Once again we hear that science tells us how the world is, but religion answers the Really Big Questions. Sadly, this time it’s from a scientist, one at Matthew Cobb’s school.
Jeff Forshaw is a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy and University of Manchester, and has collaborated with Brian Cox in explaining physics on YouTube (see here and here, for instance).
In a new column at the Guardian, “Science and religion are united in a sense of wonder,” Forshaw buys the NOMA line whole hog. He’s writing about the CERN conference I described on October 15, a conference that was supposed to bring scientists, philosophers, and theologians together in productive dialogue. My take was that it was useless: philosophers but especially theologians had nothing to add to the conference—see my post for the haughty comments theologians made about how physicists weren’t doing science correctly. I still maintain that the progress of science is totally independent of (and uninfluenced by) what happens in either theology or the formal discipline of the philosophy of science. (That’s not to say that I think the philosophy of science is useless. It isn’t; it’s value just is not in helping science progress in understanding nature.)
Forshaw apparently disagrees:
Some might say that Cern should stick to science but I don’t agree. A major reason for the popularity of fundamental physics is that it is seen to tackle some pretty “deep” questions – the kinds of questions that really “mean” something – and the quest for meaning is not something best left to scientists. With the latest ideas in physics seeming to suggest the possibility of “a universe from nothing” (the title of cosmologist Lawrence Krauss’s latest book), the stakes do seem rather high. I think it makes sense to ensure that the theologians are up to speed with the science, but I also think that scientists benefit from contemplating the wider implications of their discoveries.
Well, I don’t particularly care if physicists want to tell theologians the latest finds in physics (though it will only lead to a flurry of new theology showing how cosmology or bosons prove God), but Forshaw is dead wrong in thinking that theologians will help science progress by enabling physicists to think about the Big Questions. Can he give one example of when that has happened?
Forshaw sees a Big Danger in this lack of dialogue.
By overstating science’s power and not acknowledging its limitations, we risk fostering the growth of a religion-substitute, with the scientists as high priests. Such hubris not only irritates people, but more significantly it risks promoting the misconception that science deals with certainty – and that is the very antithesis of good science. Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.
Yeah, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, and other popular physics writers claim that we deal with certainty. That’s a base canard: the hallmark of popular physics writing—indeed, of nearly all good science writing—is its constant emphasis on what we don’t know (read The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, for example).
Even worse, it is certainly religion and not science that is “uncertain”—and far more inherently so. There are some things in science that we know with near certainty, like the atomic composition of water, but there is nothing about God that we know with any certainty at all. Yet it is the scientists, not the faithful, who are described as having annoying hubris! Why did Forshaw do that?
Forshaw continues with his tired old NOMA trope:
But the questions that science can tackle are nonetheless limited in scope. For most people, the deep questions of science do not shape their lives. For example, science does not touch on whether the universe has any point to it and it cannot even hope to answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing.
Perhaps (although Larry Krauss has an answer to why there is something if you accept his definition of “nothing”), but religion has never answered those questions either, and has no hope of doing so. Or, rather, different religions give different answers and there’s no way of knowing which is right. Which Big Questions, for example, has religion answered? Here’s a common one: is God good? That’s an easy question, and we have no answer. Here’s another: is it a sin to masturbate? No answer there, either.
Forshaw’s last paragraph is predictable:
In some people’s minds, science and religion stand in stark opposition, but is this really the case? Certainly, years of being a scientist have led me to doubt pretty much everything I thought I knew. Secure and certain knowledge is a rare thing and I am not surprised that scientists often find religious faith hard to swallow. That said, scientists do often act with what seems to me to be something like faith: a faith in scientific truths perhaps or in the humbling significance of nature’s beauty. Perhaps “faith” is too strong – enthusiastic optimism might be better. Whatever the case, the importance of science lies not only in fighting ignorance and the building of better theories – it is important too because of the way it inspires glory and wonder. In that regard, at least, science and religion are united.
Well, at least at least he thinks twice before sticking science with the accusation of “faith”. “Enthusiastic optimism” is better, because it expresses our confidence that empirical study will help uncover the secrets of the universe, but that’s a long way from faith. It’s not faith but confidence, based on experience, that science really does have the tools to answer any of the Big Questions that are capable of being answered. The use of the weasel word “faith” when it comes to science is simply to give credence to religion.
