What is a scientific or religious world view?

I am not a great believer in "worldviews". The notion that everyone has a single coherent overarching viewpoint on the world strikes me as counterfactual and unreasonable. Humans have many mutually inconsistent sets of beliefs, and they aren't driven to behave much, if at all, by any of them. Most of the time beliefs are post hoc rationalisations for sociopolitical affiliations and economic interests that may not even be obvious to the actors.

That said, religion and science often tries to deal, from a psychological and sociological perspective, with the same epistemic territory, and while they have partially speciated, there is still sufficient competitive exclusion when in sympatry for them to come into conflict. To use a less abtruse analogy, they are elbowing each other at the bar.

The "scientific perspective" is not a unitary thing. There is, I think, no single scientific method. Science is not done by recipe or epistemic algorithm, but is rewritten both in theory and in method as new evidence, technology and interests come into play. Sure, science has its own special features, but not all of them are in play at all times in every case of good science, nor are they entirely distinct from religious methods, say, in theology.

What makes religion something science is not is that religion has a role of grouping people together in part by shared beliefs and in part by shared customs. Science does not do this, although scientific groups can share both beliefs and customs (think of what astronomers discuss and wear). What makes science something religion is not is that science is reviseable at all times, and is reviseable most of the time based on data and experimental manipulation of non-social things. Except for social sciences, of course, but there the "social things" are not the things of the society of science.

We have had this debate hijacked to a degree by the ways the religious advocates against science have framed this debate. They are assuming that science is like religion. They base their justifications on doctrine, so they presume that science does so as well. Now not all religious people do this, and they are perfectly happy to realise that science is not a set of doctrines. In this way, they can co-exist with science. But we seem never to contradict the worldview argument by pointing out that science really, really isn't a worldview. It's a way of learning.

In a cosmic nutshell, religion is expecting the world to fit your preconceived beliefs, while science, as you and Isaac note, is empirically observing and studying the world and forming beliefs based on that evidence. The former presumes truth while the latter look for it. From this perspective, religion and science are about as fundamentally different as you can get.

short answer: naturalism versus supernaturalism

Darwin came after Newton, and evolution is seen by many as being incompatible with sustained belief in Christianity (though not necessarily some other form of theism) in that there is no good reason to leave room for God in the creation of life and especially the creation of man.

To me, a scientific worldview is entirely, or almost so, concerned with the evidence for knowledge or opinion & the rational basis for belief. "What is the evidence." & "*How* do you *Know*" are the classic questions. It's a state of mind based on reason/empiricism.

In contrast, to me, the religious worldview is one where faith, rather than reason, is salient.

If a religion is totally compatible with the scientific worldview, then i would guess that the religion is evidence based/compatible. But since religion deals with some unknowables, faith can persist in areas where reason is useless or where logic breaks down. Creationists & IDer's aren't being rational because they reject solid evidence disfavoring their beliefs, or they're simply stupid or nuts.

(R.A. Fisher and James Maxwell and Arthur Eddington were Christians).

Only nominally so, or were they sincerely dedicated to their faiths? If the latter, they would've had to have had compartmentalized minds, no? Reason here, & faith there, in separate boxes.

Or is there some school of Christian belief i'm not aware of that readily accepts the dictates of scientific principles?

1) re: john's response, i tend to intersect with his viewpoints well. the main issue i would take is that the definition of religion here is skewed toward the publically explicit 'higher' religions, which to some extent do (did) tread on science's epistemic area. but, i lean toward the view that ur-religion, or basal religion, probably is not a proto-science.

2) re: comment #2, i think an issue that this idea misses that i don't think religion is really all (or at all) about preconceived truths, rather, i believe it is about implicit and intuitive hunches. that is, religious ideas about the universe are not preconceived via analytic introspection, but emergent properties of human cognitive hardware. that is, the intersection of social intelligence, theory of mind, folk biology, etc. result in a 'mash up' out of which religion and its concomitant features bubbles up.

