Book Plunge: Why Science Does Not Disprove God

[Apologiaphoenix]

My thoughts on Aczel's book.

The link can be found here.

The text is as follows:

The New Atheists have by and large appeared to agree that if they're going to disprove Christianity, they're going to go the route of science. It's a quite strange route really, but it's the route taken because today most people do think scientifically, or at least think that they do. Unfortunately, a lot of people who make science their forte and ignore all the other areas tend to have that show in their argumentation. Richard Dawkins is no philosopher, but that doesn't mean he has no grounds to take on the Thomistic arguments obviously. Victor Stenger isn't a historian, but that won't stop him from talking about the historical Jesus as if he was an authority. In our day and age, the scientists have become the new priesthood. This is not to disparage science, but it is to say that when scientists speak outside of their field on areas they have not studied, we have no reason to take them as authorities.

Aczel will not take them as authorities either and has written a work demonstrating the fallacies in their thinking. When reading the work, it is unclear also what side Aczel falls on. He does not write like a Christian. In many ways, he does not even write like a theist. Still, his main contention is that the new atheists are doing a disservice to the arguments. He knows the material well and has spoken to many of the best scientific minds out there on the topic. Due to his different positions in the area of religion, it will be difficult for opponents of his to play the bias card.

The downside is that the work is largely a defensive work in that sense and thus does not really touch on the positive arguments for the existence of God. Of course, it does have some areas in science that certainly can seem to point to a deity, but at this point the idea of "God-of-the-Gaps" is trotted out. (Strangely enough, the critics of theism never consider they are going with a "naturalism-of-the-gaps.") Of course, Aczel could say that these are positive evidences such as the fine-tuning of the universe, and in that case he would indeed be right. The question is not "What is the best explanation of what we don't know?" but rather "What is the best explanation of what we do know?"

Absent are the great philosophical arguments for the existence of God, which I think are ultimately the way to go. Science can give evidence, but it is not the final authority, despite what many will think and some will think I am attacking science simply by saying that. I instead prefer to think I am giving science its proper field, which is the study of material objects and the material world. The ramifications that one draws from that study are indeed philosophical and the sad reality is that many scientists do turn out to be poor philosophers, but that has never really stopped them from trying!

Ultimately, people who are advocating that science has disproven God are in fact doing science a disservice and limiting people in the field by saying that if you are going to be a serious scientist, you cannot be religious. A lot of great minds who are religious also could be dissuaded from entering the field and who knows what benefits they could bring? From a Christian standpoint, we have too often made it be science vs. religion and when that happens, people will go with whatever they think makes the most important contributions to their lives. Some scientists would be shocked to hear religious people think religion makes the most contribution, but indeed most do. Most think of the morals that they ascribe to their religion and the sense of meaning they find and the wonder of the universe. The scientific view of atheism frankly doesn't offer an appeal to them and sadly they think "If it's science or the Bible, so much the worse for science."

Now I am not of this standpoint as I think it's not either/or but both/and and the problem is a fundamentalism on both sides that thinks because you know something in one field, you know all fields. Having a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology does not qualify you to speak on Aristotelian philosophy or the study of the New Testament. Believing that your Scripture is the Word of God and that you have an infallible and inerrant message does not mean that you are therefore in the right on everything that you speak about. Both sides are making the same kind of mistake. Consider what one Christian authority said on this:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Who said that? Augustine did, about sixteen centuries ago. It still stands today.

Aczel's book will be a good read for those interested in this debate, though at times if you're not familiar, the terminology can get difficult to follow, but it does for the most part tend to be readable. If you're interested in this kind of debate, this is a book you should seriously consider.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

[rogue06]

That quote from Augustine comes from his De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim ("The Literal Meaning of Genesis"), thought to be written somewhere around 415 A.D. This sentiment is expressed elsewhere in different ways by Augustine. Again in "The Literal Meaning of Genesis":

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.

In Contra Felicem Manichaeum ("Reply to Faustus the Manichaean"):

In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon. The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature. It is true that Christ said that the Holy Spirit will come to lead us into all truth, but He is not speaking there about the course of the sun and the moon. If you think that knowledge about these things belongs to the truth that Christ promised through the Holy Spirit, then I ask you: how many stars are there? I say that such things do not belong to Christian teaching...whereas you affirm that this teaching includes knowledge about how the world was made and what takes place in the world.

