Pharyngula

All scientists destroy religion even if they don't think that's what they are doing. Knowledge destroys religion. Religion is a synonym for ignorance.

Posted by: craig | July 14, 2006 12:14 PM

Now I usually hate the absurd claim that science is a religion, but that's exactly what Moran's article makes it out to be. It's possible, and I think very likely, that the entire natural world can be explained using natural causes, but there's certainly no proof of this. There may be phenomena that can't be explained by natural causes. If you treat science as method, that isn't a problem. You assume there is a natural cause because assuming anything else is not very useful. You're still free to admit the possibility that there is a non-natural explanation for anything while restricting yourself to looking for natural explanations because you know those are the only explanations that are useful for enhancing our understanding of the world. But Moran's definition of science takes this assumption scientists accept because of its utility and tries to turn it into an article of faith that one must always hold in order to be a "real" scientist. This is a fine belief, and it's rational for Moran and others to hold it, but one is a scientist because of one's methods, not beliefs.

Posted by: Salieri | July 14, 2006 12:22 PM

I don't have any problem with the sentiment that the practice of science is atheistic. I also understand the desire of non-believers like Haldane to wear 'one seamless garment' in all aspects of their life. In a way, it's like the desire of the believer to (sigh) always be in an attitude of prayer and communion with God.

But I would wave a cautionary note. There is something ominous about any attempt to weave every act and every experience into the same garment--which in Haldane's case was not necessarily scientific materialism, but (frankly) Marxism. We all know how THAT turned out.

Besides, Larry Moran is wrong. Scientific hypothesi are motivated by all sorts of belief systems, including that of capitalism. Would we say that Darwin's theory is not scientific because it was influenced by the thought of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus? I doubt it.

The existence of a sharp boundary between science and non-science is one proposed in theory, but never demonstrated in practice, in part because a single all-encompasing definition of science as practiced seems evasive. In practice, men and women doing science seem as incapable of wearing one seamless garment of materialism as the believer who aspires to continual union with the deity.

Since reality is not apparently impressed with our arbitrary categories of 'science' and 'non-science', I'm at peace with the idea that I will never have a single seamless garment suitable for all occasions. From time to time, I may have to change hats, as appropriate. Or maybe I'll keep the same hat, but from time to time wear it rakishly to one side or the other.

I might add that it is possible to be both a theist and a committed Darwinian and yet reject the position of 'theistic evolution', just as Haldane could be both a Marxist and an evolutionist, yet eventually spurn the Soviet Union.

Peace...SH

Posted by: Scott Hatfield | July 14, 2006 12:32 PM

There is no way to test for the supernatural. By definition, its outside of nature. Therefore everything that is testable, detectable, noticable - is natural. Something outside of nature can have no influence in nature and therefore has no meaning. If it could affect nature, then it would be considered "natural".

Excellently put. To go even further, scientists must assume methodological naturalism, for if they didn't the entire enterprise of science, which is based on a rational, law-ruled universe would be incoherent, since at any time whichever deity one thought existed could intervene and override natural laws, thus making hypothesis-testing impossible because you'd never know if the results followed from the rules of the universe or the deity's specific action.

Posted by: Albert | July 14, 2006 12:53 PM

Salieri says,

Now I usually hate the absurd claim that science is a religion, but that's exactly what Moran's article makes it out to be. It's possible, and I think very likely, that the entire natural world can be explained using natural causes, but there's certainly no proof of this.

Exactly right. You cannot prove a negative. But your logical error is more serious than that. In order to do science you need to practice methodological naturalism. In other words, you can't appeal to supernatural beings whenever you run into something you don't know. This does not mean that you have to be a metaphysical naturalist. That's where you've gone astray. This distinction lies at the heart of the debate over intelligent design.

In order to avoid confusion I inserted a quotation from Michael Ruse who explains the distinction. Did you read it?

I'm not claiming in that article that science is a religion and I'm not saying that you have to adopt metaphysical naturalism if you are a scientist. I happen to think that the two are very closely related but that's not the point of the article.