3) re: rik's comment, to some extent the naturalism vs. supernaturalism dichotomy is a good characterization, but where does this get us? doesn't by definition supernaturalism exist in a disjoint epistemic realm from naturalism? well, perhaps...obviously some christians leave open the possibility for miracles and interventions, but, the reality is that a 'non-naturalistic science' is as viable as an austrian economics that has real world implications as opposed to philosophical import.

no good reason

i tend to agree here, but

1) you will find thomists who would could argue using reasons that there is still room for god as the ultimate cause.

2) the key here is how much of religion is about reflective reason, and how is implicit inuitition. i believe that the overlay of world religions tends to decieve religionists and unbelievers as to the extent of reasoned arguments as to the validity of a religious creed. to be succinct, religions like christianity or islam or buddhism arose via a process of memetic selection in an environment of varieties of supernaturalism. i hold that the philosophical arguments of these religions are a product of two primary factors a) religious specialists at the elite level tend to have 'systemetizing' minds, so they took something that was originally un-systemetatic and reshaped it b) religious arguments were sophisticated packaging to convince intellectuals of other traditions of the validity of a given religion. e.g., christian apologetics were not aimed at teh typical roman, who was illiterate, but critiques from pagan philosophers. now, christian apologetics is seem as a bedrock of the faith by most modern christians, but i doubt it really matters to them on a fundamental level. in other words, all the 'conflict' between religion and science on the plane of reasons are smoke & mirrors, and "real" religious impulse is deeper and more primal. which explains why science has not banished religion, because religion is fundamentally different in its roots from science (even nations without much organized religion, like those of east asia, have a great deal of supernaturalism).

here's an example of an important "impasse"

"an essential component of Christian theology, . . . is that humans are descended from a unique pair (monogenism). That part of the Adam and Eve story cannot be interpreted symbolically. . . . the trouble is that this goes completely against our thinking about the nature of the evolutionary process. Successful species like humans do not pass through single-pair bottlenecks: there is certainly no evidence that this was true of Homo sapiens, a species which seems to have been well spread around the earth" (Michael Ruse, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? pp. 75-76).

catholic theologians have worked around this by contending that the "single pair" were the initial hominins who were "ensouled." the key has to do with augustinian conceptions of original sin, which do need a single pair, but once the fall happens one can imagine wholesale ensoulment. in any case, the bodies of this ensouled pair might have emerged via convential biological processes, and they might not have been that different from other hominins in their tribal group.

philosophical religion is like spaghetti code, there are many work arounds, and if you don't want to start from the ground up on a new code base than live with them....

just a note: if the problem of evil doesn't disaude christians from believing in an omni-god (benevolent, potent and niscient), then i am skeptical that darwinism will have the acidifying effect that dennett et. al. contend. the common asertion that darwinism rendered christianity irrelevant it some extent i think an anglo-centric view, and even in england you can see in peter j. bowler's scholarship evidence that there was a confluence between darwinism & anglicanism in the early decades of the 20th century. remember, darwin II, r.a. fisher, was an anglican.

Rikurzhen, that isn't an example of an incompatibility between a Christian "worldview" and a scientific "worldview." That's a incompatibility between a Christian doctrine and a biological theory.

It seems to me that an incompatibility between worldviews would have to deal with more "basic" stuff (goals, methods, etc.). This doesn't mean that real or apparent incompatibilities between scientific results and religious doctrines aren't important, it just means that they aren't really "worldview" issues. I tend to agree with John Wilkins that there isn't a single "scientific worldview," though. But I do think that there are plenty of people who think there is a single scientific worldview.

religion,whichever it is, is a system based on "faith", "belief". Even in the occasion that the religion is totally compatible with the scientific world, this doesn't make it a "scientific world view".

Because, tomorrow, that "scientific world" and its view may be crushed to pieces, and the belief "system" based upon it most probably will not be able to react fast enough to take its shape.

Sometimes, i happen to think of major mainstream physicists as religious guys too. even if they're atheists.