In his De doctrina christiana ("On Christian Doctrine"):

At the outset, you must be very careful lest you take figurative expression literally. What the apostle says pertains to this problem: "for the letter killeth, but the spirit quikeneth." That is, when that which is said figuratively is taken as though it were literal, it is understood carnally [carnalia]. Nor can anything more appropriately be called the death of the soul than that condition in which the thing which distinguishes us from beasts, which is understanding, is subjected to the flesh in the passing of the letter [hoc est, intelligentia carni subjicitur sequndo litteram]

Finally, it should also be noted that Augustine in his Confessiones ("Confessions") castigates Manichæus (the founder of Manichaeism) and some of his followers (particularly one of their bishops Faustus of Mileve) for "impudently dar[ing] to teach" on things he knew nothing about and their utter ignorance of scientific matters saying:

For their books are full of lengthy fables concerning the heaven and stars, the sun and moon, and I had ceased to think him able to decide in a satisfactory manner what I ardently desired—whether, on comparing these things with the calculations I had read elsewhere, the explanations contained in the works of Manichæus were preferable, or at any rate equally sound? But when I proposed that these subjects should be deliberated upon and reasoned out, he very modestly did not dare to endure the burden. For he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things, and was not ashamed to confess it.

It was for these reasons that Augustine ended up abandoning Manichaeism, which he briefly flirted with, and later eventually embracing Christianity.

[Sea of red]

The New Atheists have by and large appeared to agree that if they're going to disprove Christianity, they're going to go the route of science. It's a quite strange route really, but it's the route taken because today most people do think scientifically, or at least think that they do. Unfortunately, a lot of people who make science their forte and ignore all the other areas tend to have that show in their argumentation. Richard Dawkins is no philosopher, but that doesn't mean he has no grounds to take on the Thomistic arguments obviously. Victor Stenger isn't a historian, but that won't stop him from talking about the historical Jesus as if he was an authority. In our day and age, the scientists have become the new priesthood. This is not to disparage science, but it is to say that when scientists speak outside of their field on areas they have not studied, we have no reason to take them as authorities

.
This is all true but then again, lots of apologists speak out on fields they are not trained in. William Lane Craig is not a cosmologist or an historian, but he speaks about both the history of the NT and the physical science. Stephen Myer is not a biologist and he talks at length about evolution and biochemistry. Ravi Zacharias knows jack about thermodynamics- and in comedic fashion - applies it to evolution. Should they be thrown out, Nick?

The downside is that the work is largely a defensive work in that sense and thus does not really touch on the positive arguments for the existence of God. Of course, it does have some areas in science that certainly can seem to point to a deity, but at this point the idea of "God-of-the-Gaps" is trotted out. (Strangely enough, the critics of theism never consider they are going with a "naturalism-of-the-gaps.")

What I don't understand is why you don't take issue with apologists like Craig, Moreland, Strobel, McDowell, and company saying science is in their favor but have an issue with the reverse - this not a one sided street. If you have studied the literature and studied enough religion then you should be able to speak your opinion, and battle out the validity of the ideas themselves in public discourse.

Of course, Aczel could say that these are positive evidences such as the fine-tuning of the universe, and in that case he would indeed be right. The question is not "What is the best explanation of what we don't know?" but rather "What is the best explanation of what we do know?"

Sometimes it's best to just say "we don't know" and work on explaining the situation within good methodology and predictable frameworks.

Absent are the great philosophical arguments for the existence of God, which I think are ultimately the way to go. Science can give evidence, but it is not the final authority, despite what many will think and some will think I am attacking science simply by saying that. I instead prefer to think I am giving science its proper field, which is the study of material objects and the material world. The ramifications that one draws from that study are indeed philosophical and the sad reality is that many scientists do turn out to be poor philosophers, but that has never really stopped them from trying!

All we know is the natural material world. We have no empirical evidence that suggests otherwise. That doesn't mean that it couldn't exist in principle, just that given that we no evidence, it's too soon to start attributing phenomenon to it; that's how bad science and philosophy work.

