defensive ploys, religion, science

[_Tarski]

One of the most annoying trends in discussions about science and religion is the tendency of religionists to invoke some half understood bit of philosophy or folk philosophy to call into question the epistemic robustness of science. The implication -seldom explicitly stated- is that we are rationally justified in faithfully standing on the religious side of the conflict no matter what current science tells us.

Here are a few annoying ploys and things along these lines. A few are more or less specific to Mormonism. What are your favorites?

1. “Since science is changing and science has been wrong in the past we need not be troubled by any conflict between science and a given religion. Science changes all the time so I can go ahead and believe in fairies or whatever pleases me.”
Obviously such thinking rides roughshod over the distinctions between more or less well established science and ignores the cumulative character of scientific knowledge.

2. “Science involves faith too!” (Faith in commonly accepted forms of inductive reasoning, faith that the true laws of physics aren’t self contradictory or faith in logic itself; faith that we are not just brains in vats etc.) What an unfair comment!

3. “There is no such thing as absolute objectivity since even our instrument readings etc. end up as subjective conscious events in individual minds (there is often an undercurrent of mind body dualism or sophomoric idealism in these comments).”
Of course, I could go on to explain what is wrongheaded about this starting with the observation that we don’t need “absolute” objectivity in the first place and then finishing up with some thoughts about the primacy of community, praxis and intersubjectivity over subjectivity.

4. “Kuhn therefore Nephi”.

5. Accusations of adhering to defunct falsificationism. Even philosophers of science that have identified weaknesses in Popper’s program aren’t likely to deny that falsifiability is one of the prime virtues we strive for in science and would be unlikely to think it rational to suppose that stuffed animals dance around exactly and only when we aren’t checking on them.

6. Accusations of adhering to positivism. Here again the scientific virtues identified by the positivists remain in fairly good condition when construed appropriately and less stridently. The mistake seems to have been the making of a fetish out of a single virtue—the virtue being that it would be nice if we could make some operational sense of out of the terms and concepts we use in science.

7. Accusations of adhering to materialism (preemptively assumed to be silly or disproven). Here the accuser is implicitly appealing to a naïve and maybe question begging picture of “matter”. The whole thing trades on the conceptual baggage of matter as “dead stuff” obviously unable to underpin anything awe inspiring such as life or intelligence. The implied reductionism is a strawman reductionism of the greediest sort (think Skinner). This move is a conversation stopper since we never get to a serious discussion of what a nongreedy reductionistism might be or how the accused science defender may not even hold a position fairly describable as materialism in the first place. As a personal example, I take the statement that a person is a collection of atoms to be wildly false. Nevertheless I might fairly be described as being a tentative and very nongreedy reductionist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism) The alternative of eschewing supernatural explanations is hardly tantamount to naïve materialism.

8. The pretense that religions such as the Mormon religion only make assertions that are not even in principle scientifically or even rationally scrutable. “You can’t put God in a test tube”. This might work more or less well for mystical traditions but Mormonism makes numerous assertions about the existence or nonexistence of middle-sized objects and physical beings as well as assertions about dubious historical events.

9. “We don’t even need anything empirical here at all:
Godel’s ontological argument…bam!...therefore baby Jesus.”
Really?

10. “Science can’t explain the very sweetness of sugar”. Well, tell me what would be meant by “explain”. To the extent you succeed in clarifying that, I think I can go pretty far in giving some explanation.

Deviating a bit from the main theme of science and relgion, I will also mention something specific to Mormonism:

11. “See how life and everything looks so designed? There must be a God.” Well, I don’t grant that but notice how this doesn’t even fit with Mormonism since, in Mormonism, the basic abstract blueprints of things are essentially eternal things undesigned by any particular god in the past infinite chain of gods. God didn’t design the human body. His father had one and he inherited such a form not by design or creation but by procreation.

[_Simon Belmont]

I'll explain the ones I've used and why I'm right.

1. “Since science is changing and science has been wrong in the past we need not be troubled by any conflict between science and a given religion. Science changes all the time so I can go ahead and believe in fairies or whatever pleases me.”

A loaded statement. I've seen no one say anything about "fairies." But Science is always changing. It wasn't until Newton that we even understood the concept of Gravity. It wasn't until the early 1800s that the Atom was even theorized about! What will change next -- what will change in the next 50 years? The next 100? Why accept modern science when it will just change later?

This is what I am talking about when I ask you to speak in terms of what we don't know, not what we think we know. We don't know jack, quite frankly, about our universe, our planet, or even ourselves.

2. “Science involves faith too!” (Faith in commonly accepted forms of inductive reasoning, faith that the true laws of physics aren’t self contradictory or faith in logic itself; faith that we are not just brains in vats etc.) What an unfair comment!

