copernicus

I've just started this thread on another discussion board, but I thought I'd post it here to get other reactions. This is not a new idea, but I'm interested in the reactions of different people.

Let me begin by acknowledging the differences between religion and science. Religious belief encourages belief in doctrines without verifiable evidence. Science requires its doctrines to be verifiable. There appear to be no standards by which one religious doctrine could demonstrate superiority over another, but the demand for proof is the common battleground for all scientific theories. Sometimes religion and science are held to be in competition with each other, but that is not on my agenda here. Instead, I will pursue another favorite theme of atheists, the idea that theist doctrines are actually scientific theories that have failed against materialist or naturalist theories.

Here is how I would make the case:

(1) Religious theories, especially theist versions, have existed throughout recorded history, and probably as long as humans have walked the earth. Materialist theories have competed with these.

(2) Religious doctrine is invariably offered as an explanation for natural events, the most modern version being the cosmological or kalam theory of the Big Bang.

(3) Like all good scientific theories, religious theories make predictions. These can take the form of prophecies or just the prediction that good and bad outcomes for behaving in prescribed ways.

(4) People have been "testing" religious theories by using themselves as guinea pigs. They have acted as if their beliefs were true, and we have a historical record of outcomes of such actions.

Now, based on the historical record, we can see a long record of failures for religious explanations and a long record successes for naturalist/materialist explanations. For example, religious theory once placed humans at the center of the universe, but materialist theories have proven that we are rather remotely located on the spiral arm of just one nondescript galaxy in a vast universe. Also, religious medicine--faith healing--has met with some success, but nowhere near the miraculous successes of materialist medicine.

While it is never possible to prove any scientific theory absolutely, we tend to accept those whose predictions turn out to be true (e.g. Einstein's prediction that gravity would bend light waves) and reject those that fail to predict or explain the same phenomena. Hence, given the poor track record of nonmaterialist religious explanations, we can reasonably reject religion, and especially theism, as failed science.

Comments?

Undercurrent

I have, in the past, argued that through this kind of process, science is self-verifying (contrary to the common claim that the fundamental precepts of science are non-scientific, and hence science is inconsistent without metaphysical to justfy it.)

It is possible, in priciple, to see if science works or not by testing whether or not scientific societies enjoy greather success than non-scientific societies. This test has been done, therefore by science's own standards of verification, science's precepts are verified. And, as copernicus argues, "alternative" means of truth derivation are not verified (although they might be under their own standards of verification.)

fando

Except that religion is not science. What you can say instead is religion is a poor system for discovery of knowledge. If you frame your entire debate around systems for discovery and the need for them, it would make a lot more sense. It also opens up discussion as to whether religion was intended to be a system for discovery in the first place or whether this quality was tacked on merely because religion needs a way to appease the questions that arise.

Jayjay

I concur with fando. Religious doctrines do incorporate "theories" that try to explain the world, but religion is more than just an attempt to figure things out. It's also a social control mechanism used to keep people in line, sometimes by explaining them stuff, sometimes by other means.

copernicus

Thanks to undercurrent, fando, and jayjay for your comments.

I agree that religion is a "poor system of discovery", but only in hindsight. When religious claims were originally made, there was no way of verifying them. So they were just hypotheses. It does not matter whether religion was originally intended to be a "system of discovery". It was simply a theory that certain natural phenomena could be explained in terms of supernatural causes. There were no competing theories, so the supernatural explanations won by default. Later on, competing naturalist/materialist explanations came into being and were verified through scientific means. That is, they made correct predictions that the supernaturalist explanations did not, or could not, make. Hence, the naturalist/materialist theories superseded the supernaturalist theories.

It is correct that religious doctrines do more than just incorporate "theories" that try to explain the world. However, the social control mechanism is predicated on such theories and is voided if such theories turn out to be unacceptable. So, I don't consider such dependencies to have much bearing on my main point. Theistic/religious doctrines do qualify as doctrines that can be evaluated from a scientific perspective. That is, they make claims and predictions that are sometimes verifiable. When the claims have become verifiable, they have consistently failed to be true. Hence, supernaturalist explanations can be rejected on the basis of their inability to fulfill reasonable expectations.