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Of course they can be 'spiritual' (i've known several), with one clear philosophical caveat: religion, by definition, is dogma which requires faith. Faith requi

Of course they can be 'spiritual' (i've known several), with one clear philosophical caveat: religion, by definition, is dogma which requires faith. Faith requires, by definition, that one accept as truth universal aspects with no evidence. Being a good scientist requires, among other things, to accept nothing without supporting data - which is the opposite of faith. So, religious scientists who i have known notably split their understanding of the universe in two. Over coffee with one of these chaps i'll never forget his saying "Well, there's my professional system of belief, and there's my personal awareness, and I strive to keep them separate at all times." Just for the record, i couldn't manage to do that.

kbd 9y ago
> Faith requires, by definition, that one accept as truth universal aspects with no evidence. FWIW I'd disagree with this definition. To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. That's not "no evidence". Holding to a naturalistic theory of origins that explains apparent design by a long sequence of chance occurrences is equally a faith commitment. > Over coffee with one of these chaps i'll never forget his saying "Well, there's my professional system of belief, and there's my personal awareness, and I strive to keep them separate at all times." Just for the record, i couldn't manage to do that. I agree there. One of the underlying causes of the scientific explosion around the Renaissance is the idea that the universe follows rules and can be understood, and it's because it's created by God that motivated many Christian scientists like Newton, Kepler, Pascal, and others to believe that we can fruitfully explore and understand its workings. It's bizarre to me that someone would try to hold in mind a universe where different aspects are actually at odds with each other. Edit: for instance, here's an example of Kepler's motivations for scientific discovery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Christianity
- longerthoughts 9y ago
  >To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. That's not "no evidence". Holding to a naturalistic theory of origins that explains apparent design by a long sequence of chance occurrences is equally a faith commitment. I agree that modern science still requires faith as much of what we believe is inherently difficult to definitively prove. What I'm struggling to understand is how you can say that these competing theories require an equal faith commitment. By what measurement? How are the competing theories equally plausible? I actually agree when you say that the complexity of nature is "not 'no evidence'" and would add that the notion of an intelligent creator was probably the most plausible explanation available when the notion was conceived. However, plausibility has to be reevaluated and compared in the face of contrary evidence supporting other plausible theories, and I simply can't see how the competing evidence can be judged as supporting equally plausible theories.
  - tareqak 9y ago
    I can give you an example/analogy that I personally believe in: I think that science and religion (the part that comes directly from scripture without intermediaries) are two ends of a really tangled morass long rope/thread. They might be different colours, thicknesses, and different textures, but they ultimately converge to being the one same thing. I think of religion as being a sort of mission statement (the why) with a some general guidelines of how to behave and what to expect (e.g. a interface in object-oriented programming), and science being a sort of detailed, meticulous set of steps (the how) to extract information from the environment and observable objects (e.g a concrete class that is supposed implementing the interface). Unfortunately/fortunately, the compiler doesn’t yell at you if you aren’t implementing the interface correctly, so you have to figure it out for yourself.
    - lomnakkus 9y ago
      > directly from scripture without intermediaries Either scripture itself was written down by intermediaries or you're already presupposing the existence of deities. (Those deities also require an explanation or you really are just talking about faith without evidence.)
- renox 9y ago
  > FWIW I'd disagree with this definition. To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. Except that this doesn't answer the question: how this intelligent creator came to exist? Religious people either react furiously to this question or do the equivalent of "I can't hear you", scientific people look for an alternative theory.
mseebach 9y ago
The kind of truth relevant for faith isn't the empirical sort that science concerns itself with, it's the kind of truth that is contained in wisdom. Faith is guidance for all those situations where it's not practical to set up a double-blind study to decide on the course of action, it's the belief that there is good and bad in the world and that you can make meaningful decisions that will increase the good and counteract the bad. The opposite of faith (which doesn't have to be religious), is nihilism, not science.
- jasperry 9y ago
