I’ve just read a post in which eatingwords stated, on froggetmenot’s blog, that science is not qualified to answer our “highest questions.” I’m assuming (maybe not correctly?) that by “highest questions,” eatingwords might mean questions of origin and purpose.
Now, I’ll say right off that I disagree. (Shocking, huh, eatingwords?) The fact that science seems to point to answers that don’t always satisfy the longing for eternal life and thereby avoid some sadness doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or insufficient somehow. However, I have a more important question for anyone who would care to post. Here goes:
Seeing that religion has given widely variant answers to questions of origin and purpose, what is it that qualifies religion over science to answer these questions?
One caveat: Please don’t say that you don’t like religion but have a personal relationship with Jesus. All you’ve argued at that point is that you base your religion on experience, which weakens your argument. Thanks.
The quick answer to your quick question is that science and religion treat different subjects and ask different questions. That is hardly a novel concept and one that is widely accepted by scientists (hard line atheists like Dawkins excepted) everywhere. Science deals with the observable and repeatable; they are the foundation of modern science. The origin of life is neither observable nor repeatable, unlike, for example, the process of speciation accounted for by Darwinism. It is outside the purview of science. Therefore it is a question for religion and philosophy. As for purpose that is also not a scientific question. Science is about mechanism, not teleology.
But do religion and philosophy begin by assuming that there is an ‘ultimate’ purpose for everything? If so, how can that ever be proven?
I don’t believe that religion and philosophy deal with the unobservable and unrepeatable. They begin with the natural world and explain back from their observations. The foundation of religion and philosophy is the natural, observable, repeatable world.
And science, I think, does deal with causes and purpose. It has discovered the causes of many things which were, before scientific discovery, assumed by religion to be the actions of God (weather changes, crop growth, etc.). It also has revealed the purposes of many organisms and appendages and plants and languages and on and on and on.
How do you like me commenting on my own posts?
I just want to add that I’m not asking this question to squabble. I think religion needs to re-examine its foundational stances and questions. Perhaps that’s only because that’s what I’m doing for myself. UUism, at least for me, is a faith which offers not many answers, but complete freedom to question.
And it seems to me that traditional religion tries very hard to offer answers to questions which have no real answers (whose God is the real God, for example, or is there a God at all?). We can probably only be agnostic about such big issues.
We ask these questions because we want to make sense of our existence, to believe that there’s something ‘more’ that is providing meaning and purpose. Many traditionally religious folk think that if there is no capital-G God, there is no purpose for life. But I say, the natural world itself, the chance to affect change for future generations, these are all the purpose religion needs to offer us.
“That doesn’t make me feel very good, so there must be something else” isn’t much of an argument against my newfound faith, which makes me feel much better than I’ve felt in a long time.
Damn proof! Why do you assume everything has to be proven like some mathematical theorem? Zounds, that’s an awfully narrow view of life. Of course ultimate questions are going to be subject to debate. After all, we’re not talking about the digestive system of a earthworm! If you are waiting for the questions that have troubled philosophers and theologians and every thinking person since time immemorial to come to some empirically verifiable resolution then you’ll be waiting till long after you’ve mouldered in the ground.
Yes, philosophers and the religious ask questions about what they see. But more fundamentally than that they ask questions about what they intuit. Again, that is where the mystery lies. Why do I feel that there is indeed a purpose to life? What are these intimations of immortality? Read the philosophers and you’ll find that it is these, well, philosophical questions that have very little to do with the observed world that most occupy their thoughts.
And, yes, of course, science deals with causes. But you asked about ultimate causes. Why is there something rather than nothing? Ultimate causes are undetectable by science. Science can only talk about the penultimate.
Why is it so ridiculous to think that if there were a personal god, and our belief in that god was essential to determining our eternal destiny, that we could know as much about that god as we do about the intestinal tract of an earthworm? At least no one is arguing that the earthworm really has no heart. All one has to do is look and see. And my belief in an earthworm’s heart isn’t going to save or damn me.
You know, you could worship a bowl of crap and I wouldn’t be concerned about anything but your personal hygiene. However, the importance of this question remains because you also see the world through that which you worship. What conservative religionists believe affects us all, as seen in issues like homosexual marriage. Remove the religious argument, and all the others fall by the wayside.
As well, many Christians declare their beliefs as fact. Your own denomination will not allow its ministers to pray in services with members of other faiths. Of course, the LCMS isn’t alone, and Christians aren’t alone in divisiveness. Religion, then, is dividing rather than uniting human beings. It even divides theologian from theologian, philosopher from philosopher (I know science can, too. Stick with me.).
