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I'm a religious guy who loves science and technology, and I greatly appreciated this article. Men of faith need not be anti-science, indeed, many great men of

by judah 12y ago

I'm a religious guy who loves science and technology, and I greatly appreciated this article. Men of faith need not be anti-science, indeed, many great men of science were men of faith. And not by an incidental flaw in their minds, as the article puts it, but as a driver and strengthener of their science. In the last 100 years especially, religious people have grown anti-science, largely because we see science growing increasingly atheistic. Others feel threatened by evolution, as if natural selection undermines the existence of God. I am working in my own religious circles to counteract that and to bring back a love of science and a love of knowledge back to my own Christian circles. In the meantime, articles like this one are helpful to dispel the modern notion that one cannot be religious and still love knowledge and science.

jacquesm 12y ago
You will have to take into account the times when these men lived and what was known back then vs what is known today and to acknowledge that you live today. I'm happy that you're doing what you're doing but ultimately religion is very un-scientific, which is one of the root causes why religious people tend to view science as atheistic. Those are flip sides of the same coin. It's very well possible to do good science whilst being religious. At the same time it is very well possible to do good science whilst being an atheist. Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible. Assigning correlation between religion and the ability to do science seems a bit strange, as if if Maxwell would have been an atheist he would not have been able to make the discoveries that he did. I don't buy that, but maybe someone could do a double-blind test by staffing labs in the same disciplines with devout Christians (Catholics, Protestants, Church-of-England or whatever denominations you can find enough scientists from) and similar labs with just atheists. Then maybe we could draw the kind of conclusion the article wishes for us to make. Until then I'm fine with letting people believe whatever they want and taking the fruits of their progress whatever their belief was when they did their work.
- judah 12y ago
  Religion speaks of something beyond measure, and this is a reason some perceive religion as unscientific. Atheism too speaks of something that can't be measured: the certain non-existence of the thing every human culture has sensed, longed for, believed in some form or another since the beginning of humanity. Science itself is full of things that can't be measured. The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter are examples of this: we theorize about why earth -- despite 100 billion-billion other planets like it -- appears to contain the only life in the universe. The theories include those of super-intelligent life beyond our measure, which really isn't that far intellectually from the idea of God. The article does not claim Christians are better scientists than atheists. Rather, it corrects the idea that these thinkers' religion was an incidental primitive flaw in an otherwise great mind, when in fact, these men's insights into and pioneering in their scientific fields were driven by philosophical commitments to the divine origin of the universe.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    There is a lot of common ground between religion and science, both attempt to explain and both originate from man. Religion goes one step further than science and sees itself as an end-run around all requirements for evidence by being 'self evident' and 'self proving'. Science sees limits to its power and that alone makes me more comfortable with science. To see Maxwell and contemporaries trotted out to try to prove some point in the present about these men's dedication without letting them speak for themselves (they can't, they're safely dead) is to me just as much a heresy as claiming that Johann S. Bach would have composed all his works if he had been an atheist, rather than that he took a lot of inspiration (if not most of it) from his deeply religious nature. It's really not fair to put words in the mouths of men long dead and gone, we can not know of their motivations if they had lived in the present because they didn't so all we can do is see that work within context. So I suggest that we just be grateful for the work they did, whatever their motivations were. Keep in mind that priest-natural philosopher was a pre-cursor to our current day scientist and recognize that evolution of thinking is pretty much a given taking into account the march of scientific progress (if we can call it progress, I wished that that was more clear cut but it unfortunately isn't always, perhaps in a few thousand years or so we can answer that one with clarity). So, being religious isn't a primitive flaw in anybodies mind, great or not. But it can be detrimental, especially when it counteracts the truth with great (but ultimately misplaced) authority.
- etse 12y ago
