Science and Religion: Final Exam

Joseph Angel-Field
Satchmojoe@yahoo.com
http://puppyj.blogspot.com
Movie:You can’t blame the youth, made it on windows movie maker (admittedly a little more difficult than it ought to have been), got pictures on the internet and used inspiration from a songs lyrics, and the ideas of scholars we had used in class, namely Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. You can find the movie below on the blog, and on both youtube and google videos.
Attendance:I really only missed classes when I was excused (beach band travel to the Big West Tournament in Anaheim) and when I was in Italy after spring break (which I’m not sure if you excused). I really tried to make it to all of your classes, and on time. If I was tardy it was only once or twice by a couple of minutes, though once in the past couple of weeks I was about 30 minutes late because I was swamped with work in yours and other classes as well as under the weather.
Midterm Grade: you said I was on “the ‘A’ track.”
Posts: http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/msearch?date=any&DM=------------&DD=----&DY=----&DM2=------------&DD2=----&DY2=----&AM=contains&AT=satchmojoe&SM=contains&ST=&MM=contains&MT=&charset=utf-8

1. I read (or listened to) The God Delusion (don’t recommend it to future classes cause it was hard to quote it in the midterm without having it written). I read The Language of God. I read the Antichrist. I read 1/3 – ½ of Mere Christianity. I read The Pleasure of Finding Things Out with the exception of a couple chapters that didn’t seem relevant to course material. I skimmed a couple of chapters of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. If I could make a criticism, I think your workload was a bit unreasonable (though I recognize this is an upper-division course), and if your intent was for us to skim the books, you should let us know, that would’ve helped out. Even more helpful would be to whittle down the readings to some important excerpts.
2. Hmm, Mere Christianity was a great exploration of philosophy. The Antichrist was a little abrasive, but terrifically interesting, and provided a good insight on a different worldview. The Language of God, had problems: too much about Collins, commenting outside his scope on the validity of the gospels, etc. I think however that the thesis of The Language of God, of Biologos, was a very satisfying and plausible model for life. Although Dawkins was a bit aggravating and abrasive with his arguments against religion, his book was very good, as it provided the sort of paradigm shift that I love so much. Although he may or may not be right, providing people with an opposing idea that might open the mind is a noble cause, and it is clear in an age with growing fundamentalism that opened minds are increasingly necessary. Unfortunately, Dawkins tends to become a little fundamental himself. As is it is easy to see, The God Delusion is a campaign by Dawkins for Atheism. Although I might disagree with his purpose, I can understand the cause, even necessity, for his campaign, and I think he did a good job with it. Upon reading Feynman, I decided my favorite book would probably be a tie between Feynman’s and Dawkins. Feynman does a great job of explaining his scientific worldview through witty anecdotes and poignant analogies. His worldview can be used to explain a lot about life, and although I don’t completely fall in with Feynman’s views, I can see that he changed the way I think in a way that I see as positive.
3. The transvaluation of values is in Nietzsche’s words, “[when] the concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places.” He refers to transvaluation in his critique of Christianity in The Antichrist, as a downward transvaluation, calling bad things “good,” and good things “bad.” It is important to keep in mind Nietzsche’s peculiar worldview about evolutionary morals, whatever is good for life and survival is good, and whatever is weakening or deadly to humankind is evil. In general the movement is from the mediocre majority to make it feel powerful by making its “lower” values transvaluated upwards. When you think of moral and values as connected, you realize that there is a ever shifting system of power according to the transvaluation cycle of what gets the moral upperhand.
4. The ultimate moral value is the ultimate cliché, “do unto others as you would have them do to you.” The infamous golden rule is sometimes phrased on the opposite, like in the Confucian idea of not doing to others, as you wouldn’t have them do to you. It has been popularized as the ultimate moral value and proliferated through direct and unconscious means across world religion and philosophies. We will invoke the ideas of Friederich Nietzsche as we say, ‘What if: the golden rule is actually bad?’ But we must really consider the possibility that the golden rule is an equalizer of an innately stratified society that cannot have equality. Once again we can see that Nietzsche’s worldview is a radical one, even if not a negative one. In his world equality is not equality, life is a fight, dog eat dog, with natural castes as a part of cosmic law.