The point was that Theistic Evolution violates the fundamental credo of good science; namely, that you can't invoke the supernatural. End of story.

There may be phenomena that can't be explained by natural causes. If you treat science as method, that isn't a problem.

I'm talking about Methodological naturalism. That's science as a method.

You assume there is a natural cause because assuming anything else is not very useful. You're still free to admit the possibility that there is a non-natural explanation for anything while restricting yourself to looking for natural explanations because you know those are the only explanations that are useful for enhancing our understanding of the world. But Moran's definition of science takes this assumption scientists accept because of its utility and tries to turn it into an article of faith that one must always hold in order to be a "real" scientist. This is a fine belief, and it's rational for Moran and others to hold it, but one is a scientist because of one's methods, not beliefs.

Be careful with your attributions; it's not my definition of how science should be practiced. It's a widely held consensus definition held by scientists and philosphers. I provided a link to the NCSE site. This is the very site that promotes Theistic Evolution as science.

I am claiming that in order to be a good scientist you must practice methodological naturalism. If this is what you mean by an article of faith then I'm guilty.

Is there an alternative? Yes, there is. I alluded to the views of Phillip Johnson and Alvin Plantinga in my essay. They would like to include the supernatural in their new version of Christianized science. Would you like to defend that point of view?

Posted by: Larry Moran | July 14, 2006 12:57 PM

Why does Moran compare Flat-Earther 'kooks' to 'equally extreme atheists'?

Posted by: Manson's Cellmate | July 14, 2006 12:59 PM

Russell said:
I'll say it again: science has no need for methodological naturalism. Going further, naturalism itself is a confused notion

Huh? Science only succeeds because of methodological naturalism. What's confused is your terminology. You are confusing ontological (i.e., "philosophical" or "metaphysical") naturalism with methodological naturalism. Methodological refers to methods, not metaphysics.

Perhaps this will help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism

Posted by: JT | July 14, 2006 1:08 PM

Supernatural. It is a compound word. I didn't make the definition or the word. You can't show things that are not of nature. Only imagination can have "beings" zap in and out of "Our" world. That's pure folly. Things of nature must follow nature's rules. That's a huge part of the scientific ideology and methodolgy.

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."
[Delos McKown]

Posted by: Alex | July 14, 2006 1:08 PM

Craig,
"All scientists destroy religion even if they don't think that's what they are doing. Knowledge destroys religion. Religion is a synonym for ignorance."

I'd like to see some evidence for this hypothesis. Truly, this was the case for you. It was not the case for me. But I guess you would just lump me in the ignorant crowd and call it good.

Posted by: squeaky | July 14, 2006 1:11 PM

Scott Hatfield says,

Besides, Larry Moran is wrong. Scientific hypothesi are motivated by all sorts of belief systems, including that of capitalism. Would we say that Darwin's theory is not scientific because it was influenced by the thought of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus? I doubt it.

The existence of a sharp boundary between science and non-science is one proposed in theory, but never demonstrated in practice, in part because a single all-encompasing definition of science as practiced seems evasive.

That's why Intelligent Design Creationism is not science and that's why Theistic Evolution is not science. There may be other things that straddle the border between science and non-science but that wasn't the point of the essay. This one is obvious.

Posted by: Larry Moran | July 14, 2006 1:15 PM

You can't show things that are not of nature.

That's right, which is why science must assume naturalistic explanations. However, it is still an assumption.

Only imagination can have "beings" zap in and out of "Our" world. That's pure folly.

You don't know this. It is untestable and not subject to formal proofs. Since you cannot test for it, it must be false, huh?

Things of nature must follow nature's rules. That's a huge part of the scientific ideology and methodolgy.

Exactly, which is why science must assume naturalism. But the assumption doesn't make it so. Science is the best we have, and it has worked really well thus far, so we should stick with it. But don't forget that throughout science, we are and have always been inherently limited by what we can observe.