  I don't disagree, but it's too easy to pull a kind of bait-and-switch using one of these non-religious definitions of faith. You can define "faith" as something like "adopting principles or wisdom for living that isn't empirically verified and is based on personally felt or shared values". Fine; I agree that everybody needs that kind of faith to avoid being a nihilist. However, this doesn't imply that there's "another realm of truth" inaccessible to empirical demonstration, or that one ought to subscribe to some supernatural dogma. That's a separate definition of faith. The religious aspect is so baked into the usage of the word that we have to be careful that it doesn't get a free ride in on the back of a non-religious definition.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    We should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are always going to be bad people standing by to abuse whatever -- there are also plenty of scams that shroud themselves in supposedly scientific fact, e.g. practically every single health and nutritional claim in consumer marketing. Certain health-nuts are building entire pseudo-religions around their supposedly scientific beliefs. I don't think it's correct to cordon off "truth" as being only that which can be empirically learned. That leaves us with phenomenon like true love and the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. If anything is in a separate realm, I'd argue it's scientific truth. That's not to demean it, rather it's a higher, superior realm.
nbulka 9y ago
There's actually a lot science requires a person to accept outside of data. The law of excluded middle comes to mind ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought#The_three_traditional_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought#The_three_tradi... Science also uses induction and so relies on the future being essentially the same as the past, which is not a given. see David Hume.
jdtang13 9y ago
> Being a good scientist requires, among other things, to accept nothing without supporting data - which is the opposite of faith. An important caveat is this: a modern scientist accepts nothing without supporting evidence except, of course, the principle that "one should not accept anything without supporting evidence", which is itself taken without question as an axiom, a dogma. If it were possible for someone to live a life entirely free of assumptions, that person would have absolutely no access to objective knowledge, period. And we must not forget to mention the various metaphysical assumptions that modern day science-philophers will often try to sneak past you while claiming to be objective.
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  It's of course true that it's dogmatic in the strictest sense, but it has a massive advantage that it's actually been shown pretty conclusively that it works. That's a high bar. Still doesn't say anything about is vs. ought, but that's a whole other can of worms.
BeetleB 9y ago
>Of course they can be 'spiritual' (i've known several), with one clear philosophical caveat: religion, by definition, is dogma which requires faith. Faith requires, by definition, that one accept as truth universal aspects with no evidence. Being a good scientist requires, among other things, to accept nothing without supporting data - which is the opposite of faith. I've yet to meet a scientist who does not take something on faith (need not be tied to religion). And I've not met a devout person who at times required data. Which is why a religious scientist or a skeptical theologian is nothing worthy of notice (at least if you spend time with the two camps).
nyc111 9y ago
>"Well, there's my professional system of belief, and there's my personal awareness, and I strive to keep them separate at all times." Just for the record, i couldn't manage to do that. Neither could Newton. Actually your comment made some things about Newton's work clearer to me. I would say that for Newton his research into orbits (and Principia is mainly a book about orbits) was no different than his work on the Christian origin. All of Newton's work is religious. This is what Newton wrote in his Optics: God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable movable particles. (Isaac Newton, Optics, 1704, Book III, page: 375) This quotes reveals two things. 1. Newton considers himself to be a prophet who is privvy to the way God created the world. And this idea was enforced later by Newton’s disciples. The idea being that, god created the world for Newton to discover (god created newton and all was light...) 2. That this is secretely Newton’s zeroeth law. Because Newton’s entire doctrine is based on the dogma of atomic materialism. Without the assumption of the doctrine of atomic materialism Newtonian edifice falls apart. This quote clearly shows that when Newton was researching orbits he believed he was unraveling the secrets of god’s work. He was doing religious work and not what we would call “physics” today. But Newtonian mythology is so strong that even otherwise enlightened people consider a blasphemy to question Newton and even to mention his name without the qualifier “genius”. A previous commenter who wrote something similar >It is more than just a passing interest. There would be no Newtonian physics without religion. was heavily downvoted. I agree with the main idea but it is very misleading to call what Newton was doing “physics” because he was not. There was no such discipline at the time.
lurquer 9y ago
Before contrasting religion with science, one should first disentangle 'history' from 'science.' That is, much of the 'conflict' between science and religion stems from differing opinions about past events. That is, history. Whether it be evolution or cosmology generally. I'm unaware of any conflict between any religion and science in its strictest sense; that is, a reproducible phenomena backed up with expirementsl evidence. Its a fallacy to think that use of scientific tools to support a historical theory makes the theory scientific.

