A guest post by Canadian Atheist.
Firstly, I’d like to thank Bruce Gerencser for giving me this opportunity to write a guest post on his blog, and to do so anonymously. The only reason I retain my anonymity is because there are family members who are not aware I am no longer religious and would probably be hurt by finding out on the internet if they stumbled across this post at some point in the future. Who am I? I am a Canadian scientist. I study human physiology. I was a Christian for roughly the first three decades of my life before finding my way to atheism. My path to atheism is not the topic of this post, as I have written about it elsewhere. If Bruce is willing, a link can be provided to my own blog writings. But I volunteered to write a guest post about what science is, why it is often misunderstood, and why it is so important. The value of science seems to be under deliberate attack in some Western nations (notably the United States and Canada), and scientific findings are often rejected or rebuked when they don’t fit with certain agendas. I’d like to write about why that is dangerous to society.
What is Science?
Science is a process that methodically gathers knowledge about the natural world. Science leads us to knowledge about the world around us, and how it works. We all make observations about the world around us all the time, but the scientific method is careful not to jump to conclusions based on those observations until they are testable repeatedly and independently. This means that, for scientific findings to be valid, anyone with the right training and resources must be able to repeat the experiments and consistently come out with the same results. Science, though it is conducted by biased and imperfect humans, must be conducted in an unbiased way. Scientists have to learn to put aside their biases and preconceived beliefs before they conduct their experiments. Bias can very easily cause someone to misinterpret the results. This is the fundamental difference between the scientific approach and the approach taken by most people in society. If you have a favorite political party or sports team, you are likely to cheer for them no matter how they perform. Even if your sports team never wins, you may still convince yourself they are the best team. The difference between the scientific method and what I would call the political or religious method is best explained by the following illustration:
In the scientific method, all the evidence on a particular topic is examined. Then the conclusions are drawn from the findings of the evidence regardless of whether you like the conclusions or not. Conversely, in the political or religious method, the conclusion is generally formed first and then evidence is gathered to support that conclusion or theory. When it seems like science has been wrong about something, usually it is because scientists have not properly taken their bias out of the methods and therefore have misinterpreted their findings. A very important part of science is also acknowledging when you don’t have enough data to form a conclusion. (More on that later in relation to scientists being wrong all the time).
Deliberate Discrediting of Science and Scientists
There are two classic examples in recent years of how good science has been rejected because it conflicts with an agenda: 1) evolution; and 2) climate change. Evolution is a process that explains how biological diversity arises by change in the inherited genotype (genetic make-up of the organism) and phenotype (the observable characteristics) through generations of offspring. The word “overwhelming” is often used to describe the amount of evidence supporting evolution. There is no doubt that evolution happens in biology, and that humans evolved from more primitive primate species (not monkeys!). Evolution is as established and verifiable as many other part of science, such as gravity, germ theory, etc. I don’t need to list through all the evidence in favor of evolution here, that information is available to anyone who honestly wants to know the truth. However, evolution goes directly against the concept that God created the species (including humans) as they are, and that humans are somehow special among the many species of animals. Therefore, those people who are unable to let go of their belief that God exists and that he created the species as they are, must reject evolution, try to discredit the science behind it, and even teach children known falsehoods in science classes, all because the truth of evolution challenges their pre-conceived conclusion that God created humans as we are. They are following the second method in the diagram above.
Another example is climate change. The global climate is a complex phenomenon. There have been large variations and cycles in the earth’s climate throughout its history. Cycling between ice ages and more warm periods seems to be a natural occurrence. However, in the past decades, the earth’s climate has been changing much more rapidly than ever before. This has been occurring in concert with an increase in carbon dioxide levels higher than they have been in roughly 100 million years. The rate of change is completely out of whack with the natural cycles that have happened in the past, and corresponds to the recent centuries of industrialization of our society and our massive increase in use of fossil fuels (which give off carbon dioxide). Again, there is no doubt in science about the facts of climate change. Though the process of climate change is not as established as evolution, there is no doubt that human activity is dramatically affecting the climate on our planet. But, to alter this process would take some very, very significant changes in all our lifestyles. (This is the part where climate change deniers roll their eyes and claim that environmentalists would have us all living in caves). One of the huge changes that would have to take place is a shift towards cleaner energy sources, and there are very, very wealthy and powerful people who make all their money by having you and I use up fossil fuels. They have an agenda, and they don’t care about the science. Therefore, the science of climate change has been very deliberately attacked by organized and well-funded groups with special interest.
Both of these (evolution and climate change) are great examples of the political and religious process of having an agenda or a conclusion, and then going out and looking for evidence to support your agenda, rather than forming your conclusions based on all the evidence. Sadly, many people have been led to believe exactly the opposite: that scientists have an agenda with evolution and climate change and that they are making it all up to support their agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Don’t Scientists Have an Agenda Too?
The short answer is no. Scientists are human of course, so they all have biases and are capable of making mistakes. But, the scientific method is specifically designed to remove human bias, errors, and agendas. The whole point of the scientific method is to discover without bias. Yes, some scientists have an agenda. Yes, some scientists do take money from a funding agency that wants to prove they are right more than they want to discover the real truth about something (think pharmaceutical companies). But, the vast majority of scientists deliberately try to remove bias from their work, look for the honest answer regardless of what they want the answer to be, and when they do have their findings, they present them publicly for others to review and criticize to ensure they are valid findings. That is the way good science is conducted in research institutions, and the vast majority of the time it works to uncover a lot of knowledge about the world around us.