Posted by: Shygetz | July 14, 2006 1:17 PM

Yet again, this "non-testability" of religion guff, which allows it to escape.

Time to nail it right down.

No god is detectable, even if that god exists.

And, therfore, if it is not detectable, it will have no effect in the real world.

A god may have a detectable effect on our world that we have not yet identified, while remaining unbound by its laws (the god of the gaps argument). So long as our knowledge of this world is imperfect, this possibility cannot be ruled out (although as our knowledge increases in depth and scope, it will become less probable). The fact that such a hypothesis cannot lead us to predict things makes it unuseful but not necessarily untrue.

Posted by: Shygetz | July 14, 2006 1:21 PM

Oh yeah NO SCIENTIST DESTROYS RELIGION, as any scientist will be able to deduce by means of basic math and statistics skills. Moreover science has it`s own field to analyze group dynamics such as religion: it is called psychology/neurosciences.

In principle, science, religion and so forth are all the same...as far as the emotional spectrum goes in gross relationship to the intelligence of a certain person (note: intelligence is a psychological term and roughly means competence - 7 different "intelligences" are discriminated). However such great margins for diversification and individuality, as are seen right now, will drastically reduce within the upcoming centuries - as any rational thinking person with an understanding of evolution will be able to deduce.

Posted by: lo | July 14, 2006 1:22 PM

The whole attempt to use "undetectable supernatural entities" as an escape clause for religionists is a red herring and a waste of time. Because what religion has ever posited deities who don't influence the observable world in some way? What would be the point of believing in such a thing? How could it possibly satisfy the needs that religion is supposed to satisfy?

Methodological naturalism is really not a philsophical doctrine with some actual content, at all. It's merely a goes-without-saying consequence of the fact that all science depends on observation of some kind.
If gods, fairies or unicorns influenced natural phenomena, we'd be able to detect that influence. If they don't, there is really no meaning that can be attached to the claim that they "exist", nor in practice does any believer believe in things that "exist" only in such a quixotic fashion.

Posted by: Steve LaBonne | July 14, 2006 1:36 PM

You can't show things that are not of nature.

Shygetz said: That's right, which is why science must assume naturalistic explanations. However, it is still an assumption.

You don't know this. It is untestable and not subject to formal proofs. Since you cannot test for it, it must be false, huh?"

Posted by: JT | July 14, 2006 1:41 PM

jesus christ! (sorry didn`t wanna wake u)

you can blabla and claim all day long, but in fact nothing is absolute - this is why we have some beautiful mathematical constructs to not only put statistics into pretty much anything but also use the most complex of algorithms to deduce the most complex tasks. One of the most primitive but yet useful (because u can do it even in your mind) in genetics is the chi square test.

Thusly god does exists becuase you merely have to google for "god" and the hits will be in the millions. Google for "is lo my god" and you can rationally deduce that i am. (i sarcastically tried to point out that math is one thing, careful planing of the exogenous factors of the system that is tried to be modelled is the even more complicated step).

Posted by: lo | July 14, 2006 1:46 PM

Now I usually hate the absurd claim that science is a religion, but that's exactly what Moran's article makes it out to be. It's possible, and I think very likely, that the entire natural world can be explained using natural causes, but there's certainly no proof of this.

It's an impossible question to answer and therefore a bogus bullshit question.

That is why SCIENTISTS who PRACTICE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD as a CAREER do not give a shit about these metaphysical questions, at least not while they are doing their jobs as scientists.

This hardly makes science a religion. An analogous and equally vapid statement would be the following: "plumbers can't fix pipes so they are eternally watertight so plumbing is a religion."

Such statements merely show that the speaker is ignorant about the purpose of plumbers and the purpose of religion.

Posted by: Great White Wonder | July 14, 2006 1:57 PM

If the entity conceived of as God does exist, there's no reason the entity could not take an action which definitively answers the existence question at a scientifically acceptable level. The entity, according to most religious explanations, chooses not to do so because faith in the entity's existence is a pre-requisite of belonging to that religion.

