Elvis is still dead. Oh, and evolution is a fact.

I was enjoying reading that book until I came across this:
Science and religion address separate aspects of human experience.
Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological
evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious
people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution.
What aspect of human experience does religion address? Why can't science address it? If it's human, then it's amenable to the scientific method. Seems to me like the NAS got gun shy and tried to make the message palatable to non-fundis.

The fact that scientists like Francis Collins suffer from cognitive dissonance doesn't mean evolution enhances religious faith. Evolution isn't teleological. It doesn't require god. How can that enhance your faith? I just read Collins' execreble "irreducible argument from Moral Law" or whatever it was called. Yuk.
Sigh, I'll have a lie down now.

This is perhaps the best quote I have ever seen in "popular" scientific writing (I do realize that Livescience does not exactly have the readership of, say, the NY Times Science page): "Scientists accept evolution as the best and only theory that accurately explains how humans and other species came to be so diverse."

People that work in science and hold to the scientific method agree that evolution is the only valid explanation (as of yet - we actual scientists always have to put that in) of how life came to be as it is on this planet. The only quibble I have with that quote is the "diversity" aspect of it. Evolution is the only theory that describes how we and others came to be.

To the (other) Brian:

I think that that perhaps the NAS got gunshy in definitively dealing with religion and science as addressing two wholly separate spheres of the human experience. However, I can honestly say that I believe that religion and science address two separate spheres *now*. There are people that don't like cauliflower; I do. There is no scientific explanation for that as of yet. If you think that 'heart chakras' or some such nonsense explains this - more power to you. At least you have a potential explanation, albeit one contrary to every known theory of science. As long as you follow the evidence where it lies (and this is where I differ from the ID crowd).

There is equally a gap in knowledge regarding the religious impulse in humanity - and there very obviously is one, as the vast majority of the people who have ever lived on this planet have believed in a god(s), in one form or another. Why? Is there a god, or, given our social nature, have we evolved some sort of artificial amalgamation tendency? Until we know the truth of this question, then yes, there will be questions that religion cannot answer but science can, and vice versa. The import of the questions is a wholly separate affair.

There are people that don't like cauliflower; I do. There is no scientific explanation for that as of yet. If you think that 'heart chakras' or some such nonsense explains this - more power to you.
I may be wrong. But asserting heart chakras or religion as a catch-all isn't addressing anything. It's just moving the question a step further.
Religion may make people stop looking for an explanation, but it doesn't offer any. I find that religion just asserts things and people say it's real because it stops them from accepting the world as it is (as best we can understand it).
The religious impulse seems to be a struggle against death and the indiffernce of the natural world to our existence. Pay no, get immortality later......Religion.
Anyhoo....
The other Brian.

I think that the NAS is afraid of scaring the horses, and in that I concur. But I think that religion is, as a fact about human beings, totally addressable by science, and indeed I hope to work on just that for my next project.

However, if you have a religious experience, then it might seem to you a Hard Problem. In which case you might make an argument that this is not addressable by natural science the way those who think that phenomenal experience is not addressable by physicalist models. And the answer to that is not scientific, but philosophical.

In my view, Hard Problems are defined into existence and can be defined out of existence with a suitable formulation, but I can see how many might think otherwise.

It's not only phenomenal experience that is not (or may not be) addressable by natural science. It's actually relatively easy to conceive of models where science is of limited utility to reveal the nature of things. For example, consider a computer simulation where intelligent programs "live" in a software universe. Over many cycles, some of them discover that through repeated testing, observation, and deduction, they can uncover a layer of "fundamental forces" and "particles" underneath their natural world. They call this the "assembly" layer. One of them even wins a Nobel prize for discovering the new fundamental force "mov ax, bx" (this is one of those hellish Intel universes). But eventually, they discover all the forces and particles (registers) they can, and there's nothing left to test. None of them know why these forces and particles are the way they are, because there's no way to go any deeper - they've run into a brick wall. There are no scientific tests they can perform to uncover the true nature of the underlying hardware and the greater reality in which it resides. Even though they are casually dependent on this layer of reality, it is cognitively closed to them and utterly beyond their ability to understand. (Unless perhaps, some programmer God opens up a miraculous I/O port, and reveals it to them in carefully crafted terms they can relate to.)