If you get into a disagreement or argument with a scientist about his or her particular area of expertise, then one of two things is likely to happen. Firstly, and much more likely, you are wrong and are not accepting the evidence that the scientist is using to back up their position. (A simple example would be having an argument with a physicist about whether the earth is round or flat. You are wrong. They are right. They are right because they have based their position on the evidence). Or, secondly, you are right and the scientist is wrong because they have either left the scientific method of examining only the evidence, or they have over-extended themselves beyond what the evidence tells them. (An example of this would be if a physicist tells you that we know we are in the only universe in existence. We don’t have enough evidence to support that claim, and if a scientist claimed that fact, then they have forgotten not to extend their conclusions beyond the evidence).
Why Do Scientists Seem So Arrogant?
In short, because they are right! Remember, when they are doing their job properly, scientists only form their conclusions based on evidence and facts and limit their conclusions when they don’t have enough evidence. Therefore, when they do draw a conclusion about something, it is very, very likely to be correct. You’ll notice that it is very hard to win an argument with someone when they do this. Try to take the position in an argument that the sky is not blue, or that gravity does not exist and see how you do. If you knew nothing about gravity, you might think a physicist seemed arrogant for being so adamant that they are right about gravity. But, they are only adamant because the evidence overwhelmingly supports their position. If you base your arguments on evidence and are careful not to overextend your position beyond the evidence, then you will always be right, simple as that. Of course, most scientists have extensive knowledge on one specific topic that is far greater than the average person. Therefore, when you argue with them on that one topic, they are always right and you are always wrong (assuming they base their argument in evidence). This can seem like arrogance.
Of course, in reality many scientists do overextend themselves beyond the evidence and make claims that are not supported. Then they are just being arrogant.
Aren’t Scientists Wrong All the Time?
Scientific findings are often corrected as we learn more about the natural world. Sometimes scientists discover something and then realize down the road that their discovery was not quite right after all. But, that is not a good reason to reject science whenever it conflicts with your particular preferences, and to explain it away by saying that scientists are often wrong anyway. The scientific method gradually produces knowledge and facts about nature, but one experiment might not immediately provide all the answers. For example, if you want to know whether drinking aspartame has negative effects on pregnant women, you don’t want to draw your conclusions after one experiment. After many experiments by many different scientists, we may discover the truth about that question. But each experiment by itself tends to give an incomplete picture. The important thing in understanding science is to distinguish between the findings that are preliminary and those that are overwhelmingly supported. If you read in the news about a study that found that eating seven carrots a day will reduce your risk of cancer by 36%, then you can likely assume that it is a preliminary finding. Much more research needs to be done to establish the actual benefits of a certain number of carrots per day. But, if you read a textbook on evolution, you would be wrong to roll your eyes and think that this is a preliminary finding. Over 150 years of scientific research in many different fields (geology, biology, genetics, microbiology, etc.) all lead to the same conclusions about evolution.
It is easy and tempting to look back over time and claim that scientists have been wrong about so much. You could look back in history and claim that scientists first thought the earth was flat and the sun went around the earth and so on. But, most scientific claims have a degree of uncertainty to them. (Statistics dictates that certainty is not possible in any one scientific experiment. Most scientific experiments are set up statistically so that the likelihood of misinterpreting the results are roughly 1 in 20. But that does not mean that the chances of science being wrong on well established findings are 1 in 20. For example, any single experiment on tobacco smoking leading to cancer will have a 1 in 20 chance of being wrong. But the chances that smoking does not cause cancer are much, much less than 1 in 20, almost infinitely smaller.) That is why scientists have to be careful to say that the evidence supports their findings, given what we know so far but that there may be a lot more to the whole story. Scientific findings have to be interpreted with a great deal of humility about what we still don’t know about nature. Anytime a scientist conducts one experiment and then claims to know the truth about that phenomenon, they are probably being hasty and arrogant. Only over time, with careful and unbiased repetition of results, can we state things to be true with a very high level of certainty.
Usually, when science has turned out to be “wrong”, it is in fact a case of a scientists having drawn a conclusion before there is enough evidence to support it, so that when enough evidence does come to light their conclusions don’t hold up. In ancient times, a true scientist would not have made assumptions about the earth being flat, but instead should have said: “We don’t have enough data yet to know what shape the earth is.” This is the approach modern scientists take on many unknown issues surrounding things like dark matter, and the exact origins of the universe. Since we don’t have enough data yet, we have to be careful not to draw too many conclusions. Sadly, this acknowledgement is often exploited by the religious with a statement that God must fill in the gaps in knowledge, or that since science can’t explain everything about the origin of the universe, God must have created it.
Can You Be A Scientist and A Christian at the Same Time?
It is possible, but very uncommon. In my time as a scientist, I’ve met a very few scientists who are religious. The vast majority of those have grown up in a culture and family of religion that they have just continued with in their life as an adult. When they go to work each day and conduct experiments in science, they almost always set aside their religion and just work as a scientist. To work as a scientist and keep your firmly entrenched Christian beliefs in the forefront of your mind would be in conflict because science requires that we set aside our personal biases. If your personal bias is that God created the world and is ultimately responsible for how everything works, then you’re unlikely to be very good at interpreting your scientific findings very objectively. In my experience, the vast majority of scientists are not religious. Most of them, if asked, would probably admit to agnosticism since there is no sure way of knowing whether a god exists or not. The best answer I’ve heard on this was from my high school chemistry teacher. When asked if he believes in God, he replied: “You define God for me, and then I’ll tell you whether I believe in your definition.”
Are Science and Religion in Opposition?
This is an age-old argument. Carl Sagan’s fictional book Contact has a great debate on this topic. Everyone seems to have a different point of view on whether science and religion can co-exist. My position (which I am not saying is the only correct one), is that the two are in conflict. The whole point of this post has been to show that the scientific method is one that forms a conclusion only after examining the evidence. The religious method is the opposite: you hold a belief (or have faith) and then look at the world and find things that support that belief in God. If you always stick to the scientific method, I am confident you’ll never find a reason to even bring religion into the conversation. In my mind, everything in the world is explained naturally with no need for the supernatural. It was science that ultimately helped relieve me of my religious beliefs. After a long time of studying science I finally realized that the level of scrutiny I demanded of myself for my religious beliefs were completely out of whack with the level of scrutiny for everything else in my life. I lived an evidence-based life, always being careful to critique what politicians and others claimed against what the evidence actually stated, but when it came to religion for some reason I just accepted what the Bible said about God without ever questioning it. Eventually I overcame that inconsistency in my life and left Christianity behind, so it is not surprising that my particular point of view is that science and religion are not just incompatible but are in direct opposition to one another.
