On 6/14/05, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> >[lbo-talk] Appeal to Ignorance
> >Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
> >Mon Jun 13 08:51:04 PDT 2005
> <snip>
> >*those* scientists' rejection of mainly american/western
> >conceptions/practice of religion.
>
> There is no evidence that scientists in or from China, India, Japan,
> and other non-Western countries are more religious than American
> scientists (among whom are found many immigrants anyhow). If
> anything, the opposite is probably the case.
>
> >if we go back to the article yoshie posted, and the specific
> >quotation that has exercised several of us (including, but only
> >joanna -- and me, for that matter), we can see that far from being
> >the innocent "descriptive" yoshie painted it as, only an utterly
> >tone-deaf reader would miss the sarcastic dismissal of
> >still-religious scientists as what we have begun on this list to
> >call "residue". thus:
> >
> >===
> >Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our
> >1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious
> >beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the
> >deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of
> >knowledge."
> >===
> >
> >clearly, "real scientist in the deepest sense of the word" is
> >evaluative. let's not pretend otherwise.
>
> Scientists are free to make evaluative statements on the worth of
> religion or lack thereof, just as the religious are free to make
> evaluative statementsonof the worth of science or lack thereof. You
> are free to assent to either or both or neither. The freedom of
> conscience doesn't guarantee that your belief, religious or
> scientific or of any other kind, will be held in high regard or even
> will not be disparaged by others who don't share yours.
>
> That said, the same article that quotes Peter Atkins above also cites
> NAS president Bruce Alberts as reverentially saying, "There are many
> very outstanding members of this academy who are very religious
> people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists"
> (at
> <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050606/011942.html>),
> though he had little empirical evidence to prove it, as it turned
> out. Then, there is the late and lamented Stephen Jay Gould, who
> held -- like theologians, clerics, and lay leaders of Catholicism,
> Mainline Protestantism, etc. -- that science and religion are
> "nonoverlapping magisteria" (Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping
> Magisteria,"
> <http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html>).
>
> There is no logical reason that "a real scientist in the deepest
> sense of the word" can't be a real religious faithful in the deepest
> sense of the word. However, logic is one thing, and practice is
> another, so what's logically possible -- simultaneous mastery of
> science and belief in an actually existing religion -- may not be
> necessarily very common in reality.
>
> One of the earliest statements of a modern scientific worldview is
> Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620,
> <http://history.hanover.edu/texts/Bacon/novorg.html>). Once such a
> view (supported by the rise of liberalism in politics, both of which
> are rooted in capitalism -- itself the main agent of secularization
> of life) becomes the dominant one, older conceptions of religions
> could not survive it (and even fundamentalists today feel obliged to
> justify religion on science's terms, rather than religion's -- hence
> their vain attempts to introduce "Intelligent Design" into science
> classrooms rather than insisting upon establishment of religion
> classes). Theoretically, one could adopt a scientific view, while
> making efforts to develop new doctrines of religion within limits of
> reason, but such new doctrines tend to raise a new intellectual
> problem: namely, if you go _that far_ in limiting epistemological
> claims as well as socio-political powers of religion, so much so that
> you can very well live without religion in your everyday life, why
> not simply dispense with it altogether? Catholicism, Mainline
> Protestantism, Reform Judaism, etc. have managed to survive by
> allowing the ordinary faithful to more or less concentrate on
> practical aspects of religion (dignifying life's major occasions,
> holding social events, ministering to the poor, etc.), paying little
> heed to doctrines (which are themselves radically liberalized by
> their respective theologians, clerics, and lay leaders in keeping
> with modernity). That seems to "work" for many Americans in
> practice, but it is probable that few scientists -- who are trained
> to ask, "Must I believe it?" rather than "Can I believe it?" -- find
> it to be an intellectually satisfying solution.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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>
-- Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead