Can Science and Religion be reconciled?

And if there is nothing more to life than chemicals and laws of physics ...
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This view is called reductionism and is by its very assertion proved fallacious.This assertion cant be made except from a subjective personal space, using symbols (language for example) from culture (an intersubjective realm whose truth is value or quality). Reductionism is itself a subjective qualitative value judgement that says qualitative subjective value judgements dont matter.

There is already more. Take emotions. Even though some claim to explain them as chemicals, they are still emotions and worth having. It is all a matter of point of view and willingness to live.
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Yes its also a matter of value and quality.


Reality exists quite independent of consensus opinion.
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Does it? I dont think anyone would disagree that there is some "stuff" out there, but our knowing of it is necessarily subjective and this is a good thing because without meaning and value knowledge is useless. Empirical truth cant stand alone. Reality cant exist outside of consensus opinion because only consensus intersubjective "opinion" can provide symbols to express it and give it value.


Just to be clear on terms, for the sake of this thread we are defining religion as judeo-christian religions, correct? There are faiths that encourage scepticism, buddhism for one.

Religion and science cant exist without each other. Empirical truth must by necessity have a cultural context and an individual meaning and religion (or some belief system) is part of that context. Every religious tradition has empirical components even if only the deep biological structures of the human brain from which simiarities in myth arise (I dont mean myth in the sense of fairy tale, myth is true in its context).
The problem is reductionism. The religionist try to reduce everything to a religious context (creationism is a glaring and laughable example of this). The empiricist try to reduce everything to quantiifiable matter, which is equally stupid.


Truth is not only relative, there are different kinds of truth and they are interrelated and dependent on each other.


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A fine example of the fruits of reductionism is the discussion here on non-supernatural intellegent design. A discussion that should have by definition taken place in the realm of conciousness (design, intention etc) and subjectivity, was almost immediately waylaid by empirical reductionism and so dissolved into bickering and confusion. This is not the fault of the participants. Value, quality, and the subjective (is it any wonder that there are so many people on prozac?) have been so discredited in this culture that it may not even be possible to have an intellegient dicussion on the subject.
 
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Originally posted by m0rl0ck
This view is called reductionism and is by its very assertion proved fallacious.This assertion cant be made except from a subjective personal space, using symbols (language for example) from culture (an intersubjective realm whose truth is value or quality). Reductionism is itself a subjective qualitative value judgement that says qualitative subjective value judgements dont matter.[/i]
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Waaa?

Reductionism is the process of describing a phenomena in terms of other more 'basic' phenomena. This can be done either qualitatively or quantitatively. His assertion that 'life is nothing more than chemistry and physics' is a qualitative reductionist statement. Reductionism doesn't imply anything about qualitative or quantitative reasoning, and can make use of both.
 
Waaa? Pt. II

Value, quality, and the subjective (is it any wonder that there are so many people on prozac?) have been so discredited in this culture that it may not even be possible to have an intellegient dicussion on the subject.
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This sounds highly subjective.

It is a subject for wonder why there's a lot of Prozac use, but I'm pretty sure it's not so easily quantifiable as a lack or dismantling of value or quality or...whatever all those other words are. You been reading Zen of Motorcyle Maintenance?

Le Coq
 
Reductionism is the process of describing a phenomena in terms of other more 'basic' phenomena. This can be done either qualitatively or quantitatively.
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I intended to mean quality as a totality of features (not just objective or subjective) as in satisfiying needs, in its more wholistic sense, taking into account subjective and objective components.
Reductionism can go both ways too, whatever your bias might be for that more "basic" component, for instance "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence" was mentioned in this thread. In that book Pirsig expounds his metaphysics of "quality" reducing everything to subjective quality is also a distortion. For creationists the "basic component" is god a kind of religious reductionist distortion.




His assertion that 'life is nothing more than chemistry and physics' is a qualitative reductionist statement. Reductionism doesn't imply anything about qualitative or quantitative reasoning, and can make use of both.
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This sounds highly subjective.