I wrote at the beginning that: “for scientific findings to be valid, anyone with the right training and resources must be able to repeat the experiments and come out with the same results.” The beauty of science, therefore, is that it is freely available for anyone and everyone. No one can come along and claim to have knowledge that is not accessible to you. No one can claim that they know better than you, and you should just trust what they say without independently verifying that knowledge. You will notice that this is in direct opposition to the religious approach to knowledge by revelation. The Bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross and came to life again a few days later. But this is not independently verifiable. You cannot test this claim. You must rely on someone else’s description of that event in order to believe it. This is exactly the opposite of the scientific approach. While you may have to rely on scientist’s description on things that are very complicated for you to understand, nothing is stopping you from going and getting trained in that field of science and then conducting your own experiments to find out for yourself it they are correct. If you do that, no honest scientist will ever tell you: “Yes, but I have superior knowledge and findings in my experiment, so I’m still right.”
Why Do We Need Science Anyway?
The way science is conducted is changing rapidly in universities and research institutions. Governments are focusing funding towards things that they think are important and ignoring or actively discrediting the science that they think it either unimportant or that goes against their political agenda. This is not the way science is supposed to work. Science is a process of discovery, but you often don’t know what you are going to discover. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries in history were made more or less by accident when a scientist was actually looking for something else. When Alexander Fleming stumbled upon penicillin in 1928, he did so by accident. He wasn’t even studying antibiotics at all. Yet, that accidental discovery changed all of our lives for the better, probably more than any other medical discovery in the 20th Century. Imagine if governments had shut down Fleming because they didn’t feel his relatively obscure scientific research was contributing to society. The point is, you never know where the most important scientific discoveries are going to come from. So, trying to focus on curing cancer while stopping the study of sea-slugs would be a big mistake because ultimately the cure for cancer could lie in knowledge gained by studying sea slugs. When you limit the process of discovery, you limit the discoveries you will make.
The other very important reason that science is important in society relates back to the image above of the scientific process. If everyone took an evidence-based approach to life’s decisions, we’d have a much better world. There would be far fewer (if any) wars and governments would be forced to serve the best interests of the population not of the party. The scientific method teaches us to take a humble and open-minded approach to life. Don’t go into things assuming you know the answer before you begin. Stick to your conclusions if the evidence supports it, even if everyone else says you are wrong. But, do admit when you are wrong. These are the hallmarks of a good scientist, but most of us don’t act this way when engaging in politics, marriages, friendships, conversations, and so on.
Summary: Why Is Science Relevant to a Discussion About Religion & Atheism?
What does science have to do with religion? Isn’t religion outside the realm of science? Doesn’t religion require faith, which doesn’t involve science? Well, science is all about basing conclusions on evidence. If there is no evidence for something, then it probably isn’t reality. Therefore science is very relevant to the discussion on religion because there is no objective evidence for God. If there was a God and if there was evidence for God, scientists would be the first people lining up to tell the world all about it. Discovering that God exists would be the single greatest scientific discovery in history, which any scientist would be glad to get credit for, if only it were true. The reason scientists do not generally agree that God exists is not because of some agenda or some grand anti-religious conspiracy. No, the reason science does not support the existence of God is simply because there is no evidence to support that claim. All the claims of the existence of God (or gods) are based entirely on personal experience. All the personal experiences that are recorded in the Bible are examples of exactly the opposite process of discovery in science: they are not reproducible, they are not supported by evidence that anyone can observe, and they are not carefully controlled observations by people trained to be unbiased in their interpretations. This is where the conversation between believers and scientists can start to go in circles with believers claiming that God is outside the ability of science to detect and therefore does not require evidence, and with scientists claiming that nothing is outside the ability of science to detect and therefore God must not exist since there is no evidence for God.
I’ll conclude with a statement and a challenge. My statement is this: “Everything that exists is explainable by science, given enough time and resources.” I state this because my position is that there is only the natural world. There is no supernatural. Since science provides answers to the natural world, science has the answer for everything. My challenge is this: “Come up with a question, for which there is a definite answer, that science is not capable of providing an answer with a reasonable level of certainty..”
Good summary of the scientific method. The more I learn, the less I’m sure of things in the political and religious circles. I’ve recently been thinking that I’m ready finally to no longer associate with any political party. Somehow religious affiliation was easier to let go than political affiliation.
This was a super essay that really explained science versus faith quite well. Thanks for sharing.
This was a very well-written post. It had excellent information and was concise while dealing with a difficult topic to fully explain. Well done, and thanks for the information. As a science teacher in a Christian school, a lot of what is in the textbook bothers me because I know that the conclusions as stated are not what the evidence supports. I like the example of the chem teacher’s response to religious questions. Thanks for the article.
I can certainly agree with you concerning the large part of your post, and enjoyed considering your premise.
I would differ in thinking that all knowledge can be wholly defined by the scientific method, or by reason alone.
Also, science is incapable of answering deeper questions concerning the nature or purpose of reality. It can give us weapons of mass destruction, as well as a possibility of the cure for cancer.
It seems to me that philosophical atheism totally closes itself off from knowledge that does not conform to materialism and naturalism. I find it limiting.
Also, I want to add that many people of faith feel that there are good arguments pointing toward the existence of a creator. They have not all simply formed a conclusion without careful thought and research. I’m sure this is true for many in the political realm as well.