  "Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible." I am very skeptical of that. The scientific community is susceptible to politics and social competition, at least as any other community. Reproducing results (real science) is hard work and the reality of it is that scientists are entitled to unsupported beliefs, but may find it difficult/tempting to misuse their achievements or stature to champion those beliefs. "ultimately religion is very un-scientific" This is a provocative statement that would be interesting to hear more on.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    As for the science community's shortcomings: scientific theories change one funeral at the time. > This is a provocative statement that would be interesting to hear more on. HN isn't the venue for this discussion, but since you asked: I don't think that's a very provocative statement at all. Miracles, Heaven, Hell, virgin births in humans and so on (and that's just some branches of Christianity). There is no limit to the number of un-scientific things one can find in religion, either in a literal interpretation of scripture (which we are supposed to have grown above these days but which still underpins much of Christianity) as well as a lot of more permissive interpretations which still boil down to special treatment for mankind at best. My usual way of dealing with such things is to look at this picture for a minute or so: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue_Dot.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue... And to wonder why we think we're so special in gods eye that he/she/it chose to create all of this just for us. And then of course within 'us' there are those who think they are even more special in the eye of their deity. The next thing that troubles me greatly about religion is that religious people can't seem to agree on any one thing in the aggregate. It usually seems to boil down to 'I believe what most people believe where my crib was located.'. Reasoning about religion should - if it was aimed at discovering some kind of truth, and so be more scientific - converge, but divergence seems to be the norm. Science tends to converge when looked at over the longer term.
    - yawboakye 12y ago
      > Science tends to converge when looked at over the longer term. Evolution. String theory. Scientists really converges 100%. > There is no limit to the number of un-scientific things one can find in religion M-theory. String theory. 2 theories unprovable with the scientific method. So there's at least 2 un-scientific things eating at the table of (scientific) science as we speak. Some scientific scientist hold them close to their hearts, even though their very unscientific. More unscientific than miracles. > Miracles, Heaven, Hell, virgin births in humans and so on Why can't miracles happen? Basic definition of miracle is an event that cannot be predicted by observed law governing similar events. It doesn't mean miracles can't happen. Arithmetic law of addition says that $1 + $1 = $2 (and it remains so indefinitely), assuming the thief doesn't pass by. If they do, $1 + $1 will be equal to how much money they left you. It doesn't mean the law of addition is unpredictable; it means it only governs normal events.
Retra 12y ago
One cannot be the best possible scientist while maintaining a state of confusion as to what makes statements about reality true or not. Nor can you make the best possible decisions when you deny the means by which science evaluates which decisions are correct.
Kalium 12y ago
> In the last 100 years especially, religious people have grown anti-science, largely because we see science growing increasingly atheistic. If I may have a moment? I want to discuss this comment. For a very long time, many people rooted their faith in mystery. Nobody knows how the weather works, therefore God does it. That sort of thinking was very commonplace. Science has always been "atheistic" in that God has never been a coherent part of any scientific system. It's difficult to account for an uncontrollable and omnipotent force, after all. Nothing there has changed in centuries. What has changed in that science has advanced enough to pull away the mysteries that used to be attributed to God. Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God. Anything they didn't understand, that was God. Science was just something those rich eggheads did. Over time, it became possible to see the material world in which we live as comprised of matter and energy that are governed by natural laws. It was no longer necessary to see God in everything you didn't understand. The human body wasn't divinely created in its current form, we're the product of millennia of evolution. To a great many people, whose primary understanding of divinity is that of a God of the gaps, knowledge and faith are fundamentally incompatible. If they acquired knowledge, the unknowns on which their faith rests will vanish and their faith be shaken. I suppose this is a very long-winded way of saying that I don't perceive science as becoming more atheistic over time. I perceive religion as being in a slow, painful retreat from territory it never should have occupied.
- arethuza 12y ago
  “Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things.” - Hippocrates.
- cscurmudgeon 12y ago
  "God of the gaps" is one big straw man argument. Lots of religious philosophies don't even have a place for God directly acting in the world. Evolution is again a straw man argument. Lots of religions accept it. Ever hear of Gödel's rigorous ontological argument? http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.pdf http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.p... Science is the not end of it all. Science rests on logic and rational thought. What would be the scientific experiment for validating the scientific method? My point is that arguing against simple-minded religious folks is easy. But nobody has come up with any serious objections to arguments like those coming from Kurt Gödel and the like. I am not holding my breath! :)