5. In short, Bertrand Russell is not a Christian, because in his eyes the Christian “God” is appalling. He cites the Old and New Testaments and Christian doctrine as evidence that the God, the Christ, and the religion that follows are appalling and generally negative. Christianity harbors fear, excludes itself, retards progress, and above all is morally wicked. Bertrand feels that anybody who buys into a notion of “eternal damnation” is essentially damaged goods, or just wrong.
6. C.S. Lewis’ argument for Christianity is founded on a core belief in the Moral Law as a true, tangible, and absolute thing. Lewis believes that the Moral Law represents a form that suggests, or points to the existence of a God. Lewis also makes an argument based on his proposed “god-shaped void,” an innate natural void in human beings for a higher power. His analogy is that we crave sex and sex assists, just like we crave food and nourishment exists, and it would follow that a “god-shaped void” would point to the existence of a god. This is of course is an a priori argument, in that you have to believe the premise of a “god-shaped void” to follow his rationality to God’s existence. Lewis’ less unique argument is the claim that the human conscious mind, and the universe were all just too amazing and special to be only natural selection.
7. The theory of evolution by means of natural selection as manifested in nature, written by Darwin and constantly confirmed and improved by science is a set of glasses through which one can look at all rational things. Through the frame of evolution it is easy to see that the human questioning mind is an improvement on life that helps our mind observe the world and learn to interact with it. Science, when functioning properly, observes the manner of the nature of the world, and helps (for our purposes we will limit it to) humans to survive. In Lane’s three-layered model for the human mind, science helps fulfill the needs and duties of the rational mind. It follows that religion came as a response to the transrational level. It is true that over time religion has been misused in the rational or pre-rational realms, but in its true and pure form, as we are also assuming with scientific rationality, religion was originally meant to be an approach to what was beyond reality. In their innate forms, science exists where religion should not, and religion exists where science should not.
8. Richard Feynman’s warning of cargo cult science is explicit in examples it gives, suggesting that there needs to exist an honesty, an integrity, almost a moral code for science. He also makes sure to point out that this expectation is no difficult, restrictive, “bending over backwards,” just a conventional, proper way to live. It is easy to deduce that this sort of open-mindedness, but mostly the lack thereof, is the root of the downfall of religion, just put into words through the of a shaman of science (bad analogy). One of his examples is sociology and such “pseudosciences,” in his words or, “soft sciences,” in the words of others. We will examine here for example the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Although he was presenting an idea that sounded scientific, he was not examining with the sort of sincerity that Feynman understands as being necessary to science. Freud never considered other possible explanations for the sort of results he was observing, sticking rather to explain the ideas that he believed, and therefore favored. Religion, at least in the mind of some scientists, can and should be held up to this form of inquiry. For instance, the idea of miracles makes them at first to be a scientifically observed thing, but we realize that no effort of integrity or the subject to change nature is used in retelling and selling miracles. In the story of the Guru with wax under the fingernails as an example of miracles, we see that the Guru is being dishonest about the causes of his miracle, and the audience to his miracle is to some degree fooling itself, in ignoring alternate explanations once the mind is made up on the “truer,” or favored explanation. The third example is a myth we have heard in our elementary years, and one that was actually a held superstition at some points, that the moon was made of cheese. From where we stand, the moon has randomly strewn holes on a glowing white orb, and we say, “well I’ve seen round balls of cheese with holes in it, just like that.” We don’t bother thinking about all the other things that look similar to cheese that might be the actual matter of the moon. And this is the trap of cargo cult science; we make assumptions that we have completed a definition of reality or the true explanation, ignoring the ever-changing nature of evidence-based rationality. This really captures Feynman’s attitude towards science in general, that it is a responsibility towards the human mind to use the complete functionality of the mind to inquire and control itself to be completely rational towards everything.