Ultimately, people who are advocating that science has disproven God are in fact doing science a disservice and limiting people in the field by saying that if you are going to be a serious scientist, you cannot be religious. A lot of great minds who are religious also could be dissuaded from entering the field and who knows what benefits they could bring?

I agree in not discouraging people that are religious from entering science. Hinduism and Buddhism for example, have no orthodoxy that is set in stone and so it's acceptable to ask questions that may disprove certain ideas within their frameworks. Whereas, in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam the importance of belief and creeds becomes so important that it can get in the way of good science.

[Gary]

My thoughts on Aczel's book.

The link can be found here.

The text is as follows:

The New Atheists have by and large appeared to agree that if they're going to disprove Christianity, they're going to go the route of science. It's a quite strange route really, but it's the route taken because today most people do think scientifically, or at least think that they do. Unfortunately, a lot of people who make science their forte and ignore all the other areas tend to have that show in their argumentation. Richard Dawkins is no philosopher, but that doesn't mean he has no grounds to take on the Thomistic arguments obviously. Victor Stenger isn't a historian, but that won't stop him from talking about the historical Jesus as if he was an authority. In our day and age, the scientists have become the new priesthood. This is not to disparage science, but it is to say that when scientists speak outside of their field on areas they have not studied, we have no reason to take them as authorities.

Aczel will not take them as authorities either and has written a work demonstrating the fallacies in their thinking. When reading the work, it is unclear also what side Aczel falls on. He does not write like a Christian. In many ways, he does not even write like a theist. Still, his main contention is that the new atheists are doing a disservice to the arguments. He knows the material well and has spoken to many of the best scientific minds out there on the topic. Due to his different positions in the area of religion, it will be difficult for opponents of his to play the bias card.

The downside is that the work is largely a defensive work in that sense and thus does not really touch on the positive arguments for the existence of God. Of course, it does have some areas in science that certainly can seem to point to a deity, but at this point the idea of "God-of-the-Gaps" is trotted out. (Strangely enough, the critics of theism never consider they are going with a "naturalism-of-the-gaps.") Of course, Aczel could say that these are positive evidences such as the fine-tuning of the universe, and in that case he would indeed be right. The question is not "What is the best explanation of what we don't know?" but rather "What is the best explanation of what we do know?"

Absent are the great philosophical arguments for the existence of God, which I think are ultimately the way to go. Science can give evidence, but it is not the final authority, despite what many will think and some will think I am attacking science simply by saying that. I instead prefer to think I am giving science its proper field, which is the study of material objects and the material world. The ramifications that one draws from that study are indeed philosophical and the sad reality is that many scientists do turn out to be poor philosophers, but that has never really stopped them from trying!

Ultimately, people who are advocating that science has disproven God are in fact doing science a disservice and limiting people in the field by saying that if you are going to be a serious scientist, you cannot be religious. A lot of great minds who are religious also could be dissuaded from entering the field and who knows what benefits they could bring? From a Christian standpoint, we have too often made it be science vs. religion and when that happens, people will go with whatever they think makes the most important contributions to their lives. Some scientists would be shocked to hear religious people think religion makes the most contribution, but indeed most do. Most think of the morals that they ascribe to their religion and the sense of meaning they find and the wonder of the universe. The scientific view of atheism frankly doesn't offer an appeal to them and sadly they think "If it's science or the Bible, so much the worse for science."

Now I am not of this standpoint as I think it's not either/or but both/and and the problem is a fundamentalism on both sides that thinks because you know something in one field, you know all fields. Having a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology does not qualify you to speak on Aristotelian philosophy or the study of the New Testament. Believing that your Scripture is the Word of God and that you have an infallible and inerrant message does not mean that you are therefore in the right on everything that you speak about. Both sides are making the same kind of mistake. Consider what one Christian authority said on this:



Who said that? Augustine did, about sixteen centuries ago. It still stands today.

Aczel's book will be a good read for those interested in this debate, though at times if you're not familiar, the terminology can get difficult to follow, but it does for the most part tend to be readable. If you're interested in this kind of debate, this is a book you should seriously consider.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Hi Nick,

Which of the prominent New Atheists attempts to use science to prove that there is no Creator God? I would like to look at their "evidence" for this claim. It is my position that one can no more DISPROVE the existence of a Creator than one can disprove the existence of unicorns. Allowing for the supernatural, which I believe we should, prove to me that unicorns do not exist. You can't. You can say that no human has ever seen one, but you can't say they don't exist. And the same is true with a Creator God. You can say that no human has seen a Creator, but you can't say that he/she/it does not exist.

