No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science.

[laptoppop]

The cover story for the November 2006 issue of Wired magazine is

The New Atheism
No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html

I think we need to be very careful to not set up current scientific thinking as a judge over everything else. I'm not saying anyone here is doing it - but its part of the discomfort I have when I feel like adherence to popular scientific theories is leading to a change in how one would understand the Scriptures. I'm not saying to throw everything out -- just to test all things and hold fast to what is good.

 

[Deamiter]

I don't think anybody's set up science to rule over everything else. Science is a tool for discovery. Atheism is a philosophical position.

We can USE science to discover new things about the universe God created. We can use philosophy to decide that God does not exist (or that God does exist for that matter).

I have never met a scientist who uses science to make philosophical arguments. These people do exist, and are generally rather vocal, but are by NO means mainstream in scientific circles!

You often hear people ask if there is any evidence for God, but NEVER do they claim that a lack of scientific evidence is proof of absence.

Note: The position, "no heaven, no hell, just science" is a philosophical position. It is not at all BASED on science, so I don't have a problem with it one bit. people are perfectly free to deny the existance of God.

Of course, I'll add that science HAS shown an old earth and the absence of a global flood... I fully understand how people could scientifically reject the Bible if they were taught that the Bible teaches that these things happened, yet the evidence in the world contradicts the ideas. Three of my closest high school friends were strong creationists and would tolerate no MENTION of any other Biblical interpretation. They all went into various sciences, and they all now reject Christ because they have been able to disprove their previous understanding of the Bible.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Science is by it's very nature a truncated domain. It only talks about a small piece of reality.

It doesn't talk about why a painting is beautiful
or why some music moves you and other does not.
it doesn't talk about beauty, or justice, or love
or any of a thousand things that make up our lives.

It is an important piece of our lives but to reduce all that is outside of science thinking it can be crammed into that box is really reductionist and wrong headed.

Dawkins is an interesting case. why should he care so passionately about religion? if it is false then it will disappear without any push from him. why should he spend such a significant part of his professional and personal life fighting something that is so wrong? that very passion betrays the fact that science is not metaphysics and that he is speaking as a metaphysician not a scientist when he talks about religion. but the question remains: why the passion? where does it come from?

 

[rmwilliamsll]

thank you for the link to the Wired article.
i sent it to my life group at church for potential discussion topic next week.

 

[Assyrian]

I remember seeing a Horizon program on BBC a few years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

These scientists had developed a helmet that could direct powerful magnetic field into the temporal lobe giving most people a sense of not being alone in the room, or religious feelings. Now I have no problem with humans being hard wired for religion. That is the way God made us.

The interesting thing is they tried it out on Richard Dawkins and he felt... nothing. Now either he is immune to the religious illusion and want to set other free too, or he is a colour blind man furiously denying the existence of pink.

 

[marshgreencohen]

science is nothing but facts.faith is everything but truth.

 

[Deamiter]

science is nothing but facts.faith is everything but truth.

Wow, two utterly nonsensical sentences.

Science uses facts to make predictions and then tests those predictions. Therefore, it is more than just facts.

Faith has a specific definition. You're right that faith does not equal truth, but is it EVERYTHING but truth?

Lets stick to the topic and try to avoid these types of barely-applicable one-shots.

 

[shernren]

I was particularly intrigued about this on page 5:

A variety of rebuttals to atheism have been tried over the years. Religious fundamentalists stand on their canonized texts and refuse to budge. The wisdom of this approach – strategically, at least – is evident when you see the awkward positions nonfundamentalists find themselves in. The most active defender of faith among scientists right now is Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. In defiance of the title, Collins never attempts to show that science offers evidence for belief. Rather, he argues only that nothing in science prohibits belief. Unsolved problems in diverse fields, along with a skepticism about knowledge in general, are used to demonstrate that a deity might not be impossible. The problem with this, for defenders of faith, is that they've implicitly accepted science as the arbiter of what is real. This leaves the atheists with the upper hand.
That's because when secular investigations take the lead, sacred doctrines collapse. There's barely a field of modern research – cosmology, biology, archaeology, anthropology, psychology – in which competing religious explanations have survived unscathed. Even the lowly humanities, which began the demolition job more than 200 years ago with textual criticism of the Bible, continue to make things difficult for believers through careful analysis of the historical origins of religious texts. While Collins and his fellow reconcilers can defend the notion of faith in the abstract, as soon as they get down to doctrine, the secular professors show up with their corrosive arguments. When it comes to concrete examples of exactly what we should believe, reason is a slippery slope, and at the bottom – well, at the bottom is atheism.
​

