In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is an alien computer which, using a program that runs for thousands of years, calculates that the answer to “life, the universe, and everything” is 42. I disagree, but there are many who would not. It is a common belief that the fundamental questions of life, the universe, etc. can be reduced down to science, to self-existant natural laws, to ideas, to numbers – in essence, to 42.
I am reminded of a Biblical account of the prophet Elijah (you can find it in I Kings 18:16-39 in your favourite translation). The nation of Israel had turned from their God, and started following the Caananite god Baal. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal, in front of all the people, to test which deity was real – the sign would be fire from heaven. The four hundred and fifty followers of Baal chanted, wailed, prayed, incanted and pleaded with their god for an entire day, yet no fire came. Then, in the evening, Elijah built an altar, had the watching people thoroughly douse it with water, and prayed a two sentance prayer. God then sent fire, which consumed the sacrifice Elijah had put on the altar, all the water, and even the very stones the altar was made of. On that day, all the people knew that this was the proven, incontrovertable truth: that Baal didn't exist, Elijah's God lived, and that Elijah's God was God. On this day, though people may mentally dance around and speak scientific incantations thick with mathematical signs and Greek letters to attempt to displace that God, and replace him with the empty idea of 42, the same is true – Elijah's God (and mine) still lives, and God still reigns.
I don't think anyone, or a least very few people who we would consider mentally ill, actually believe that the Hitchhiker's guide is literal truth.
ReplyDeleteFair enough - my point though, was not that Hitchiker's was literal truth, but more an analogy for the secular, rationalist worldview (which I believe Douglas Adams subscribed to).
ReplyDeleteI get it, and yes Douglas Adams was an atheist.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how scribing to a secular and rationalist view is any more "empty" than a religious one (not just a religious one even, you specify a Christian God). Perhaps for you personally believing in God makes you feel less empty, but that's not true of everyone.
Also, if, as facebook indicates, you are trying to "spread the word" you may want to consider not using examples from the bible. I understand it fits with the point you're trying to make, but it's easy for those who do not believe to dismiss it.
I'd like to address a few points before I get to the crux of what I think your argument is.
ReplyDeleteFirst, just for banter's sake, let's look at the idea that there even are answers (regardless of the source - religion, philosophy, or science) to these questions: as Douglas Adams himself asserted, the existence of these answers presupposes the existence of the questions. Can questions like this even exist? I don't know. Certainly, "Why are we here" is a question, but is it (again, as Adams alluded to) a valid question?
Why are we here? What do you mean, in New Brunswick? No. Why do we exist? Many reasons. It's too broad a question certainly to have one answer. This was the irony behind 42: "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?" "That's not a question!"
Secondly, let's follow your argument to it's logical conclusion: where science fails to answer questions, religion is there to fill the gaps (I have an insightful blog post scheduled in a few weeks talking about this, actually). First off, religion is a no more qualified school of thought to answer these "unanswerable" questions than any other (philosophy, existentialism, etc). Even if it was, any particular religion is no more qualified than any others to answer the questions; answering them with an analysis and interpretation of the Bible is no more or less valid than that of Norse mythological texts.
Also, consider the following: There is a dichotomy of mutually exclusive scenarios when science fails to answer questions: either science has no answer or science has no answer yet. I will not hazard to assert which is more likely, but will point to history where in alarming frequency whenever someone has placed a limitation on what science can achieve, scientists have been quick to prove these assertions wrong (see: sound barrier, lighter-than-air crafts, sailing the northwest passage, etc).
Thirdly, the assertion that science will be unable to "reduce" these questions to simplistic answers or expressions of natural laws is insinuating that by applying scientific analysis towards these questions in some way reduces them.
I hope you don't consider this an attack; I'm just trying to apply some critical thinking to your post. You'll have to forgive me if I seem rather skeptical of religion at the moment, as we have only just this afternoon watched _Star Trek V: The Final Frontier_ and I'm feeling weary of Vulcans bearing philosophy.
wary, not weary :)
ReplyDeleteAbout "empty", and the limits of science: its about the reason behind things - science and scientific reason are fairly good tools for answering "What is reality?", explaining how things work (I say science and reason here because those are typically the tools used in secular analysis - if you eliminate the supernatural, by definition all you have left is the natural, the domain of all things scientific). But when it comes down to it, if science is the only way to get at what is real, at some point it becomes its own motivation. "Why do the laws of nature hold?" is a question that science can only answer "Because they do." (if science explains them with other natural laws, the original question remains) - that natural laws hold, and can be thus enumerated and understood is the fundamental assumption of science, and, as such, a boundary on its powers. The religious person may well answer "Because God wills it." to that last question (and probably "I don't know, I'm not God" to the subsequent question of "Why does God will it?"). Now, likely these answers will be unsatisfying if one does not want to appeal to the existence of God, but they are answers, unlike the null answer of "Because". That is what I mean by empty.
ReplyDeleteAs for using the Bible, one could speak about Douglas Adams without referencing any of his written works, but it would be an incomplete story (Richard Dawkins would probably be a better example here, as his writing more directly reflects his views on important issues, but I'll keep with the theme I've been going with). It would be something akin to talk about God without referencing the Bible, something Christians all too often do, for the exact reasons Ashley indicated.
A minor bit about "reducing" questions - I meant it in the mathematical sense - in many ancient societies, the sun was a god of great power and majesty, who sailed around the earth in a golden chariot - I'm not advocating these views, but science has reduced (again, in the sense of mathematical proof) description of the sun to an application of the principles of nuclear fusion and gravitation.
