Sciences vs. Religion

[mal4mac]

Atheists refuse to look at evidence that counters their belief system.

Hardly. There are many atheists who have studied the supposed evidence in great detail, as a quick Google search will show you.

What science needs is a tolerant agnosticism, not atheism. Scientists need to have open minds.

The best scientists do, they always keep open the *possibility* that Santa exists, they always remain open to new evidence.

To refuse to acknowledge the problems of state atheism and only focus on the problems of other religions opens atheists to the charge of hypocrisy and even bigotry.

How can you have 'state atheism'? You can't have a state whose only policy is "Don't believe in God!"

Does atheism itself have any "good existence claims"?

As its only claim is for the non-existence of something, it's ridiculous to expect an existence claim!

And if atheists cannot argue religion out of existence, is it acceptable, should atheists get political power, in the name of "science", in the name of "reason", in the name of whatever bogus idealism they currently embrace, to try to force other religions out of existence?

I would argue no, but that's because I'm a liberal. You can be a liberal atheist, Stalinist atheist, or an atheist of any political persuasion. You can also be a liberal Christian, in which case no force is necessary on either side, but a lot of lively arguments may be expected, and should be encouraged

[Eman Resu]

Can religion and science co-exist? They do; now more than ever, they're entirely interrelated. From an article in Physics For The Terminally Stupid Magazine, "How exactly do you produce a Higgs boson?"


"There are a few ways to produce Higgs bosons at the Tevatron at Fermilab which collides protons and antiprotons together. The primary way is when a gluon, which is the particle that holds the quarks together inside a proton, begins to collide with a different gluon from the antiproton. Some of the time, when these gluons have enough energy, and when there is a quantum fluctuation like a roll of a dice choosing a particular number, the gluons will exchange a top quark, and the top quarks will merge, and transform into a Higgs boson."



I guess that since the God Particle depends upon quantum fluctuation, it could be said that the variance which creates this merging of top quarks is... well, you can figure this out by yourself:

God's Particle depends upon
Two errant quarks to marry,
The force which causes this is called
The Blessed Mergin' Vary.

[YesNo]

Nice one about the Mergin' Vary, Eman Resu.

[Eman Resu]

Nice one about the Mergin' Vary, Eman Resu.

Thanks; when I read that I kind of lepton it.

[Melanie]

If "Science" is responsible for all of creation, then why did "It" choose our planet ONLY?? Science has no intelligence and can't choose, of course. And I'm well aware that all the elements needed are in place here…but why? Why not other places in the universe? You may say there could be others in other universes but why only our planet in all this vastness around us? Why such a perfect design here only? Think about the complexities of that design…why? Just "Why" about everything.

God is the answer to "Why?".

[Ecurb]

Science is not "responsible for all creation". Instead, science is a method, or a department of knowledge in which observed facts have been logically arranged and systematized, and are subject to verification or falsification.

You are correct, Melanie, that the universe SEEMS miraculous, and inspires awe and wonder. However, God is only one of a great many possible answers to the question, "Why"?

[cafolini]

Science is not "responsible for all creation". Instead, science is a method, or a department of knowledge in which observed facts have been logically arranged and systematized, and are subject to verification or falsification.

You are correct, Melanie, that the universe SEEMS miraculous, and inspires awe and wonder. However, God is only one of a great many possible answers to the question, "Why"?

God is the only answer and science is one of the Gifts of God and doesn't have any saying about Who God is or What He's supposed to do.

[Ecurb]

If God is the only answer, does that mean there is only one question? My only point was that the universe existed before science did – so “science” could not possibly be responsible for all creation.

[Melanie]

I agree that science could not possibly be responsible for creation. The word "science" isn't in the Bible because the word didn't exist but science existed and science was created by God, whether there was a name for it or not.

[MorpheusSandman]

When people say there is insufficient evidence for something, they are saying there is no evidence that they accept for something... Atheists refuse to look at evidence that counters their belief system... What science needs is a tolerant agnosticism, not atheism. Scientists need to have open minds.