Rebecca.
Rebecca.
Thanks for your comment. In response to your comment about science being incapable of answering “deeper” questions concerning the nature or purpose of reality, that is an example of something that either science can indeed answer or for which there is no definitive answer. For example, if you ask a question such as “what is my purpose in life?”, then the scientific answer to that question is to reproduce and propogate the species. If that is not a satisfying answer for you, and you want to know the deeper meaning of life, then I would argue there is no answer and that is why science does not provide one. But to me that is not a limitation of science, but rather a case of asking a question for which there is no answer. A more simple example I like to think of is asking science to answer the question: “Which colour is better, red or blue?” Science cannot answer that question, not because science is limited, but because the question doesn’t have a definitive answer. As I wrote in the post, I don’t think that rejecting “knowledge” that does not conform to the natural world is limiting, I think it is the definition of science. Once you open up knowledge beyond the realm of the natural world, then pretty much anyone’s ideas are valid, even if they can’t back them up with evidence, which defeats the whole point of scientific discovery.
I would also agree that there are many good arguments pointing towards the existence of a creator. But an argument is not evidence and science is based in evidence. To date there is no evidence for God and therefore there is no reason to believe he exists.
Canadian Atheist
Thanks Canadian Atheist.
I also want to ask if you ever had a chance to read some stuff considering this whole God question by scientists who are Christian like Dr. Francis Collins, and the physicist, John Polkinghorne. Dr. Polkinghorne is also an Anglican priest.
Rebecca.
I find that when I read anything by a successful scientist who is a Christian, when they talk about their Christian faith they tend to completely suspend any scientific approach to their thought. It is a strange situation because you have the occasional scientist like Collins who has been successful at scientific discoveries, which requires a career of all of the careful unbiased evidence gathering invovled in the scientific method I’ve described above. And yet, when it comes to discussing matters of God they tend to just throw out that unbiased, rational throught process and religion without evidence, something they would be appalled if a colleague did within science.
As an example, I think it was Collins who was hiking and saw a waterfall in three parts and immediately felt convicted that there was a God in a trilogy (Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit), something which is just an idea that popped into his head with no unbiased thought, no evidence, no scientific approach whatsoever. If someone walked into Collins’ lab, looked at three test tubes and immediately proclaimed that the human genome comes in a trilogy, Collins would ridicule them for not applying the scientific method.
So, as I say above, almost every religious scientist I know of has simply suspended their scientific approach when it comes to religion. To me, this is not an argument that religion is outside the realm of science, but merely and illustration of how easily and readily people will embrace religion without any reason or evidence just because it feels good or comforting or right to do so.
Have to look at his book, “The Language of God.” It contains some pretty deep thinking and reasoning based on various observations by cosmologists. At a certain point, definitely outside my knowledge and expertise.
Rebecca.
Again, my understanding of Collins’ position is that he is using process number 2 in my image above. Rather than simply looking at the evidence and drawing a conclusion, he is rather assuming that there is a God and then trying to use his vast scientific knowledge to make his model of God fit with what we know about science. It is simply a modern day version of what the church was forced through at the time of Galileo and Darwin when people were forced to remodel their view of God based on major scientific discoveries.
But, my whole point in my post above is that there is simply no reason to even begin to conclude that there is a God. To start with that assumption and then go looking for scientific evidence that fits it is exactly the non-scientific approach I’m describing.
Canadian Atheist, I think it is deeper than this. In part, I do want to share that I think that we can not put God in a test tube and empirically prove his existence. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean that I’m willing as a Christian, to throw science and reason under the bus, Canadian, and just accept any seemingly incredulous claim that comes along. I don’t think following Jesus Christ means to check our minds at the church door.
I do think that God does reveal Himself to many people through experience in ways that cannot be replicated. Probably, there were many things going on in Collin’s life and thinking that led up to that conversion at the waterfall. It was probably like the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Canadian, recently I read a book co-authored by the former atheist, Dr. Anthony Flew. He was a well known philosopher and apologist for atheism for many decades, former taught at the University of Keele, and Oxford. Before his death, Dr. Flew left atheism, and came to the conviction that there was a creator. What persuaded him quite strongly, and has also impacted Collin’s thinking is the Anthropic Principle. In a nutshell,, our universe is uniquely tuned to give rise to human life. Cosmologists have identified at least fifteen physical constants from the speed of light to the force of gravity whose values current theory is unable to predict. The chance that these constants would take on the values needed to sustain complex life forms is nearly infinitesimal. It’s as if in a sense the universe knew we were coming. ( The Big Bang, itself, begs the question of what came before.) The universe is not eternal.
Collins and Flew both concluded that there are three options to explain in this.
. We are incredibly lucky. There are multiple universes which mitigate the odds.( But, of course, there is no real evidence for this). Or, the precise tuning of all the physical constants and physical laws to make intelligent life possible is no accident, but reflects purposeful design, and the actions of a creator.
Of course, this is just one of many arguments that that are interesting to consider. None will be fool proof. Ultimately, I think there is human choice involved as well as cognitive bias, and God impacts people’s lives in differing ways.
But, let’s be honest, if folks believe that all religion is to some degree toxic as well as an enemy of free thought, and science, that they are more free as non-theists, who would want to be Christian in the first place. I would certainly feel the same way.
It’s like the chickens being open,and trying to seek out the fox.
Rebecca.
Without meaning any disrespect, I have always found the “fine tuning” theory completely laughable. Life exists, therefore the universe must be capable of supporting it. To then claim that many constants had to be “perfectly tuned” to allow this to happen is to look at it in reverse. The universe must be capable of supporting life because we do exist.