However, I do believe that one can find evidence to support the existence of a Creator or Creators, in particular, the fine tuning of the universe. How did all the laws of physics come into existence? Random chance? Seems a real stretch. I believe therefore that there is strong evidence for a Creator, and zero evidence to disprove a Creator...and I will bet that this is the position of most "new atheists".

When most atheists and agnostics say that "God does not exist" I believe that what most of them really mean is, that YOUR god, Nick, does not exist. He does not exist because his claims of perfection and omniscience, and his alleged entry into human history, can be compared and can be shown to be contradictory and in error on multiple issues. There may well be a Creator, but he/she/or it is certainly not Yahweh-Jesus. Scientists and people in scientific fields, such as medicine, do not try to debate the philosophical possibilities of supernatural claims. That is not our field. That is the field of clergy and philosophers. But when a religion claims that its god has entered human history and interacted in a physical/material way with man and with the environment (such as a world wide flood or the reanimation of a dead human body), then those of us in scientific fields are commenting and operating within our field when we examine these claims and call them false or at least, unprovable.

[psstein]

.
This is all true but then again, lots of apologists speak out on fields they are not trained in. William Lane Craig is not a cosmologist or an historian, but he speaks about both the history of the NT and the physical science. Stephen Myer is not a biologist and he talks at length about evolution and biochemistry. Ravi Zacharias knows jack about thermodynamics- and in comedic fashion - applies it to evolution. Should they be thrown out, Nick?

I'm not Nick, but I'll respond to some of this. WLC did graduate work in NT under Pannenberg, so I don't think he's totally unqualified to talk about NT. Pannenberg, while a theologian, was insistent that theology incorporate history, science, and philosophy. I guess he's going off of Sinclair's cosmological work, though I am inclined to agree with you. Far too many religious believers and atheists will often make statements in fields they know nothing about. Zacharias I know almost nothing about (I'm not a huge fan of most apologetics, honestly), so I'll assume you're correct. Don't even get me started on Stephen Meyer's "work." ID is a fundamentally flawed approach to understanding God's action in the natural world. Both Signature in the Cell and Darwin's Doubt were disasters.

What I don't understand is why you don't take issue with apologists like Craig, Moreland, Strobel, McDowell, and company saying science is in their favor but have an issue with the reverse - this not a one sided street. If you have studied the literature and studied enough religion then you should be able to speak your opinion, and battle out the validity of the ideas themselves in public discourse.

I do. I think science is largely independent of religion, but they do overlap in some areas. Alister McGrath calls this "partially overlapping magisteria," which I think is a pretty good term. To paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, science is largely equally compatible with both atheism and theism.

Sometimes it's best to just say "we don't know" and work on explaining the situation within good methodology and predictable frameworks.

Absolutely! Such an approach is both the responsible scientific and theological one!

All we know is the natural material world. We have no empirical evidence that suggests otherwise. That doesn't mean that it couldn't exist in principle, just that given that we no evidence, it's too soon to start attributing phenomenon to it; that's how bad science and philosophy work.

Here I disagree with you. There's evidence that there is something beyond the material world. Even if we ignore traditional evidences for God, I think numbers strongly indicate a realm beyond material objects.

I agree in not discouraging people that are religious from entering science. Hinduism and Buddhism for example, have no orthodoxy that is set in stone and so it's acceptable to ask questions that may disprove certain ideas within their frameworks. Whereas, in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam the importance of belief and creeds becomes so important that it can get in the way of good science.

Not necessarily. Buddhism and Hinduism can have trouble with physics because of the idea of maya. I can't think (off the top of my head, admittedly) of a creedal issue that has prevented a Christian scientist from going after a better scientific explanation. Arthur Eddington, a Quaker astrophysicist, opposed the Big Bang on scientific grounds. McShea (another astrophysicist) saw the Steady State theory as being equally compatible with Christianity as the Big Bang.