Interestingly, both Judaism and Christianity (which I'm most familiar with) posit that God will be knowable in a scientific sense in their explanations of the end of time as we know it.

Posted by: BillSaysThis | July 14, 2006 1:58 PM

Nice try Great White. My god has re-spawning capability. Not only that, he was disguised as grain of sand and was hiding in the Sahara. My god is surely safe.

Posted by: Alex | July 14, 2006 2:05 PM

It's an impossible question to answer and therefore a bogus bullshit question.

That is why SCIENTISTS who PRACTICE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD as a CAREER do not give a shit about these metaphysical questions, at least not while they are doing their jobs as scientists.

I think I was pretty clear in my comment that I thought such questions are outside the purview of science. I was objecting to the assertion that people have to practice methodological naturalism in every part of their lives in order to be properly be called scientists. That would make science a religion. After reading the article again I realized nobody was saying that and said withdrew the criticism. So relax, nobody's asking you to prove a negative.

Posted by: Salieri | July 14, 2006 2:13 PM

After reading the article again I realized nobody was saying that and said withdrew the criticism.

In order to prevent future errors of this sort, you must be flamed mercilessly. Please understand.

Posted by: Great White Wonder | July 14, 2006 2:18 PM

It doesn't assume anything. Science can't do anything else but examine the natural. Incorporating anything else into the practice of science is, like creationism, ID or religion, not science. Period.

Let me rephrase--science, in its search for truth, assumes naturalistic explanations to be true. It must, due to the nature of science.

If "supernatural" beings like ghosts, werewolves, etcetera exist and have effects, they're natural. If our known rules of science don't apply to them, we just have to refine or rebuild them to include their special cases.

All that weird stuff that's supposed to happen at light speed wasn't supernatural just because it defied what Newtonian physics told us.

Not if we posit "god" to be a being that follows different physical rules than us, but that can affect our reality. In such a situation, it is conceivable that we would only be able to measure the unpredictable effects of "god" without detecting "god" itself, or understanding the rules that "god" must follow. In such a case, any naturalistic explanation of the phenomenon would simply be "This phenomenon is unpredictable", as we would be unable to find any deterministic model and any statistical model would have so much error and so many fudge factors as to be unexplanatory and nearly useless from a predictive standpoint (again, see single-subject studies in psych, then imagine doing the same kind of study with an unobservable being beyond your experience). We would be able to measure the naturalistic effects of a supernatural cause, but unable to form a predictive hypothesis about the driving force behind these effects.

Posted by: Shygetz | July 14, 2006 2:37 PM

Shygetz,
You want to posit god as some kind of magical, undetectable cause? If that's the case, dare I say, you're not getting it - and you're a beating. Nothing outside of nature can affect nature. That is by definition, not experiment. Experimentation however, has shown the definition to be very solid. As a matter of fact, in all the years of humanity, it's NEVER been shown to be false. It's really not too hard of a concept.

Posted by: Alex | July 14, 2006 2:47 PM

However, God--in the sense of an unknowable entity outside our frame of reference and if such an entity exists and had the ability to create the universe we experience--could easily have created it to behave according to rules and precepts we've been decoding as science. Heck, that makes a lot more sense to me than angels whispering in ears and takes nothing away from this entity's, um, stature.

Two fundimental problems with this. First, it makes God redundant unless he continues to intervene. The second is far more serious in that every "intervention" seems to inexplicably be explainable with real world events, like volcanos. So either God has no control over the universe at all, once it exists, or he, for no apparent reason, chooses to use its own laws to "interfere", which is increasingly silly, since the same rain of fire from the sky, if it happened today, would be easilly attributed to the big volcano that spent the last 20 years rumbling, not stuff just randomly falling out of the sky. And even the stuff that does randomly fall out of the sky, we can explain "without" God. The only "supernatural" events in any religion that are not explainable, once you know how the world works, are the purely personal and subjective ones, where there is no evidence "after" the event that it ever took place. And since everyone from the religious, to people convinced that the government and aliens are using brain wave rays to read their minds, have the same level of "proof" for those events... Its kind of hard to take such testimonies as "proof" of anything. The only "effect" they have is in the heads of the people experiencing them.

