The greatest threat to rationality… « the headspace collective

headspacebecky

02:59:43 pm on April 22, 2008 | # |

There is a live debate tonight, discussing ”Is religion a threat to rationality and science?” http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2275308,00.html being held between Sir Robert Winston and Prof Daniel Dennett - its being podcasted. A couple of choice quotes from both sides of the table: “Religion may make many people better, but it is preventing them from being as good as they could be”. “Both religion and science are expressions of man’s uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous.”

I studied physics, which I guess was supposed to make be better equipped to grapple with this debate…I always found it interesting that people I talked to either wanted to seperate rationality and religion as far apart as they could possibly go, or to look at them as inextricably linked. I think I fall on the latter, so never had much problem reconciling my religion with my subject- maybe its easier with Physics as so many concepts stem from theory? As to whether people would be ‘better’ without religion, I don’t know.

Anyone else have musings on the metaphysical?

Comments

katalice 3:17 pm on 22 April, 2008 | #

Both seek to explain existence. Religion says from God and the scientist says where does God come from. Scientists say currently from strings, p-branes or n-branes etc in higher dimensions (ie string theory) or some form of supersymetry etc. Before that it was quarks, strangeness and charm or atoms etc. But its all the same as you still have to explain where strings or higher dimension etc come from or why there is a particular number etc. Same thing with the many universe idea etc so effectively the paradox is the same in both cases. Difference being science claims to be subservient to logic where as God doesn’t so God can have his cake and eat it where as science can’t :-)
rich w 10:45 am on 25 April, 2008 | #

rather than respond on theme i have been thinking about something a bit different but that feels the same on the inside of my head.

i get annoyed when people say its philosophically more true to not believe in god than to believe in god. i think thats stupid because, when you get right down to the root of it, belief in god a binary decision (there is a god/there isnt a god) for which we all completely lack the perspective to state as fact either way. we can talk from our experiences/knowledge/science but as katalice elloquently points out, at the very bottom you are left with something that we cannot say for sure. we lack the perspective. we need faith. faith in a god or faith in not a god.

ok.

so if i lack the perspective to decide absolutely on the presence or non-presence of god, many say, i will be agnostic. that position allows me to be philosophically the truest. i do not know if there is a god or not.

BACK OFF i scream (slightly too loudly)

agnosticism doesnt exist in practice.
even if im philosophically agnostic i either need to live practically as if there were a god (like thomas who continued to meet with the disciples even though he doubted) or live practically as if there wasnt a god (like an awfull lot of people). i need to be behaviourally-athiestic or behaviourally-theistic. but neither of these descisions are philosophically truer (they cant be becasue we lack the needed perspective)

HOWEVER

im prepared to accept that its SIMPLER to be behaviuourally-athiest because thats the flow of society at large (in the same way it was simpler to be behaviourally-christian 100 years ago).

also behavioural-atheism is philosophically simpler becasue believing in a god demands you start deciding what he is like and what that means for how we make the macro and micro decisions of our lives. and im sure lots of us can testify that that is quite a trixy process even with our carpenter striding the pathway in front of us showing what humanity can be if only we begin to walk with the swagger god created us for.

but who ever had their wildest dreams comprised of a simple life?