[Sea of red]

I'm not Nick, but I'll respond to some of this. WLC did graduate work in NT under Pannenberg, so I don't think he's totally unqualified to talk about NT. Pannenberg, while a theologian, was insistent that theology incorporate history, science, and philosophy. I guess he's going off of Sinclair's cosmological work, though I am inclined to agree with you. Far too many religious believers and atheists will often make statements in fields they know nothing about. Zacharias I know almost nothing about (I'm not a huge fan of most apologetics, honestly), so I'll assume you're correct. Don't even get me started on Stephen Meyer's "work." ID is a fundamentally flawed approach to understanding God's action in the natural world. Both Signature in the Cell and Darwin's Doubt were disasters

.
Cool.

I do. I think science is largely independent of religion, but they do overlap in some areas. Alister McGrath calls this "partially overlapping magisteria," which I think is a pretty good term. To paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould, science is largely equally compatible with both atheism and theism.

These are all largely unrelated questions. Theism and atheism deal with whether or not there is a deity, while religion is a framework of beliefs about the supernatural. One can be an atheist and be a Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Janist, or even belong to certain categories of the Abrahamic religions. You can be a theist and hold absolutely no religious beliefs and belong to Secular Humanist ideas. I could prove Christianity false and it would not address theism as an idea. The more correct way of looking at the conundrum is to say that science can't contradict theism or atheism.

Absolutely! Such an approach is both the responsible scientific and theological one!

Cool... again.

Here I disagree with you. There's evidence that there is something beyond the material world. Even if we ignore traditional evidences for God, I think numbers strongly indicate a realm beyond material objects.

I'm going to withhold judgement on other realms and universes due to them being such extraordinary ideas - and they don't fall under falsification so far.

Not necessarily. Buddhism and Hinduism can have trouble with physics because of the idea of maya. I can't think (off the top of my head, admittedly) of a creedal issue that has prevented a Christian scientist from going after a better scientific explanation. Arthur Eddington, a Quaker astrophysicist, opposed the Big Bang on scientific grounds. McShea (another astrophysicist) saw the Steady State theory as being equally compatible with Christianity as the Big Bang.

Hinduism and Buddhism put more stress on the ethics and philosophy more so than the supernatural. Ask ten Hindu's about god and the afterlife, and you'll get ten radically different answers. Point is, they are not nearly as hostile towards science as the big three of Abraham.

[psstein]

.

I'm going to withhold judgement on other realms and universes due to them being such extraordinary ideas - and they don't fall under falsification so far.

Are you arguing that things we can't falsify are meaningless? To me, it seems like you're arguing for the verification principle.

Hinduism and Buddhism put more stress on the ethics and philosophy more so than the supernatural. Ask ten Hindu's about god and the afterlife, and you'll get ten radically different answers. Point is, they are not nearly as hostile towards science as the big three of Abraham.

Yes, I would agree with Hinduism and Buddhism placing more emphasis on ethics and philosophy. Moreover, there are vastly differing opinions about God and afterlife in Hinduism, so yes, I concur again. I strongly disagree with Abrahamic religions being hostile towards science. The Draper-White thesis has not held up well against research in the history of science. I would suggest God's Philosophers by James Hannam or Galileo Goes to Jail by Ronald Numbers.

Religion and science can come into conflict (e.g. YEC), but the two are largely separate, though occasionally interacting fields. You can't prove (or disprove) religious claims through science alone. You'd have to add a philosophical interpretation to said scientific claim.

[Sea of red]

Are you arguing that things we can't falsify are meaningless? To me, it seems like you're arguing for the verification principle.

No. If the idea takes on characteristics that would make it predictable or obtainable by inquiry, I'll be happy to give it a look. I'm always willing to to adopt a change to my life so long as it is grounded in discovery.

[Gary]

Why do Conservative Christian Apologists rely so heavily on Philosophy to defend their beliefs?

It always drives me nuts when I debate a conservative Christian about the supernatural claims of the Bible and he or she immediately wants to steer the discussion into a philosophical mindfield, attempting to trip me up with such irritating and preposterous statements such as, "How do you know, Gary, that you even exist? How do you know that you are not just a figment in someone else's imagination."

Good grief. What nonsense.

