Dogma, religion and its sometimes contempt for science
So, this months topic is religion and science. Alone, you could write volumes. I love both these subjects. Taken together, what you get is a history of reaction and spite.
The issues are that deeply held beliefs spur the religious side to deny science legitimacy. The most notable moment of this was the Copernican revolution. Copernicus, through his theories, challenged the view of the world held by religion. Copernicus avoided the ire of the church, but it fell instead upon Galileo, whose works supported the view that the earth revolves around the sun. Dogma at the time held that the earth was the centre of the universe, and the evidence Galileo offered caused controversy. For this, he spent the rest of his life under house arrest at the order of the church.
This shows up the main issue. Dogma. In the film of the same name, the 13th disciple Rufus, notes “he (Jesus) said man kind got it all wrong by taking a good idea and building a belief structure on it...you can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier. People die for it, people kill for it”. Dogma and belief, at their most extreme, fight against science.
Islam and Christianity both have big proponents of biblical and koranic literalism - which is a problem. Once, a priest counted back through the bible, and discovered the world was made in 4004 BC. The earth is 6 billion years old. One of these things doesn't mesh
Yet the bible, claim some Christians is the literal, infallible word of god. It can't be wrong. Science must be. Science, they claim, is conspiracy, put forth by the devil
Well, now you have an issue. And this ties in for all things. Where creationist's accept the universe, they deny evolution. They tie themselves in knots to explain the moon, and the flood, and so on, as natural occurring events, attempting to co-opt the scientific paradigm, whilst evading its most important strictures
What are the structures of the scientific paradigm? Observation, test, result, conclusion. You learned it at school. You start with an aim. Personally, I quite like it when the aim is “I want to see what happened when you apply X to Y” but, alas, the age when you could just do this kind of science is long gone (although the ignoble awards, show productive research that often seems to be of this sort).
Then you predict something. You don't have to do this. I’m sure a lot of scientists went in not knowing. However, with so much theory about, you can often make a prediction. This means there’s theory backing it up.
Then you need a method, which is rigorous and fair, perform your experiment, or gather your samples, and then, in your results and conclusion, try to work out what it all means. Good science should go through this whole thing. A lot of time should be spent on method. A lot of time should be spent explaining your conclusions. When you’ve done that, you see how it changes your view of the world. That’s the most important key to the scientific method. It self-corrects. It changes to match the world. Nothing is set in stone, so to speak, only that we should push closer to the truth, and be willing to examine and re examine everything
So, back to religion. Many religious types feel compelled to try and co-opt this. Science like language offers a veneer or “properness” to something. Add some super script numbers, go ahead and use some solid speeds. Suggest scientific principles are at work. But this is all done with the conclusion written. The aim of the paper is to make sure prediction and conclusion match. Evidence is cherry picked. And dogma is saved
This paradigm is done for a lot of things. Religious types use it to try and deny evolution, and explain the flood. “God did it” is not good enough. It needs to be more 'sciencey'.
Homeopaths do it. So do drug companies, probably with an increasing amount of competence in hiding the shallowness of their efforts.
But whilst drug companies do it to turn a profit, the religious types seem to feel compelled to do so, to prove they are right. Its not enough to believe themselves, everyone else must believe. It must be true. Every logical fallacy, and many non-logical fallacies, are met in this effort. Appeals to authority are common (the authority is often the bible).
Science can't be true. It challenges god. The church must be in the science class room. Over the past umpteen years, there has been a bitter fight to get first creationism, and then Intelligent Design, into the science class rooms in the conservative American states.
This is because evolution (over which there was a court battle in the 1920s) is seen as godless, and wrong. If children are taught it, the literal word of the bible will be challenged. Dogma must be defended. Children must learn only the biblical way.
And the sad thing is, it needn't be this way. Religion is not for everyone. I am an atheist. But religion is not incompatible with science. God can know things, God can exist in a world of science, being the first cause, knowing everything. This doesn't require one to wash ones hand of the bible. Further more, there is the view that it was divinely inspired, but interpreted by men. Fallible and trapped by limits to their knowledge.
Science does not preclude faith. It never has. But dogmas pull has tugged many people against science. It was not enough to have faith that god set it up. That gods about in the back ground. You have to prove it to others, lest they challenge you. This kind of fight seems insecure. And its sad to watch.
Did god make the universe? I don't know. We will never know. Some questions will never get a proper answer. What I do know is that if it did make the universe, it just switched the on button. Its existence did not, can not, invalidate science. And when I'm asked to believe otherwise, I just feel saddened by the lack of reason, (in an enlightenment sense) .
By Philip Overal