9. In the philosophical frame, normative science includes “aesthetic, ethics, and logic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_science).” Normative simply means the norm, or accepted way. Normative is sort of like proto-religion, and every follower of science follows the norm to a different degree. Richard Feynman’s view of science fits into normative science to a certain degree. He believes that rational inquiry leads to an expansion of the mind and nature of human beings, individually and socially. But as discussed above, he wants to keep up a norm against the “cargo cult science.” This scientific moral code also acts in the way that religion would dictate proper behavior to people like Francis Collins. It is this culmination of ideas about interpersonal relating and relating to other “selfs,” that completes Feynman’s scientific worldview. As scientists, Feynman says, “We are at the very beginning of time for the human race,” appealing to the idea that humans are only now reaching their wholeness through scientific rationality. Feynman feels that the ideally scientific man is never sure; he only sees possibilities and probabilities.
10. Intelligent design as an umbrella term, characterizes a range of ideas from a creationist universe directly designed by a divine creator in 6 days 6 thousand years ago, to a view that combines evolutionary science with a “god of the gaps.” Richard Feynman’s issue with this would be, something that Richard Dawkins has repeated, that these a priori arguments assume that the premises are true, a cycle that depends on a lack of evidence. Feynman believes that doubt is the highest virtue of rational mindfulness, and one must explore alternate explanations, rather than assuming a favored response that overshadows results and necessary experimentation. It leads us back to the cargo cult science, a deficient science, which forces a true science of rationality and inquisition.
11. Simply, from the worldview of atheism, religion is wrong, and atheism is superior and truer than religious thought. If one sees religion as a bound, a limitation on life and one’s perception of life and reality, then atheism is seen as liberation. For Dawkins, whose rational worldview is so overarching, atheism makes him feel intellectually superior to religious points of view, which he simply deems as unsatisfactorily intelligent. The best analogy is the platonic model of reality. If man in his natural state, is bonded inside an enclosed cave with higher figures mysteriously imposing reality on the wall before us, then there is a dichotomy between the limited cave reality, and the unconditioned reality which exists as a true world outside the cave, with trees and bushes that aren’t merely conventional designs suggesting trees and bushes, but actual “real” trees and bushes. In the platonic point of view, the atheist feels that religion is the bondage and shadow images on the wall. It is hard to generalize what the unconditioned reality is; for some atheists life is unconditioned reality, but without religion it is without restrictive limits; for others unconditioned reality is scientific rationality, simplifying all reality, and believing that higher reality is not SUPERnatural, just natural (in a almost supernatural way? It gets complicated). It comes to that all-important question, do you think this world, this life, this existence, is “it?” Or might there be something more?
12. Professor Lane’s aforementioned three-rational levels of the human mind is an ideal analogy to express how he believes Religion can, “survive the onslaught of reason.” If we equate reason with rationality, then we see that on the one hand lies pre-rationality, and on the other hand lays post or trans-rationality. Lane perceives religion undergoing an attack of scientific rationality, and resorting in defense to rationality and pre-rationality. It brings to mind the Buddhist model of the finger pointing to the moon, the pointing finger acting as a conventional design. Science works with conventional designs, depends on them, like time and space, but religion must be the moon, the “above.”
13. Pierre Laplace is famous for having said that he had no need for the hypothesis of religion (http://www.tothesource.org/5_1_2007/5_1_2007.htm). This is like what I was discussing at the end of question 11, that for some people life as we know it can be complete without anything outside of our consciousness. This is the sort of trend suggested by atheist thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens, however, argues this point even further; god is not only unnecessary but also a negative thing. I will point it out here, that I feel like it is not difficult to rally a good set of arguments for and against both religion and science, operating on the sort of models like Lane’s, or Gould’s NOMA, or Collins’ BioLogos. That said, an intelligent man like Hitchens would mount an attack like God is not Great with emotion. Hitchens confessed in a radio interview that his book was arising out of frustration with the growth of religious orthodoxy, saying, “enough! (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2007/1919949.htm)” Hitchens has no problem arguing against conventional designs of rational or pre-rational religion, proving that the “great god” that man has put in his scriptures and doctrines is faulty, and simply not great. He, however, runs conspicuously into the problem that lies in all science religion battles, that they should operate in immunity from the other. Although many faults can be pointed out with religion as it exists, one will have difficulty attacking “the beyond,” the Tao, whatever cosmic life force made existence possible and exists as the absolute unconditioned truth. It is frustrating for scientists, and hence the cause of books like God is not Great and Dawkins’ The God Delusion, that religion has been clashing with science, creating unnecessary problems. The battle between science and religion is most definitely a man made illusion like Francis Collins and I believe.
