Another cleric pipes up
Another cleric lets us know there is ‘a lively and important discussion to be had…on the whole idea of the engagement between science and faith; then he gives a demonstration of the way ‘faith’ plays havoc with the ability to think clearly – or the ability to write forthrightly. One of those.
Contrary to popular understanding, the Christian community is not fundamentally anti- science…..[T]hrough the ages and still today, many significant scientists have been and are people of faith, and vice versa.
But that’s beside the point – unless the reverend is making a claim purely about hostility. But that’s where the lack of forthrightness comes in. When he says ‘engagement between science and faith’ does he mean likes and dislikes, friendship versus enmity, or does he mean something about validity as a form of inquiry or knowledge? If he’s just saying ‘some Christians like science,’ he may be right but that’s not really the issue; if he’s saying ‘some Christians like science therefore there is no tension between “faith” and science’ he’s perpetrating a non sequitur.
Richard Dawkins’s resurrected conflict theory, pitting faith and science as irreconcilable mortal enemies, is as offensive to atheist colleagues as it is to those of us who call ourselves people of faith.
But again, that’s beside the point. Never mind how ‘offensive’ it is; is it true?
Taking, as Dawkins and others do, such a dogmatic, fundamentalist view of other people’s opinions and then arguing the absolute correctness of their own view, which is that because a monkey shares 99.99 per cent of our genetic code evolution is proven and therefore there is no God, is not dissimilar to the aggressive and unreconstructed fundamentalist rejection of Galileo those years ago.
Very neat illustration of doing the very thing one is attacking someone else for doing – but I suspect that’s not what the rev intended. That ‘and therefore there is no God’ is just silly. It’s not just a dogmatic, fundamentalist view of other people’s opinions, it’s an outright misrepresentation of them; it’s something too silly to bother saying.
We believe that engaging with views that we do not agree with can be constructive.
Ah – but do you? Because that’s not doing it. Offering a fatuous parody of such views is not ‘engaging with’ them, it’s engaging with a fatuous parody of them.
Among the problems with reducing humans to no more than simple gene-propagating machines is the sense of hopelessness that this engenders. What’s the point in love, in beauty, in compassion, in poetry, in self-sacrifice, if all that we see around us is simply a “momentary cosmic accident”, as Stephen Jay Gould puts it[?]
Once again – beside the point. The issue is, or should be, the truth of the matter, not what sort of sense it may engender. Many defenders of ‘faith’ seem to have a really hard time grasping that very basic distinction.
And the debates remain. Why are humans here? Are we fundamentally anything more than just our genes, and the molecules that compose them? Why does anything exist at all? As the president of the Royal Society, Sir Martin Rees, concedes, “such questions lie beyond science … they are the province of philosophers and theologians”.
No they’re not; not of theologians they’re not; theologians have nothing to offer on the subject. Neither does anyone else, really – no one can offer a definitive answer to those why questions; but theologians actually muddy the water by offering pseudo-answers based on fantasies and wishes.
The only quote from Martin Rees that I have found is from the prologue of Our Cosmic Habitat
I disagree. Q1 is a matter for science (which is not to say that present-day science is answering it). Q2 and Q3 are unintelligible as they stand, and therefore not a matter for anyone at all.
Moreover, if one theologian purports to answer a question, what reason does that theologian give us for preferring his answer to the anwers of other theologians? If he does give a reason, then possibly we can count him as a scientist after all. If he doesn’t, why pay any attention to his wishful thinking?
I do wish one of these defenders of faith would come down off the fence and admit openly that their real claim is that humanity is better off not knowing the truth about the world it inhabits. That, I suspect, is what Ian Galloway is hinting at when he says
“Among the problems with reducing humans to no more than simple gene-propagating machines is the sense of hopelessness that this engenders. What’s the point in love, in beauty, in compassion, in poetry, in self-sacrifice, if all that we see around us is simply a “momentary cosmic accident”, as Stephen Jay Gould puts it”
Poor Ian Galloway. Why do religious people think that sounding vaguely ‘portentous’ is intellectually chilling? Why, in fact, do the ‘why?’ questions seem so mesmerising to them? Why are we here? Why is there anything at all? Since nothing is nothing at all, the question, since we’re here, is, I suppose: Why not?
And why the caricature of the theory of evolution? He’s a product of evolution, with all his childishly insistent whys.
And, every time, Dawkins is taken as a fundamentalist, while the real fundamentalist weaves around all Dawkins’ qualifications and probabilities and humanity.
And then, he thinks he’s engaged with something or someone! The mind reels!
And why does the Rev’d Mr. Galloway take Rees as an expert? After all, Rees has acknowledged that he takes part in the church as ‘an unbelieving Anglican … out of loyalty to the tribe.’ (TGD, 13) Dawkins prints it, and I don’t think Rees has challenged it. Kind of lets old Galloway down! No room for theologians here.
“What’s the point in love, in beauty, in compassion, in poetry, in self-sacrifice, if all that we see around us is simply a “momentary cosmic accident”, as Stephen Jay Gould puts it[?]”