It is a subject for wonder why there's a lot of Prozac use, but I'm pretty sure it's not so easily quantifiable as a lack or dismantling of value or quality or...whatever all those other words are. You been reading Zen of Motorcyle Maintenance?
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Do you think if you consistently tell people that everything they love, believe and hold dear has no meaning except as chemical and electrical processes it wont make them depressed?
Why should I not just discount everything you say and believe, after all you are nothing but a bunch of physical processes that happen to occupy the same space.
Theres nothing special or significant about you, "you" are an illusion created by bits rushing around in a bio-electrical computer. Those same processes occur all over the planet and are as common as dirt.

Depressed yet? :)




Yeah I read it. A while ago.
 
I think all of this will be cleared up once the first computers reach consciousness and show us a few things about the mathematics of the universe.

However, things are not as they appear to "the ego" however, which would like to own/consume the world. Humans are hyperintelligent rodents.
 
Do you think if you consistently tell people that everything they love, believe and hold dear has no meaning except as chemical and electrical processes it wont make them depressed?
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Well, that is reductionism, and usually the only people who really mean that are... well, I don't know. It may seem like that that is what science is saying, but nothing is just a "bunch of" its atoms. A pile of sand is mostly silicon dioxide, and so is a microchip. If you mean convincing people who are religiously inclined that they no longer have a soul... but I don't think this is what you mean, either. Your point seems to be what is the meaning of life, from the standpoint of science. Personally, I think the extraordinary (or perhaps it is merely ordinary) circumstances that have occurred in perfectly naturalistic ways to have brought about our existence is reason for awe. I don't feel that my life is meaningless because I don't believe in an afterlife. When I interact with my family and friends, there may be chemicals and molecules and other scientific principles that primitive minds can't understand, but that doesn't lessen my appreciation of it, the "quality" that I assign to it. I just don't need that "quality" to be verified by committee.
Why should I not just discount everything you say and believe, after all you are nothing but a bunch of physical processes that happen to occupy the same space.
Theres nothing special or significant about you, "you" are an illusion created by bits rushing around in a bio-electrical computer. Those same processes occur all over the planet and are as common as dirt.
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I hope you are being facetious here, but not mimicking the clumsy summation of scientific thought as was orated in the movie Signs with Mel Gibson dismissing his wife's warning as a "random" firing of neurons during her death. This is a fallacy to believe that science describes things only in terms of its parts. It is also the fallacy of an excluded middle argument to suggest that because science rejects vitalism, then its only explanation for life is "just a bunch of chemicals that somehow made its way into protoplasm." Science is looking for the principles that conduct the organization of life, but it will conclude upon a principle only when it meets rigorous observable examination by a mulitude of independent parties. In the meantime, science is not suggesting that we don't really "enjoy" things or that love and hate and that spiritual belief are not real. Those concepts should be dealt with on their own terms, just as you cannot discount scientific processes with unquantifiable arguments, such as "The bible says that homosexuals are sinners, so any discoveries of genetic justification for such behavior is therefore wrong." Science, as a descendent of philosophy, seeks to explain the world and all phenomena in naturalistic terms, without supernatural explanation. With science, humanity has successfully explained many form of mental illness as chemical processes, and has eradicated (or at least mitigated) the social and religious stigma placed on the sufferers of such maladies. Rational minds no longer fear mental illness as the work of "evil." There will, for a long time at least, be a residual fear of the unexplainable, and the fear that science will explain away not only this but such ineffable terms as God or our soul or the meaning of our individuality.

(signature omitted due to its lack of meaning)
 
Well, that is reductionism, and usually the only people who really mean that are... well, I don't know. It may seem like that that is what science is saying, but nothing is just a "bunch of" its atoms. A pile of sand is mostly silicon dioxide, and so is a microchip.
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More on the current guises in which reductionism appears in the other thread :)
But reductionism appears as a continuing subtextual basis for whatever theory is currently being used to explain thought, conciosness, and being, there is, of course necessarily an empirical component to thought and conciousness and being, but to reduce the whole to its merely empirical components is to lose meaning and distort truth. To use your term you lose the emergent qualities.