What you’re saying, then, is something like this: Religion is important enough to divide over, and to deny certain persons what some feel is a civil right, AND that one religious system is ‘true’ in contrast to all others, but it cannot be verified by any process which we have available to us as human beings.
Let me add that some ‘intuit’ these things and some do not. Intuition is pretty darned subjective.
Maybe religion and philosophy simply shouldn’t claim to offer ‘answers.’ Here’s where I think there’s real promise for the future. While religion cannot offer answers, it can offer avenues of exploring what Paul Tillich called “the Ground of Being.” Christianity is one avenue, Buddhism is another, Islam is yet another. What has to go away for that to happen is for conservative, moderate AND liberal religionists’ claims to be offering answers.
Two points about wanting God to provide more evidence:
1. What sort of evidence could He possibly present that would remove every doubt? Undisputed miracles? You know there would still be plenty of people who still explain the miracle in a naturalistic way. Billboard in the sky? Folks would say it was the aliens talking to us. Which leads me to point two.
2. There is plenty of evidence for those looking for it. I take it as a fact of observable human existence (quite apart from theology) that none of us are pure souls searching for truth free from all presuppositions and preconceptions. In short, we see what we want to see. When I look at the world my vision is shaped by the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran theology. I see proof for God’s existence in many places. When you look at the world you see it as a religious humanist and agnostic. You see plenty of reasons for your doubt. (Whoda thunkit? You’ re the modernist and I’m the postmodernist.)
So, yes, the existence of God can be proven by processes available to us human beings. The problem is that none of us use these processes objectively. That includes me.
Eatingwords:
To your questions:
1) I suppose I would ask the same proof as the earthworm has offered. To be touched, to shake hands, to ask the will of this god and get a verbal answer. These are not too much to ask of a god who is all-powerful and who supposedly decies our eternal destinies based on belief or non-belief in said god (and who, by the way, supposedly set us up as thinking, proof-seeking human beings in every arena, it seems, other than religion). What a cruel, capricious thing to do, to demand obedience and obeisance and then to hide from some and make oneself obvious to others.
2) I agree, and wonder how a person could go from this notion to the idea that if one doesn’t believe the ‘right’ things, that one will be lost eternally. Or that the believer will be rewarded eternally based on seeing what he wants to see. Or even that the way one sees the world is the one, true way. Postmodernism doesn’t work well with traditional Christianity or the notion of orthodoxy in general.
I’m using a screen name from the Battlefield 2 game that I play in order to have a little more anonymity from those on the Internet. You should be able to find out who I am based on the email address I supplied and the hostname/IP address from which I am posting this.
Since you emphasize the scientifically testable, measurable, and observable, I’m curious to know where “love” fits into your belief system. Based on a purely naturalist worldview, love would just be a mechanism used for selective advantage, just another concoction of chemicals or hormones that makes us “feel” something. Yet love frequently causes us to make decisions to our own detriment. Parents frequently give their very lives to save their own children, even though at a raw, biological level, the parent could just have more children to replace the one that was killed. Few would argue that love doesn’t exist, yet it isn’t testable, logical, or measurable.
Good to hear from you. I had no idea you were the world’s most violent mime.
In my opinion, and from what I’ve read, love actually is a product of chemicals and hormones. The parent jumping in front of a car to save her child is sometimes explained by scientists as the evolutionary urge to protect the young, those with great promise, at the expense of the older. The species needs young to survive. The parent has done his job in procreating. So, speaking with evolution and survival of the species in mind, love and protecting one’s own is quite logical.
And love is testable. Certain areas of the brain are more active when love is the foremost emotion. That doesn’t make it any less pleasurable or noble, for we still have to decide which emotion (love or greed, for example) to satiate. It simply denotes, in my opinion, that all our actions can be explained in one way or another.
Some will argue, “but that isn’t a very satisfying explanation. There must be more to it than that.” I think there is more than the bare scientific explanation of love, and that is the pleasure we receive from doing good things. The fact that it, too, is an evolutionary by-product doesn’t make it any less pleasurable.
I’ve found no more satisfying explanation. That a god gives us these emotions is actually pretty disturbing, considering this would be the same god who created a world in which, every day, mothers have to decide whether to abort their severely ill babies or raise them with no hope of societal function or the return of the mother’s love.
And I would add that if a person doesn’t like the explanation that science gives, then that person is always free to simply live life enjoying all the products of evolution without ever seeking a ‘reason’ for them. But to say ’science doesn’t make me feel good when it explains things like love, so a personal god must be involved’ makes absolutely no sense to me.
First, don’t take this as confrontational, I’m only quoting you so that you know the parts to which I am responding.
