axelbeingcivil
3 days ago
I want to try and respond seriously to the topic of the post, on whether religious and scientific thinking are compatible. I think the place to begin is to ask what the two modes are to begin with.
The scientific method is classically defined as developing models of how the universe runs, spinning off hypotheses that these models generate, and then testing those hypotheses. If the model is not able to account for the results, it has to be discarded. This doesn't propose to give a *true* model, simply a more accurate one; improving with each iterated refinement.
Religious thinking, though, is not so readily defined. Religion is, obviously, extremely broad. If someone proposes a model of the cosmos in which a god, gods, or spirits are involved but then proceeds to test that, are they engaging in religious or scientific thinking?
But that's not the norm, nor what is usually meant by "religious thinking". Religious thinking tends to involve revelation, received wisdom, and philosophical inference. That is, to say, people either receive knowledge from external sources (divine beings or wisdom from ancestors) or infer through thinking extensions from past understanding.
With these in mind, I'd say that there is actually a good deal of incompatibility there. Scientific thinking tends to take the position that all models that fit the evidence equally are equally valid, and models that cannot be tested hold no utility at all. As such, revelation of one form or another has no actual utility in the scientific method; unless you can verify it yourself, it's not all that useful. Likewise, philosophical inference can be useful for hypothesis generation but bears no actual validity unto itself. It can indeed be actively harmful, which is why you get religious philosophers like Aquinas making such enormous assumptions about the nature of light that are patently false and then never feeling a particular need to test it.
All of which is a long way to say that I do think there are some fairly deep incompatibilities here that are worth addressing and resolving.
And here
The scientific method has philosophical underpinnings that are necessary to its success. Anyone can do an experiment and gather data but the actual construction of models and development of new hypotheses requires weighting different kinds of evidence. Model construction requires you to assume, for example, that the universe is consistent; that the conditions that you acquired evidence under now are at least similar to that of when past evidence was generated. It requires you to hold as equal all models that have equal supportive evidence.
Accepting quantum mechanics as fact is not the same thing as scientific thinking. Quantum mechanics is a *discovery*; a product of scientific thinking. Scientific thought is the underlying method that went into the discovery itself, through rigorous study, model generation, and the development of hypotheses.
If a person is of a scientific mindset and ends up experiencing what they consider to be a revelation, they have to consider all models available. One of those models would indeed be that they're receiving divine messages, but they could also be receiving diabolic ones, messages from aliens, messages from elves, messages from other dimensions, etc., or quite simply they could be misinterpreting the inner monologues and feelings their brain generates as coming from an external force. The natural thing to do is to then develop hypotheses for these models and study them because, at the end of the day, their experience is a phenomenon and they cannot actually draw conclusions without additional evidence.
But if you just accept revelation on its face... That's not really how science works.