The best analogy I have heard is this: one cold evening it is raining. In the morning you go outside and notice a puddle of ice has formed in a little hollow in the ground. You pull the ice out of the hollow and are amazed to see that the shape of the ice matches perfectly to the shape of the hollow in the ground. You show it to a friend and proclaim: “There must be a god, because otherwise what are the chances that this ice would fit this hollow so perfecty?” But, in reality, the ice must fit the hollow exactly because that is the nature of water, gravity, and ice formation. Just the same with life. To state that it is amazing that life exists in this universe is to not understand that the universe came first and then life appeared in the only possible form that could work in the universe. But the fine tuning theory seems to go about it the other way around and assume that the nature of life existed first, and then the universe just happened to be formed to allow that life to exist. This is reverse thinking.
It seems rather more complex than this to me, Canadian. But, I think we will have to agree to disagree. Thanks again for this discussion and for sharing your time with me. Also, hopes and prayers that you will be able to come out to your family, and able to have these kinds of discussions with them also.
Also, I’ve looked over your blog and appreciate your concern for world peace, and living sustainably, two passions of mine as well.
“Blessed are the peacemakers..”
Rebecca.
Thank you for your thoughts, and let me preface this by saying I always appreciate when I can communicate with someone who has opposing views and still have a civil and respectful conversation.
I have no problem agreeing to disagree, but it is hard not to take it as a bit of condescention when someone says things are more complex or deeper than that. I don’t see anything complex or deep about people’s perceived experiences with God. I find them to be very personal, even convincing, but not particularly deep or complex. To be honest, even though I’m sure you don’t mean it this way, it always sounds to me as a way of just saying that God is outside of science once someone runs into the problem of no evidence for God.
In the end, as I say in my original post, I think that is what it all boils down to in the end. People either believe that everything is within the natural world and therefore in the realm of science or they don’t. Whichever side of that line one happens to fall on, in my experience, discussion is unlikely to sway someone one way or the other. The best we can hope for is a respectful understanding of the other’s point of view, which I think we have achieved here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Canadian Atheist, for your article and being willing to present your ideas in a format that they can be scrutinized and discussed. I have 3 responses.
1. The idea that all religious belief starts with a conclusion and looks for evidence to support it is false. There may be some who do that and if those are the ones you wish to confront, so be it, but there are others who do not take that route. An example is an atheist who adopts theism. As an atheist, the conclusion he was operating from was “there is no god.” Then something, some kind of evidence, convinced him to accept a different conclusion. Now, you may disagree with his interpretation of the evidence and the line of thought that leads him to his new conclusion, but still he did follow the evidence and reach a new conclusion.
2. Regarding your closing challenge: “Come up with a question, for which there is a definite answer, that science is not capable of providing an answer with a reasonable level of certainty..” There are events in life that make significant impact which beg for an answer to “why?” The scientific method cannot give a definite answer. Here is a simple example. Several years ago, my family went on a camping trip in the Colorado mountains. On the way, my daughter, who was about 10 -12 years old, was sitting beside me in the pickup. Suddenly she asked me which pedal was the brake and which was the clutch. We weren’t discussing the operation of a vehicle; she just asked out of the blue. A few hours later we arrived at a potential campsite, stopped the pickup and looked out. We decided to get out and look around. My daughter decided to stay in the pickup. My wife, son, and I were walking around a few minutes when the pickup began to roll forward on the sloping ground. Several things could result: one of us could be hit by the vehicle, the vehicle could slam into a tree, the pickup with my daughter still in it could go over the ledge that was 30 – 40 feet ahead. Since my daughter had asked the question, she was able to get on the brake. Apparently when we stopped and sat looking around, I had shifted into neutral and didn’t put it in gear or set the brake when I got out. This series of events had a significant impact, perhaps even saving someone’s life. The scientific method cannot explain why that happened.
3. The whole point of your article seems to be that the only way to know anything real is by way of the scientific method. If I’ve missed your point, please correct me. The statement “the only way to know anything real is by way of the scientific method” is itself a truth statement. It’s an assertion of reality. If the only way to know anything real is by way of the scientific method, then that statement must be required to meet the criterion. The assertion must be reached and verified by way of the scientific method. Please provide a description of the scientific research which proves that the scientific method is the only way to know anything is real.
Thank you Michael for your comments and questions.
1. Clearly I would disagree with your point about evidence, and also about what evidence is. To my knowledge, no one has ever come up with scientific evidence for the existence of a deity (upon which religious belief must be based). You talk of an atheist who sees some evidence to lead them to theism, and I would say that that person has not seen evidence at all, but some personal or other experience. People often talk about evidence that converts people to a religion, but when pressed they can’t actually produce anything resembling scientific evidence. I’m not disagreeing with the interpretation of the evidence, I’m disagreeing that it is evidence to begin with. As I’ve said, the whole point of the scientific method is that it is repeatable by others. That is what distinguishes it from personal experience, hallucinations, biases, et cetera.
2. One word: coincidence. You had a coincidence, that is all. They happen all the time. The human brain is naturally very supersticious. When something like that happens, we attribute it to some reason. There is none. Your daughter happened to ask a question out of curiosity, as children do, and then later she applied her new knowledge to a situation, as children do. Since the potential consequences were dire, and the averted catostrophe was hugely beneficial to you, it seemed supernatural to you, it wasn’t. So the question of why this happened, is an example of a question for which there is no definitive answer. There is no reason it happened, it just happened.
3. I’m having a very hard time comprehending what you are saying here, and i’m not clear on where I wrote: “the only way to know anything real is by way of the scientific method”. But, in short, the scientific method verifies knowledge carefully, objectively, and repeatably.
Thanks for your response, Canadian Atheist. Can I call you CA, for short?
1. I think you are displaying your bias when you state “I would say that that person has not seen evidence at all, but some personal or other experience.” Since he did not come to the same conclusion as you, then he must not have had real evidence? Unless you, CA, know everything there is, so there can’t be any evidence you’re not aware of, and you interpret all evidence perfectly – you’re not saying you’re infallible are you? (There is a god, and, oh no, he’s Canadian!