As for science and religion being “united” in inspiring glory and wonder, well, yes, they both do, but in one case the glory and wonder are based on what is true, while in the other they’re based on lies.
I’m wondering why Forshaw descided to write such a misguided article, unless he realized the genuine public-relations advantages of osculating the rump of faith. Perhaps Matthew Cobb, who is at the same University as Forshaw, and also a friend of Brian Cox, can get Forshaw to explain.
h/t: James
I’d like to see that happen. I mean really, not just learning a few fancy words to make bullshit sound better.
I not convinced that science and religion are united in a sense of wonder either. Religion seems to stifle wonder in favour of a false certainty about god and the universe. Wonder is about acknowledging your ignorance but also about trying to find out about things. It’s not about saying ‘god did it’ and going back to the TV.
+1
+2
+3
Science and religion are not united in a sense of wonder; they’re divided by the type of wonder we’re talking about. It’s the difference between astronomy and astrology.
In the first case one is amazed and humbled by the beauty of the cosmos as revealed by the Hubble telescope. In the second case one is amazed and humbled by the fact that all those stars and planets which we can see with the Hubble telescope are actually signs and portents connecting YOUR life with the universe as a whole. Should you get married? Should you make that business deal? Are you aware that all of reality is seamlessly focused on your personal growth in spiritual awareness? Your sense of wonder is stimulated.
In a different way, however, from the sense of wonder that you get from astronomy. The quest for THAT sort of meaning is beyond science. Because the facts which evoke it — aren’t facts.
This, exactly, with one important addition.
Fundamental to science is rational empirical observations that draw their strength from doubt and uncertainty.
Fundamental to religion is faith, which draws its strength from dogmatic certainty not apportioned proportionally to observed evidence.
So long as religion considers faith virtuous, religion will remain the ultimate arch-nemesis of science.
Cheers,
b&
Exactly. And religion’s view of the universe is so small. What is more awe-inspiring, a focus on a the few people who lived a few thousand years ago in a small spot on the globe, or a vast expanse of uncountable light-years of emptiness with uncountable stars, producing how many planets where other life and even civilizations might exist? The latter to me is far more worthy of wonder.
That’s what I would have written, except I lack the ability to write that well.
I wonder if Forshaw is eyeing for Templeton money.
Also my thought. I see a cheque for one million dollars arriving in the post…
I am shocked at this piece. C’mon Brian, have a word!
Forshaw is dead wrong in thinking that theologians will help science progress by enabling physicists to think about the Big Questions. Can he give one example of when that has happened?
A.N. Whitehead argued that the scientific revolution was inspired by Christian theology. I would say that is a pretty big example.
The fact that it worked, allowing atheists to pick up the ball and run with it is no more intellectually significant than the fact that atheist lawyers took over the common law after Catholics had developed it.
I don’t know who that Whitehead is, but the idea that the scientific revolution had anything to do with christian theology is ridiculous.
Whitehead is dead wrong. Christian theology suppressed scientific progress for hundreds of years during the Dark Ages. The practice of science as a discipline grew out of the Enlightenment, which was a revolt against the canons of theology. That is not to say that some scientists weren’t (or aren’t religious), or were inspired by their desire to understand God’s plan, but that admission is not the same thing that saying that science itself was inspired by Christian theology.
You can actually trace elements of the scientific method to a tad before the Enlightenment. Francis Bacon’s “Novum Organum Scientiarum” was published in 1620 & Descartes’s “Discourse on Method” in 1637. Heck, the rudiments of scientific method were described by !*Roger*! Bacon as early as 1265 in which he describes (as Wikipedia puts it) “a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification.”
Science certainly gained full steam in the Enlightenment years, but the scientific revolution is often deemed to have gotten started 200 years earlier during the Italian Renaissance.
The scientific revolution was largely a rebellion against the methods of medieval scholasticism, the dominant school of theology in the late Middle Ages. However, both Bacons (Roger and Francis) and Descartes were all religious- they basically thought the scholasticism of folks like Aquinas was unsound, and that everything should be rethought from the ground up on the basis of systematic verifiable experiments.
