From: gene@aee.aee.com (Gene Kochanowsky)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Organization: Associated Electronic Engineers
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 20:00:50 GMT



>In article <1992Nov7.212535.312@aee.aee.com>, gene@aee.aee.com (Gene Kochanowsky) 
>writes:
>|> sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner) writes:

>|> >	This is complete nonsense.  There may be religious leaders who 
>|> >demand unquestioning acceptance of belief, but I've certainly never met one.  
>|> >As a matter of interest, how many have you actually asked?  Most religions 
>|> >do indeed require some kind of intellectual commitment eventually, but in the 
>|> >varieties I'm familiar with that commitment is compatible with continued 
>|> >questioning.  

	How can you live in this culture and not be constantly bombarded
by religion of all kinds. They come to your door, they are on TV. You meet
them at parties. They are on the internet. They send you mail. They are 
_everywhere_. I can throw rocks at a church from my house. And, of course, 
with the wide selection of religions availible in America today, it is possible 
to get any slant you want. There exist religions that have been packaged to 
appeal to many mass audiencies. At what point in time, of this constant readjusting 
of religion to suit the population in general, is it really no longer a 
religion, but just some sort of national feel good, anyone can join in campaign.

	If a given religion says that everything can be questioned. That you don't
even have to believe in a God or creator or whatever. That you can make it up 
as you go along, is this a religion? If a religion has a set of beliefs and
a model of how and why the world is as it is, but allows the members to
question it and propose alternatives, if there is no critical review,
burden of proof, is it not really just a psuedo-science, like Astrology and
Acupuncture?  If there is critical review, and empirical proof then isn't it 
now become a Science ?

	Are you trying to tell me that you are in a religion that is really a 
Science?  Or is it that somehow you think Science is really religion? Or are
you just totally confused?

	Those religions that are serious, require that the dispensers of
religion at least have faith, because there is no proof. What a religion proports 
is beyond proof, this leaves only faith. There have been many fine postings
in this vien that have demonstraited the difficulty of dealing with proof
and omnipotent things. Also there is an interesting proof in symbolic logic
that shows that from the set of all things (omnipotence) anything can be proven.

	-A, A > B

		> == is provable	

	I contend that omnipotence is inherently a contradiction, that
it intrinsically includes "the case and not the case", both alive and dead, both
here and there, etc. Thus from it anything goes. Anything can be proven and
nothing can be proven. What does this leave but faith.

	And don't tell me that you don't require something omnipotent in
your religion. If you do not, then what is the differenct between your God and 
a UFO?

>|> 	Or if you are a bible thumper try this quote for size:
>|> 
>|> 		"proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing"

>	I doubt I've ever thumped a Bible, and I can't imagine a reason for 
>thumping a bible, but I'll bite anyway: where's the quote from?

	Try these on for size

		Prov. 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine hart; and lean
			  not unto thine own understanding.

		Cor. 2:5 Your faith should not stand in the wisdom of
			 men, but in the power of God.

		Eph. 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith
			  ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts
			  of the wicked (Scientists).

		Heb. 11:1 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
			  evidence of things not seen.
	
		Heb. 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him,
			  for he who comes to God must believe that He is,
			  and that He is a rewarder of those that seek him.


>|> 	If there is any complete nonsense here, it is that a person can be truely
>|> religious and scientific in his religion at the same time. It is absurd, 
>|> illogical
>|> and speaks volumes of misunderstanding on the part of that person of what is the 
>|> basis of both science and religion.

>	Who said anything about being scientific in his religion?  I expect a 
>scientist to scientific in her science, not in her religion.  What I did object 
>to was the simple paradigm "science questions everything, religion questions 
>nothing".  I don't think either part of the statement is true.

	I agree wholeheartly with your statement that Science should be for
Science and not used in religion. I do question the last statement. At
what point does a religion remain a religion, if there is questioning and 
revision allowed, and becomes pseudo-science or worse science itself?

>|> >You simply can't do science without the 
>|> >"unquestioning belief" (usually unconscious) in the foundations upon which 
>|> >it is built.
>|> 
>|> 	Yes, you are absolutely right. In the last hundred years there have been
>|> no scientists that have questioned the science of thier time. Not Rutherford or Bohr, 
>|> or Einstien, or Shroedinger, not Feynman or Dirac. Gosh, it doesn't seem like any 
>|> scientist has questioned the science of the day..... NOT. 
>|> 
>|> 	And just maybe in the group of "space potato" scientist, as you call them, 
>|> might be the next Einstien, or Dirac. That person will be heavily criticized, and 
>|> scrutinzed, but, just maybe, if the person is right, the experiments will be done, 
>|> and will prove thier point. That person will become the producer of new science.