) My point is that some people don’t start at a pre-conceived conclusion, but do follow some kind of evidence and reach a conclusion that there is a god.
2. Coincidence? That’s not an answer for why, but maybe for how. At any rate, what evidence did you examine and repeat to come to the conclusion that it was coincidence? “It just happened,” you say. How do you know it just happened? Did you repeat the process – drive into the mountains with your daughter, wait for her to ask about the brake and clutch, and, without planning it, leave the vehicle in neutral, get out, watch the truck roll toward you, and breathe a sigh of relief when your daughter pressed the brake? You did say in your original post “for scientific findings to be valid, anyone with the right training and resources must be able to repeat the experiments and consistently come out with the same results.” The scientific method cannot explain whether a series of events was or was not a coincidence. (By the way, I never said that what happened “seemed supernatural.”)
3. That was my summary of what I think you were saying with your article. I’m sorry – didn’t mean to imply it was your statement. Your statement is “Everything that exists is explainable by science…” Also, you say “the scientific method verifies knowledge.” Take either one of those statements – you’re saying that it is a fact, a reality, a truth that can be known. It – the fact that everything that exists is explainable by science – exists. I’m saying that if that’s true, then you have to verify it with the scientific method; you have to verify the scientific method with the scientific method. So I’m asking you, without starting at the conclusion, to provide a description of the scientific research which proves that the statement “everything that exists is explainable by science” is true.
My point is that the scientific method is not the only of knowing. It is a way of knowing a lot of things, and it is important. But it is limited (all ways of knowing are limited). There are aspects of reality that cannot be known by the scientific method.
When you state that all ways of knowing are limited, this reminds me of something that Kant said in his “Critique of Pure Reason.” He asks the question, “How do we know that our perception of reality corresponds to reality itself?”
I think we have to be aware that reality has many dimensions so there are various ways of knowing. Also, I believe all of us actually function by various ways of knowing.
And lo and behold, Rebecca, the answer to your question is once again: science. We know that our perception of reality corresponds to reality itself because of science and evidence. As soon as you claim something as reality, I can ask you for your evidence that your perception is reality. If you can produce repeatable, objective evidence that anyone can observe, then we know it is reality. (Or else we know everyone who is obseving it is hallucinating or schizophrenic). That is the whole point of evidence. Think of how do we know if the reality perceived by any great scientist of the past (or present) corresponds to actual reality? We know this because of evidence. If Newton or Einstein perceived things differently, then their version of reality wouldn’t have corresponded, observably, with reality every time since.
1. You seem to be using the word evidence in a way that is exactly contrary to what I wrote about in my post. Evidence is freely available to anyone and everyone, so long as they have the resources available. You can, in theory, go split an atom just like any nuclear physicist can. You can go and fly to the moon on a rocket if only you have enough money and some engineers. You can take antibiotics and find that they cure your infection just as they cure someone else’s. The reason I state that I don’t agree it is evidence that leads to a conversion to theism is that it is exactly the opposite. It is personal experience because it is not available to everyone. If someone converts to a religion because of something they experience and they claim it is evidence, then my first question is: “Show me the evidence.” They are always able to talk about the experience, but never able to produce or reproduce the evidence. It is not the case that it isn’t evidence just because I decide it isn’t, that is the whole point of my post: science examines objective, repeatable evidence. So, for someone to effectively say: “I’ve had an experience that convinced me there is a god, but I can’t show you this experience or reproduce it, and you can’t experience it as well”, then they cannot claim it to be evidence.
2. You are right, I have not conducted an experiment on that scenario. But, what do you expect would happen if I did repeat that scenario 100 times (with different people)? Sometimes (probably very occasionally) the girl would step on the brake, and sometimes she wouldn’t. I say it just happened, because I take your word for it that this event occurred. But, just because it happened doesn’t mean there is a “greater” reason why it happened. In one sense I agree that coincidence is not an explanation for why it happened, if you are looking for some “greater” meaning to the question why it happened. When you ask for some greater meaning to the situation, and ask science to provide it for you, you are approaching the same type of question that I wrote about in the post: “Which is a better color, red or blue?” There is no answer to that question. But, my answer about a child simply putting into action something she learned is a reasonable explanation for why it happened.
3. I’m not sure I still understand your point here. You ask me to use the scientific method to verify the scientific method. You are getting into the subject of research statistics which verifies that the findings of a scientific experiment are valid, that the findings are not just chance. As I wrote, in most experiments the probability of the results just being chance are about 1 in 20 or 5%. Does the scientific method sometimes yield knowledge that is incorrect? Yes. But, the scientific method, over repeated experiments, statistically yields knowledge that is extremely likely to be true, so likely that we can take it as truth. In short, statistically, each time you run an experiment you reduce the probability that the findings are chance. So, if you run one experiment you have a 5% probability that your conclusions are incorrect. After running the experiment 100 times, that number has reduced so small as to be negligible.
Your last sentence is where we clearly disagree. You write: “But [science] is limited (all ways of knowing are limited). There are aspects of reality that cannot be known by the scientific method.”
I completely disagree. Science has no limits in acquiring knowledge. That is the main thesis of my original post. Science is a method for acquiring knowledge about the natural world. Since we have never discovered anything but the natural world, we can safely conclude that science is the method for acquiring knowledge about everything.