It’s the 18th-19th astronomer LaPlace who famously said with reference to God that “I have no need of that hypothesis”. This is actually a bit distorted. In actuality, LaPlace saw no need to believe God intervened at a certain point, contra Isaac Newton, to stabilize the universe. LaPlace wavered between deism and atheism most of his life.
The medieval church’s tendency to suppress science is an erratic off-and-on affair. The Pope during Bacon’s time actually encouraged his work and protected him, but after that Pope’s death, local Franciscan authorities went after Bacon for heresy.
So the issue is a bit more complex and layered than either Whitehead or JAC has described her.
And it is much more complex and layered than you have described too. Even taking your account of events there is much underlying the nuances of the intentions and reality of the situations that are very difficult to know for sure this many years latter, your account may be correct or it may be not. And what influence was obtained from others that you haven’t mentioned? There are many unwritten heroes and villains throughout history that surely played a larger role in the reality of the time than those that are written of.
Really, the practice of the basic principles of science began long before the time that you write of.
I’ve come across the claim that only the Bible approached history as linear progress, and revealed a natural world which is consistent, reflecting the rational Mind of God. All other religions and philosophies believed time was circular and the universe was inconsistent and chaotic. You can’t do science if you think there is no progress, or believe the universe is inconsistent. Thus, the Christian world view was a necessary foundation for the growth of science.
There are so many things wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to start.
I think that the rediscovery of classical texts and pre-christian scientific knowledge starting with the Renaissance had a much greater role in prompting a renewed interest in the natural world and in kickstarting the scientific revolution than any theology that had been dominant for over a millennium without much of a positive effect.
It is the wet hand of religion (claiming to substitute for a god’s finger).
Juts ask the choir boys.
I agree with the others — the scientific revolution wasn’t inspired by anything inherently Christian, it grew out of non-theological elements co-opted by a powerful Church.
But even if your point were granted, you’re now dealing with Frankenstein’s monster … or universal acid. Science is now being turned on what you consider its creator, and is eating away at the container.
Does God exist? Is Christianity true? Let’s do away with the special pleading and approach these questions without faith, bias, prejudice, obscurity, revelation, and handwaving. Let’s be curious, clear, and consistent.
Stand back; we’re using science.
You are so screwed now.
Awesome. 🙂
Oh, the inconsistency of the faithful – it knows no bounds.
“Science is limited. Science doesn’t know everything. Scientists are often wrong. Can you prove that rational, evidence-based reasoning is reliable?”
“We xians started science and continue to help inform it.”
– e^i*pi
Because there were no Islamic scientists…
I would ask Whitehead to explain the impressive scientific advances made in the East: in medieval India and especially in the Islamic World: while keeping in mind that without with medieval scientific scholarship in the Islamic World, the European Renaissance might never have happened.
I would also like to ask why it took 15-16 centuries before the supposed advantages of Christianity kicked in, and also why for most of that time, and since that time, the various churches have actively been in opposition to science.
Oh, and though this is not relevant to the question of the stimuli of the European Renaissance, perhaps Whitehead (or Kevin) might also like to explain the history of science in China and Japan.
These slogans are nowadays quite popular among Christian intellectuals: Christian thinkers bootstrapped the scientific revolution of the 17the century – the Catholic Church did its very best to save as many Jews as possible during the Nazi-regime – I even heard a Catholic academic explain to his students that in the times of witch hunts and pogroms in Europe, it was the ‘Holy Catholic Church’ that did its very best to protect people from the evil secular authorities torturing and burning and maiming poor innocent citizens! The Catholic Church is currently conducting a veritable propaganda war against atheists and secularists.
Whenever I read or hear someone attempting to equate science with faith, I have to think of Tim Minchin’s line: “That’s absolute bullshit. Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.”
Again, I come back to the concept of predictive validity. (Am I starting to sound like a broken record here?)
“Certainty” is idiotic. It doesn’t exist, and to keep bringing it up is the strawman of all lame argument.
What is the level of predictive validity of any belief? Science has provided us with plenty, religion with none at all. If 98% of a given disease is eliminated by vaccination, we don’t throw the vaccine out because of the other 2%. We ask ourselves why the 2% didn’t attain the immunity that the other 98% did.
