h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'Amongst many problems I have with the faith system, especially the Abrahmic type is its pretensions to absolutism. Not only is the existance of God insisted upon without evidence, this insistance is held with 'certainty'.'

You bring to mind, Effers, a little something I noticed in my evening reading last night:

'Nor is this the only instance, in which the belief and knowledge of the child are superseded by the more rational ignorance of the man.'

Edward Gibbon was speaking of his own intellectual development, but I think his words can also be taken as a metaphor of the development of human knowledge.

Oh. The Gibbon bit was from 'Memoirs of My Life and Writings': http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext04/gbnlw10.htm

Interesting question, Dogster. I've hinted at it myself, but not expressed it as clearly.

But I would argue that the broadly philosophical questions about what science is, and about truth and knowledge etc are probably more fundamental here than the actual science.

Noggin

Hi Dogster,

How do we know 'real' science from 'junk' science?

In a word, testable predictions (OK, two words). Of course, you need to be sufficiently scientifically literate to know that's what to look for. Independence is also important (would you get your info on tobacco safety from a cigarette company?)

But, frankly, look at all the sciencey-sounding stuff around today. Cosmetics are a particular example. Marketing people see science as a 'brand' that it's advantageous to be associated with. So we get beta-globulins in our shampoo and lipids in our moisturiser - not because we need those things, but because chemical names = science.

Gif

Hi Mikey,

Not sure what you meant by that - if you think it's unfairly biased (always a risk, since I'm the only one who can edit it!), let me know what you'd like to see in it. It's intended to encourage debate, not stifle it.

Gif

Gif, would the word 'falsifiable' fill the bill for a single word distinguishing actual science from the junk variety?

Gif

I'd be very interested for a 'survey' of scientists from the last 200 years,
to see how many followed any Abrahamic faith.

"I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world."
Albert Einstein

Ye.s The dice comment is, of course, referring to Einstein's legendary disagreement with proponents quantum theory, specifically the probabilistic nature of events they thought occurred on the scale of the very small. This was an anathema to Einstein and the dice quote is what speaks to that. However, the fleeting reference he makes to to god follows in the long tradition of Einstein's religious references implying the metaphorical use of the word god to mean the sum total of known laws of the universe.


This becomes clear if we consider some of his other pronouncements on the subject.


"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"I have never imputed to nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we comprehend only very imperfectly and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. "

"The idea of a personal god is quite alien to me and seems even naive."

Albert Einstein


Now, Warner, you've previously identified yourself to me as a deist - no personal god - so in this impenetrable conflation of christianity and isalm that you appertain to, is this how you conceive of 'god' in a strict einsteinian sense?

My sense is that you do not having previous described oxygen as having purpose and god as energy - but I look forward to you explaining in your own words what you think.

Einstein said a lot more than that:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355323,00.html

Gif

Ah - Gif to the rescue - I was looking for a reference to Einstein's letters I could cite, rather than quotations in abstraction.

Ironic you found that of faux news!

In any case whatever Einstein believed is irrelevant. He believed that E=mc2 and that light would be deflected by gravity - both of which can be (and have been) tested by experiment and found to be consistent with the results of those experiments. Whether he believed in god or not - and it's quite clear he didn't - has no relevance to whether there is a god or not. Claiming that he did as part of your own argument is a common fallacy known as 'appeal to authority'. However some of his beliefs (prayer has no effect, faith healing is no better than placebo) also can and have been tested by experiment and again found to be consistent with the results of those experiments.

F

>> Whether he believed in god or not - and it's quite clear he didn't - has no relevance to whether there is a god or not. <<

I don't dispute that at all, folks !


I am certainly interested in 'the great scientists' backgrounds, as I propose there is
a correlation between 'religious knowledge' and mankind's progress in science.

Did anyone happen to catch the first part of Channel 4's History of Christianity series last night? That particular episode was Christianity from a Jewish perpective and, I thought, very interesting. The next episode looks at the links between Church and State from Roman times and whether that was a good or bad thing for each side. It has the makings of a very good series indeed (although it could still go either way!). The first episode showed how the apostle Paul really cemented the idea of Jesus as son of God and developed Christianity into a religion as opposed to a Jewish sect, how the Christian view of Jews became very distorted and discussed whether Jesus should be considered a charismatic rabbi rather than the leader/creator of a new religion.

OK, this is a VERY sweeping generalisation, and I have so many reservations I hesitate to post this, but Warner has asked several times. I would say roughly:

Pre 900 AD: most 'scientists' were pagan
900 - 1600 AD: most 'scientists' were Islamic
1600 - 1900 AD: most scientists were Christian
Since 1900 AD: there is a mixture of atheist, Christian and 'other'

There are, of course, individual exceptions, but that's the broad strokes of my worldview.

Gif

Hi PP,

Long time no see.

Gif

*waves to Gif*

Have been scandalously busy and every time I saw a comment I wanted to respond to it was about 50 posts back and had already been dealt with so I just left it. Should be better from now on tho

>>I propose there is
a correlation between 'religious knowledge' and mankind's progress in science.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you. For example...if we look at the Muslim greats such as Avicenna, it's clear that they were motivated to investigate what they saw as a divine plan. And then there's Newton who was, by any assessment, a religious crackpot.

*However* there is also a strong case to be made that religion *interferes* with science. Averroes, for example, had to bend over backwards to spin his work so that it appeared to align with orthodox thinking. Just think how much further he might have gone if he'd just been allowed to get on with it.

And then there's Galileo, of course.

The real diveregence between religious and scientific thinking, though, can be traced back to Empiricism. From Francis Bacon and through to the Enlightenment, thinkers came to realise that the only basis for knowledge was observation of the material world. The Received Wisdom of religion was no longer intellectually tenable. But then - many Ancient Greek philosophers had known that.

And by the time we got to Darwin, it was a straight choice:
'Look - is there evidence for god in the evolution of species or is there not?'

Progress in science is entirely concerned with scientific theories, which is the only relevance in that context.

Cult of personality can be interesting though in an entirely different context to look at the way they are used politically, to push certain ideologies for reasons of power and control in a sociological context, and the light they cast on understanding how different ideologies rise and fall through time. That doco sounds interesting pp, but I didn't see it.

Nog,

"But I would argue that the broadly philosophical questions about what science is, and about truth and knowledge etc are probably more fundamental here than the actual science."

I'm not saying the philosophical questions aren't important, but perhaps we sometimes focus on them too exclusively on this thread.

Gif,

"How do we know 'real' science from 'junk' science?"

Oh no, let's not get distracted with that. We've all been over that territory a thousand times (in this thread alone). Suffice it to say, falsifiability doesn't sum it up in one word (cf. Lakatos, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Putnam, Rorty, etc.).

Ed,

Don't forget the principle of least action - one of the most useful principles in physics and initially justified in religious terms (perfection of God, etc.).