kbd 9y ago

> Faith requires, by definition, that one accept as truth universal aspects with no evidence. FWIW I'd disagree with this definition. To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. That's not "no evidence". Holding to a naturalistic theory of origins that explains apparent design by a long sequence of chance occurrences is equally a faith commitment. > Over coffee with one of these chaps i'll never forget his saying "Well, there's my professional system of belief, and there's my personal awareness, and I strive to keep them separate at all times." Just for the record, i couldn't manage to do that. I agree there. One of the underlying causes of the scientific explosion around the Renaissance is the idea that the universe follows rules and can be understood, and it's because it's created by God that motivated many Christian scientists like Newton, Kepler, Pascal, and others to believe that we can fruitfully explore and understand its workings. It's bizarre to me that someone would try to hold in mind a universe where different aspects are actually at odds with each other. Edit: for instance, here's an example of Kepler's motivations for scientific discovery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler#Christianity

longerthoughts 9y ago
>To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. That's not "no evidence". Holding to a naturalistic theory of origins that explains apparent design by a long sequence of chance occurrences is equally a faith commitment. I agree that modern science still requires faith as much of what we believe is inherently difficult to definitively prove. What I'm struggling to understand is how you can say that these competing theories require an equal faith commitment. By what measurement? How are the competing theories equally plausible? I actually agree when you say that the complexity of nature is "not 'no evidence'" and would add that the notion of an intelligent creator was probably the most plausible explanation available when the notion was conceived. However, plausibility has to be reevaluated and compared in the face of contrary evidence supporting other plausible theories, and I simply can't see how the competing evidence can be judged as supporting equally plausible theories.
- tareqak 9y ago
  I can give you an example/analogy that I personally believe in: I think that science and religion (the part that comes directly from scripture without intermediaries) are two ends of a really tangled morass long rope/thread. They might be different colours, thicknesses, and different textures, but they ultimately converge to being the one same thing. I think of religion as being a sort of mission statement (the why) with a some general guidelines of how to behave and what to expect (e.g. a interface in object-oriented programming), and science being a sort of detailed, meticulous set of steps (the how) to extract information from the environment and observable objects (e.g a concrete class that is supposed implementing the interface). Unfortunately/fortunately, the compiler doesn’t yell at you if you aren’t implementing the interface correctly, so you have to figure it out for yourself.
  - lomnakkus 9y ago
    > directly from scripture without intermediaries Either scripture itself was written down by intermediaries or you're already presupposing the existence of deities. (Those deities also require an explanation or you really are just talking about faith without evidence.)
renox 9y ago
> FWIW I'd disagree with this definition. To give a really simple example: believing in an intelligent creator based on design in nature. Except that this doesn't answer the question: how this intelligent creator came to exist? Religious people either react furiously to this question or do the equivalent of "I can't hear you", scientific people look for an alternative theory.

mseebach 9y ago

The kind of truth relevant for faith isn't the empirical sort that science concerns itself with, it's the kind of truth that is contained in wisdom. Faith is guidance for all those situations where it's not practical to set up a double-blind study to decide on the course of action, it's the belief that there is good and bad in the world and that you can make meaningful decisions that will increase the good and counteract the bad. The opposite of faith (which doesn't have to be religious), is nihilism, not science.