>I'm afraid you've missed my point.  I said nothing about questioning the science 
>of the day -- how conservative science should be is a practical question only.  
>I was pointing out that all scientists, as long as they're doing science, must 
>accept the conceptual foundations of science (doesn't sound very controversial, 
>does it?).  Let me try an example.  Suppose an experiment is reported in the 
>literature that suggests that conservation of energy does not hold under 
>some circumstances.  What options are available to a scientist reading this?  
>He can dismiss it as a bad experiment or a statistical fluctuation (which would 
>probably be the case); if the evidence is strong enough, he might consider 
>changing the definition of energy (unlikely, but it's happened before).  
>Finally, if he's really bold, and he can't find a way to fit the new results
>into the existing theory, he will consider the possibility that energy 
>conservation in fact doesn't hold, and that what we had taken to be a valid 
>conservation law was actually an approximate result of some more fundamental 
>theory (very unlikely, but as you point out, revolutions do occur).  Mind you, 
>he may have no idea yet what that theory is, but he is confident one is out 
>there, waiting to be found.  The one thing he does not do, as long as he is 
>acting as a scientist, is conclude that the world has stopped exhibiting law-
>like behavior, and that no theory will ever be found to explain the new 
>result.  This, I maintain, is an example of faith in operation.  I happen to 
>think it's well-founded faith, but that's irrelevant.  As in the case of 
>religious faith, you can continue to practice your science even if you harbor 
>some doubts about its foundations, as long as you don't let them affect the 
>way you do your work; once you actually start believing that the world 
>doesn't follow rules, or that the scientific literature is all cooked by the 
>government to keep the truths of Larsonian physics from the masses, you are 
>no longer doing science (the analogy with religious faith should be clear).
>	Now you may well believe that the assumptions made in doing science are 
>self-evident (I have the same inclinations myself), but it doesn't take much 
>reading in the literature of other cultures to realize that self-evident 
>beliefs are often historically conditioned.  If you want a more contemporary 
>approach, try reading some sociology or philosophy of science: some of those 
>people don't think what we're doing is at all simple or self-evident.

	What you have illustraited is not so much a faith as a desire. If the
Universe is not repeatable in some fashion (statistical repeatablity will do)
then there is no chance for Science to succeed. However if it is found that the
Universe is not repeatable in any sense, then I am sure it will be reported,
in the journals, questioned, examined and put to the test.(Kind of an absurd
idea but I am sure it would happen). There may be scientists that take repeatability
on faith. There is no reason to do so, since if it is not true they are out
of business. I am sure there would be some people who would continue to try
to practice Science if this came to be, but at that time Science would
definitly have become a religion or history or both.

>|> 	The only sad thing about Mr. Shaffner's last statment is it shows a 
>|> confusion, a thought process that identifies Science as a kind of religion. When I was
>|> in grad school, it was common for the students of the time to rigidly oppose any
>|> idea that the Science being taught at the time could be wrong. This was independent 
>|> of any opposing idea, they had faith in what they were being taught. These grad students
>|> were not scientist, they were preachers.  Because of this, I am afaid for science in
>|> the US, this is the sort of thing that could kill it.

>	Sorry, I don't think science is a kind of religion.  I engage in both 
>pursuits, and I am well aware that they have different goals, methods and 
>motivations.  One thing they do have in common, though, is that both offer an 
>interpretive framework for understanding the world.  Whether the frameworks are 
>compatible depends in detail on which religious tradition you're talking about 
>(had the original claim been that, say, fundamentalist Christian creation 
>science and biology were incompatible, I would have done nothing but agree).
>That they frequently are compatible is clear from the many scientists who are 
>and have been practicing believers in a variety of religious faiths.

	I fail to understand how the existence of Scientists that practice
religion indicates that they are compatible. Next you will be telling me
that Lawyers and the public good are compatible. Action of differing motives
in the same person, makes no indication of compatibility or complimentarity.
However it might be an indication of schizophrenia.

	Lastley I would like to nail this one last nail into the coffin, and
you will hear from me no more. I live here in the bible belt of America, and 
have many friends and relatives of all faiths. I have said to them, and in 
church many times that it is all complete and utter nonsense. I have done
this in the Ukraine, in some of the oldest churches in the world, in Paris
in Moscow, in Canada. I have asked directly to the heavens in these places of
demonstraited sanctity, "Strike me dead where I stand". I would have endured 
the fires of Hell forever just for that bit of proof. And yet here I write. 

Gene Kochanowsky
-- 
Gene Kochanowsky                           | "And remember ....
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