From: lisjws@gdr.bath.ac.uk (J W Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Evol & God : CANNOT Co-exist!
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:50:07 GMT
Organization: University Library, University of Bath, UK

In article <1556@adpplz.UUCP> martin@adpgate.UUCP (Martin Golding) writes:
>lisjws@gdr.bath.ac.uk (J W Smith) writes:
>
>> It is not incompatible BUT you cannot hold a scientific belief in god.
>> Why? Because science, as you so clearly point out, can only tell us about
>> appearances whereas religion claims to have the 'truth'.
>
>> One small question - If religion can give us the 'truth' why do you bother
>> with the second rate information that science gives us?
>
>This is a good question, and if asked and understood on a regular basis
>by the religious (and occasionally by the followers of science, a not
>entirely disjoint subset) would perhaps improve relations all around.
>
>Religion may give us "Truth". I shall hold that as an axiom. But does
>your "second rate information that science gives us" follow? No religion
>(of which I am aware) teaches us Euclidean geometry. Or math. Or electronics.
>If you want to design a computer, the "second rate information" is the
>only data that _applies_, God hasn't (in any religion of which I am aware)
>declared the wonders of RISC, or disparaged string instructions.
>If you want your property surveyed, no bible or other written religious
>doctrine (of which I am aware) notes that very long lines are affected
>by the curvature of the earth. The "second rate" data is of primary
>importance for that subject. When I'm out riding my motorcycle, it is
>of _immediate_ interest that motorcycles countersteer, and hopefully
>irrelevant that there is an afterlife. 
>
>This is important. Note this. Please listen:
>
>By telling me that motorcycles countersteer, physics postpones my
>direct encounter with God. Or whatever afterlife you prefer, there
>are lots of them proposed and I don't intend to take sides here.
>No religious literature (of which I'm aware) mentions motorcycles,
>or that they countersteer, or that some have shaft drive. As long
>as I ride with care, physics is critical, and religion irrelevant.
>
>Religions may have more powerful or more encompassing Truths, but none
>has all the Truths, or even a very long list of them. Science is to
>discover the second rate, lesser Truths which are irrelevant to, and
>ignored by religion, just as the more important Truths are irrelevant
>to, and ignored by, science.
>
>
>Unless your particular religion specifically rejects the fruits of
>science, how can there be a problem, for you, with sciences coexistence
>with your god or gods? If your religion does reject the fruits of
>science, then what, if you'll pardon the expression the HELL, are you
>doing _here_?
>
>
>Martin Golding  

I'm afraid my original question was rather oblique (and therefore
misunderstood - it will teach me not to be 'too clever'!).

To set the record straight - I believe in no religion, and I find it
impossible to understand how one can both believe in a religion (that
promises Truth) and in science which can never offer more than limited
knowledge (it can certainly never promise Truth). There seems to be a
contradiction here.

Note: By Truth I mean knowledge and a way of knowing that bypasses
observation and reason - I do not simply mean a set of laws like 'The Ten
Commandments' or the entire contents of any religious book or books.

It may help if expand my original question to "If you believe that Truth
is knowable by human beings via religion then how can you also believe in
science which takes as one of its basic assumptions that all we can know
are our observations and our interpretations of those observations?".

Separately I question any interpretation of religion that limits its areas
of application, for example, to morality. It seems a contradiction to me to
claim that religion can give us access to some overarching Truth and then
limit its area of application to certain aspects of human life.

Instead of shrinking religion until it is comfortable to live with why not
drop it altogether? If you need a moral framework - why not Humanism?

John Smith.