See, the problem I have with this is quite simply that for the definition of "supernatural" to apply to "anything" that effects the real world, you must exhaust "all" possible natural explaination. Not just hand wave when you can't come up with one, but completely exhaust them. It can't be something attributable to meteors, comets, some odd lensing effect of a laser, warp fields (people are working on this), teleportation (which is improbably, but not mathematically impossible) or "any" other likely, up to merely extremely unlikely, "natural" phenomena. That leaves out, as near as I can figure, 100% of all verifiable events attributed to the supernatural and lands the rest in, "But where is the proof it ever happened in the first place?"

And even the claim that something "might" be beyond our understanding and "able" to effect the world in some completely bizzare way is "still" hand waving. Take C4 back in time to jerico or a nuke back to Saddom and Gomorra and what do you end up with? Probably the same goofy explaination you have now for them. Why? Because back them an earthquake coincidentally hitting when you ask for it or some moron lighting off a massive vein of white sulphur (brimstone) under his house and having it burn down two neighboring cities was "unbelievable", "unexplainable" and hand waved into "supernatural". We are pretty sure the former is true. The later we can be fairly certain "did" involve the fuel they used to light and heat their homes (the stuff is so common there that you can pick pounds of it out of the walls in a matter of minutes), but the specifics of "how" it happened are still sketchy. There isn't any reason though to expect that some reasonable explaination won't show up. And if some God just one day decided to move 90% of all the brimstone in the region and drop it, burning, on the cities, it still begs the question of, "Why?". Why use something readily available in "massive" amounts, instead of doing something completely impossible for the region, like turning both cities to ice instantly? Why would a true supernatural being "need" to use what was there, instead of doing something completely unrelated to the area?

Same argument goes for "any" of the BS in the Bible, which can either be explained by *known* magic tricks of the time, like the whole water to wine/blood nonsense, or which depends on the natural world to produce natural events, which are well.. completely fracking natural for where they happened. This is one of the things that, personally, made me decide that the whole edifice of the supernatural was completely stupid.

Point being? Some nuts, like the "I want to find Atlantis" nuts, underestimate how ignorant people where and exagerated events can become when you have no clue what caused them. Some of the Atlantis nuts claim that the prior civilization on the planet nuked itself because of this, while ignoring the lack of evidence of either nukes or technology needed to make them. The theists make the opposite mistake and babble about some sort of unspecified, vague and improbably "something" that "might not" be explainable by science, so would "have to be" supernatural.

Sure... But lets say we wait until we bloody find such a thing and it doesn't turn out to be merely something wierd, like levitating a frog with magnets, which would be unbelievable 100 years ago, but is *still* explainable.

Posted by: Kagehi | July 14, 2006 3:17 PM

Larry spent a great deal of time to establish that "theistic evolution ain't science". What part of Scott's statement, "Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution" do you suppose he misunderstood?

At the other end of the TE spectrum, one can postulate a sort of Divine superintendence of the universe which is not even in principle detectable, in which case science is safe (and Larry's attack irrelevant). It requires, I think, a certain compartmentalization of one's thought processes -- undetectable metaphysics on Sunday; but strict empiricism the rest of the week. Moreover, when one starts asking what statements about "undetectable superintendence" actually entail, I think the conclusion has to be: nothing. It's a convenient out-of-the-way place to park the God who gives you warm fuzzies in other areas of your life, while you're doing the science stuff. It's not (in the long run) for me, but if someone else finds it makes their life happy and meaningful, who am I to argue? Those things are important.

Posted by: Steve Watson | July 14, 2006 3:25 PM

GWW wrote: In the United States, Christians have a tendency to do that. A very fucking strong tendency. Looked at your currency lately?
OK, I've got a sawbuck right here: Wilfred Laurier on the front, kids playing shinny on the back. Lemme check a 20...the Queen, and an Inuit sculpture. I'm afraid I don't see your point. Is there something in the intaglio I'm supposed to find? My eyes aren't as good as they used to be.....

Seriously, though: I thought the context was, say, people like Ken Miller, or like I was back before I was an atheist, and the conceptual interface between science and faith. Christians who get in your face is a different topic. If and when they look like doing so, I'll argue with them. But it's got nothing that I can see to do with TEism. You know what? I still don't think you have a point.

Posted by: Steve Watson | July 14, 2006 4:06 PM

This is a little off-topic, but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nxzJaWk4wY

Here's all of the clips of the Daily Show's Evolution Week in one convinient place.

Posted by: Tim Vermeulen | July 14, 2006 4:11 PM

Steve:

The issue isn't whether Theistic Evolution is good or bad theology or even if the is such a thing as good theology. Larry is arguing a strawman here. TE is not science but who among the TEers claim it is science? Ken Miller? Francis Collins? Who?

Great White Wonder:

What part of Scott's statement, "Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution" do you suppose he misunderstood?

The part where the NCSE presents theistic evolution as a continuum which butts right up against non-theistic (i.e., atheistic) evolution on that graph which Moran presents on his web page.

I thought that was clear.

Not really. Even Larry says "it is closer to the dividing line than the explanations of Young Earth Creationists." Indeed, he shows nothing closer, so I don't know what 'butting up' is supposed to mean in this regard. Larry asserts, on nothing more than personal authority, as far as I can see, that there is some sort of complete gulf between them. It seems a funny kind of argument for a scientist to succumb to, especially when he's basically saying you have to act like a scientist 100% of the time or you aren't one at all. Last time I looked, scientists didn't argue based on personal authority.

Posted by: John Pieret | July 14, 2006 4:18 PM

An "infinite God" would at the very least, operate from a higher dimension - one that would appear to be everywhere all the time relative to the scientist. Such a God could destroy the universe by having not created it in the first place - a feat obviously not possible for the space/time constrained scientist. In such a reality there would be no way for a scientist to prove or disprove that events which occur billions of years apart are being "simultaneously" manipulated by forces operating at that higher dimension.

Perhaps not, but there's no good reason for a scientist to posit such a thing in the first place. Or any other kind of god, for that matter.

Even religious nuts practice methodological naturalism most of the time. If you burn your hand on the stove, nearly everyone will conclude "FIRE HOT!! NO TOUCH!!" rather than thinking that God is personally punishing them for being such a friggin' dumbass.

Posted by: Dan | July 14, 2006 4:57 PM

With the God I presented, this "cares about us as individuals" thing would likely be happening at a higher dimensional level, which I don't believe has human emotions, unless Jesus or Mohammed or whatever lived to form portions of Gods "personality"..

Anyone else out there laboring as a heartland academic or coming from a dogmatic family or workplace where you feel compelled to come up with complex rationalizations just to cope with the nonsense of fundamentalism?

Posted by: freD | July 14, 2006 5:03 PM

Francis Collins' book is subtitled, "A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief".

He says, "...God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship."

And then God created ebola and AIDS so he could watch 'em die.

Nice guy.

Posted by: Great White Wonder | July 14, 2006 5:13 PM

Supernatural is meaningless word, just like the word god and perfect. They are concept words which have no physical manifestation in reality.

There is nothing "outside of nature". To say it is possible for anything supernatural to exist is ridiculous. If something exists, it is natural. Nature is EVERYTHING. What's left?

Posted by: James | July 14, 2006 5:24 PM

GWW: so, because Miller et al don't leave their religion, they're somehow equivalent to the other Christians who do get in your face? What?

As I said: you don't have a point; only a rant.

Posted by: Steve Watson |