Some of them are so profoundly bound to their particular theory/hypothesis, that they forcefully reject anything that is not compatible. They don't reject it after it's proved, but until the moment it is, they give hell to the guys who try to prove it.

how many more "charlatans" will we meet, before they become the "next big thing"?

maybe the difference between the religious and scientific world views has nothing to do with your religion our scientific curriculum.

religion, like ideologies, is a "set of rules about a set of subjects". which means, once you accept it, you place the "ideologic filter" to your brain, your processing speed is immensely increased, because you don't think about all the parameters in the subject now. You just "compare" it with your filter, if it's compatible, you accept, if it's not, you don't.

In contrast, the scientific (and skeptic if you want) world view, is not based on "previous judgements" and prejudices. I think having a scientific world view is just "thinking a little more before doing anything". Asking the question "why" to everything. [even our decisions, "why do i make this decision?" is an unexpectedly good way to fall into a long conversation with yourself]

So at the basic level, the difference is: "acceptance of an unbendable mindset as a filter" versus "evolution of a flexible mindset as a guideline"

religion, like ideologies, is a "set of rules about a set of subjects"

no, not necessarily. i think is the crux of the issue here - i simply do not believe that most catholics believe in the catholic religion because of thomism and revelation. rather, i believe they have biases in the way they view the world which supernaturalism fills, and most of the time they are born into a catholic family so that flavor of supernaturalism is what slots into their minds. even if though they go through catechism (rules, regs.), i don't think that this is the fundamental heart of their religious experience, which is implicit (unelucidated) and social. the rules & regs are epiphenomena which sit on top.

Following from here, I can say that I know a lot of guys having a scientific world view, and believing in Jesus, Allah, or some god/religion.

They believe that god starts where science fails, have a scientific "worldview" on "earthly matters" (they're skeptics, they accept "proven science", but their views about "what was out there before big bang", "what actually *are* strings?", "afterlife?" are almost always related to god.

I tend to think of them as third world countries: adapting easily to the new technology, filling the gaps with old methods, consuming the technology but only occasionally contributing to it.

And the religious guys are split in two too: tolerant and strict.

When the tolerant guy faces with something that doesn't quite fit in his rule set, he just ignores it or says that he doesn't believe in it.

When the strict guy faces with the same thing, he fights back with all his might to prove that "IT IS NOT TRUE!". Although I can see where they come from and the impossibility for them to even "let them be", their lack of flexibility surprises me all the same.

"even if though they go through catechism (rules, regs.), i don't think that this is the fundamental heart of their religious experience,"

Excuse me for not being clear about the "rulesets". I wasn't talking about the rules that a believer must follow. The ruleset I talk about are more the ruleset of a neural network than the ruleset of a game.

Every decision we make, everything we do and say, is based on the previous experiences we've had [all we did, all we have learned from our schools and our families and friends and internet and ....]

Every moment we live, we have a slightly different sum of experiences, therefore a different set of parameters with different weights to use in the process of decision making.

I think of beliefs and ideologies as pre-compiled rulesets for the mind. The flexibility of these rulesets differ from person to person, because the experiences differ from person to person.

This brings me to the point of "stereotype guys". That's a really hard achievement, creating stereotypes.. You give the people more or less the same experiences, they go through the same stages, they do the same things at the same age, they learn the same things, they look at the same things...

If the rules and views are predefined by such a system, one can analyze them and find the "handles" of the people and pull them wherever one wants.

Your creationist guy knows exactly where, in the mind of his audience, is the "handle" and pulls & pushes the audience at his will.

Nothing more or less than what the governments, politicians or any "source of influence" does using the press or other means.

I think the scientists think too highly of the world to revert to manipulation :)

[Sorry I've got carried away :)]

Like razib said, if you can handle the question "why is there so much evil in this world?" (in Europe after WWII it often took the form "How can you believe in God after Auschwitz?"), then handling the dissonance between Science and the book of Genesis is peanuts.