Interesting, though concerning the basic laws of nature, I have to disagree. Again, I refer to the fact that because we don't have an answer now, does not mean we will never have one.
ReplyDeleteYes, to the religious person, the answer might be "due to God." It is their opinion, after all. However, it is not an answer in the scientific sense (as you pointed out, religion and myth are concerned with the supernatural while science with the natural. It seems unjust to apply supernaturality to a scientific question). Science is not bound by these assumptions that natural laws hold just because, it is motivated by them to further explore. Though inductively we may never achieve a state where all natural laws are explained, we can continue to advance so that more of them are explained (even if they rely on newly formed natural laws).
Personally, I find the idea of "because" as an answer to be, while not fulfilling, certainly not empty. It questions us, drives us to find out more and more until we can answer the question. It stirs within me the lust for answers that will never be satisfied, so I find it in this perspective to be fulfilling.
If or when we do have an explanations for fundamental laws through science, religion must cede this territory, as was your example of the explanation of the sun. Because we are continuously advancing our scientific knowledge, it could be argued that the realm that religion reigns over is getting smaller and smaller.
It seems like you've given a lot of thought to this subject. I enjoyed reading your response and found it to be a stimulating challenge to my opinions (I enjoy having my beliefs challenged in this manner. It is all too often that the people who disagree with me resort to pejorative remarks concerning my character). It's given me something to think about, and I what I really draw from this is that what we fill these gaps in science with is a matter of opinion; I fill it with future scientific answers (much like a unbound variable in functional programming) while others chose their own explanation.
But why your God?
ReplyDeleteAssume science doesn't have all the answers and can never answer certain questions. I have no problem accepting that there there could be something "supernatural" that science can never touch. I can't presume to know what it is, however. Yes, you have the Bible to tell you that it is God. I have several pagan books which advocate the existence of a goddess and a very different god. Science fails and so we must have religion, why your religion? Why not Bertrand Russull's giant orbiting teapot?
Are you saying that science shouldn't have tried to explain the sun? Of course you aren't saying that, but then why can't science be applied to creation, death, or the existence of God? The sun god was every bit as real to those early worshipers as God is today to Christians. Should science have simply respected their beliefs and not investigated fusion?
Your original example from the Bible is easily dismissed because I don't perceive it as true. As an allegory it doesn't work, "don't pray to one deity pray to another" doesn't equate with "science isn't the answer, pray to a deity".
Also, "Because" and "Because God said so" are pretty similar. I think the only answer to "Why does God say so?" is "Because".
Ash raises some valid points, and I too much prefer discourse to perjury. In that spirit, the sense in which I see things in is that science, in its basic form, is the discovery of rules governing the natural world. There may be many of these which it cannot explain, but there is still the implicit assumption that the natural world is governed by rules. (If I may propose an example - time is somewhat of a tricky thing to explain scientifically - if discovery of Star Trek-esque tachyon fields is ever made to explain time, science will be left with the question of explaining tachyon fields - thus, science has not answered the question of "Why do natural laws hold?", it has just added another layer of natural laws). Within the bounds of scientific reason, then, I cannot argue any answer to that question, as the only method of science to explain natural law (as a body) is natural law, and to appeal to anything outside of science (the supernatural) is to violate this fundamental assumption of science that the world is governed by discoverable laws (as a non-scientific answer implies that science is not governed by natural laws, and, by transitivity, neither is the world).
ReplyDeleteAs to "why my God?", well, as I've just stated, I can't prove my answer to that question in any sort of scientific context. As scientific data is one of the few (or perhaps only) input to rationality widely accepted, as anyone can observe and test it (God could miraculously lights things on fire again, but even that would likely fall into Ash's category of "things science hasn't explained yet"), I am at a loss for 100% objective, convincing arguments (in the event such arguments existed, someone else would have thought of them before anyway, and we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the truth of my position would be self-evident). What I hope to do with this blog, and will expand on somewhat in future posts, is explain why I do believe what I do, freed of the constraint of making what I am saying answer to science, because that is an impossibility anyway.
I'm not asking for a scientific reason why you believe in your God, I'm asking for a reason. I've said I can accept your view of science, but how do you pick what religion you believe in? It doesn't have to be a reason I find acceptable, just a reason.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is likely that it's what you were raised, and find it to be appealing now. If you were raised pagan you might be pagan now. Do you, or do you not believe your God is true and the pagan goddess is fiction?
The debate isn't science vs Christianity, it's science vs religion. Even if you convince someone that your points about science are correct why does that help your argument for Christianity? It doesn't, it may argue for a belief in something beyond science, some sort of a God, but not a Christian God specifically.
This is beyond the comments, but if in future posts you could address why your belief in a Christian God is more valid than a belief in a goddess, or, as you've argued, a "belief" in no god, I'd appreciate it.
Ashley, you raise some very valid questions, which, as suggested, I will attempt to address in future posts (I mean, I need some source of ongoing blog content :-) ). The short form is that it has a lot to do with personal experience (which, I will admit, is highly subjective, and can likely also be explained by any number of psychological phenomena I don't know the names for), and a lot to do with grace - the mechanism by which, against all reason, I am not damned, in this life or any afterlife you care to believe in (but a little bit more about that on Tuesday - I'm staggering my posts a bit to avoid burnout and tromping on the existing discussion).
ReplyDeletewhere is this new post we were promised....
ReplyDelete