I absolutely agree with your first sentence, which is why I think it behooves people to consider what constitutes good and bad evidence to begin with, rather than just talking about good and bad evidence in the abstract. This is what I love about LessWrong and Bayesian Epistemic Rationalism. If you read that site from the beginning, you'll see how Yudkowsky builds from the ground up a way of assessing evidence in a manner that is as objective as we humans can get. I say AS objective, because Bayes itself acknowledges, in the existence of priors, the subjective nature of human experience, how every piece of evidence we observe is affected and affects our previous experiences and evidence.

That said, I completely disagree either that atheists refuse to look at the evidence that contradicts their belief system, or that scientists aren't open-minded. For the former, the people that write about atheism generally do so in the context of addressing the arguments and evidence from theism! Dawkins, eg, expresses his atheism through his attack on the "evidence" put forward for ID and Creationism, and how evolutionary biology is far superior in its evidence to either. Indeed, take way Dawkins' critiques of ID/Creationism and you take away the very basis for which we know him as an atheist! You can say the same thing about Krauss and Creationist cosmology, or Shelly Kagen and theistic morality, etc. In regards to scientists, having somewhat open minds is really part and parcel of what they do. As I've said before, however dogmatic individual scientists are, the nature of the scientific method and peer-review is very much a "watch dog" over that dogma turning into blind authority. If science didn't have an open mind, Darwin's theories never would've gained an ounce of footing to begin with, as the idea, back then, would've seemed far too absurd to even other scientists.

[Melanie]

Here's something God designed that scientists don't have a clue about. It just so happens to be at the core of creation.

Watch this TED video about the uncertainty of scientists as to the location of electrons and their "mysterious" behavior:

http://www.dump.com/locationelectrons/

This video is a scientific explanation that SCREAMS a Higher Power.

[MorpheusSandman]

Here's something God designed that scientists don't have a clue about... This video is a scientific explanation that SCREAMS a Higher Power.

This is just the classic God of the Gaps (we don't know something, so God!), and is plain false is well. Science has an incredibly accurate probabilistic model of how electrons behave, and we have a perfectly deterministic one if we accept those models as real without adding anything unnecessary to them. It turns out, the reason they seem weird to us is because we are made up of particles ourselves, and one particle system cannot observe another without both of them being affected. Our "confusion" was entirely over not considering ourselves in the equation. Take ourselves into account and the weirdness goes away. Even if we DIDN'T know these things and DIDN'T have that model, our ignorance creating a mystery would never be evidence of a "higher power." See here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hs/think_like_reality/

Again, to quote the relevant:

Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don't go calling it nasty names like "bizarre" or "incredible"... Quantum physics is not "weird". You are weird. You have the absolutely bizarre idea that reality ought to consist of little billiard balls bopping around, when in fact reality is a perfectly normal cloud of complex amplitude in configuration space. This is your problem, not reality's, and you are the one who needs to change.

Human intuitions were produced by evolution and evolution is a hack. The same optimization process that built your retina backward and then routed the optic cable through your field of vision, also designed your visual system to process persistent objects bouncing around in 3 spatial dimensions because that's what it took to chase down tigers... When you go down to the fundamental level, the level on which the laws are stable, global, and exception-free, there aren't any tigers. In fact there aren't any persistent objects bouncing around in 3 spatial dimensions. Deal with it.

Calling reality "weird" keeps you inside a viewpoint already proven erroneous. Probability theory tells us that surprise is the measure of a poor hypothesis; if a model is consistently stupid - consistently hits on events the model assigns tiny probabilities - then it's time to discard that model. A good model makes reality look normal, not weird; a good model assigns high probability to that which is actually the case. Intuition is only a model by another name: poor intuitions are shocked by reality, good intuitions make reality feel natural. You want to reshape your intuitions so that the universe looks normal. You want to think like reality.

[Melanie]

...Science has an incredibly accurate probabilistic model of how electrons behave...

