Dec 29 2009
RP) Assumptions about Religion and Science
(Recycled material: I’m in holiday/travel mode. This material first posted on Dec. 24, 2008)
A research finding released four days ago bore this headline: God Or Science? A Belief In One Weakens Positive Feelings For The Other.
As you might guess, I have doubts about the wording of the title and the news release itself, which starts like this:
A person’s unconscious attitudes toward science and God may be fundamentally opposed, researchers report, depending on how religion and science are used to answer “ultimate” questions such as how the universe began or the origin of life.
The problem — and its no quibble — consists of not defining which deity they are referring to, for there are and have been hundreds of them, thereby perpetuating the assumption that there is one deity that all people recognize.
C’mon! Study some history and anthropology and world religions. Inject some objectivity into the piece. Using the word “god” both capitalized and without a preceding article not only perpetuates assumptions but it also compromises science. In this case, what god, precisely, does belief in weaken feelings for science?
A much more scientific wording would make explicit that the “belief in” question was not about the god Zeus or Ra or XYZ, but no doubt a generic, monotheistic version of the Abrahamic tradition.
The first sentence of the final paragraph states,
The most obvious implication of the research is that “to be compatible, science and religion need to stick to their own territories, their own explanatory space,” Preston said.
That’s an odd sort of compatibility. Sort of like saying a husband and wife need to stay in their own rooms to be compatible.
Good science precisely defines its variables and tests its claims about the universe. Popular religion does neither. It is a poster-child for bad science.
If we want to best understand the universe we should stick to science even if it means shredding religious claims and assumptions.
One god? By name alone.