14. Fundamentalist religion refers to “strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist).” Fundamentalism essentially refers to orthodoxy, and sometimes can be poised opposite the open-minded mystical approach to religion. The reason evolution is a contentious issue for fundamentalists, is simply because it is not written in. A fundamentalist depends on all of their scripture and doctrine to be right; otherwise it breaks down their strong religious foundation. Because evolution was not written in, and actually defies a literal interpretation of the scripture of ancient religions, evolution lies in opposition to religious ideas about the creation of life on earth. In the battle between science and religion, evolutionary science also threatens fundamentalist religion that believes it will lead towards atheism. For people who combine evolutionary thought and creationism, advances in science continue to chase away god from evolutionary “gaps.” If religion is dependent on ancient scriptures and a literalist translation of them, then evolutionary science will lead to atheism, and will succeed.
15. As we have discussed time and time again in this course, religion can only flourish if it operates on a transrational level. Science will help religion in a “tough love” sort of way, forcing religion to be transrational, by disproving religion in rational and pre-rational realms. Science through its exploration and inquiry will lead to a more awe-inspired view of life, the kind of awe that makes one adore life on a concscious level and can lead to a “higher” consciousness. Like Collins’ BioLogos, science will help contribute to a complete worldview by helping to understand our nature and the nature around us. If science learns more about human consciousness and the human mind, it will probably help to understand religion and adjust unconditioned and altered states.
16. Most importantly, a belief in the unconditioned, whether a god, or enlightenment, or cosmic law, helps one to set a standard for what a positive and moral life is personally, and with interaction to others. Religion is simply an eye for the “beyond,” and will continue to be a positive thing for any one who needs, wants, or is interested in the beyond. It leads us to a similar conclusion to Gould’s NOMA, science will aid religion in realms that religion cannot reach, and religion will do the same for science in the realm of the beyond.
17. In the first chapter of Paramhansa Yogananda’s autobiography he refers to a miracle, where at his sister’s doubting he would both make a boil on her arm double in size and a new boil would appear on him, “by the power of will…(http://www.ananda.org/inspiration/books/ay/1.html)” Such medical “miracles” are particularly impressive and also particularly hard to rationalize. In this example we don’t even have any sort of first-hand evidence like photographs or medical records. If we grant that he really did double the size of a boil and made another appear, then we must look at his premise that it was caused by his will power. With will power he hit the nail on the head. We don’t know much about functions and abilities of the human mind, but we are well aware of its tremendous ability to control and alter the body, so it would not be far-fetched to believe that his mind, as well as the mind of his sister, worked together to create a phenomenal effect. In class we discussed a “miracle” of creating scents from one’s fingers, and although this one has a more scientific explanation, about the trickery of melting waxes under fingernails, the mental aspect still exists in the mind of the believer. Skepticism, like belief, all results from mental effects. If one has a skeptical frame, then it would be extremely difficult to get them to budge on their opinions, and show them something that would be a ‘miracle.’ For the believer, however, it is an irrational open-mindedness that helps the believer sees ‘miracles’ in natural phenomena and human trickery. Miracles DO happen, both naturally and supernaturally, and it is up to our limited psyche to organize and decide about them.