Elvis is dead?!! I thought he evolved into Muzak....

Brian (also) said "Is there a god, or, given our social nature, have we evolved some sort of artificial amalgamation tendency? Until we know the truth of this question, then yes, there will be questions that religion cannot answer but science can, and vice versa."

But just because we may not yet fully understand the genesis and evolution of religion as a pyschological and social phenomenon, it does not necessarily follow that religion itself provides any answers. It provides a framework within which you can choose to operate, and accept as much as you want, but it does nothing to provide authority for that framework other than what is brought to the equation by the believers themselves.

Religion clearly provides certain benefits, some more easily identifiable than others, on a psychological and social level, but not necessarily any benefits that are not otherwise definable and available through non-religious means. I too am unwilling to concede that, even in our ignorance, religion actually answers any questions that science cannot answer with equal plausibility. Religion simply presents an alternate hypothesis, which happens to be couched in a supernatural rather than natural framework. But it is not necessarily any more deserving of being called an "answer".

The religious impulse seems to be a struggle against death and the indiffernce of the natural world to our existence.

If they could talk, I doubt the myriad species that make up a large part of the natural world, now being driven to extinction by humanity, would agree they were, in fact, "indifferent" to our existence.

That said, I'm still waiting for a materialist explanation why it is valid to impute emotional states like indifference to things....

Elvis is dead?!! I thought he evolved into Muzak....

Posted by: Ian | January 4, 2008 7:28 AM

Nope, he just went home (scroll down).

I'm still waiting for a materialist explanation why it is valid to impute emotional states like indifference to things
I'm imputing no emotional state. I perhaps lack the words. But indifferent seems to capture the idea of non-sentient nature "chugging" along with no "foresight" or "interest" in humans. It's very human to use human states to describe things. Like, that door is jammed again just because I'm in a hurry to go to the pub. It doesn't mean the door is conscious and vindictive and dislikes social gatherings at public houses....

Just to note: indifference is a lack of emotion...

Thanks John. I sort of thought that. But people can say that they're indifferent to a proposal. Which sort of allows it to be termed an emotion.

It's a privative term, denoting a lack. The Latins would say that an indifferent individual is one lacking passion (i.e., without anything acting upon them). It's not an emotion as such. So, rocks are indifferent to cares about the world, but that is not to say they have an emotion. To think otherwise is to commit, as Jesus did with the lilies in the field, the pathetic fallacy.

I assume the fallacy would apply to my programs as well - even if they behave anthropomorphically? I would think behaviour and not consciousness is the fallacy issue (if consciousness can even be defined yet).

The pathetic fallacy. Define that for me. :)
My programs behave like humans. All my workmates blame every problem on the network to the putative deviant functioning of my programs. Thus my programs must have intelligence. Or my workmates are lazy gits who blame my programs so that I have to do the grunt work and solve any cockup that happens......

Pathetic Fallacy.

Well, I guess what I'm saying is that if software is sufficiently advanced, is it a pathetic fallacy to ascribe some human qualities to it, especially when it actually does objectively have those qualities (ignoring phenomenological assertions)? It's not clear from the wiki, although there would be less tolerance than with literature.

Is it really a pathetic fallacy?

If we assume, as some do, that humans are simply a collection of chemicals following deterministic rules of nature then aren't we just wetware programs and free will an illusion?

So the analogy in #5 would seem more than an analogy.

f we assume, as some do, that humans are simply a collection of chemicals following deterministic rules of nature then aren't we just wetware programs and free will an illusion?
Over to you John. Free will/compatibilism are a philosophers turf....

I think we have free will. But it is constrained by genetics, development, raising, culture and experience.

I'll put in my $0.02. I agree with Jim. We have free will as far as the given conditions and properties or our existence and culture allow. I'm not free to be any other person or thing. I'm not free to change anything that has happened. I have very limited freedom to change the future. I'm constrained by physics (including space and time), chemistry, biology, my genes specifically, my culture and unique upbringing. Which is to say, I'm not free to be what I'm not.
Did any of that make sense?

...Did any of that make sense?
Posted by: Brian English

Yes, free will is of course constrained by the situation and conditions we find ourselves in and/or inheriting.
But then in what way are we any different from the software creatures in #5 ?

It may be philosophy, but perhaps Physics also has something to say about it http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079 , appears free will may be required.