I used to be religious, and I didn't have problems with creation. I just thought that the biblical account was an allegory, written in the ancient time by people inspired by God, but not free from their myths and prejudices. I thought that religion is not a finished view, but something man evolves to through generations, shredding prejudices and myths on the way. Firstly people believed Earth was 6000 years old and that gays should be stoned to death, than they dropped one prejudice after another, while keeping the core of the religion: love among people, Final Judgement, etc.

But even if one treats the Book of Genesis as an allegory, there is the problem of New Testament miracles: resurrection of Christ and other. They're fundamental for Christian faith and cannot be "allegorized away". This *is* a problem for the scientifically minded. I know several good scientists who are religious. I have yet to ask them what they think about it. I suspect they think along the lines "God, you can get away with a miracle once, but don't repeat them!". Those who observe the Sunday Mass, must also deal with the supposed miracle of the Holy Communion. I don't think one can get around this as easy as round the creation stuff, which gets most attention.

Now I am rather indifferent towards religion, but still think that the Christian code of ethics ("love thy neighbour", "do not kill", "what you have done to the little ones counts as what you have done to your God"; and the augustinian "love and do as you like") is a *good thing*. A Polish dissident from the Communist times, Jacek KuroÅ, who was a socialist and a great and noble man, said that he was an atheist who tried to fulfill Christ's gospel in his life. He didn't believe in Christ's divinity, but took his moral teachings about how we should love other people as his own. Of course, KuroÅ's views on such things like contraception, abortion rights, sex ethics etc were of course very different that those of the Catholic Church.

Every decision we make, everything we do and say, is based on the previous experiences we've had [all we did, all we have learned from our schools and our families and friends and internet and ....]

this sounds close to tabula rasa. see the cognitive revolution for why i disagree.

As a devout Hindu, I've found the marriage between religion and science to be a very happy one. In some cases, my religious upbringing has actually been beneficial to my scientific opinions. For instance a lot of work they're finally starting to do now with emotion and cognition in animals. A lot of the 'surprising' results they get are kinda 'meh' to me. "What you mean that monkeys really do get angry? WOW. I never would've thought that if they have a limbic system, look angry, and act angry, that they possibly could really be angry."

The big ugly conflict between religion and science (which actually isn't creationism vs. evolution, IMO) doesn't exist for the hindu. We fundamentally see man as a part of nature and the difference between us and animals of one of degree rather than kind. No Anthropic Principle problem.

We're also allowed to be irreverent and throw out absurdity without fear of being declared heretics (well, until recently when several christian strains of thought entered into hindu mainstream theosophy).

But to the point, I see religion and science, rather than being two warring entities, simply two parts of human understanding and epistemology. Science is what is empirically understood. Religion is that which either cannot be measured/cognized empirically and that which provides a more interpretive view of observable phenomena.

In other words, empiricism and scientific theory win out over religious dogma. But even when we get to the point where we can measure everything, there will still be that which is unexplainable. And there religion will continue to live.

two words: vedic science.

being critical or supporting? There's plenty good in vedic science, plenty bad. *shrug*

I'm not saying my personal views on the intersection of hinduism and science are the mainstream ones. I'm basically a 'self-taught' Hindu since I coudln't stand the temple atmosphere, which is obviously non-Hindu from entrance to exit. Just like most houses of worship come to think of it.

getting back to naturalism versus supernaturalism... they conflict on matters of ethics. religions place ethics in the supernatural realm, whereas I would endorse an ethical naturalism. i've been meaning to point this out on the old blog wrt the common misunderstanding of what the "naturalistic fallacy" really does and does not imply

i think empirically hinduism does have fewer issues with science...but your point about some habits imported from christianity are correct. 'vedic science' is one of those formulations, and attempt to show that the vedas are a book of science as well as religion (similar to muslims who see in the koran all of knowledge, or christians who use genesis as a comsology texet).

religions place ethics in the supernatural realm, whereas I would endorse an ethical naturalism

what about natural law? additionally, there are sketchy relationships between ethics and some factions of christianity, which basically trend toward antimonianism....

I think that a significant difference between religion and science is the idea of purpose. Many religions postulate that we (in fact the entire universe) were created by a god or gods for some purpose (of the gods I assume). Science does not tend to reflect this. While events may have causes they are not usually purposeful in that fashion.