1. You began your article saying that religion always begins with the conclusion then tries to find evidence to support it, while science first gathers evidence then comes to a conclusion. I contend that this is a false analysis of some who have religious belief; not everyone who has religious belief begins at the conclusion. Antony Flew explained his acceptance of theism:
“the evidential situation of natural (as opposed to revealed) theology has been transformed in the more than fifty years since Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism. ” (Letter From Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology’, Philosophy Now, @ http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm )
” My own commitment then as a philosopher who was also a religious unbeliever was and remains that of Plato’s Socrates: ‘We must follow the argument wherever it leads.” (Ibid)
“It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.” (cf. http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/100ScientistsAd.pdf, http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/100scientists0929.htm)
“I think that the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries. . . I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.” (My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: An Exclusive Interview with Former British Atheist Professor Antony Flew, http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/flew-interview.pdf)
No mention of an “experience”.
2. You’re answer focuses on only a single aspect of the series of events – the girl steps on the brake. If you attempted to repeat the entire scenario without planning it out 100 times, I doubt that it would be repeated at all. Science cannot reproduce the “coincidence” of the entire series nor provide an explanation of the events. This illustrates my point: science is limited.
3. We’re not even on the same page here. I’m not asking how statistically often the scientific method works in a specific experiment. I’m asking for scientific proof that there is nothing that science cannot know. To say that science has never discovered anything but the natural world is only proof that science reveals the natural world. It doesn’t prove that there’s nothing else.
Yes, we disagree. And that’s okay. Thanks for the conversation.
I agree that disagreement is fine and can be left alone, but at the same time the whole point of these conversations is to make sure one understands each other properly. I don’t think that is yet the case.
With regards to point 1. Perhaps I overstated the point when I say that religion always begins with a conclusion. I contend that it usually does, and that it almost always begins with some preconceived notion that does not stem from evidence. However, you have raised another scenario that I did leave out in my original post and that is the god of the gaps notion. When there is seemingly no explanation yet for everything, people (including scientists sometimes) are tempted to leave the unexplained or the incredible up to god. When the natural explanation for something seems incomplete or insufficient, many people assume that the only explanation is a supernatural one. This has happened over and over in history, and over and over science has filled in the gaps as it advances. So, yes there may be cases where someone does not begin with a definitive conclusion, but they do start to fill in the unexplained without evidence. The basic concept is the same. Christian scientists tend to make this mistake all the time.
I think we understand one another on point 2, but we clearly disagree. Even if the event was repeated a million times and the girl had only stepped on the brakes the one time it makes no difference to my case. It was an event that is physically possible and plausible, it requires no greater explanation. Michael Jordan once won a championship on the final shot of his career. Why did that happen? No particular reason, it just happened. As unlikely as it was, and as unlikely as it would be to reproduce, it is physically possible and plausible. Scientific explanations for things don’t mean that they have to be reproduced on your whim in order to be true. Something might only be reproducible once in a billion chances, it can still be scientific. Our mind is just biased to want to see an explanation when something very unusual happens in our lives. Your situation is very much like someone who wins a lotto. They might be tempted to ask: “Why did this happen to me?” There must be some reason. But, the only reason it happened to them is because they bought a lotto ticket and their numbers happened to come up. Yet, you’d have a hard time reproducing it by buying another lottery ticket. Nevertheless, the odds of buying a lotto ticket are calculable and predictable scientifically, just as I would suggest your experience is if it were studied scientifically.
I understand the god of the gaps idea. There are other gap-fillers as well: the devil of the gaps, the ghost of the gaps, the ancient aliens of the gaps. There’s also the scientific phenomenon of the gaps. It’s called hypothesis. Scientists do it all the time – something is not fully explainable by the scientific evidence so a hypothesis (maybe several) is proposed, such as the universe started with the Big Bang or the first living organism occurred by chance. Some of the hypotheses are right and some are wrong. Trying to fill the gaps is just part of our attempts to understand reality. In this way science is no different than other methods of knowing. I do appreciate that you are willing to accept the fact that not everyone who has religious belief begins with the conclusion.
I’m not sure you do understand my point 2. You keep focusing on only one aspect of a series of events – girl steps on brake. There’s much more to it than that. Science cannot prove or disprove that the entire series is a random coincidence. As for Michael Jordan’s shot, I can explain it – it was designed, planned, intended, and carried out. The meaning? A world championship. And the lottery ticket – again someone intended to buy a ticket and they took action to make it happen; they had no control over the outcome but it was still a deliberate design and action. The example of my experience – no one involved had any intention or plan for any of that to happen.
But to me the most important issue in our discussion is my point 3 – there is no scientific proof that the scientific method is the only way to know what’s real. I repeat what I said before: to say that science has never discovered anything but the natural world is only proof that science reveals the natural world. It doesn’t prove that there’s nothing else. We use other ways of knowing all the time, like personal experience, eyewitness testimony, historical reporting, etc. Each way of knowing has it’s own limits, applications, and level of reliability. Science is one way of knowing.
This comment belongs to Canadian Atheist.
You state: “In this way science is not different than other methods of knowing.” No, I’m afraid that is completely inaccurate. Scientists do form hypotheses when they begin a research experiment and then they either accept or reject the hypothesis based on the results. Rejecting they hypothesis also advances knowledge as it rules out one factor. But, the god of the gaps is not a hypothesis, it is simply plucking an idea out of thin air because you have idea what the answer is. As I’ve said, since there is no evidence pointing towards anything supernatural or any god, then to say that god fills in the gaps in knowledge nicely is a random statement not based in science. As I wrote in my post, in that situation a scientist would say “I don’t know the answer yet” rather than simply hypothesizing with ideas. For example, when scientists did not know how the universe began, the Big Bang was not just someone’s random idea that they came up with and which then happened to be correct. It was a hypothesis formed gradually as evidence arose to lead scientists in that direction. For a long while before that point, scientists did not know how the universe began, and admitted so (at least the honest and unbiased ones). So, again, science in this way is the opposite of the religious approach of filling in the gaps.