I'm a science man. Philosophy to me is the wishy-washy past time of eighteenth and nineteenth century spoiled, upper class, aristocratic, daddy's-boys; guys who never had to do an honest day's work in their entire lives; living on a chateau in southern France; mooching off of daddy's bank account.

Get a real job, for Pete's sake!

So why do conservative Christian apologists rely so heavily on philosophy to defend their beliefs, and at the same time, usually prefer to shun, or belittle, the hard sciences? Is it just coincidence? Actually, no. At least that is what one philosopher has to say regarding the relationship between philosophy and religion. Here are some excerpts from his intriguing article:


Does Philosophy have a Future?

by Mark English

Scientia Salon

...The general belief within philosophy is that the process of collegial debate, discussion and review leads to a refinement or clarification of views and so to a progress of sorts. Refinement, yes. Clarification, I’m not so sure.

Often this process can all too plausibly be interpreted in one of two ways (or both — the ideas are not mutually exclusive): it can be seen as a cover for what is essentially an ideological battle; or merely as a competitive game, self-perpetuating and futile.

With respect to the former point, it is at one level extremely difficult to demonstrate that a particular philosopher’s arguments are influenced by his or her ideological or religious convictions; but on another level it is blindingly obvious that, say, Christians or hardline physicalists are motivated to find and defend arguments which accord with their beliefs. Likewise with social and political beliefs. But playing the philosophical game involves ignoring these issues (and so potential sources of bias) and any mention of them is considered irrelevant — just not philosophy. Such an approach reflects, I think, an outdated view of cognition and one that puts far too much faith in discursive reason.

The view that much philosophy is self-perpetuating and futile, a game of sorts which ends not when some kind of “truth” or resolution is finally arrived at but when people just get tired of that particular game and move on to another, has often been more or less acknowledged by philosophers.

…One other area of concern relates to the complex relationship which continues to exist between religion and philosophy.

Many of philosophy’s iconic figures were religious. Plato was heavily influenced by the Pythagoreans; Plato’s Socrates, still a model for many philosophers, not only believed that concepts have some kind of essential meaning, but also clearly had supernatural beliefs. (He was guided by his daimon, for example.) Even Aristotle’s thought is strongly influenced by what are generally (and I think rightly) seen as completely discredited teleological and other metaphysical notions. Descartes was a believing Catholic. Spinoza was a mystical thinker. Leibniz was religious. Kant’s writings are deeply marked by his Pietism. Hegel was a Christian. Wittgenstein was a Christian and a supernaturalist in the manner of Pascal or Dostoevsky.
The philosophical canon includes of course many skeptical as well as religious or Platonistic thinkers. But often they were only writing to counter essentially religious doctrines

…Philosophy can be seen not only to have arisen from religion in a historical sense but also to be — as a modern, independent discipline — still strangely dependent on it. There are funding issues involved here and little doubt that academic philosophy is cleverly exploited by churches (and other ideological groupings for that matter) [4], but perhaps even more important than this is the extent to which the agenda of philosophy has been determined, directly or indirectly, by religious ideas.

Sure, sections of the philosophical community seek to undermine religious belief, but often the topics discussed (in popular forums and undergraduate contexts especially) relate in some way to religious ideas. Examples that come immediately to mind include Euthyphro-type arguments against a divine command view of ethics, classical arguments for the existence of God, and free will (the very term is taken from Western theology via the Late Latin liberum arbitrium). More sophisticated thinking in philosophy, of course, engages with science and advanced logic and mostly leaves the theological trappings behind, but the origins of many of the key problems still lie, I would suggest, in religious modes of thought.

…I am definitely not claiming that philosophy is necessarily religiously oriented, only that it thrives in a broader environment that is. Why this may be I cannot say, but I am increasingly inclined to the view that the presence in a society of a critical mass of people who are committed to religious or mystical ideas tends to create a space for non-scientific but rationally-informed discourse about “the nature of things.”

…But though the idea that philosophy may be, as it were, parasitic upon religion challenges what has become the standard view of philosophy as a discrete, self-contained and entirely secular discipline, it does not entail a belief that the discipline is doomed. If it is indeed doomed, it is doomed for other reasons, because religion is certainly not going to disappear any time soon.


About the author: Mark English holds a PhD in philosophy from Monash University, and blogs at Language, Life and Logic.