You said: “The parent jumping in front of a car to save her child is sometimes explained by scientists as the evolutionary urge to protect the young, those with great promise, at the expense of the older. The species needs young to survive. The parent has done his job in procreating. So, speaking with evolution and survival of the species in mind, love and protecting one’s own is quite logical.”
The point I was trying to make is like the old Bill Cosby sketch, where Bill said his parents would tell him “I brought you into this world, I can take you out, and I can make another one that looks just like you.” Why would a parent jump in front of a car to save his child, if, instead, the parent could avoid the pain to himself, let the car hit the child, and just make another one? The child was too young to reproduce anyway, and thus unable to advance the species. The parent, on the other hand, just creates another child to replace the one that was lost, much like the ducks on my pond which may produce a dozen offspring, only a handful of which survive, the one’s that are lost are replaceable because there’s always next year’s brood.
You also said: “I think there is more than the bare scientific explanation of love, and that is the pleasure we receive from doing good things.”
But this, then, indicates that your love for Heather and Marcus is because *you* receive pleasure from doing good things for them, thus making your love for them seem less altruistic.
You also said: “And I would add that if a person doesn’t like the explanation that science gives, then that person is always free to simply live life enjoying all the products of evolution…”
But the products of evolution are the severely ill babies caused by genetic mutations, one of the mechanisms of evolution. How can we enjoy these products of evolution?
If I didn’t get pleasure from the things I do for Heather and Marcus, I wonder if I would do them. Now, I may not get immediate pleasure in taking Marcus to the children’s museum, for instance. In fact, it’s kind of painful and boring sometimes. However, we’re members and go often because it’s wonderful to see him growing into an intelligent young man, and to know that he’ll do great things to ‘advance the species,’ if you will, because of what he’s learning. It’s my duty to raise this young man to be all that he can be. Both nature and morality (they may be one and the same) tell me that, it’s good for Marcus and it brings me great pleasure. Even jumping in front of a car for him would bring me a type of pleasure in knowing that I’m sacrificing myself for another.
This is really similar to the old Christian argument of whether you do your good deeds because they make you feel good or because they ‘please god.’ In the end, it doesn’t matter. You do them.
You said, “But the products of evolution are the severely ill babies caused by genetic mutations, one of the mechanisms of evolution. How can we enjoy these products of evolution?”
Evolution is certainly impersonal and produces some ill effects. Sometimes, all we can do is try and overcome our evolutionary tendencies. That’s one of the great tenets of religious humanism.
My honest and sincere question to you is, if you attribute everything you see around you to the creation of a personal god, then the severely ill babies of which you’ve spoken would have to be indirect results of that god’s creating. How could you enjoy that god?
Why do we have to understand everything He does? Does it come from pride, where we disagree with what happens and we question whether God really knows what He is doing? Are we prideful in our knowledge and assume that we have some right to the answers, and that if He were to tell us His whole plan that we would understand? Consider a parent-child relationship. At times parents have to do things that the child doesn’t understand. Take, for example, childhood immunizations (which I hate to see my sons go through). Through the child’s eyes it is a terrifying experience. They are in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people. They are in a situation in which they have no control, and there is pain involved. If I were to sit down with my boys and explain the immune system, how it works, and the history and development of immunizations, they wouldn’t understand. I’m sure that while they are getting the shots they question my love for them. Their eyes seem to be asking, how could you let this happen to me? They don’t understand and don’t see the whole picture.
I can’t comment on the example of the severely ill baby since I have not personally experienced it. However, I have heard testimonies from those who do (back at Kankakee First). Their testimonies frequently included simple life lessons that their handicapped child had taught them.
I don’t know that we’re having the same conversation here. You begin with an assumption that there is a personal, intervening god. So, you see evil and say, we can’t understand it, but god does.
I see evil and the claims of a good, loving, personal, intervening god as contradictory claims.
I don’t know where to go in this particular line of debate from that major foundational difference.
Is it possible, though, that God could not create a world with free will that did not contain evil? I believe it to be logically impossible, just as God could not create a world with a 5 sided hexagon, it logically can’t exist.
Free will never did make sense to me. It seems to me it’s just the notion that god gave us the rope to hang ourselves. Why is it so ridiculous to think that if there were a personal, intervening, creating god, that god would be bound ethically either to grant everyone eternal life or to not allow the possibility of evil? Such a world would not be full of robots, but happy people. This god would not be making anyone do anything, but eliminating the possibility of those beings permanently destroying themselves.
I can’t imagine that you would set poison out in an open container around your children. But why not? Poison exists, and maybe they are only choosing to live because they don’t know poison exists. Maybe they can’t really be free to choose unless there’s the possiblity of this poisonous option.
That seems absurd, but freewill says that’s what god did. And what’s astounding is that many argue the world is better because of it.