by judah 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

You will have to take into account the times when these men lived and what was known back then vs what is known today and to acknowledge that you live today. I'm happy that you're doing what you're doing but ultimately religion is very un-scientific, which is one of the root causes why religious people tend to view science as atheistic. Those are flip sides of the same coin. It's very well possible to do good science whilst being religious. At the same time it is very well possible to do good science whilst being an atheist. Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible. Assigning correlation between religion and the ability to do science seems a bit strange, as if if Maxwell would have been an atheist he would not have been able to make the discoveries that he did. I don't buy that, but maybe someone could do a double-blind test by staffing labs in the same disciplines with devout Christians (Catholics, Protestants, Church-of-England or whatever denominations you can find enough scientists from) and similar labs with just atheists. Then maybe we could draw the kind of conclusion the article wishes for us to make. Until then I'm fine with letting people believe whatever they want and taking the fruits of their progress whatever their belief was when they did their work.

judah 12y ago
Religion speaks of something beyond measure, and this is a reason some perceive religion as unscientific. Atheism too speaks of something that can't be measured: the certain non-existence of the thing every human culture has sensed, longed for, believed in some form or another since the beginning of humanity. Science itself is full of things that can't be measured. The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter are examples of this: we theorize about why earth -- despite 100 billion-billion other planets like it -- appears to contain the only life in the universe. The theories include those of super-intelligent life beyond our measure, which really isn't that far intellectually from the idea of God. The article does not claim Christians are better scientists than atheists. Rather, it corrects the idea that these thinkers' religion was an incidental primitive flaw in an otherwise great mind, when in fact, these men's insights into and pioneering in their scientific fields were driven by philosophical commitments to the divine origin of the universe.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  There is a lot of common ground between religion and science, both attempt to explain and both originate from man. Religion goes one step further than science and sees itself as an end-run around all requirements for evidence by being 'self evident' and 'self proving'. Science sees limits to its power and that alone makes me more comfortable with science. To see Maxwell and contemporaries trotted out to try to prove some point in the present about these men's dedication without letting them speak for themselves (they can't, they're safely dead) is to me just as much a heresy as claiming that Johann S. Bach would have composed all his works if he had been an atheist, rather than that he took a lot of inspiration (if not most of it) from his deeply religious nature. It's really not fair to put words in the mouths of men long dead and gone, we can not know of their motivations if they had lived in the present because they didn't so all we can do is see that work within context. So I suggest that we just be grateful for the work they did, whatever their motivations were. Keep in mind that priest-natural philosopher was a pre-cursor to our current day scientist and recognize that evolution of thinking is pretty much a given taking into account the march of scientific progress (if we can call it progress, I wished that that was more clear cut but it unfortunately isn't always, perhaps in a few thousand years or so we can answer that one with clarity). So, being religious isn't a primitive flaw in anybodies mind, great or not. But it can be detrimental, especially when it counteracts the truth with great (but ultimately misplaced) authority.
etse 12y ago
"Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible." I am very skeptical of that. The scientific community is susceptible to politics and social competition, at least as any other community. Reproducing results (real science) is hard work and the reality of it is that scientists are entitled to unsupported beliefs, but may find it difficult/tempting to misuse their achievements or stature to champion those beliefs. "ultimately religion is very un-scientific" This is a provocative statement that would be interesting to hear more on.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  As for the science community's shortcomings: scientific theories change one funeral at the time. > This is a provocative statement that would be interesting to hear more on. HN isn't the venue for this discussion, but since you asked: I don't think that's a very provocative statement at all. Miracles, Heaven, Hell, virgin births in humans and so on (and that's just some branches of Christianity). There is no limit to the number of un-scientific things one can find in religion, either in a literal interpretation of scripture (which we are supposed to have grown above these days but which still underpins much of Christianity) as well as a lot of more permissive interpretations which still boil down to special treatment for mankind at best. My usual way of dealing with such things is to look at this picture for a minute or so: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue_Dot.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue... And to wonder why we think we're so special in gods eye that he/she/it chose to create all of this just for us. And then of course within 'us' there are those who think they are even more special in the eye of their deity. The next thing that troubles me greatly about religion is that religious people can't seem to agree on any one thing in the aggregate. It usually seems to boil down to 'I believe what most people believe where my crib was located.'. Reasoning about religion should - if it was aimed at discovering some kind of truth, and so be more scientific - converge, but divergence seems to be the norm. Science tends to converge when looked at over the longer term.
  - yawboakye 12y ago
    > Science tends to converge when looked at over the longer term. Evolution. String theory. Scientists really converges 100%. > There is no limit to the number of un-scientific things one can find in religion M-theory. String theory. 2 theories unprovable with the scientific method. So there's at least 2 un-scientific things eating at the table of (scientific) science as we speak. Some scientific scientist hold them close to their hearts, even though their very unscientific. More unscientific than miracles. > Miracles, Heaven, Hell, virgin births in humans and so on Why can't miracles happen? Basic definition of miracle is an event that cannot be predicted by observed law governing similar events. It doesn't mean miracles can't happen. Arithmetic law of addition says that $1 + $1 = $2 (and it remains so indefinitely), assuming the thief doesn't pass by. If they do, $1 + $1 will be equal to how much money they left you. It doesn't mean the law of addition is unpredictable; it means it only governs normal events.

