Starboy

Is {Science vs. Religion} == {Science Truth vs. Religious Truth}?

When I speak of religion I specifically mean Christianity. I would like to present the idea that religious leaders would like the debate over science and religion to be viewed as a battle of truth vs. truth. I would also like to argue that they have no interest at all in illuminating the basic differences between the two endeavors. Also that they have a vested interest in keeping their following completely in the dark as to the method and product of science.

1. Religious leaders insist that what they preach is the truth. Look at their primary sales pitch, “This is the word of God, and is his truth.” Not only are they selling the truth, they claim it is the highest quality truth you can get. To me, this makes them truth mongers. If anyone has an argument against the idea that religion is about the truth, I would sure like to hear it.
2. Because religion is about the truth and is considered by believers to be the highest quality truth you can get, when it comes to a debate that is the ground that they will wish to fight on. From their point of view it is their strong point, the best weapon in their arsenal.
3. Science is about what works. This is because part of the process of science requires that scientific knowledge and theories must be tested. If it passes the test it works. When a theory can be replaced by something that works better, it is usually tossed out. Thus over time, science builds on its successes and learns from its failures and just works better and better.
4. Science makes no claims about the truth. If it were about the truth why would it need to be tested? And tested? And tested? ……
5. There is no doubt that science has been a great success. Anyone reading this post is reaping just one of the millions of advances science has made possible.
6. Religion wishes to keep the argument on the terms of truth vs. truth because they are terrified of the alternative. From the viewpoint of what works, religion has a dismal record. Take this country for instance. Christians have been in the overwhelming majority for the last one hundred years. Most of our presidents have been Christians, most of our lawmakers as well. You can’t swing a bag of creamed corn without it getting smeared on at least a dozen churches. Yet it is the Christians that are the first to scream that the country is a mess. Apparently they feel that if they can get the last 5% of the population converted to Christianity that somehow it will all work. From my point of view, we have done the experiment, the results are in and Christianity is a failure. But this is not the only example. It is easy to find dozens of examples of failure at things that Christianity claims to be good at.
7. If Christians are forced to debate on the terms of science, they are left with nothing, since all they have is the truth but very little that actually works. This is why they wish to frame the argument in terms of “Truth vs. Truth” and why they do not want their followers to understand what science is all about.

Starboy

[ July 10, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Superceded would be a better word. All the old information must be subsumed within the new theory. The old theory isn't wrong, just incomplete.

Science doesn't claim absolute truth. It does however claim provisional truth -- that is, it's statements are always in the form of 'X is true, as far as we know at the moment, as far as it is possible to tell from all the knowledge we've gathered to date'.

I don't know what other sort -- or source -- of truth there can be. Something is claimed. You can either accept it at face value, or you can check it. The latter is the best way of avoiding lies, of avoiding being wrong... ie of finding the truth. Thus science is a search for truth... the only sort of truth you can trust because you can check it. I suppose it depends on one’s definition, but I wouldn’t call a truth that you can’t trust the truth!

Provisional truth is the best we can hope for. The whole point of science is not that the world is pre-defined, but that we’re trying to find out how it is.

With religions, however, the world is pre-defined as containing god(s) which have acted and continue to act in certain ways. Religions, therefore, are wonderful circular reasoning. There is/are a god(s), they did A B and C, and interact with the world doing X Y and Z. They make claims about how the world is, and back it up with their original ideas. They assume what they set out to prove.
“Isn’t the eye amazing! See -- God’s work!”
“How do you know there’s a god?”
“Well just look at things like the eye!”

And, uh... what sort of truth is it that doesn’t work, that doesn’t match up (cannot be matched up) to reality?

Spot on, Starboy.

Cheers, Oolon

Starboy

Hi Oolon,

That is really the crux of the matter. I think that religious truth is a sort of mathematical truth; true by definition, true by convention and therefore just like mathematics, it is a form of circular reasoning. There is a lot of binary thinking going on these days, if something is labeled as true then it means it is not false, by claiming scientific knowledge is true and then saying, “Oh yah, that is provisional truth”, you just end up confusing the issue. Rather then talk about provisional truth or hypothetical truth, I say drop the word truth all together. It just gets in the way because it plays right into their strong suite, because it makes it easy for them to use the argument, “well you haven’t proved anything”.

I also think that science really isn’t about the truth. The phrase provisional truth is just a fancy way of saying “not known to be false and not known to be true, but taken as a working hypothesis”. From a religious and mathematical point of view, that has nothing to do with the truth.

Lastly, by going at it from the point of view of the truth it puts the battle on their terms which completely ignores the very powerful methods science has developed. If the arguments were conducted using scientific methods, they would have to state their theory, we would state some current scientific theory and there would be a simple bake-off of what theory can explain what and what theory can predict what. That is really how the winners are chosen by science, why do we let those religious truth mongers take our most powerful weapon away from us?

