Scientific versus Religious Arguments
Chuck Doswell - 10 June 2011
The inspiration for this comes from a wonderful essay by Chris Mooney
in “Mother Jones" that describes “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe
Science”. Its basic premise is the simple observation that folks who’ve become convinced of something almost always find it difficult, if not impossible, to change their minds. This is probably true for most
humans, but it’s not true for most scientists, because science is
perpetually in a state of change. Even scientists have their
equivalent to “sacred” notions, but a big difference between science
and religion is that scientists must
nevertheless always remain open to the possibility that the ideas to
which they might cling may need to be discarded. New
evidence forces us to reject old ideas and replace them with new ideas
that fit the evidence better than the old ones. Scientists train
themselves to remain as open-minded as possible, even when the ideas
being challenged are their own creations. Having to change one’s
ideas happens routinely in science. Most of the time, the new
paradigms are small in scope, narrowly–focused on some tiny part of the
science. Such small changes are very esoteric and matter only to
a few specialists. Other times, the changes are vast and even
revolutionary, with stunning new implications (like quantum mechanics
and relativity) and perhaps spreading to scientific disciplines outside
of the original field (such as chaos theory). And everywhere in
between these extremes. Science without change is dead and
uninteresting, so learning to accept change is an essential part of becoming a scientist. We embrace change and seek to foster it.
If we consider the mindset of religious believers, on the other hand, a
fundamental characteristic shared widely among them is that they cling
to their beliefs on faith (which can be defined here as belief without
reason or evidence). And many believers claim, clearly in direct
contradiction to the reality of science, that science is a type of
religion. Let’s ponder that notion. Nothing in science is
beyond question. Science accepts no supernatural “explanations”
for anything. Arguments by authority are recognized in science to
have no validity. Science makes no claim to absolute
understanding – rather science seeks to identify the limits to its
understanding. Most of all, scientific debate resolution is
always about evidence favoring one notion more than any others.
It’s difficult to see any similarity between science and
religion! Given that most modern world religions were created
more than a thousand years ago – that is, prior to the development and
rapid expansion of modern science during and after the Renaissance –
religious prophets and sacred texts mention relative few direct
conflicts with science today. Among the few arenas in which they
clash are: cosmology, geology, and evolutionary biology.
When confronted with scientific evidence in favor of modern scientific
understanding, many believers follow the patterns described in Chris
Mooney’s aforementioned essay: they seek to rationalize their
beliefs so as not to have to change them. That rationalization
involves such things as trying to discredit the evidence, finding ways
to interpret the evidence in such a way as to confirm their beliefs,
“cherry-picking” the evidence, and so on. Thus, we have such
chimeras as “creation science” that attempt to simulate the scientific
process in rationalizing fundamentally unscientific concepts.
This whole rationalization process is puzzling to me, because if
religion is founded on faith, it’s inconsistent to seek evidence to
justify it! In response to a challenge based on science, a
believer could respond honestly and say “We have faith that our version
of reality is correct and your evidence will never cause us to give up
our faith.” But many believers seem to prefer rationalization.
Scientists also seek to question the validity of the evidence presented
by others, and offer different interpretations for the same
evidence. But the nature of scientific debate revolves around
honesty and full disclosure, disallowing any attempt to resort to
supernatural “explanations” and argument by authority. The very
uncertainty about the evidence and its interpretation that any good
scientist always tries to express and address openly as part of the
presentation makes the science vulnerable to attack from religious
believers, who see uncertainty as an admission of error, rather than an
acknowledgment of our limits. For most believers, there is only
absolute proof or absolute disproof, leading to unshakeable beliefs and
the delusion of knowing absolute truth.
Extraordinary claims in science are required to provide extraordinary
evidence. Scientific skeptics outside of the consensus aren’t tortured,
exiled, or killed for their lack of acceptance of the consensus – they
have a right to disagree. But they have to be innovative and work
very hard to overturn the consensus. Supernatural explanations
offer zero explanatory power and so are not allowed. Knowing that
some mysterious creator named “Timex” made my watch tells me nothing
about how it was made or by what mechanism it works.
Science seeks only to understand the process and that understanding is
only gained by hard-fought debate and an accumulation of evidence.
Finally, an important distinction between science and religion is that
science works! There can be no doubt that scientific
understanding provides the basis for virtually all of modern
technology. There’s still no objective evidence for the efficacy
of intercessory prayer, the existence and divinity of a jew named jesus
2000 years ago, the possibility of life after death, and so on.
Religion just doesn’t have much to show for its extraordinary claims.