Can anyone name one SINGLE instance of religious belief, ritual, or procedure that produced results beyond chance?
Yikes. L
The pocketing of money?
But that was yesterday, today it seems less of a certain income.
Good one. You made my morning. L
Let’s not forget supplying the priesthood with a steady supply of choir boys….
b&
–“Certainty” is idiotic. It doesn’t exist, and to keep bringing it up is the strawman of all lame argument.–
I am dismayed at how many intelligent people confound ‘certainty’ with ‘predictive certainty’ and thus make outrageous statements like the above. If I weigh a small quantity of sugar, in the neighborhood of an ounce, I may have to deal with issues of precision in my measurement, but I can be absolutely certain (100% certain!) that my quantity of sugar weighs less than ten pounds. Certainty is by no means ‘idiotic’.
I am in complete sympathy with the intent of Linda’s post, but there is no reason to give away the certainty farm to defend against theologians.
You didn’t notice, then, that Linda brought up “certainty” only in the context of “predictive validity”?
/@
Yes I noticed… and as I said I am in basic sympathy with her point. And within that context her comment that certainty is idiotic may not be too terribly hyperbolic. I apologize for decontextualizing.
I would love it if just once a senior theologian of any stripe would come out an say their faith is based on uncertainty and that it could be dismissed with more evidence.
I’ve seen many agree that their faith is based on uncertainty — that’s what makes faith so special, though. You need to have doubt in order for there to be any value in overcoming it, just like you have to first be fearful so that you can exercise the virtue of bravery.
“Faith is believing things without evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence. In some circles, this is considered a virtue.”
I’ve forgotten the source; much obliged to anyone who can provide it.
Maybe the saying Credo quia absurdum est – I believe because it is unbelievable / absurd ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum
And did not Kierkegaard became famous with similar ideas? Something about the necessity to make a leap into faith?
It needed to be done, and it was done with flair!
I note that Forshaw tries to have it both ways in the end, earlier “overstating” is now “to doubt pretty much everything I thought I knew”, and the certainty of religion is not seen as “hubris” but “inspires glory and wonder”.
That may work for him, the capacity for humans to fool themselves are unlimited (to use Feynman’s take).
Unfortunately for him, few would swallow the contradictions in his position unless previously entertaining his “belief in belief”.
Science and religion do not have to be at loggerheads
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22431-science-and-religion-do-not-have-to-be-at-loggerheads.html?full=true
Are you serious?
I went to this link and read the article, which can be summed up as follows: We’d all get along just fine if you uppity scientists would just learn to properly kiss ass.
Sorry, but the uppitiness belongs to religion. We’d really all get along fine if the religious would stop acting like they’re all so special. L
From the writer’s profile, I note that
Templeton? Haven’t I heard that name somewhere?
Every time a cash register rings, a Templeton fellow gets his bling.
The article seems to be of the “if it is true, we pray it not be widely known” genre. Good lord, fatwas against partice physicists?
“it is important too because of the way it inspires glory and wonder. In that regard, at least, science and religion are united.”
Agreed. For example, in my case (just had an earthquake here in LA) I *glory* in the fact that I left the church, and *wonder* how in the world I ever wasted so much of my life there.
When Forshaw talks about the Science being uncertain, it is a different type of uncertainty than that of religion. The uncertainty of science changes on a day today basis relegated to the hypethetico-deductive reasoning strategy or scientific method. Uncertainty decreases with the increasing knowledge. Religion stays stagnant , never discovering anything and always uncertain. I think that Lawerance Krauss at the Cern Conference bests describes the uncertainty by these quotes. “One gets the impression from a meeting like this that scientists care about God; they don’t.”
“You can’t disprove the theory of God.
“The power of science is uncertainty. Everything is uncertain, but science can define that uncertainty.”
“That’s why science makes progress and religion doesn’t.” Just to clarify, Lawrence clarified, on Facebook as a correction to John Gribbin that it is not a theory of God but a hypothesis of God. These quotes from Lawrence are from this article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19997789
I’m curious if Jeff Forshaw is a member of a church with a relatively minimalist creed or one that is outright non-creedal such as the Quakers or Unitarians. If so, his views are more acceptable to me. But I wish he would be more sensitive to the science-obstructionist character of much religion outside his orbit.
O good grief! What an ill thought out article this is.
Any person who believes that our planet is 6,000 years old and points to a book that was written by men years after the events they are writing about had happened, as proof that god exists is at best on dated and unquantifiable ground.
The assault on science by religion over the centuries has been incredible (and it still continues) and I for one am dismayed at this fashionable new “respect” society we must show medieval belief systems.
I respect ideas that have validity but if someone tells you they’ve seen unicorns at the bottom of their garden you would laugh at them, possible arranging for a psychiatrist’s visit, so tell me why is religion given a free pass?
After all these people no longer believe in Thor, Zeus et al!
Not only has theology failed to answer the Big Questions, it’s also failed to answer to the Medium and Small ones – and it’s had a lot longer on this planet than science to do so (in organised or disorganised form).
What’s more, theology isn’t capable of even formulating a question honestly, such that the answer can be anything but “God”, because for theology that is the only & the ultimate answer, because by the way they speak down to the rest of us, theologians would have you believe they’ve probed reality and found Him in every corner – and the scientists are accused of hubris and scolded for doing science wrong!
Finally, I would like to see one (1), that is – ONE – real, concrete example of a theologian discovering a Truth or an Answer using their theology that a scientist using science didn’t. Considering theology appears to be (in significant part) the practice of retrofitting dogma to comport to reality as revealed by scientific investigation, I find it extremely unlikely that such a discovery has ever happened, or ever will.
Theologians are storytellers and not much else.They wandered into Geneva, hoping that they can somehow spin good physics into their silly bronze-age snuff-porn fantasies.
Sometimes I think theologians are wistfully remembering the time when they were the only game in town and silently cursing the modern successes of (and popular fascination with) discovering actual truths about the universe. Their actions (attempting to co-opt actual science as retroactive proof of scripture, scolding actual scientists, NOT actually investigating their own beliefs honestly, NOT applying actual science to their scriptural claims and NEVER admitting that science seems to have debunked or rendered irrelevant/moot/useless most of theism’s positive claims) seem to confirm that.
If the deep unity between religion and science postulated by some had any validity, we should expect that theologians would be a fecund source of hypotheses for scientific investigation — since, having the best understanding of the ways of the Lord, they would presumably be in a privileged position to suggest the areas of inquiry most likely to explicate God’s handiwork. If so, I must have missed the reports of the Collegium Romanum suggesting which observations Galileo should undertake to confirm the Copernican solar system; missed the writings of turn-of-the century theologians that inspired Einstein to ponder inertial frames of reference and the curvature of space-time; and missed the story of how the images of all those consulting clerics got cropped out of the iconic photograph from the 1927 Solvay International Physics Conference depicting the fathers (and Mother Marie Curie) of quantum mechanics.
Quite to the contrary, theologians show up only after a new scientific paradigm can no longer be plausibly denied to exclaim “Why, of course, that is precisely how God would have ordered the universe!” Or at least the sophisticated, progressive theologians do; the reactionary, fundamentalist theologians go merrily along ignoring and denying all inconvenient scientific discoveries — the example nonpareil being the literal-Genesis-accepting Young Earth Creationists (though even they eventually had to give up the ghost on a flat earth and geocentric solar system).
For shame, Forshaw!
Please respond to Professor Coyne. Thanks.
Religion answers the Really Big Questions in life :-
Should I put oil on my head when I fast? Should women cover their head in church? Should I sell all I have and give the money to the poor? Should I eat food sacrificed to idols? Should we tithe mint?
The answers to all these questions can be found in the New Testament.
Science is restricted to questions like – where did human beings come from, is there life elsewhere in the universe, how old is the universe.
No wonder theologians are desperate to hang around with the cool science kids, and try to bask in the prestige of people who can provide real answers to the real questions people want to ask.
after reading this post:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/thomas-friedman-is-pro-life/
… it occurred to me that using the term “accommodationism” is actually not working correctly. I’d argue that supernatural claims have always been accommodated by science – and have lost.
is this pedantic/nitpick or semantics? or could using loose terms like that lightly be working against one’s intended meaning?
also TIL double C double M in “accommodate”.