As you say OB, it is beside the point in this instance, but it also is a typical what is it they actually want? response from the religious. If the sensation of chocolate is the result of chemicals hitting the tongue and neurons firing in the brain, it doesn’t make the sensation in of itself any less pleasurable does it?
Aren’t love, beauty and all that ends in themselves without the need for some ‘higher purpose’? What is it they want? The idea that everything that is wondrous about existence is a product of chance and luck or whatever actually makes it so much more thrilling; that a God made everything (and that it is no effort at all) seems so parochial, so obvious, so easy, so mundane, so false. The idea that humans don’t in any grand scheme matter, and we and we only have charge of our own ethics and concepts of rightness and beauty: that is truly liberating to me.
I found the article to be another of those maddening examples where some unctuous defender of religion blithely sweeps major problems under the table and suffers an attack of historical amnesia.
Here in the U. S., the fundamentalists, and creationists have found their way into government at all levels and have injected religious dogma at every opportunity. Besides the high-profile court cases related to “Intelligent Design”, there are many less visible instances.
One of one of the more flagrant examples was when some low-level flunky started censoring the NASA web site to alter statements about matters, such as the big-bang theory, that conflicted with fundamentalist religious dogma.
Since the 40% of professional scientists who believe in a prayable god is only about half (I think) the percentage of the general population who believe the same, this figure is more reasonably interpreted as evidence for rather than against the conflict between science and faith.
This is somewhat off the topic and I don’t wish to hijack the thread, but can someone explain why people ask ‘Why does something exist rather than nothing’?
Since we have abundant evidence that things do exist, even in ’empty’ space, and we can say nothing at all about existence before or outside our universe, it’s quite perverse to expect nothing as the natural state, and something as an exception to be explained, which this question seems to imply.
‘Why shouldn’t something exist?’ seems to me a question every bit as sensible, or pointless, to ask.
‘What’s the point in love, in beauty, in compassion, in poetry, in self-sacrifice, if all that we see around us is simply a “momentary cosmic accident”‘
Well, just to take compassion as an example, is there no point in my rescuing a drowning child if the child, its distressed mother, and I myself are “cosmic accidents”? What about relieving the child’s and mother’s suffering? Or doesn’t their pain matter unless they are special creations of a personal God? What if some of the living creatures in this world are divinely created, but others are “cosmic accidents”? Should we have compassion only on the former, and not give a damn about the latter?
Kiwi Dave: Your question actually makes a lot more sense than the traditional metaphysical codswollop. There is something – or rather, there are lots of somethings. That’s where we start. We live in a universe, we are stuff, and we’re surrounded by stuff. Yet, according to these theologically inclined metaphysical speculators – for short, how ’bout we just call ’em wankers, since mental masturbation is quite apparently their favorite activity… Anyway, according to these wankers, we ought to suppose that what is apparent and evident and in every literal and metaphorical sense MANIFEST – existence itself – is something that stands in need of special explanation, whereas a state of affairs we have never witnessed and cannot properly even wrap our heads around – nothingness – is somehow the proper default position and need not even be addressed. It’s the greatest shifting of the burden of proof fallacy in the history of argumentation, and no one with any sense ought to stand for it. I’ve decided that “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is quite simply the most malformed, ill-considered, outright misleading question in the history of philosophy. No surprise, then, that the question is only ever raised as if it were a serious and weighty matter by people trying desperately to rationalize their emotional conviction that their imaginary friend is real. *sigh*
“Why does something exist rather than nothing?”
Because if nothing existed we wouldn’t be here to ask that question.
In the universes where nothing exists the non-existent entities don’t ask why. Unless they are familiar with the metaphysical argument in which case they know that theirs is a superior God to any that actually exists.
“What’s the point in love, in beauty, in compassion, in poetry, in self-sacrifice”
…if they cannot be rendered irrelevant by God’s infinite monopoly on them? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe the point in a child not being dominated by its parents and making their own way in the world? Or of virtue lived as its own reward rather than for appearances? Or of intimacy as a response to the immanent qualities of some other being rather than cash?
If there were no pop stars, my singing in the shower would be comparatively better. If there is no God, my capacity for love is comparatively greater. And yet the cleric fears that the absence of God will destroy meaning. But it cannot, since if God did not create meaning his absence cannot remove it.
Theology is truly the dismal philosophy. Let us suppose a deity…
Kiwi Dave, that veyr question has been addressded by Bergson in his Evolution créatrice (somewhere 2/3ds down if I’m remembering well)
you can find it in English at
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/26163
Thanks JoB.
Some Christmas reading.
Kiwi Dave
Well it will be a loooong read, it is a tough cookie. But worth it in trying to steer clear from absolute essentialism, a pure mathematical conception of life, and from the extremest of relativisms – the unscientific view on life.
For a quote and some personal rambling-ons on this:
http://quoughts.skynetblogs.be/tag/1/Bergson
Guess who is also on the ‘province of philosophers and theologians’ case.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/12/17/edge/
Hee hee. I think author’s been reading B&W again.
Obviously Galloway hasn’t read his arch-nemesis Dawkins‘ book Unweaving the Rainbow, a tome dedicated to bringing good poetry to science.