Starboy

Vesica

Maybe I had bad teachers but I was taught that theories could be proven wrong. For example, the geocentric model of the universe was a theory to explain the observed motion of the heavenly bodies...as it was explored, it was proven wrong, not incomplete....It is a wholly incorrect theoretical stance. It did explain one set of observations but not others....others that were explained/able to be predicited using the heliocentric model.....And, before anyone goes there, they were both put forward as models of the 'universe' yet that part of the theory was superceeded by the knowledge that our solar system is not the whole of the universe.

Starboy

I think you are both correct. In cases where there is clearly a better replacement, such as special relativity vs. Newtonian physics, it was easy to toss out Newtonian physics, but in cases where there is no good replacement, such as the standard model in the light of the current neutrino data, it is likely that a patch will be applied, or in the words of Oolon, superceded. Even though it is now understood that Newtonian physics is flawed at its core, it is interesting to note that it is still widely taught, primarily because it is such an easy to understand demonstration of the use of mathematics to model the physical universe, and it is also useful when applied within the appropriate boundary conditions.

Starboy

Oolon Colluphid

If you say so. In which case, please define ‘truth’! If you mean it as an absolute, then that is of course only possible when you’re defining the universe a priori. Since with science we are not, ‘how the world is’ can only ever be provisional. Hence truth is only provisional... or else in the real world there is no such thing. (The religious and mathematical version is sunk by circularity, as you said.)

Personally, I can live with ‘the best present version of the truth’. Science doesn’t give you truth’s exact location, but it does give you the general region it’s in.

Oolon

Starboy

Hi Oolon,

I think you and I are mostly saying the same thing. The only point I wanted to make was that if you look at the many posts made to this web regarding comparisons of scientific and religious truth, the word is used fast and loose. Its use by those that advocate the scientific point of view just confuses those that advocate the religious point of view and I think it would be best if it was left out of the discourse all together. I think we can make our points much more succinctly if we point out that the process of science may not produce absolute truths, but it certainly, by its very nature produces what works. That is obvious to see if you just simply compare life today vs. life four hundred years ago.

Starboy

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Hi Starboy

I agree about the problem. However, whenever it’s come up, I and others (in fact, everyone I’ve read on the nature of science) have always stressed the provisional nature of scientific findings. I’m not sure what’s to be gained by avoiding the word truth. It’s the only word offhand I can think of that means ‘how it really, genuinely, fundamentally, honestly is’.

So while I appreciate your concern about using ‘truth’, I think it’s just as, if not more, misleading to just refer to scientific findings as ‘what works’. It makes it sound like it’s only after practical applications. Science is, fundamentally, a systematic way of finding explanations, of finding out how the world is. If there is indeed a single basic -- true -- way that the world is, science closes in on it. Therefore it is a search for ‘truth’ (how reality truly is). Therefore, as I said, science shows you the approximate location of the truth, and aims to get constantly closer to it.

The way we know we’re in the right region is by how well it works -- how well it withstands testing -- but it’s not, primarily, what it’s for. It’s for explanations, and the best explanations will be the true ones.

And because of the way science arrives at this (approximate) location, scientific truth is the only sort of truth there is.

Cheers, Oolon

Starboy

Hi Oolon,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. I appreciate your willingness to consider my view points. I hope you will consider this argument that I present and favor me with a reply.

You may have guessed from my previous posts that you and I differ on a key point. I have been trying to say that science as it is now is not setup to produce truth, but to create what works. If it happens to create truth it is purely accidental.

A long time ago, when I was a graduate student working on my Ph.D. in physics, I had to grade kiddy physics papers. If a student got the right answer to the question, but for the wrong reasons I gave them no credit. This distressed many students, and I gained the reputation of being a hard ass. Some of the methods they used were really very creative, but I would not budge. Now in my old age, I realize that I was too hard on those poor students. What they were doing is exactly what science does everyday.

You see scientific knowledge has two components, fact and theory. Fact and theory dance with each other, we need the theory to interpret the fact and we need the fact to support the theory. Funny thing about theory, it is just a model. A model of a thing is not the thing. It will never be the thing. A drawing of a pipe is not a pipe. Try putting anything in it and smoke it!

Of course this is not the whole story. What science does is take this dance of fact and theory and require that it works. That is, survive the test of time. Like any machine that man builds, no matter how well he builds it, from time to time it breaks down, produces crazy results. Science is no different, just like with any machine, scientists are constantly tinkering with science, upgrading it, sometime replacing entire sections of it. But the goal is the same as with any machine. These changes are made because it is hoped that it will work better.

Starboy

removed the quote.

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]

[ July 13, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Ape31

[Lurk Off]
Interesting discussion. Recently read Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell and he repeatedly describes himself as a positivist and he seemed to mean that he didn't care what was the TRUTH only what worked. Whether or not we take the same position, that is a heavy weight mind in seeming agreement with Starboy.
[Lurk On]

[ July 18, 2002: Message edited by: Ape31 ]</p>