Found an interesting paper on the subject, downloadable in pdf format:

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/199.html

"Abstract: The paradigm shift from behaviorism to cognitive science has wrought many
changes in our methodologies, experimental techniques, and models of human activity.
Not the least of these changes has been the legitimation of such hidden variables as
mental processes. The cognitive science paradigm has been a swift river carrying us to
new horizons but there are now a number of major counter-currents. The positivism of
behaviorism is being replaced by the reductionism of neural networks-how do mental
processes arise out of physical cellular activity? The ontogenetic bias of both
behaviorism and cognitive science is being challenged by ethnomethodological
perspectives in which the very notion of an individual is an experimental artifact-how
do mental processes arise out of the lifeworld? Meanwhile the promise of greater
understanding of the knowledge level is being fulfilled, and operational models of human
cognition and action are being generated-how do mental processes relate to the logical
structures of overt knowledge? This paper surveys these issues both theoretically and in
terms of practical applications. It suggests that it is from the underlying tensions that the
strength of the cognitive science paradigm arises, but to harness that strength requires
much broader concepts of cognition and mental processes than are conventionally
accepted."

Its interesting that the abstract notes that "The positivism of behaviorism is being replaced by the reductionism of neural networks - how do mental processes arise out of physical cellular activity? "

and: "The ontogenetic bias of both
behaviorism and cognitive science is being challenged by ethnomethodological
perspectives in which the very notion of an individual is an experimental artifact-how
do mental processes arise out of the lifeworld?"


Which says to me that biological and neurological reductionism is being replaced by a cultural reductionist view in which the "individual is an experimental artifact" :)
So you shift the scientific perspective without having to give up the underlying reductionism :) Pretty neat trick, eh?


I hope you are being facetious here
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Yes, just trying to illustrate a point.



Science is looking for the principles that conduct the organization of life, but it will conclude upon a principle only when it meets rigorous observable examination by a mulitude of independent parties. In the meantime, science is not suggesting that we don't really "enjoy" things or that love and hate and that spiritual belief are not real.
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But that is what it ends up doing. It says thats its the ONE truth and all other truths are merely appearances with an underlying purely empirical, objectivist basis to which other truths can be reduced.
It seems to me that this culture offers two mainstream alternatives for world view, religion (more accurately judeo-christian theism) and scientism, and each is busily trying to reduce the other to its own terms.
The real problem is the notion that there has to be one truth or set of knowledge to which all other truth and knowledge must be reducible. In other words the notion of heirarchy. I dont really beleive (upon reflection) that the rejection of hierarchy is automatic synthesis, the systems theorists have rejected hierarchy and reduced everything to equal meaninglessness.
 
morlock, thanks for the link. I am reading it and finding it interesting. Cognitive science is an interest of mine. I am a biochemistry student and am considering neuroscience as a possibility for graduate studies. It seems our argument is boiling down to nature/nurture. I think the two are related, though I think the former is a function of the latter. There is an interesting article in Discover this month about a disturbing trend away from genetic thought, and away from science, a view I think you're disagreeing with. It seems to say that no matter what your parents do, you're going to turn out however your genes dictate. I believe a lot of that, but I would also like to believe that playing Bach and Black Sabbath for my kid is going to be better for him than Britney Spears.
Another point the article mentions (sorry I don't have a link at the moment) is the repulsion many have for science because people like Hitler used the idea of genetic perfection to drive his ideology (as well as a good if not equal dose of cultural mysticism). It's the repulsion people have for reductionism; someone doesn't want to be told their sadness is a chemical imbalance. People (mostly liberal intellectuals) don't like to believe that someone can be genetically stupid, unless it's someone on death row. It's a slippery slope fallacy: once we acknowledge that our success in life can depend greatly on our genes, then we might as well start building mass gas chambers. The author of this article countered that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot used the idea of absolute equality to murder millions: the bourguois (sp?), the intellectual, the people who were "more equal than others" (Vonnegut). I would argue this fear of genetic inequality, of those who will be more succesful, is greater than those who fear genetic mongrelization. Of course you will have the good judgement to understand that I'm not trying to argue that there are better "races" or "groups" who deserve success.
But to get back to the topic: To reconcile science and religion: I would argue there was never any consilience in the first place (I'm not talking about epistomology at large, which can be informed- if not altogether ruled- by religion). Religion relies, and always has relied, on visions and hierarchal authority, on faith-based (not requiring proof) knowledge. Science, as "empiricism", has tried to describe the world we can observe, with theories in terms of phenomena that we can see, or possibly see using naturalistic means. But you knew that already.

