4 ms·
The underlying concept here is that religious-like faith/belief has a utilitarian value regardless of the actual truth or verifiability of religious claims, and
by photochemsyn 3y ago
The underlying concept here is that religious-like faith/belief has a utilitarian value regardless of the actual truth or verifiability of religious claims, and that this utilitarian value can be ported over the non-religious secular society by introducing 'faith in science' and in particular 'awe of science'.
I think this a profoundly misguided notion that is highly detrimental to the actual practice of scientific investigation and discovery, and it's a bit telling that none of the promoters of this concept, characteristic of the 'New Atheism' are working scientists in any active field.
The problem is that our scientific understanding of the world is continually evolving and developing as new discoveries are made and old concepts are overturned. Clearly, developing a sense of faith in some scientific paradigm as the basis of some utilitarian 'psychological benefits of belief' project will lead to grief if that scientific view is upset by new data. The notion that one's cherished views of reality may be overturned by new knowledge (particularly if that leads to things like a loss of funding in some field) is already hard enough for working scientists to come to grips with (e.g. plate tectonics etc.) without adding in the fact that psychological despair may be induced by such new revelations.
Furthermore, science has very little to say about morality or justice, other than providing factual forensic data which people may use in a legal context. For example, all science has to say about cannibalism is that eating brain tissue from one's own species may lead to degenerative prion diseases. Genocide of human populations, well, scientifically there's nothing wrong with that, it's just natural selection and competition for resources. Religion, regardless of the factual reality of it or not, is probably a somewhat better guide to the kinds of moral behavior, although in modern society it's all codified in legal structures.
I suppose the secular view is that science and law are the twin pillars of modern civilization, but the notion that 'faith' in such structures has some necessary psychological benefit smells of a manipulative controlling approach to human relations. If people really want something supportive to believe in, they're better off sticking to their favorite literary/religious texts, even if they're just products of human imagination.
- zmgsabst 3y agoTherein lies the problem with Trust the Science (TM): All the awe, worship, and adherence to priests with none of the moral precepts.
- nathan_compton 3y agoAs far as I can tell, priests and pastors of various stripes have no better moral compasses than anyone else (perhaps even worse).
- mistermann 3y agoIt would be interesting to know what the truth of the matter is!
- haswell 3y ago> The underlying concept here is that religious-like faith/belief has a utilitarian value regardless of the actual truth or verifiability of religious claims As far as I can tell, this is not what the paper is claiming at all. It draws a clear distinction between religious belief and a different kind of spirituality emerging from scientific thinking. The point seems closer to: the utilitarian benefits that religious people gain from their beliefs can also be gained from a spiritual outlook on science, which requires no religious beliefs or blind faith in anything. This view is completely compatible with scientific progress, and is not rooted in anything other than a kind of recognition that regardless of the progress that science makes towards labeling things, awe and wonder are always on tap, available, and benefit the scientific endeavor itself. Put more simply: getting excited about the work that you do tends to make you better at doing that work, and leads to a happier life in general.
- zupatol 3y agoTheir first point is that saying the values are already there. The most obvious value of science is truth, which can be reached by the scientific method, which allows paradigms to change. Giving so much importance to truth is a matter of faith, you don't derive that from somewhere. It's interesting that they're going further than that and apparently find awe and meaning even just from the scientific method. Awe and meaning are in short supply in this world, so it's worth asking if we can get more of it from science, instead of pretending it's not there.
- photochemsyn 3y agoThere are a great many questions of interest to humans that science cannot provide any truth value for. Science cannot answer metaphysical questions like "are we all living in a perfect simulation" (in this case, no experiment or observation could reveal the simulation, barring something like simulation glitches) or "why does the universe even exist - why is there something when there could be nothing?". Hence science is quite limited in scope. One might argue that mathematics gives us an unambiguous definition of truth, but that's only in the context of a given set of axiomatic basis, and if you introduce you other favorite choice of axioms, well, where's the truth of which are the 'right' axioms? More fantastically, one could argue that supernatural beings are constantly intervening in the physical universe, but only when they're sure nobody is watching them. This all leads to a notion that science will always leave room in the world for mysticism of various kinds, which is fine.
- JieJie 3y agoEarthseed’s three main tenets are: God is Change. Shape God. The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. https://godischange.org/about/ https://godischange.org/about/