[psstein]

The issue is, the existence of God is not a scientific question. It's a philosophical question, and has to be discussed on those grounds.

[Apologiaphoenix]

I think psstein did great and said much of what I would say. As for authors that write against God using science, consider books like Victor Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis."

And as for what is being said against philosophy, it is simply thinking about thinking and learning to think well. If you're opposed to that, it says a lot about you. It amazes me when so many talk about how science is so superior, they never use science to demonstrate that. It's always philosophical.

[Sea of red]

The issue is, the existence of God is not a scientific question. It's a philosophical question, and has to be discussed on those grounds.

It's both.

[Sea of red]

I think psstein did great and said much of what I would say. As for authors that write against God using science, consider books like Victor Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis."

And as for what is being said against philosophy, it is simply thinking about thinking and learning to think well. If you're opposed to that, it says a lot about you. It amazes me when so many talk about how science is so superior, they never use science to demonstrate that. It's always philosophical.

Philosophy is how to think properly whether it be about induction, deduction, epistemology, ethics, or aestheticism. Science is about how to describe the universe and it's properties through the methods of chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, or mathematics - which is a kind of science in some ways. Without philosophy, science would be incoherent, and without science, philosophy wouldn't move past first principles.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Philosophy is how to think properly whether it be about induction, deduction, epistemology, ethics, or aestheticism. Science is about how to describe the universe and it's properties through the methods of chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, or mathematics - which is a kind of science in some ways. Without philosophy, science would be incoherent, and without science, philosophy wouldn't move past first principles.

It depends on what you mean by science of course. I hold that Aristotle was really a major beginner of it and remember that philosophy was really born when Thales successfully predicted an eclipse of the sun. Philosophy that ignores sense data I find to be highly fallacious and gets into the presuppositional approach Gary was talking about. Now if someone upholds a scientism approach that says science is the only way we know anything (And yes, I meet several atheists who hold that approach) then I think questions of "How do you know exist?" are indeed valid questions.

I prefer to see all of these as different avenues of learning and each is relevant for different subject matter. Knowing science won't help me much when doing mathematics for instance, but mathematics is indispensable for science. Knowing literary theory might not help me much when studying biological evolution, but literature is certainly highly important.

I ultimately think that when we get to a science vs. religion, it is because of a fundamentalism that exists on both sides sadly. Psstein is right. The Draper-White hypothesis has no reason to be taken seriously and I recommend the books that he recommended as well.

[Sea of red]

It depends on what you mean by science of course. I hold that Aristotle was really a major beginner of it and remember that philosophy was really born when Thales successfully predicted an eclipse of the sun. Philosophy that ignores sense data I find to be highly fallacious and gets into the presuppositional approach Gary was talking about. Now if someone upholds a scientism approach that says science is the only way we know anything (And yes, I meet several atheists who hold that approach) then I think questions of "How do you know exist?" are indeed valid questions.

Philosophies god fathers where really Anaximenes, Thales, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and company. Lets not forget the later greats like Hume and Kant though. Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Hooke, and Newton founded physics and astronomy - and really science as a whole. Then came the formation of biology with Darwin, Crick, Morgan, Watson, Crick etc. Then we had the theories of electrodynamics, relativity, cosmology, atomic theory, and quantum mechanics by Bohr, Maxwell, Hoyle, Hubble, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and company.

Yeah there's overplay but that's really how I would put it.

I prefer to see all of these as different avenues of learning and each is relevant for different subject matter. Knowing science won't help me much when doing mathematics for instance, but mathematics is indispensable for science. Knowing literary theory might not help me much when studying biological evolution, but literature is certainly highly important.

Mathematics is a quantitative way of describing relationships in the universe (science) but uses proofs that are grounded in logical philosophy. Historiography is a crossover between scientific testing to establish facts and epistemology to form reconstructive frameworks with those facts.

I ultimately think that when we get to a science vs. religion, it is because of a fundamentalism that exists on both sides sadly. Psstein is right. The Draper-White hypothesis has no reason to be taken seriously and I recommend the books that he recommended as well.

If you liked Sagans work you should try The Myth of the Framework: Karl Popper or The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Thomas Kuhn. Both are very dry reads but give a great intro to the philosophy of science.