Science has been put forward (at least in the classical Western mind-set) as the most effective way to understand the natural world. Although science is often faulted for being incomplete, or inadequate to the task of explaining all of our experience, it has a unique place in our culture - it explains our world, and allows us to develop effective technologies in a way that magic and speculative philosophy never has.
For example, though someone may completely ignore their health, play the lottery, read their horoscope, believe in ghosts (all indications of magical thinking)– they still get on an airplane (the fruit of science). They don’t understand Bernoulli's principle, so it may as well be imps holding the plane up as a difference in air pressure. The fact that no one rode in airplanes even 100 years ago (or used a telephone, or a computer, or a light bulb, or sat in a car) underscores the 1,000s of technologies that have come from a better understanding of how the world works. Magic has never worked over the entire course of human history, while science has enabled technologies that rival the wildest fables. You’d think that folks would compare the outcome of magical thinking, and the outcome of scientific thinking and draw the obvious conclusions. Still, most folks seem to embrace the fruit of science, while retaining a magical worldview.
When we discover (much to our surprise) that magic is invisible to science, magical thinkers see this as a fault of science, not as an error in their way of seeing the world. Yet magical thinking injects inaccurate, often dangerous ways of viewing the world. Consider the popularity of prosperity thinking (currently championed by no less than Oprah) in a world where we allow billions to face hunger, famine, disease, and early preventable death. Consider our unwillingness to face up to the way we have polluted our world, while ignoring the clear results – declining fisheries, animal extinctions, global warming. We can raise over 600 million dollars in 10 days to see Spiderman III, but we can’t be bothered to address Darfur, the Central African Republic, drug resistant TB, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, acute malnutrition - the list goes on.
We forget that we live in a democracy (that is, we are responsible for the state of things), and let our infrastructure crumble, our children go without health coverage, and our commitment to fairness and decency dissolve, while we seek immediate gratification (and fall further in debt).
At least one reason these things happen is that we fail to see the obvious conclusions science presents us, and take responsibility for ourselves, our community and our planet. Magic does not work, and our culture is not going to be made happy, healthy or wise by magical thinking. We cannot hand over political power to the greedy and corrupt and expect good to come of it. We can’t insist on buying the cheapest goods and expect anything other than exploitation, slavery and shoddy practices to come of it.
Instead, we should be spending our political and economic capital in ways that help build a world in which we all can live. Paying careful attention to the way things are (the legacy of science) is a first step in this process, because it helps us exchange our magical (wishful) thinking for a glimpse of what actually is. Even more crucial are the next steps, where we create a fairer, more just culture based, not on what we wished was real, but based on what actually exists.
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What do you mean when you say science "explains our world".
It does no such thing.
It certainly can't answer the "why" questions.
And sure, it can show us how to make nuclear weapons, but it can't tell us if we should use them, or if we should even make them in the first place.
Your Science God will fail you.
Well, consider night and day. Genesis 1 explains that night and day is part of creation, and predates the existence of the sun. This may have some important theological implications, but it does not help us actually understand night and day, which is caused by the earth rotating as it spins around the sun.
I think we benefit from understanding what day and night is - for example, we need not fear that an eclipse is some monster eating the sun. We need not fear that one day, someone will forget to drag the sun across the sky, or that the sun's chariot will get to close to the earth, and scorch it.
So science is not a god, but an approach to understanding the world. Religions can lead to the inquisition, the Presbyterians killing the Anabaptists, devastating wars, petty hatreds... but perhaps it is not religion or science that is to blame, but people?
Sure, but whose view of science?
Greene maintains that, as currently formulated, both relativity and quantum theory cannot be true.
For centuries people were convinced that Newton had explained the world.
Later, they thought Freud had explained the mind.
They were all wrong.
And as far as killing people goes, the practitioners of atheistic philosphies managed to kill over 100 million people in the 20th century alone; more than in all the war, religious or otherwise, in previous history.
Gary, I'll answer both your questions.
First, Greene does not know if some new theory will unify these two, or if some new theory will replace them - but as science is not a religion, but a way of understanding the natural world, either is OK. The point is that the universe described by these two theories won't change - and both theories, as far as they go, will continue to describe reality (just as Newtonian physics still works). Science is OK with ambiguity and change - and with learning that science was wrong. But don't look for that to mean that we will suddenly "discover" that the world is 6,000 years old. Using your example, Newtonian physics was replaced by general and special relativity, and then quantum mechanics - but in each realm (the world we interact with, the very large scale and very small scale, respectively), the systems continue to work - and accurately describe reality.
