Thumbs up to naturalism, evolution, and Palin fading away

Today Pharyngula, a terrific science/ progressive/ anti-religion blog, hit the mark with links to stories on three of my favorite subjects.

Exposing Sarah Palin for the fool that she is. Palin is against science. She's for the teaching of creationism. She doesn't think humans have much to do with global warming. Picturing her as vice-president of the United States: too irrationally scary to contemplate.

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Evolution points to a reality incompatible with traditional religion. Some people claim that God could have created the universe in the big bang and then left it (including Earth, obviously) to evolve in accord with natural laws. But what's the point of religion if there's no evidence of anything godly in the physical world?

First, let's clear up the incoherence of the question. I understand it as, "Does understanding science [it's not just biologists who exhibit this phenomenon!] lead to an abandonment of religious beliefs?", and that's the question to which I think an affirmative is the correct answer. It ought to; scientific thinking is corrosive to religious belief.

...Thinking scientifically means that you question assumptions and that you ask epistemological questions and you try to rationally justify the acceptance of ideas, and that's the antithesis of religious thinking. If you apply scientific reasoning to even that moderate version of religion, it crumbles — there is simply no evidence for any of their claims.

The natural world is, naturally, all that is known to exist. "Materialists" are better termed "naturalists." Science knows that matter isn't just solid objects, stuff you can knock your fist on. It's also energy, space and time, quantum tremblings far beyond our ability to sense with even the most powerful instruments. There's plenty of room for pondering the Big Questions of Life in naturalism.

Science is dependent upon methodological naturalism because a necessary feature of any scientific hypothesis is that it is testable. Non-natural causes are by definition non-falsifiable, and therefore scientific methods cannot act upon them. It is like the now famous cartoon of the mathematician writing out a very complex equation, but in one part simply writes “and then a miracle happens.” His colleague points out that, “I think you need to be a little more explicit in this section.” (I may be paraphrasing.)

Science cannot say, “and then a miracle happens.” There is no way to do an experiment or make an observation that can test a miracle. Miracles, by definition, defy natural forces or explanations. They cannot be constrained, which is a necessary feature of any hypothesis that can be falsified.

Comments

[David]

This argument doesn't really hold water with me anymore.
Science is, by definition and in practice, limited to that which can be conceptualized. And it seems to me our ability to conceptualize is not terribly strong. Try to conceive of a Mobius strip. Or the Moment of Change. Or Time.
Mostly we have to build up our concepts, slowly. Consider learning something new, like playing tennis. First you learn the grip. Then a few swings, etc. Then you "chunk" them up. The grip, the swings, become second nature, in other words we forget the concept and just go with the action. Eventually if we persist and become good at it we forget most of the concepts and let the body do it's work. Being "in the zone."
To me, this shows a tremendous weakness in our innate ability to conceptualize. We can do it, but in the end it's not what we rely on anyhow.

Most honest religions have at their core the idea of identifying with Awareness (consciousness) instead of the mind and it's conceptualizations. This frees the practitioner from the limitations of the mind and brings one directly into the Zone, if done successfully.
Not to say Sarah Palin has made this leap. I don't know much about her, (being Canadian) but the argument that she's intellectually inferior is not sufficient to dismiss her abilities.

[Brian]

David, I'd say that science is more about the ability to observe and describe, not conceptualize. You imply that science is about abstractions. To some extent that's true (quantum phenomena can't be observed), but also not -- because the effects of unobserved entities can be observed (as in high energy particle experiments).

"Being in the flow" can be seen and described by outsiders. You can see a dancer or an athlete performing, and compare their "in the flow" actions with "regular" actions. So I think you're exaggerating the non-describability of the intuitive side of life.

If someone is enlightened, if they've merged with "the flow," this should be evident. Otherwise, it really is just a concept. A name has been given to them -- "enlightened person"-- but nobody can tell them apart from someone unenlightened. This is truly conceptual, not science.