01.21.09
Reconciling science and religion?
Seeing and Believing
by Jerry A. Coyne
The never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion, and why it is doomed to fail.
I tend to be critical of attempts to ‘reconcile religion and science’, but this applies only to science as current and religion in the form we find in much Christianity.
There are lots of ways of unifying the science/religion duality, but the current debate between Darwinists and creationists is almost completely barren.
Thus Coyne’s article seems somehow pointless if it can’t bring itself to see the limits of Darwinism. Coyne is clearly listed in association with the Altenberg 16, and the movement beyond the Darwin dogmas that can only be reconciled with religion by propagandists like Miller.
He must be aware that there is something problematical with Darwinian explanations.
The reconciliation of science and religion has been performed (badly perhaps) in dozen of ways from the Samkhya philosophy of ancient India with its universal materialism, to the multiple New Age versions, stretching between the absurd to the profound.
The philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer show the most promising avenue for the modern mind, predisposed to science.
But first and foremost is to give up this obsessive Darwinian scientism whose form of explanation is as bad as anything in Creationism.
Note: the debate is not between science and ‘faith’. the latter is a specialized and highly corrupted theological belief of Christians. Many discuss religion and faith as if they were synonyms, which they are not. There are many religious viewpoints, e.g. the Buddhist, that would reject faith as the basis of religion. And this in general raises the question, what is religion, and are what religionists call their religions really religion? Many spiritual sages have denounced the forms of ‘religion’ as spurious.
Scientists seem oblivious to this fact, and generally focus on the most decayed or corrupted forms of religion in decline in their attacks.
A religion such as Buddhism they would leave untouched, probably because they sense they do not understand it, or have the categories ready to approach such religions in intelligible fashion.
Note: Scientists are adamant that science can never deal with the ‘supernatural’. Fine, but is this more than an obsession with words? It would appear to be an insoluble paradox in the inadequate way that scientists approach the question.
A close reading of Kant, for example, will suggest that the issue is intractable, if not undecidable.
It is one thing to posit the supernaturalism of religious myth in its extravagance, but quite another to imply that reality must submit to universal causal explanation in the form promoted by basic science. This attitude, as Kant clearly demonstrated, makes the whole substance of human psychology a study in the supernatural, disallowing the concept of freedom, and free will, as unscientific ideas. Small wonder scientists lowball out, and end up in their batty routines attacking the Bible Belt.
Stephen P. Smith said,
January 21, 2009 at 9:20 pm
The word “bullys” comes to mind!
James said,
January 26, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Miller and Ayala are simply perplexing. I get the sense that they are probably closet Gnostics rather than Catholics. They seem troubled that the ID crowd wants to associate God with the “design” that we see in nature. I’m guessing that they consider “natural selection” to be the demiurge.