Second, by some estimates at least, religious wars and religiously sanctioned genocides have killed at least 100,000,000+ people. (http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm)I am only counting Christian-motivated deaths here. Early European settlers excused their treatment of indigenous North Americas with God-talk. The Spanish excused their genocides in South America and the Caribbean with God-talk. - there have been plenty of non-Christian religious wars through history as well.
Of course, I think it is idiotic to debate which is worse, secular or religiously-based killing; everybody does it. This does not make them right, just human.
The point I am making is that you are making science your enemy ONLY because it does not support your theology. This is very shortsighted. You use the fruits of science every day (and granted, not all fruit has turned out that well). Right now, there is no going back - science will provide the foundation to solutions to our problems, or billions and billions of people will die. Further, science and faith are not enemies; though I grant that young earth creationism is not compatible with the discoveries of science. In my mind, that should raise up a red flag about this particular interpretation of the Bible. A literal reading of Genesis is not the only, nor the best way to approach the creation stories. What is more, the earth IS old, life HAS evolved from common ancestors, and kinds DID NOT appear, all at once, some few thousand years ago.
Greg, I got my figures from the Black Book of Communism, Harvard University Press.
Oh, I know, that was communism, but you certainly know that communism...as it functioned in the 20th century at least...rested on the atheistic basis of Dialectical Materialism
You get your figures from the Acharya S. site, a rabid anti Christian mythicist who even starts out her book with such whoppers as Lenin and Trotsky were Jews (ancestrally, yes, but they were comitted atheists...which she ignores) and the old anti semitic canard that Hitler had Jewish ancestry. (There is not a mainsteam academic historian of World War II anywhere who gives that credibility.)
Her sources are third rate, out dated, and she has no credibility: here only goal is to promote here Christ myth position and astrotheology.
I am suprised that you reference such material...but it answers some questions about where you are really coming from.
Gary, you say her sources are outdated… but you don‘t offer an alternative count. Don’t like this link? Try this one:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatz.htm#RelCon
Of course, Stalin did not justify his killings based on atheism (unlike the genocides by Christians in Africa and the Americas). The point I am making is that millions and millions of deaths have been justified in the name of religion, so the argument that an atheistic worldview results in greater deaths is hardly compelling. After all, your reading of the Bible holds that all but a small fraction of the earth’s population is slated to die, either by plague, famine or war in the apocalypse, right?
Personal attacks may be satisfying to you, as it seems to allow you to dismiss my points - but the facts remain. You are the one who trotted out the tired old, "atheists have a horrible track record" argument (as if that has any bearing on the validity of science).
Personal attack?
I am stating facts. You are referencing a fourth rate source, with a fake name (Acharya S) and fake credentials, who pushes known anti Jewish canards and HATES Christians generally. (As for personal attacks, you and your buddies at KCFS are the experts on that, aren't you?)
This tells me where you are coming from, and have been all along. You have said elsewhere you are a former minister who is trying to educate people on the value of SCIENCE...yet every chance you get over at KCFS you attack Christianity in most of its forms.
AS for Stalin, he most certainly did justify his killings in the name of atheism...Dialectical MATERIALISM was the basis for his entire political philosphy and personal motivation. As it was for Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of their followers in the 20th century.
AS it STILL is in large parts of the world.
And as it is for people calling Christians delusional (Dawkins), chld abusers (Dawkins and Dennet) and being worthy of death if their beliefs are deemed "dangerous" (Harris).
As for SCIENCE itself, it has provided means of destruction by plague, famine and war that make anything in the Bible look small time. (YOU claim to have gone to seminary and so you know the Bible records the actions of people good and bad, no cover up. It doesn't mean such actions were approved of...but you no this. Your motivations are clearly elsewhere.)
Well, Gary, now you are raving. I cited an alternate source, with even larger numbers - and facts are facts. You have not disputed the facts- just resorted to more personal attacks. Nor have I attacked Christianity - unless you have confused a YEC approach to Biblical interpretation with Christianity - I do agree that I find Biblical literalism and creationism to be Biblically and scientifically unsupportable.
Any you still have not explained what this has to do with science.
But you're scaring me, so I think I'll let it go at that.
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