Le Coq
 
It seems our argument is boiling down to nature/nurture.
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Nature v Nurture has nothing to do with it. There just two competing flavors of reductionism.
 
All men are not created equal.

Its not related to ethnicity, religion, or any of that nazi crap. Its just the random shuffleing of genes each generation. Some get a royal flush, others get all jokers.
 
You are wrong.
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The nature arguement reduces human conciousness to genetic preprogramming.
The nuture arguement reduces it to behavoristic automata.

To get back to the subject of the thread the only way to reconcile science and religion is to reconcile the empirical and the subjective. To come up with a worldview that incorporates, includes and honors both. Then maybe religion or faith could be addressed as an intersubjective form (or some sort of objective representation) of concousness.


I started a thread on the philosophy board hoping to discuss that issue:


http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11774
 
Clockwood:

I think a better comparison is: Religion is based on spirituarlity. Science is based on materialism.
 
what is spirituality? The belief that some things are greater than you? That some things can not be understood?

what is science: The endless search for more knowledge? the belief that all things are knowable and knowledge is the path to glory?
 
Ok I thought this was a dead subject.

But since I received the e-mail of this post:

what is spirituality? The belief that some things are greater than you? That some things can not be understood?

what is science: The endless search for more knowledge? the belief that all things are knowable and knowledge is the path to glory?

1. Spirituality: in the sence of theists, yea you are right, in the sence of reality, spirituality is every experience that you have passed through, every thought you've have ever had, every emotion of that you have experienced, that which makes U you!!.

2. Science: is the enless searh for knowledge, yes, correct, the belief that all things are knowable, no that's not science, science is not a "belief" science is the "fact" that all things in physical existence are knowable. No scientist I''ve ever known has claimed that knowledge is the path to glory. What glory?
 
This is a compy of one of my other rants but it applies here

Recently where I am in America there are a bunch of people who say we need to bring God back into American life. I have one problem with that. Which God?

Would that be Allah, Yahwah, or Christ? You aren’t limited to monotheistic religions. The hindu pantheon? Hello vishnu. Or dead religions. Why should it matter if people are still paracticing it? The Roman pantheon maybe? Jupiter, Hecate, Mars, or Vulcan? Perhaps the ancient egyptian pantheon? Set, Amon Ra, Osirus, or Horus?

Perhaps some religion that we don’t even currently know about…
After all, all religions have equal validity. None of them can be proven or disproven.

Whatever god or gods exist, I think I just offended all of them. No offense intended guys
 
I dont want to end up in the third ring of hell... give me some slack. It is not fun to be encased in a glacier for all time.
 
The simple answer to the question "Can science and religion be reconciled" is yes, while at the same time understanding that no answer will satisfy everyone. I have made piece with this question by accepting the concept that "Between true science and true religion there is no conflict." I accept that God built and is in charge of all the processes that go into making the universe. Before He formed this earth He knew the beginning from the end, including the many concepts that man kind would formulate in an attempt to find answers to science and religion. This world was designed so that many questions we can ask cannot be answered, for example, the double slit experiment. The more I learn, the more questions I become capable of asking, for which I cannot get answers. My opinion is that man will always have more than enough questions to take up our short span of life, I am never bored. It is the mind or spirit that originates thought, not the brain or physical body.
 
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