No way! Nothing in science prohibits belief not because science is the arbiter of what is real. Nothing in science prohibits belief precisely because science fails as an arbiter of reality in the area of faith and belief. If Francis Collins put forward a God of the Gaps argument in The Language of God (as Ken Miller did, to some extent, in Finding Darwin's God) I don't suppose it's a good representation of how science and theology can interact without conflict.

 

[Gwenyfur]

science is nothing but facts.faith is everything but truth.

wow...
all that and you said nothing ...

 

[artybloke]

Now either he is immune to the religious illusion and want to set other free too, or he is a colour blind man furiously denying the existence of pink.

Personally, I'm going for the latter. Whenever Dawkins starts talking about religion he leaves science behind, and the same would be true of Ken Miller.

I'm quite happy that science can only ever say that belief in God is "not prohibited" by science. I don't need science to tell me that John Coltrane is better than Madonna; and I don't need science to know that God is better than no-God.

Creationism is essentially no more than acting the ostrich: stick your head in the sand and wish all those nasty facts away.

 

[Deamiter]

Personally, I'm going for the latter. Whenever Dawkins starts talking about religion he leaves science behind, and the same would be true of Ken Miller.

Hmm... I'm not sure I agree. It'd be pretty darned convenient for Dawkins if he could suggest that all religious experiences are the result of some bio-chemical stimulation of a particular bit of brain tissue.

I think he probably DID feel nothing, and reported his experience accurately. Yes, he's also furiously denying the existance of God, much like a blind man denying the existance of pink, but I doubt that's why he reported feeling nothing.

 

[artybloke]

It'd be pretty darned convenient for Dawkins if he could suggest that all religious experiences are the result of some bio-chemical stimulation of a particular bit of brain tissue.

There may well be a bio-chemical component to religious experiences; in fact, I'd be surprised if there wasn't. That doesn't mean a) that that is what always causes it or b) you can't consciously or unconsciously block it out because of strongly-held beliefs like Dawkin's atheism.

 

[ScottF]

science is nothing but facts.faith is everything but truth.

I'm going to assume that since you're only 18 that you mispoke here.

 

[ScottF]

Yes, yes. Science is the end-all, be-all of everything. If science can't prove it than it must not be so.

 

[busterdog]

Hmm... I'm not sure I agree. It'd be pretty darned convenient for Dawkins if he could suggest that all religious experiences are the result of some bio-chemical stimulation of a particular bit of brain tissue.

I think he probably DID feel nothing, and reported his experience accurately. Yes, he's also furiously denying the existance of God, much like a blind man denying the existance of pink, but I doubt that's why he reported feeling nothing.

Existince of pink. Haha. Very good.

Standard academic denial based upon reducing your sample to the experience of one person, or a few at best. You can prove lots of things never happened that way.

 

[Deamiter]

Existince of pink. Haha. Very good.

Standard academic denial based upon reducing your sample to the experience of one person, or a few at best. You can prove lots of things never happened that way.

What, wait? "Standard academic denial?" It's largely us Christians who claim to have evidence for God based on the experiences of one person (ourselves). In the academic world, such things are unheard of!

You might note that Dawkins never claimed that people experience nothing -- he said that HE experienced nothing.

What you're talking about is much more common in media or politics (or advertising), but you will NEVER find a scientific paper published that concludes that one person's personal testemony is particularly conclusive!

It's one thing to claim that one person's experiences do not PROVE anything (they don't). What you just said, that they DISPROVE something is just as incorrect and equally something no scientist would claim.