From: rhatcher@fnala.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 10 Nov 92 22:55:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: fnala.1992Nov10.165533.1
Distribution: na
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Lab
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnala.fnal.gov

I don't know why I'm bothering with this particular post in this long
thread, but...

In article <1992Nov8.160429.14488@galileo.physics.arizona.edu>, lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) writes:
> gene@aee.aee.com (Gene Kochanowsky) writes:
>> 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.
> 
> Tell that to Einstein.

I did.  He didn't dispute it.  Nary a peep.  Maybe he didn't hear me
through all the dirt.  :-)

> (I do not know what religions you have been exposed to, but my
> beckground in is a sect that specifically encourages constant
> questioning and self-examination.)

I want to point out the difference between "[self] questioning
and self-examination" and questioning the fundemental beliefs
(axioms?) of a religion.  Most religions stress the first; few, if any,
to my knowledge encourage the second.  This seems to be the basic 
underlying dicotomy being discussed here.  Science encourages (to some
extent, at least) questioning fundamental assumptions.  Religion, as
pointed out previously, ceases to be a religion when those basic
assumptions are questioned.

  Is a catholic (to pick a particular) still a catholic after questioning
  those beliefs and deciding that the pope is NOT a link between "god" and 
  humanity, but instead just another power broker interested in benefits 
  for some small class of people?

Don't bother trying to answer; it was meant as a rhetorical question.
The scientific method has survived the loss of some of "science"'s
axioms, because it is the *methodkey.  Note the earlier parallel thread (Popper et.al.) that went so
far, in my understanding of what was said, to question the scientific
method itself; Science survived that as well.

The problem with religions in general is that they provide no "method"
for deducing anything.  Everything is subject to *subjective*
interpretation, often of a holy book generally by someone with differing
objectives than yourself.  Nor do the "answers" tend to be reproducible.
And there are no objective standards for resolving differences.

This is not to say that everything in human experience derives from
science (the "religionists" usually point out the example of "love").
It's just that one doesn't need *religion*, per se, to generate values
and emotions.  I can love, be happy, etc, without reference to a god.
So please drop those arguments that the existance of love and such
"prove" the existance of god (to badly paraphrase another thread).

Well, I think I've gone far enough a field from sci.physics that
I should call a end to this whole discussion here.  Maybe move it to
one of the philosophy groups.

> 	Larry "Appealing to historicity" Hammer

-robert
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