18. Before I proceed to contravene the requirements for this question, let me explain why I have not chosen a historical episode, but rather the modern day clash of science and religion. I feel like my options for historical periods are limited to evolution vs. creationism, and Galileo’s confrontation with the church. Realistically, science and religion clash on a constant basis, as society’s Zeitgeist shifts, science and religion are put back in the arena with a new grudge and new weapons and proceed to fight it out again. However, for a 600-word research paper, I feel like I’d pretty much be stuck to the two aforementioned episodes. Choosing the modern era, I feel, gives me a chance to sum up what I have learned in this class, as this class has been both a pawn in the modern-day battle, as well as a lens with which to look at it. It will also be a good way to unify my thoughts on science and religion, and will be a last chance to convey my thoughts, propose my model, and try to reconcile science and religion. It will provide me some help and some hurdles that I have chosen to examine a period I live within. Still, it is a necessary examination of a growing schism between science and religion, within the individual, and in context of the individual’s interaction with the world. We can let this growing battle become history, and examine it in hindsight, or we can look at it now and try to improve it now.
I am going to begin this examination of the battle, not by proposing that one party or the other started it, but merely proposing that fundamentalist religion is the most difficult view in this spectrum. In the Islamic world, fundamentalism has come in the form of suicide bombs, bomb-strapped baby, and terrorism in general. This was never the fundamental intent of Islam, merely bastardization by certain fundamentalist Muslims. Fundamentalism in Christianity has also resulted in terrorism, for instance the bombing of abortion clinics. Fundamentalist Christianity has always resembled other movements of radical ideas, like the Ku Klux Klan and other similar organizations. Fundamental Christianity is also probably the single most direct cause of the growing schism between science and religion. Dawkins has proposed that Christian fundamentalism is the greatest form of child abuse, raising children to live in fear, ignorance, and close-mindedness. It is also important, however, to note that Dawkins wants to fuel this schism by insisting that religious people should be fundamentalists. Because fundamentalism exists in different religions, it is surprising the sort of unity they have on issues of things like dietary restrictions, sexual restrictions, taboo of homosexuality, opposition to birth control, literal interpretation of scripture. The results of fundamentalism range from terrorism to a general close-mindedness. The latter is the issue that is both the cause and the effect of fundamental religion.
On the other seat of the see-saw lie science, scientism, materialism, evolution, and rationality. Religious fundamentalism is accused, by Dawkins and other atheistic scientists, as the environment that gave rise to the growing scientific rationality in the 21st century. It is important to differentiate, however, between atheism and scientific rationality. Scientific rationality is really the result of a huge expanse of scientific discovery over the past couple of centuries. We have learned so much to bring our minds from a naïve, unaware state, to a knowledgeable scientific existence. Fundamental religion does not work in this environment because fundamentalists are not open to changing their ideas. This has resulted in backlashes like the Scopes Monkey Trial, or Galileo’s episode with the church, or the bombing of abortion clinics. The growing belief in creationism, and the instilling of the creationist view on children is truly the hot-button topic for the scientific debate in the modern day. We can see this in books like Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which is truly a campaign against religion, based on evolutionary science. Richard Dawkins is a scientist whose worldview is completely focused on evolution, and in his latest book, he has put more effort and more bluntness in trying to spread his view, just like the religious virus, or meme, he describes. Francis Collins, a Christian scientist, who is deeply involved in the discussion of evolution with his work on the Human Genome Project, uses this position to try to boost religion, while he must use the backside of his argument to condemn religious fundamentalism and the irrational belief in creationism. Agnostics, Richard Dawkins postulates, are polite Atheists. The growing population of Atheists and Agnostics represents a shift in values; where Atheism was once unacceptable, it is now becoming quickly more acceptable, possibly even more tenable than religion in some settings. Richard Feynman points out in his arguments about scientific education and cargo cult science, that science is prone to the same, or similar mistakes of close-mindedness and dishonesty as religion.
