Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
Your answers are fine, I'm not looking for a debate or anything, just kicking some thoughts around. I believe that in the 19th century and probably earlier, there was some hope or vision that science and religion would ultimately meet and that meeting would occur when more knowledge was uncovered about the nature and origins of life. Are you familiar with this or do you have anything to say about it?
Doesn't a decision have to be made that science and religion are two completely isolated and separate fields. That is not necessarily the natural order of things although that seems to be how things are in today's world.
If science insists that it is completely separate, then all that you have written is correct. Even there, much of today's science seems to be intruding into religion and doing so mainly to invalidate the underpinnings of religion. Religion will then fire back. The best example of this is the dispute over whether "intelligent design" is present in this universe and whether it had anything to do with it's origin.
Pitting "intelligent design" versus "evolution" is ridiculous to me. Obviously, those two terms are not mutually exclusive. If there is intelligent design, then the design could include evolution within it. It's not necessarily an either / or problem.
Good points about the differences between science and math. I just threw the math in to illustrate how things could be different than what science is stating.
Lakey
I agree with you that there will be enough information, in fact I think there has been enough information for centuries to extrapolate the spirit.
But in the 19th century science took another direction.
Prior to that, religion and science were considered to be about the same thing.
Science was called natural philosophy and considered another arm of the parallel path to knowledge and truth.
But in the early-middle part of the 19th century the word "science" came into being. The separation came about for two reasons:
Philosophically, the idea was to seperate and use empirical proof and scientific method as the standard of evidence--that is induction rather than deduction.
And the other reason was the rise of anti-Catholicism in Great Britain and especially the United States.
This is when several scientific journals and publications began publishing false stories and tales of showing Catholicism as anti-science.
For example, the legend about Galileo's trial that he was standing up for science and reason against the anti-science of the pope, when in fact, the pope was being more scientific than Galileo. It was Galileo who was being authoritarian.
Unfortunately, this legend still prevails and is taught today.
Another reason that science took the direction of induction rather than deduction was an effort to settle the age-old problem of knowledge.
While science, I think, was correct in seperating the two functionally, the effort was done over the definitions of knowledge, truth, and reality.
Religiously, knowledge prior to the Enlightenment was thought to come from sacred text. The job of natural philosophers (scientist) was to explain phenomenon within the context of scacred text.
Well, it is easy to see what is wrong with that.
But the problem for science was the dilemma that since Plato, knowledge was considered to be universal, necessary, and certain.
By necessary here is the philosophical definition of necessary which means that it must be so deductively.
For example, if Bill is taller than Joe, and Joe is taller than Mary, then it is necessarily true--it must be--that Bill is taller than Mary.
By universal means that it must be true everywhere; if it is true in Athens then it is true in Egypt.
What met this criteria for Plato was geometry.
Rectangular buildings may be different in Athens than those in Egypt, but the concept of a rectangle was the same. Therefore it is universal.
The problem that has always haunted science is that it uses empirical data.
Empirical data is always particular instead of universal, and empirical data is always probable instead of necesary, and empirical data is always contingent on the circumstances and never universal.
It comes down to the difference between induction and deduction.
Then there is the aspect of Logos. By logos is meant the underlying principle behind things.
In most religions the Logos is expressed in their scriptures.
Science needed a logos to be legitimate so what passes for logos in science is the scientific method.
This Idea goes back to Sir Francis Bacon's "Novo Organum" which means a new method.
Novo means "new" and Organum refers to Aristotle's work on logic and syllogisms. Organum means system or method.
This is why Bacon is often called the Father of modern science.
So a consistent method was to serve as a logos itself. But it relied on induction.
There is nothing wrong with science and induction, but it can never prove anything metaphysical simply because it relies on empirical evidence.
There is nothing wrong with the wisdom of religious text.
But one has to keep in mind that it is all about interpretation of age-old truths and not about the material world.
Science is interpretation of reality. Religion is interpretation of the logos.
Science uses induction and is particular, probable, and contingent in order to interpret phenomenon.
Religion uses exegesis of canonical texts to understand the logos.
Those who use religion to interpret reality are making the same mistake as those who make science and the scientific method their logos.
Science will never prove anything meta-physical.
Religion will never explain physical phenomenon.
The Anabaptist Jacque