I think I do understand your second point, but we simply see it differently. I agree, the Michael Jordan and lotto examples involved some intent where your example did not. But, that is a minor discrepancy. I could easily come up with another example where no intent is involved, such as someone being hit by lightning randomly while in a group of people and wondering why they were the one hit by the lightning. I just don’t see why you seem to think there is some reason why this event happened. It just happened. Anyone who has kids sees this sort of thing all the time when they repeat or act upon knowledge seemingly beyond their abilities. In your example the consequences were potentially dire, so it seems amazing and impossible without some reason for it to happen. Again, our minds are biased to being superstitious when unlikely events happen in our lives.
Although I feel you dismissed my point on statistics, I think it’s relevant to this point. Statistics is what shows us that science is giving us the truth rather than just some false conclusion based on observations that are not necessarily causal. You are right, science discovers the natural world so it cannot disprove that there is something more than the natural world. However, that is to go about things backwards, because to then assume that there is a supernatural world since science can’t disprove it would be illogical. This is where atheists often bring in the concept of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Since science cannot disprove that the world isn’t run by an Invisible Pink Unicorn, it would not be logical to then assume that it exists. It is technically possible that there is an Invisible Pink Unicorn who hides all evidence of her existence from the natural world, but it is extremely unlikely. This is exactly the same as the statement that science cannot disprove the supernatural world, but the existence of it is extremely unlikely. This is an important point, because religious or non-scientific people often say at this point something along the lines of: “Ah-ha, so science can’t disprove God, so he likely exists.” While the first part of that statement is true, the second part is not.
I see this conversation as really just a few detailed examples of what I talked about in my original post about the scientific method. To me all three points ultimately collapse into one, which is that when there is no scientific evidence readily available, then there must be some greater (perhaps supernatural) explanation which science is not capable of giving. Lack of a scientific explanation for something does not open the door for some other explanation. Either there is no scientific explanation because the experiments haven’t been done yet (e.g. How many universes are there?), or there is no scientific explanation possible because there is no answer to the question (e.g. Is red or blue a better color?). Either way, saying that something outside the natural world is the explanation is to jump to a conclusion without evidence, exactly what my original post was all about pointing out as a non-scientific approach. Another commenter on here (Rebecca) has made somewhat of the same point that there is something “deeper” or “greater” than scientific evidence. The problem is, there’s no offer of what this other, non-scientifically acquired knowledge is.
In conclusion, I think your argument (and that of many who either don’t understand science or dispute its ability to uncover all knowledge) is defeated by a lack of evidence. Without meaning to put words in your mouth, what I hear you saying is that there are other ways of acquiring knowledge, yet you are unable to provide an example of knowledge that is acquired through some non-scientific means. It always is simply a claim that science can’t explain it, therefore the knowledge falls outside of science and the natural world. But the mistake is in not realizing that no alternative is ever provided. You conclude with “science is one way of knowing”, yet I don’t see you providing any knowledge that has been established in any other way. Originally I challenged: “Come up with a question, for which there is a definite answer, that science is not capable of providing an answer with a reasonable level of certainty,” Let me re-phrase it to this argument: “Come up with some established knowledge which science could not have provided.”
No, I’m not saying that if science cannot disprove something then it must exist, like your invisible pink unicorn or a god (I haven’t tried to prove or even allude anything about a god.) I’m saying that if science cannot disprove something, that does not mean it doesn’t exist. But since, for you, science is the only way of knowing anything, that can’t be true. You’ve circled the wagons so tightly that nothing else can enter. I offered 3 other ways of knowing: personal experience (this is how I know my wife loves me), eyewitness testimony (this is how many court cases are decided), and historical reporting (this is how we know people like Plato existed). These are not “testable repeatedly and independently.”
OK, you have given me at least one specific example of knowledge, that your wife loves you, that you claim is only knowable through personal experience and is not testable repeatedly and independently. This is a great example of how often people misunderstand science because I think most people would agree with you that this is outside the realm of science, but it is not. I’ll address why I disagree with you.
Firstly, your claim that your wife loves you is not actually established knowledge, it is your opinion. I’m sure you would understand and agree that many people in the past have been utterly convinced that someone loves them, only to find out they were wrong. But, if we assume you are correct and your wife does love you, then this knowledge is absolutely independently and repeatably testable. If your wife loves you, chemicals in her brain will be different and regions of her brain will be more active when she is thinking about you. This is easily testable. An example would be functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which measures blood flow to different brain regions when someone is stimulated with different questions or thoughts. Another example of a testable observation (though less reliable than fMRI) would be a polygraph (lie-detector test). Yet another example would be things like dopamine levels in her brain when she is thinking about you. So, the knowledge of your wife’s love for you is well within the ability of science to measure and discern, and every qualified scientist who tested your wife in this way would come to the same result. People often think that “love” is something magical or spiritual, when in fact it is simply a physiological, emotional, or psychological state, all of which are very much within the realm of science.
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Many, many court cases in the past have involved a wrongly convicted person who was then vindicated by science such as DNA testing. If an eyewitness testifies that they saw Joe murder Jane, then that is not an established piece of knowledge, it is a testimony. Just because a court establishes something as knowledge of fact does not make it so.
Historical reporting is also very unreliable. Read two different accounts of the same event and you will get two different version of what happened. It is just another version of eyewitness testimony that is written down and stored over time. Science never lies when it comes to reporting history and it can report much more on history than any eyewitness ever could. Only by science are we able to discern what happened millions of years ago, which no eyewitness can do. So again, a historical account is not established knowledge, it is someone’s opinion of what happened, which is often very inaccurate.
Well, maybe it depends when the person is tested. I deeply love my husband, but I think there are those times when I might fail that test. LOL
CA, thanks for your discussion of these issues. I think we’ve reached a stopping point. You believe science is the only way to know reality and will answer from that perspective. I believe there are additional ways of knowing and will answer from that perspective. We could keep going back and forth but I’m not sure it would be very profitable. Again, thanks, and peace to you.