From: ydobyns@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (York H. Dobyns)
Subject: Re: Logic and God (was: Young earth creationist logic NOT!)
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 23:04:46 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.151959.11603@acuson.com> lawson@aldia.UUCP (Drew Lawson) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.021757.9487@panix.com> carlf@panix.com (Carl Fink) writes:
[...]
>>  Drew, an honest and nonsarcastic question:  why should YOUR religious
>>beliefs be used as a guide to scientists, and not other religions?
>
>A good question.  If I may counter it with another question.  Why
>should my religious views be excluded from a scientific endevor in
>which I am involved?  I do not ask for my views to be imposed on all of
>science.  I do ask that the veiled hostility toward religion be removed
>from science.

Your religious beliefs can legitimately be used in scientific reasoning
if and only if they are scientific in structure; that is, they are
supported by evidence and subject to change if new evidence so warrants.
Otherwise, they have no place in scientific inference.

>A researcher comes to a fork in the road (figuratively speaking), and
>has to choose between A and B, and chooses A.  If he is asked why he
>made that choice and responds that his doctrinal learning has told him
>that B is a dead-end, he is likely to be laughed to scorn.  

*And rightly so!* See below.

>That is the
>kind of thing I want removed.  Sure, he could be wrong, but so could
>the guy with the 300 page justification of choosing A over B.

The crucial difference is the *justification*. The second researcher,
as you yourself say, *justifies* his decision. He may be wrong, but
he's wrong for the right reasons: because the available evidence was
misleading or misunderstood. The "researcher" who bases his choice
on faith (doctrinal learning) has no such excuse. If he happens to
make the wrong choice, he's wrong for the wrong reasons; rather than
holding a justified belief which turned out to be false, he held an
unjustified belief which turned out to be false. And he's in a much
more serious pickle than the second researcher. By hypothesis, he made
his choice based on doctrinal considerations, i.e. as a consequence
of his faith. It was the wrong decision; that consequence of his
faith is false. This would appear to constitute a reductio ad absurdum
disproof of his faith.

So look at it this way: If you, (Drew or any other firm believer in a
doctrinal religion) made a scientific prediction based on some element
of your religious faith, and that prediction proved *wrong*, would you
then recant your faith and adopt a different religion, or none at all?
If your answer is "no", you have just illustrated why religious beliefs
have no place in science. Non-falsifiable hypotheses do not belong
in research.

[Carl, referring to various other religions:]
>>  It's a real question, Sir:  why are your religious beliefs to be used
>>as a guide to science, and not theirs?
[Drew:]
>Let them worship as they please, but DO let them worship.

Huh? I'm as much in favor of religious freedom as anyone, but this
seems a total non-sequitur to the question it seems intended to answer.
If your faith is a valid guide to real-world conclusions, why is not
any other strongly held faith an equally valid guide? Your response
of "Let them worship as they please" seems to imply that you think that
those other faiths *are* as valid as yours, in terms of informing
scientific decisions. But if you think that, how do you account for
the fact that those faiths contain mutually exclusive elements?

The essence of this argument, at least on the side against Drew, is
simply that *faith is not a valid criterion for determining matters
of fact.* If I am converted to some odd religion that teaches that
no man can be more than 6 feet tall because God so decreed,(*)
I can believe that with all my heart and all my soul, but it
won't make Andre the Giant one inch shorter. 

>Drew Lawson                      If you're not part of the solution,
>lawson@acuson.com                you're part of the precipitate

Sad. I expected better from someone with such a clever .sig.

(*) This may sound like a silly example, but consider a prevalent folk
belief in Appalachia: that no man can be *exactly* 6 feet tall because
that was the height of Jesus Christ.

York Dobyns		ydobyns@phoenix.princeton.edu
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins