OPINION & EDITORIAL
Contrary to common contention, religion inspires inquiry
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by Letters to the Editor
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Corey Sheahan’s column (“Dawkins Reveals the Beauty of Science,” March 11) elucidates some of the finer points between science and faith and the misunderstandings that occur between them. I applaud Mr. Sheahan’s astute synopsis of Richard Dawkins’ work. I further praise his equally fair-minded treatment of faith, relative to the virulent language often flung at the over-nebulous group of “religious people”; more often than not this idea is espoused with Christians in mind, and in particular the oft-demonized Christian right.
However, I personally take issue with Mr. Sheahan’s contention that “Faith states that it has answers, as long as you don’t ask questions.” His point being that faith fails to dispel ignorance, where science provides truth, and eventually or theoretically all the truth humans will ever need.
This broad gauge characterization of faith is disconcerting to people who take solace in the hope that religion and faith provide some of the deeper questions presented to the human condition. To be sure, science will never answer some of these questions: “Is there divinity in a world that at times seems devoid of providence?” “Do humans have souls?” “Is there an afterlife?” “What is my obligation to divinity and man?” “How does divinity affect the here and now?” “Why must do humans suffer beyond what can be considered physical pain?” These questions are inherently untestable by empirical science, and they fail to meet the scope of human scientific inquiry.
Quite contrary to Mr. Sheahan’s assertion, faith is all about questions. The supernatural will always lie beyond the scope of science; because the supernatural is not innately observable it can neither be believed in nor rejected through personal experience. The psychological and metaphysical questions that have plagued human thought for so long, at the end of the day, are more important to most than the questions science can answer.
The brevity of human existence, a mere blip in the history of the universe, demands that intangible questions be asked. Faith answers many questions, as does science. But it is important to remember that in the seemingly stark, cold moment experienced by every human being at the end of his or her life, we will never be solaced by any answer to any question that science can give us.
Mr. Sheahan has made a troubling and outdated implication that all “religious people” reject science. I myself firmly believe in evolution, the slow-moving geology of our planet, the formation of the universe, the physics of the stars and that we will always be able to better ourselves through knowledge. I also believe in a personal God who is working out a perfection of what we have made imperfect.
Nathan Sweet
UW Senior, Hebrew
and Semitic studies
nsweet@wisc.edu
Anonymous (March 12, 2008 @ 7:35am):
Nate, a very sincere, thoughtful and respectful repsonse. Well done.
Anonymous (March 12, 2008 @ 12:22pm):
Your questions that can't be answered with science are interesting, because they are questions created BY faith.
Think about the difference between faith and doubt. Are they actually the same thing?
William Waller (March 12, 2008 @ 3:30pm):
Hi Nate,
Science may not answer the questions you mention, but that may be precisely because those questions are meaningless (we cannot simply assume they are meaningful.) If the only means by which those questions might find an answer is faith--where faith is an act of will made in order to believe an arbitrary proposition--then the answer arrived at is utterly worthless, because it has no methodological connection to truth. Unless you are operating with a different concept of faith (which you then ought to offer), literally any answer one might care to have is legitimized by faith. If you then assert that faith can arrive at true answers, you are put in the unenviable position of reconciling a literal infinity of true contradictions. Faith isn't looking so hot, is it?
Of course, philosophy should be able to address some of them, insofar as they are well-formed, but the answers will not generally please the theist. For instance, considerations about the burden of proof for positive existential claims and the failure of arguments for those claims cause most philosophers to reject the God concept, if they don't simply find it self-contradictory in the first place.
What the history of science can tell us, however, is that the more a God concept is said to be involved in the natural world, the less likely it is that said God actually exists. The course of human knowledge is a remarkably steady retreat from gap-filling Gods, who at one time were responsible for everything from the weather to the existence of humanity. The blistering epistemic power of science and its mechanisms of predictive success, unification, and falsifiability destroyed the belief in those Gods, supplanting them with naturalistic theories of much greater epistemic and aesthetic value. It is quite telling, I think, that God has retreated to the intangibles you and the other writer mention--meanings hoisted upon the meaningless and ghosts forced into machines--which are entertained only in virtue of their offering to God (and by extension, our delusions) a last, apparently impenetrable refuge.
Anonymous (March 12, 2008 @ 4:32pm):
"Mr. Sheahan has made a troubling and outdated implication that all âreligious peopleâ reject science."
-When did I make the assertion that all religious people reject faith? Give me a quote. Lying is not sincere, thoughtful, or respectful.
-I'll address your 'questions' for science one by one:
âIs there divinity in a world that at times seems devoid of providence?â
-Why would you presuppose the existence of a divinity in the world when you READILY ADMIT that there doesn't seem to be any? This question makes no sense whatsoever.
âDo humans have souls?â
-I don't know. But there's good reason to believe that the 'soul' is simply the human interpretation of our consciousness, which is the product of our extremely complex brains. The 'mind' is the 'soul,' and neither could exist without a complex brain. This is a scientific question. I don't see how religion's answer to the question ("Yes, there is a soul. No, I don't have any evidence for it.") is at all satisfactory.
âIs there an afterlife?â
-I don't know. But why should you think that Bronze age myths have the right answer? How do you know that your particular version of the afterlife (determined solely on where you were born) gives the right answer? While science will never conclusively answer this question, neither will religion. Just because religion provides a comforting answer, it does not follow that this is the correct answer.
âWhat is my obligation to divinity and man?â
-???? You're presupposing the existence of the divine, without any real reason to do so. While 'science' may not have a direct answer to how we should act toward one another, we can get morality from areas other than religion, like philosophy.
âHow does divinity affect the here and now?â
-It doesn't.
âWhy must do [sic] humans suffer beyond what can be considered physical pain?â
-Why should we think that emotional and physical pain are all that different. We feel pain because then we learn not to do those things that cause us pain. It's a useful survival skill. Perhaps emotional pain has the same causes. Maybe science does have an answer to that question. I don't know, but that doesn't mean we can't try to find out.
"These questions are inherently untestable by empirical science, and they fail to meet the scope of human scientific inquiry."
-No, they aren't. They are well within the scope of scientific - and philosophic - inquiry.
-Corey Sheahan
Anonymous (March 12, 2008 @ 5:58pm):
Sheahan, nice counter.
Corey Sheahan (March 12, 2008 @ 8:35pm):
I apologize for all the weird characters in the response. Apparently, message boards do not care for copy and pasting.
-Corey
Anonymous (March 12, 2008 @ 10:42pm):
it isn't the copy and pasting. it is that the badgerherald does not allow the quotes characters and other basic functions of writing
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