The shifting Zeitgeist has made it acceptable to talk about religion and science in social settings where it once was unheard of. As religion and science have come to the forefront of the human psyche, a polarization has appeared and directed them in opposite directions, religion more and more toward fundamentalism, and science more and more towards scientific rationality, even sometimes to the point of scientific fundamentalism. In the middle lies the confused individual with battling ideas in his or her mind. How can this cultural and personal conflict be avoided? There are many ideas about this, from Gould’s NOMA, to Collins’ BioLogos. It is not difficult to reconcile these ideas into a cohesive worldview, but what it requires is an open-mind, and ample research and experience. Science has obviously proved its usefulness in explaining the rational universe and even being applied for human benefits. For Feynman, the void of morals in science need not exist, for Collins it insists on religious morals. Religion has a harder job ahead of it, to sell itself to open-minded worldview that accepts both science and religion. Religion must first prove to individuals, that there is more to this universe than can be perceived or understood by our senses and science. Religion, after proving that there is more to this existence, must prove as well that it is the satisfactory means for approaching the unconditioned reality. Richard Feynman’s opposition to philosophy and religion represents a reluctance to follow his own ideas about open-mindedness. Feynman’s ideas, however, are the most satisfying in light of what we are talking about. Our minds must always be opened and inquisitive about things around us, but in Wilber’s model, this includes an exploration of mystical and philosophical dimensions. Whether these dimensions are real or not, it is not difficult to open the mind to them and explore them. Richard Feynman believes philosophy should be able to laugh at itself, and I would say that all of human existence and all realms of thought should be able to exhibit a certain playful open-minded enjoyment about everything. The study of religion, I will conclude, is a valuable exploration of a realm that cannot be reached by science, and this is why our school has a religious studies department, and a course in science and religion. (information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_religion, Lane’s class and class materials)
19. Mystical religion can mean a broad range of things. Mystical religion in some contexts is a deviation from normal life, like asceticism or sexual experimentation. In other contexts mysticism can be a sort of philosophy where whatever unconditioned reality exists in the universe, exists in some form within the individual and can be attained through practices of the mind and body. Ken Wilber is an individual whose worldview is mystical and who has campaigned a lot for mysticism. Let us then, clarify Wilber’s argument about mystical religion in regards to a scientific age. For starters, Wilber feels science is being practiced in the wrong, “narrow,” way. Wilber feels that ideally science will expand from stimuli of the 5 senses, into deeper levels of consciousness. As we have already discussed, an idea that is clearly agreed upon by most of the authors we have read as well as our professor, is that the opposite of mystical religion, what I will call fundamentalism, is easily toppled by science. Wilber’s “pre/trans fallacy,” resembles Lane’s model of the three states of rationality. Wilber proposes that religion and science and expand into transrational dimensions, including evidence from logic, symbolic, hermeneutical and other levels of consciousness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber). It is a strong argument, if your frame is one of mysticism. If you buy into philosophy, and think it valuable to your life and the life of others, then Ken Wilber’s model of trans-rationality, of broadening science and religion makes a lot of sense. He is right in saying that if both religion and science broadened their views they could both exist more purely. However, Dawkins chides, “There’s this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.” For rationalists the universe that our senses show to us is enough, they have no need for the hypothesis of something higher if their senses don’t even provide the means to see the higher. It leads us back to the epistemological, existential, philosophical question: “what is real? What is ultimate?”
20. William Paley’s argument was for many, including Darwin, convincing philosophical evidence for intelligent design. The inference often goes, if you see a complex creation, you must assume it had a complex creator. What Stephen Wolfram discovered with his work on cellular automata, is that with simple lines of programming, could lead to incomprehensible complexity. So suddenly rather than a complex creator for a complex result, we have a simple, non-intelligent creator for a complex result. This lead to Stephen Wolfram’s complexity theory, that infinitely complex systems can be the result of simple computations. If one is to expand this to the universe, the suggestion is that perhaps some infinitely simple, natural equation set up all the complexity and mystery of the cosmos and life within it. There are two issues with this argument. For starters, I think perhaps Paley’s watch argument is taking too literally. Rather than looking at a watch, lets look at a human being. Rather than saying he is complex, we will use a vague word like, divine. If this man is “divine,” Stephen Wolfram’s theory does not really address the possibility of a divine creator. Stephen Wolfram’s theory does not really conclude a simple design to the universe, only makes the suggestion that it need not necessarily be complex because its result is. The other problem is with overusing Stephen Wolfram’s complexity theory. We cannot say for a fact that his theory is true, much less that it applies to something as big as the universe. And if we assumed he was right and the whole universe was the result of some mathematical program, how does that preclude the divinity of that program?

You can't blame the youth