Retra 12y ago

One cannot be the best possible scientist while maintaining a state of confusion as to what makes statements about reality true or not. Nor can you make the best possible decisions when you deny the means by which science evaluates which decisions are correct.

Kalium 12y ago

> In the last 100 years especially, religious people have grown anti-science, largely because we see science growing increasingly atheistic. If I may have a moment? I want to discuss this comment. For a very long time, many people rooted their faith in mystery. Nobody knows how the weather works, therefore God does it. That sort of thinking was very commonplace. Science has always been "atheistic" in that God has never been a coherent part of any scientific system. It's difficult to account for an uncontrollable and omnipotent force, after all. Nothing there has changed in centuries. What has changed in that science has advanced enough to pull away the mysteries that used to be attributed to God. Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God. Anything they didn't understand, that was God. Science was just something those rich eggheads did. Over time, it became possible to see the material world in which we live as comprised of matter and energy that are governed by natural laws. It was no longer necessary to see God in everything you didn't understand. The human body wasn't divinely created in its current form, we're the product of millennia of evolution. To a great many people, whose primary understanding of divinity is that of a God of the gaps, knowledge and faith are fundamentally incompatible. If they acquired knowledge, the unknowns on which their faith rests will vanish and their faith be shaken. I suppose this is a very long-winded way of saying that I don't perceive science as becoming more atheistic over time. I perceive religion as being in a slow, painful retreat from territory it never should have occupied.

arethuza 12y ago
“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things.” - Hippocrates.
cscurmudgeon 12y ago
"God of the gaps" is one big straw man argument. Lots of religious philosophies don't even have a place for God directly acting in the world. Evolution is again a straw man argument. Lots of religions accept it. Ever hear of Gödel's rigorous ontological argument? http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.pdf http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.p... Science is the not end of it all. Science rests on logic and rational thought. What would be the scientific experiment for validating the scientific method? My point is that arguing against simple-minded religious folks is easy. But nobody has come up with any serious objections to arguments like those coming from Kurt Gödel and the like. I am not holding my breath! :)