jasperry 9y ago
I don't disagree, but it's too easy to pull a kind of bait-and-switch using one of these non-religious definitions of faith. You can define "faith" as something like "adopting principles or wisdom for living that isn't empirically verified and is based on personally felt or shared values". Fine; I agree that everybody needs that kind of faith to avoid being a nihilist. However, this doesn't imply that there's "another realm of truth" inaccessible to empirical demonstration, or that one ought to subscribe to some supernatural dogma. That's a separate definition of faith. The religious aspect is so baked into the usage of the word that we have to be careful that it doesn't get a free ride in on the back of a non-religious definition.
- mseebach 9y ago
  We should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are always going to be bad people standing by to abuse whatever -- there are also plenty of scams that shroud themselves in supposedly scientific fact, e.g. practically every single health and nutritional claim in consumer marketing. Certain health-nuts are building entire pseudo-religions around their supposedly scientific beliefs. I don't think it's correct to cordon off "truth" as being only that which can be empirically learned. That leaves us with phenomenon like true love and the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. If anything is in a separate realm, I'd argue it's scientific truth. That's not to demean it, rather it's a higher, superior realm.

nbulka 9y ago

There's actually a lot science requires a person to accept outside of data. The law of excluded middle comes to mind ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought#The_three_traditional_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought#The_three_tradi... Science also uses induction and so relies on the future being essentially the same as the past, which is not a given. see David Hume.

jdtang13 9y ago

> Being a good scientist requires, among other things, to accept nothing without supporting data - which is the opposite of faith. An important caveat is this: a modern scientist accepts nothing without supporting evidence except, of course, the principle that "one should not accept anything without supporting evidence", which is itself taken without question as an axiom, a dogma. If it were possible for someone to live a life entirely free of assumptions, that person would have absolutely no access to objective knowledge, period. And we must not forget to mention the various metaphysical assumptions that modern day science-philophers will often try to sneak past you while claiming to be objective.

lomnakkus 9y ago
It's of course true that it's dogmatic in the strictest sense, but it has a massive advantage that it's actually been shown pretty conclusively that it works. That's a high bar. Still doesn't say anything about is vs. ought, but that's a whole other can of worms.

BeetleB 9y ago

>Of course they can be 'spiritual' (i've known several), with one clear philosophical caveat: religion, by definition, is dogma which requires faith. Faith requires, by definition, that one accept as truth universal aspects with no evidence. Being a good scientist requires, among other things, to accept nothing without supporting data - which is the opposite of faith. I've yet to meet a scientist who does not take something on faith (need not be tied to religion). And I've not met a devout person who at times required data. Which is why a religious scientist or a skeptical theologian is nothing worthy of notice (at least if you spend time with the two camps).

nyc111 9y ago

>"Well, there's my professional system of belief, and there's my personal awareness, and I strive to keep them separate at all times." Just for the record, i couldn't manage to do that. Neither could Newton. Actually your comment made some things about Newton's work clearer to me. I would say that for Newton his research into orbits (and Principia is mainly a book about orbits) was no different than his work on the Christian origin. All of Newton's work is religious. This is what Newton wrote in his Optics: God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable movable particles. (Isaac Newton, Optics, 1704, Book III, page: 375) This quotes reveals two things. 1. Newton considers himself to be a prophet who is privvy to the way God created the world. And this idea was enforced later by Newton’s disciples. The idea being that, god created the world for Newton to discover (god created newton and all was light...) 2. That this is secretely Newton’s zeroeth law. Because Newton’s entire doctrine is based on the dogma of atomic materialism. Without the assumption of the doctrine of atomic materialism Newtonian edifice falls apart. This quote clearly shows that when Newton was researching orbits he believed he was unraveling the secrets of god’s work. He was doing religious work and not what we would call “physics” today. But Newtonian mythology is so strong that even otherwise enlightened people consider a blasphemy to question Newton and even to mention his name without the qualifier “genius”. A previous commenter who wrote something similar >It is more than just a passing interest. There would be no Newtonian physics without religion. was heavily downvoted. I agree with the main idea but it is very misleading to call what Newton was doing “physics” because he was not. There was no such discipline at the time.

lurquer 9y ago

Before contrasting religion with science, one should first disentangle 'history' from 'science.' That is, much of the 'conflict' between science and religion stems from differing opinions about past events. That is, history. Whether it be evolution or cosmology generally. I'm unaware of any conflict between any religion and science in its strictest sense; that is, a reproducible phenomena backed up with expirementsl evidence. Its a fallacy to think that use of scientific tools to support a historical theory makes the theory scientific.