Faith that when you take a step down the onto the ground, it will remain solid and support your weight. Faith that when you walk outside an asteroid won't hit earth and devastate the entire surface of the planet. Science most assuredly involves faith!

3. “There is no such thing as absolute objectivity since even our instrument readings etc. end up as subjective conscious events in individual minds (there is often an undercurrent of mind body dualism or sophomoric idealism in these comments).”

This is a true statement.

Of course, I could go on to explain what is wrongheaded about this starting with the observation that we don’t need “absolute” objectivity in the first place and then finishing up with some thoughts about the primacy of community, praxis and intersubjectivity over subjectivity.

If we don't need absolute objectivity, then I guess you'll just have to accept that I saw a faerie last night.

4. “Kuhn therefore Nephi”.

I don't get it.

10. “Science can’t explain the very sweetness of sugar”. Well, tell me what would be meant by “explain”. To the extent you succeed in clarifying that, I think I can go pretty far in giving some explanation.

Okay, Tarski: what does sugar taste like to me? What does the color red look like through my eyes?

[_DrW]

1. “Since science is changing and science has been wrong in the past we need not be troubled by any conflict between science and a given religion. Science changes all the time so I can go ahead and believe in fairies or whatever pleases me.”

This is the one that annoys me the most. It annoys me because it is used so often and because the folks who use it obviously believe that it is a strong argument. And in doing so, they show that they probably would not understand why it is not, no matter how well the reasons were explained to them.

[_Hoops]

1. “Since science is changing and science has been wrong in the past we need not be troubled by any conflict between science and a given religion. Science changes all the time so I can go ahead and believe in fairies or whatever pleases me.”

This is the one that annoys me the most. It annoys me because it is used so often and because the folks who use it obviously believe that it is a strong argument. And in doing so, they show that they probably would not understand why it is not, no matter how well the reasons were explained to them.

I don't get it.

[_Tarski]

I'll explain the ones I've used and why I'm right.

1. “Since science is changing and science has been wrong in the past we need not be troubled by any conflict between science and a given religion. Science changes all the time so I can go ahead and believe in fairies or whatever pleases me.”

A loaded statement. I've seen no one say anything about "fairies." But Science is always changing. It wasn't until Newton that we even understood the concept of Gravity. It wasn't until the early 1800s that the Atom was even theorized about! What will change next -- what will change in the next 50 years? The next 100? Why accept modern science when it will just change later?

This is what I am talking about when I ask you to speak in terms of what we don't know, not what we think we know. We don't know jack, quite frankly, about our universe, our planet, or even ourselves.

2. “Science involves faith too!” (Faith in commonly accepted forms of inductive reasoning, faith that the true laws of physics aren’t self contradictory or faith in logic itself; faith that we are not just brains in vats etc.) What an unfair comment!

Faith that when you take a step down the onto the ground, it will remain solid and support your weight. Faith that when you walk outside an asteroid won't hit earth and devastate the entire surface of the planet. Science most assuredly involves faith!

3. “There is no such thing as absolute objectivity since even our instrument readings etc. end up as subjective conscious events in individual minds (there is often an undercurrent of mind body dualism or sophomoric idealism in these comments).”

This is a true statement.

Of course, I could go on to explain what is wrongheaded about this starting with the observation that we don’t need “absolute” objectivity in the first place and then finishing up with some thoughts about the primacy of community, praxis and intersubjectivity over subjectivity.

If we don't need absolute objectivity, then I guess you'll just have to accept that I saw a faerie last night.

4. “Kuhn therefore Nephi”.

I don't get it.

10. “Science can’t explain the very sweetness of sugar”. Well, tell me what would be meant by “explain”. To the extent you succeed in clarifying that, I think I can go pretty far in giving some explanation.

Okay, Tarski: what does sugar taste like to me? What does the color red look like through my eyes?

My God. Thanks for verifying that you give credance to each of these horrible excuses for thinking.
Most people will have thought about things long enough to see how "junior high school" your responses are.

I'll take one or two and let others take on the others:

A loaded statement. I've seen no one say anything about "fairies."

Change fairies to angels.

But Science is always changing. It wasn't until Newton that we even understood the concept of Gravity. It wasn't until the early 1800s that the Atom was even theorized about! What will change next -- what will change in the next 50 years? The next 100? Why accept modern science when it will just change later?

So what? The problem is with your implied conclusions regarding religion.

How about this: "My religion says illnesses are all caused by demons. The fact that science is always changing makes it OK for me to ignore the germ theory of infectious disease".
Anything worng with that?

If we don't need absolute objectivity, then I guess you'll just have to accept that I saw a faerie last night.

Which is like saying that since there is no such thing as absolute accuracy in measurement, I can guiltlessly build your new house using tumble weeds and blocks of melting ice as rulers.

Things can be very very objective without being absolutely objective. The fact that hearts pump blood in human bodies is a very objective fact. Care to deny it?