How can "probabilistic" be "incredibly accurate"?? Interesting leap of faith you have there.

...and we have a perfectly deterministic one IF we accept those models as real…

"IF"???…..another leap of faith. You might as well throw in a leap of faith in a Higher Power while you're at it….just to be fair. Gotta' just love how God has a few mysteries that He's keeping scientists in the dark about (as well as all of us). He wouldn't want to unleash ALL of his secrets…that would be too much power in the wrong hands.

Even if we DIDN'T know these things and DIDN'T have that model, our ignorance creating a mystery would never be evidence of a "higher power."

You just don't see it do you. You are saying that if you don't know these answers (which you don't) and don't have an accurate model (which you called probabilistic), are ignorant (your words not mine), and can't answer the mysteries…...then you would not be open-minded to another leap of faith concept ? Wait. Didn't you just tell YesNo that scientists are open-minded?

POST #100 from MorpheusSandman to YesNo…."I completely disagree either that atheists refuse to look at the evidence that contradicts their belief system, or that scientists aren't open-minded."

[YesNo]

Science has an incredibly accurate probabilistic model of how electrons behave, and we have a perfectly deterministic one if we accept those models as real without adding anything unnecessary to them.

The many worlds model doesn't add the needed assumption that allows it to generate the Born probabilities. Therefore it cannot construct a wave function. Therefore it is not an interpretation for how electrons behave. To believe in many worlds requires a "leap of faith", to use Melanie's term.

Considering the absurdity of many worlds and the absurdity of even wanting a strict determinism like it proposes, I think theistic beliefs are more reasonable and more scientific since they fit reality better.

This particular thread is about science vs religion. However, science and religion are not at odds, especially not today with the introduction of fields as part of reality, the understanding that the universe is not deterministic and the realization that the universe is incredibly young. What are actually at odds are science and pseudo-science. I would put beliefs like many worlds in the pseudo-science category.

[MorpheusSandman]

How can "probabilistic" be "incredibly accurate"??

If a system is innately probabilistic from our perspective then an accurate model would be probabilistic as well, the same way a coin flip is 50/50 or a die roll is 1/6. Are these probabilistic models not "incredibly accurate"?

"IF"???…..another leap of faith.

I don't see that as a leap of faith at all. So far, every time we've accurately modeled reality it's been of real phenomena. People's reluctance to accept QM models as "real" stems from them upsetting their subjective perceptions/experience of what reality is. So, if you believe the models over our historically fallible perceptions, then the models are deterministic; if you believe our historically fallible perceptions, then you have some explaining to do. How many instances do we need of our perceptions being wrong and our scientific models being right before we start to trust our scientific models over our perceptions? You might as well say it's a "leap of faith" to believe the sun will rise tomorrow.

Nevertheless, it's foolish to put all "leaps of faith" under the same label as if the leaps are of equal length. Historically, people proposing gods behind natural phenomena are batting a perfect 0%, while science discovering natural causes behind natural phenomena are batting a perfect 1.000. So, now we find ourselves in the midst of another "mystery;" please explain to me why it's an equal "leap" to go with the theory that has been consistently WRONG, as opposed to going with the theory that has been consistently RIGHT? The sun rising is the same thing; sure, maybe the sun WON'T rise tomorrow, and maybe it's a "leap of faith" to believe it will, but to propose that both leaps of faith (it rising VS it not rising) are equal is patently absurd.

You just don't see it do you.

Apparently you don't get it either. How is "I don't know" evidence for the theory that "God did it?" Especially from a historical perspective we've used gods to explain tons of things we didn't understand--lightning, the "movements" of the planets/stars, storms, waves, mountains, etc.--and have been wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME! That's not a good track record for gods being behind what we don't understand. However, we do understand quantum mechanics. Engineers use the models in several facets of modern technologies, like GPS and quantum computing. The models work, they're scary accurate. The debate is over how to interpret what they mean and, as I said, if you trust the models are representing real things, then they are deterministic and only become indeterministic from our perspective because we are bound up in the system we're observing.