A lot of people seem to totally misunderstand the issue of credibility. I have had a three day argument with 'Trapper Joe', running about 700 (yes! Seven Hundred) comments. And now this morning I see someone way more intelligent also not getting it.
Listen up guys this is important.
Let's compare Science to Religion. Obviously we are somewhat comparing apples to oranges, because Science and Religion fulfil two very different roles in life. But I'm not trying to compare them in toto. Rather, I want to compare the methodology and reliability of the various facts that are claimed by each to be true. Also, please bear in mind that I am NOT talking about conflicts or contradictions between Science and Religion. Not at all. I am simply going to contrast and compare these two endeavors in their approach to gaining knowledge, and see what conclusions are to be drawn. Also, by religious knowledge or beliefs, I am referring to Spiritual / Theological or beliefs of a similar nature. Social / practical beliefs, for example be nice to people, are not included, since such beliefs are not specifically religious, but rather most societies, even secular ones, come to similar conclusions.
Inspiration
Interestingly, both Scientific Knowledge and Religious Knowledge can often start out the same way - as a spark of inspiration in someone's mind. How did Einstein suddenly figure out the theory of relativity? Something sparked in his brain. Similarly a Novi gets inspired. Of course we can debate where the inspiration comes from, but let's leave that aside for now.
Scientific Methodology
After the initial spark of inspiration, Science and Religion diverge quite rapidly, and quite significantly. If a Scientist presented a theory, based on nothing more than inspiration, it would get nowhere. We want to see his working. We want to see repeatable experiments. We want to make sure that other scientists in other parts of the world can produce the same results. We have peer reviewed journals. And this system works very well. Of course scientists are human, and occasionally someone publishes some wrong theories (by mistake or even deliberately), but these usually get discovered sooner or later.
Consensus
If you look at most aspects of life, you will find little consensus amongst humanity. How to live? Which political party to vote for? What's the best flavor of ice-cream? Sometimes it seems that nobody agrees on anything. Even with topics that have been debated for thousands of years, for example philosophy, there is often little agreement. Yet modern Science has only been going for about 200 years, and we have incredble global agreement on many, many parts of it. How did this happen? How come we don't have a Japanese Science, and an American Science? Isn't it incredible that the global community of Scientists pretty much agree on all the basics?
The answer of course is obvious.
Objective
Firstly, Science is about objective fact. It's not about emotional, personal things such as how to live, or what to value. This means that scientists can be objective, and not get emotionally invested. Of course scientists can still get emotionally invested in their pet theories, and this happens a lot, But over time, new scientists come on the scene, and eventually these biases can be overcome. Note: I am talking about pure Science here. When a Scientist oversteps the boundaries and starts making pronouncements about religion and God, then of course he can be very biased indeed.
Methodology
Secondly, the consensus in Science has arisen precisely because of the Methodology described above. Scientific journals and books precisely lay out the details for the theory, describe experiments which can be replicated, and the field is open to anyone to confirm that the theory is true.
Applied Science
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the entire world relies on applied science, in the realm of technology and medicine. Everyone of us literally trusts our lives to science. Science makes predictions which work in the real world. Science enables us to create drugs which really do cure people. Science enables us to create technologies which we see work with our own eyes. Nobody, not even the biggest fundamentalist, denies this.
An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine a world where Science is only pure, never applies. Even though the methodology would be as solid as it is in our world, would a Pure Science be seen as credible, without a working practical application? Tzarich Iyun.
However, in our world, the Scientific Methodology, combined with real world results have produced what most people regard as the most amazing human achievement ever.
Another thought experiment: Imagine if the world of Science was divided into warring groups of scientists. Imagine if each group had a theory which they proclaimed as true, but no side could prove their theory. Would any one side have credibility? Of course not, the matter would be up for debate. And there are certainly large parts of Science which are like this, for example String Theory. Nobody would claim that String theory has conclusively been proven true. It is speculative. I'm sure that the originators of String Theory are very passionate about it, but even they wouldn't claim it is within the realm of 'Proven Science'. And, if they did, they would probably be accused of being biased.
Now, let's compare this with religion
Religion
There are many hundreds of religions in the world. Many of them contain beliefs about God, gods or similar. Many of them have sacred texts and sacred teachings, either directly communicated by God or gods, or by prophets and Holy men. Unfortunately, a lot of these teachings or beliefs contradict each other, so they can't all be true.
Religious Methodology
There is no methodology as such in religion. Once a prophet (or set of people) claim to have a revelation about something, that becomes dogma. There is no experimentation, no peer review, no way of proving this to be true. No real world practical application. Rather each religion claims that through intuition, tradition, and authority of their particular religious figures, the knowledge is true. The problem though is that all the religions pretty much claim a similar set of reasons for why they are true, yet they mostly contradict each other. They can't all be true!