[_Ren]

It wasn't until Newton that we even understood the concept of Gravity. It wasn't until the early 1800s that the Atom was even theorized about! What will change next -- what will change in the next 50 years?

It's interesting to me that you describe the above items as 'change'.
I think both those would be more accurately described as 'discovery'.

You could describe discovering something new as 'change' I suppose. But what seems more important to me is travelling in the right direction...

Faith that when you take a step down the onto the ground, it will remain solid and support your weight. Faith that when you walk outside an asteroid won't hit earth and devastate the entire surface of the planet. Science most assuredly involves faith

Going by that kind of definition, pretty much everything requires 'faith'. And faith then would seem to become a fairly useless, meaningless, hopelessly watered down word.

...maybe that's your intent...?

If we don't need absolute objectivity, then I guess you'll just have to accept that I saw a faerie last night.

To continue on from one of your earlier riffs, the above sounds about as sensible as saying:

"Well, I can't be absolutely sure an airplane WON'T land on my head if I walk out my front door - so I'd better stay inside. I'll have a slightly better chance then..."

I don't get it.

Funny. You often sound like someone who appears interested in the philosophy of science.
I guess we'd better be ready to consider very small values of 'interested' here huh?

what does sugar taste like to me?

And if Tarski - or anybody else - could answer that definatively, that would explain 'the very sweetness of sugar' - would it..?

[_Aristotle Smith]

defensive ploys, fundamentalist religion, science

Fixed that for you, and since most Mormons are fundamentalists (not FLDS, the generic descriptor), yes these usually hold.

Also related is the following topic:

defensive ploys, scientism, religion

In any case, I have no interest in defending religion in general, nor how stupid people think, so carry on.

[_Tarski]

defensive ploys, fundamentalist religion, science

Fixed that for you, and since most Mormons are fundamentalists (not FLDS, the generic descriptor), yes these usually hold.

Also related is the following topic:

defensive ploys, scientism, religion

In any case, I have no interest in defending religion in general, nor how stupid people think, so carry on.

I kinda agree. Kinda.
I wish you would start a new thread explaining what a totally nonfundamentalist religion looks like. What exactly are we left with? Should I be thinking John Haught or maybe Shelby Spong?
You're the man to do it, so I wish you really would start a new thread.

[_Simon Belmont]

My God. Thanks for verifying that you give credance to each of these horrible excuses for thinking.
Most people will have thought about things long enough to see how "junior high school" your responses are.

I've thought about them a great deal, and, to date, no one has been able to persuade me that they are wrong.

So what? The problem is with your implied conclusions regarding religion.

How about this: "My religion says illnesses are all caused by demons. The fact that science is always changing makes it OK for me to ignore the germ theory of infectious disease".
Anything worng with that?

But my religion doesn't say any such thing. In fact, it supports the discoveries of science in most cases. In other cases, it doesn't say one way or another, but leaves those conclusions to the men and women of medicine and other disciplines in the realm of science.

And, to answer your question, of course there is something wrong with ignoring germ theory because you believe demons cause illness. Modern medicine has been shown to be able to treat and cure many illnesses. That doesn't make it the end-all say-all truth, though, as medicine will be vastly different 100 years from now. So is what we are doing and discovering in medicine true now, or will it be true in 100 years, or will it never be totally true? How can we know?

Leeches were, at one time, shown to reduce illness. Do we still widely use them today?

Which is like saying that since there is no such thing as absolute accuracy in measurement, I can guiltlessly build your new house using tumble weeds and blocks of melting ice as rulers.

That's an extreme. You can guiltlessly build a house utilizing the best tools we have for measurement at this moment in time. But will the way we measure things change in 100 years? Probably. In 1000? Definitely. So what is truth? Is truth in science to be found now, then, or never?

Things can be very very objective without being absolutely objective. The fact that hearts pump blood in human bodies is a very objective fact. Care to deny it?

It is a very objective fact, I agree. It is not an absolute objective fact, though. It wasn't until William Harvey discovered the heart that we even knew about it or its function. Before that, what was true?

[_Nightlion]

11. “See how life and everything looks so designed? There must be a God.” Well, I don’t grant that but notice how this doesn’t even fit with Mormonism since, in Mormonism, the basic abstract blueprints of things are essentially eternal things undesigned by any particular god in the past infinite chain of gods. God didn’t design the human body. His father had one and he inherited such a form not by design or creation but by procreation.

TIme for just one. I realized thirty some odd years ago that LDS recreational theological myths like this are unfounded in LDS scripture. What is scripture is that God indeed made all things. These are the workmanship of his hands. So there is only one creator and all eternity should bow before his majesty and wonderful works. Well, there are three of this one God. But that is as far as it goes. NO INFINITE CHAIN OF GODS> we never become one either, ever. Worlds without end. That is good scripture.