provisional. Science separates fact from value. Science never seeks to endorse or champion a particular ideological vision of the world though many ideologies would fain capture and control the scientific method. Religion sees knowledge as an event in the world whereas the scientific method sees the world as an event in knowledge. Religion offers comfort, hope, purpose and meaning in a moral universe. Science does no such thing - a cold, amoral creature, without comfort, purpose and meaning. Religions have a built-in resistance that really evades falsification. For science the notion of falsifiability is a sine qua non.

Why then this debate between the two? Rational fundamentalism has grown to become a most powerful tool for understanding this world, so powerful that it has the dastardly habit of ripping into, savaging and ravaging any culture it comes into contact with. It is seen as a threat that can disturb, a powerful knowledge beyond culture, a threat to established cultures. Claims made in the religious realm are subjected to the ravages of empiricism and mechanism, the method of scientific enquiry - there is no escape. Religious assertions are by such an enquiry found somewhat wanting.

For instance a movement within the Catholic Church, the Faith Movement seeks to demonstrate that there is not, nor should there be, conflict between these two disciplines. The Enlightenment, however, showed that the poor handmaiden to theology turns out to be quite that - poor indeed and quite bereft in a modern world or rather ought I to say theology without support becomes the weeping relict of yesteryear. If it were ever expected that science should fly high on a wing and a prayer, today’s world shows that it does indeed fly massively high but without the help of any prayers at all; it is the prayers that have dropped off, they are not needed. The wings remain. The fate of Icarus is nowhere to be seen.

Science does not need religion or any other culture in order to fly high and in this regard religions feel pushed to one side but still want a commanding place in the picture, fearing exclusion and irrelevance. They wish to envelope rational fundamentalism and will even go so far as to assert what they see as that crucial distinction between ‘how’ and ‘why’, the which distinction Dawkins said was as useless as asking what kind of smell the colour purple has in contrast, say, to the colour green. It is but a way of trying to keep God in the debate. The great perennial problems of human existence, life, suffering, death where meaning and purpose lie enjoy their fiefdoms in religion not science.

Which God would you prefer: the one who can conjure a rabbit out of a hat and create the world in six days or the one who would see billions of years pass by, numerous fossil records crossing eons traipse by, before eventually coughing up, amongst a diversity of sundry hominids a little upstart, Adam? Could these gods be one and the same or is one more telling than the other? I put this question to a class of ten year olds. No surprise, the magician with his promise of instant gratification won out over that sense of deferred entitlement that the long-bearded, sky-bound ancient could work up over long and lengthy time. I asked one child what sort of question would he put to these two gods. Regarding the latter he answered, grudgingly: why are we waiting? The magician, it seemed, commanded more awe and respect; the other, alas, did not.

[JoeyKnothead]

Fom the OP:

Religion is no more a science than boots are biscuits.

Unless it is, you're a-starvin' you for knowledge, and religion is all you have to eat.