Many religions postulate that we (in fact the entire universe) were created by a god or gods for some purpose (of the gods I assume)

many religions don't really posit this though (hinduism, many pagan religons). remember not to conflate christianity with religion.

razib, totally on point with the 'vedic science' thing. Reminds me of my last trip to tirupati where a Hare Krishna accosted me and tried to tell me about 'religion being science'. I bought a book about it to shut him up and vomited all over it in disgust after about 3 pages.

IMO, that stuff suffers from disobeying the Rule of Ganesh; don't take anything too seriously.

While it's pretty clear that there is a fair amount of scientific observation in the vedas (some of the points on ecology the Atharva Veda makes are scarily similar to modern understanding), it's equally clear that the vedas 'transcended' a purely scientific epistemology. Once they did that, one could no longer call them works of science, per se. Merely informed by it.

What religion are you, btw (if you don't mind sharing?)

getting back to naturalism versus supernaturalism... they conflict on matters of ethics. religions place ethics in the supernatural realm, whereas I would endorse an ethical naturalism.

I do not believe one can derive ethics from science.

What religion are you, btw (if you don't mind sharing?)

none of the above. my family is muslim.

Figured from the name, but you know what they say about assumptions...

well, think the p value wuz probably < 0.05 :)

Religious people tend to ignore evidence that contradicts the assumed truths of the cultural and sociological institutions they identify with. So do most people espousing a scientific worldview. Oh, wait, you were looking for differences. . .

As others have said, there are no scientific and religious "worldviews" in terms of "collection of facts/beliefs." The differences are epistemological.

Science as we know it is based on theories based on reproducible *objective* observations within a defined social framework (academic institutions, journals, etc). Science is good at collecting and organizing facts about the material world in which humans live.

Religion is a bit more diverse. Some religion is theory (shared belief/dogma) without observations of any kind. This aspect of religions is more like politics than epistomology.

But much of religion is based on reproduced *subjective* observation within a defined social framework (religious groups, castes, or simply ways of living - such as "monastic," etc). This is more about the mind, soul, etc - the non-objective component of human existence, which science struggles to say *anything* about. This epistomological approach is not incompatible with science per se, but it is a separate or parallel process. Many scientists derived their ideas from "intuitions" (what Einstein called "muscular thinking") rather than the empirical fact-gathering process of what Kuhn called "normal science."

To use Einstein again: he said imagination is more important than intelligence. The scientific process needs hypotheses from somewhere. At the end of the day, they come from somewhere *subjective*, somewhere interior that has never been adequately defined by empirical science. Call it the soul, mind, world of forms, divine inspiration, or just higher order thinking - but it exists, and it's necessary.

matthew, love the blog's title and description, I will be visiting again.

This epistomological approach is not incompatible with science per se, but it is a separate or parallel process. Many scientists derived their ideas from "intuitions" (what Einstein called "muscular thinking") rather than the empirical fact-gathering process of what Kuhn called "normal science."

Darn tootin. Although as I've said earlier, I'd consider it more a continuum. Those of us who work in some of the more 'messy' areas of biology understand that 'objective' is itself qualified by varying degrees of subjectivism.

It's one of the reasons Razib doesn't give a damn about higher-level classifications, because it's a lot less objective. But to me, the higher-level stuff is the more important stuff, and while less so, can be 'fairly' objective. Religion is just a few steps away. Think 'Gaia hypothesis'. Informed by empiricism, but making non-empirically verifiable claims.

This of course only holds for 'good' religion as I've defined it. Which seems to be the way the Vatican is trending now. And hinduism as I've defined it. But since everyone has a different definition of 'good' religion, and no three hindus agree on what hinduism actually is, YMMV.

perhaps precise would be a better word. and frankly, i think evolutionary genetics is darny messy, if precisely messy....

good call. precise slots in there a lot easier. Looking forward to your comments on a piece I'm writing for the tangled bank in two weeks that deals with systematics and taxonomic conventions