Consensus
There is almost no consensus in religion. The three major Western Faith do seem to superficially agree on God and the Bible, but when you dig a little deeper very significant divisions appear. Some Christian Sects accept the Old Testament as the literal word of God, other sects just regard it as sacred literature. Christianity itself mostly regards Jesus as the son of God, a belief which Jews find totally unacceptable. Islam believes that Moshe forged key parts of the Torah, and that Yishmael was by the Akeidah, not Yitzchak. Not only is there almost no consensus between all the various different religions, even within each religion you typically have a huge variety of sects, all of whom significantly disagree with each other as to the basic teachings.
Although religion has been ongoing for 3000 years, not only has little consensus been reached, if anything, it seems more and more religions get created with different beliefs. Mormonism and Scientology are both relatively recent. There is no global consensus, and no process for achieving consensus.
In the same way that Science is regarded as incredibly reliable, because of the consensus, reliable methodology and application in the real world; religion exhibits the exact opposite set of features: no consensus, no reliable methodology and no way to test out the beliefs in the real world.
In fact, attempts to prove religious beliefs, e.g. God or prayer, have always failed.
Separate Magistaria
Some readers will claim that this comparison is unfair. Of course Science is reliable, because Science deals with the physical world which is measurable. However religious beliefs concern the spiritual world, and the methods of science cannot be applies. It is unfair to expect that Scientific methodology could be applied to the spiritual world. However there are two responses to this, each response works independently.
Response 1
The very fact that Scientific methodology cannot be used for Spiritual questions is the issue. If spirituality cannot be seen or measured, then there's nothing we can know about it. This response assumes that Scientific methodology is the only methodology which is valid.
Response 2
However, we don't need to take such a hard line to refute this allegation. We can certainly accept that Science isn't all there is, and that human intuition, tradition, or any other method could potentially work to create reliable knowledge. The problem of course is that the religious methodology is entirely unreliable. Using religious methodology, we have hundreds of religions all claiming to be true, yet all contradicting each other. Sure, one might be true, but how could you possibly tell?!
Each religion has its devotees, who passionately confirm their own religion as the one true religion. But since religion is a way of life, it is impossible for these devotees to escape the charge of bias. Even worse, many religions actually make it a religious CRIME to question the religion, promising all sorts of awful punishments for those who dare to do so.
Can you imagine a world where questioning science meant getting a jail sentence?! It would be unthinkable. Yet this situation exists with religion. How can any passionate religious person possibly be non biased in such an environment?!
It should be clear that the key components that make Science credible: Reliable Methodology (experiments, peer review) , Objectivity (facts about the world), Real World Application (Technology, Medicine) are not only missing in Religion, in fact we have the exact opposite in religion: We have an Unreliable Methodology (tradition, religious authority), Subjectivity & Bias (passionate devotion to religion,laws against heresy) and no real world application of the beliefs themselves.
Some people might argue that there is real world application of religious beliefs. For example people feel very connected to God. Or people give charity. But these are actions and feelings, they say nothing about whether God actually exists, or whether the charity giver is actually going to Olam Habah.
In summary, it is clear that while science is a very credible, religion certainly is not. Does that mean that we should reject religion in total? Not necessarily. But certainly in any conflict between Science and religion, it's no contest. And, any religious person who accepts their own religious beliefs, but rejects various aspects of Science (which Scientists themselves regard as 'proven'), is clearly being ridiculous, accepting an unreliable methodology over a reliable one.
How reliable is Science? Well since almost everyone on the planet trusts their lives to it, I would have to say that (in general), the parts of Science which are accepted as proven are about as reliable as anything could possibly be in this world. Of course as our scientific knowledge deepens we will further refine and even alter various theories, but this is all part of the awesome methodology where change is possible and even encouraged (where proven).
How reliable is Religion? Well since almost everyone on the planet disagrees about it, I would have to say that in general it has absolutely no credibility at all. Does this mean that all religious beliefs are false? Not necessarily, but without any really good evidence or arguments there is no reason to assume that any of them are true.
In another thread, RJM says that if only I would know Ancient Near East (ANE) history, I would see that Divine Revelation is the most reasonable explanation of how the Torah came to be. Of course there are plenty of ANE scholars in academia, far more knowledgeable than RJM who know ANE history very very well, and yet think that human origins is the most reasonable explanation for the Torah. Perhaps these Scholars are Reform Jews, or secular, in which case maybe they are biased. perhaps, But this only goes to show that everyone here is incredibly biased, and no one has any credibility.
More likely, it is RJM who is biased, since he is religiously compelled to affirm a Divine Torah. Maybe you could argue that the Secular Scholars are equally religiously (or anti religiously) compelled to deny a Divine Torah.
Either way, at the end of the day, nobody has any credibility here. Without a Scientific (or any) reliable methodology, without the ability to be Objective, and without a real world way of testing these beliefs, we are simply left in the dark.
HALOSCAN COMMENTS
