Science != Religion
Argh.
I’m writing this from my comparative literature class where we’re discussing Calculating God as this weeks book. Right now i’m in the process of trying to explain why science is not a religion. I’m getting a bit of resistance from the class. The argument to that effect is that science is equivalent to religion in the sense that both are nothing more than roughly equivalent worldviews that simply draw different conclusions in the pursuit of knowledge.
There appears to be a fundamental confusion about how scientists reject theories. The claim is that science is based wholly on beliefs much the same as religion. Rather, science is based on explanations, which are accepted or rejected based on their ability to explain something in the real world.
Now I’ve just been told that language cannot communicate knowledge, and therefore science is equivalent to religion plus a veneer of empricism.
I wish I wasn’t so tired, because I would like to get into this. There’s a lot that I think I could say on the subject if I were able to form coherent thoughts.
Language can’t communicate knowledge. Language can communicate information. Our brains turn that into knowledge (if they can make sense of it). So that is correct, but the statement that follows that doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with what language can communicate. I don’t think science is a religion. Certainly it has some religious qualities, like belief in things that haven’t yet (or can’t, perhaps) be proven, and the fact that some people will hold onto science the way others hold onto religion, but that’s about it.
I think that it’s an artificial and atrocious misuse of the language to separate ‘language’ and ‘knowledge’ in this context. This is an aside, though, since that’s not my core issue. What is my beef is the misdirected fervour with which the literati attack science in general. Although there are exceptions to this (of course) it seems to me that as a group the issue seems to be with science’s perceived legitimacy as a means to understand the world.
Literature is in the process of redefining everything as a “dialogue,” which is only a partial view of the world. Worse, they seek to redefine every aspect of society as dialogues of equal standing, subordinate to the one that interprets them as such. Classing religion and science as the same thing from an epistemological perspective fails to appreciate the difference between their approaches and acceptance of new ideas.
Look at it from an object oriented POV
Science is a subclass of a belief system. Religion is also a subclass of a beleif system. Specific religions subclass the religion class, etc…
So at some point, yes Science and Religion share a common ancestor, but they are in separate branches of the tree.
Here is an essay on the topic I wrote way back when, for a philosophy of science class: http://spaz.ca/aaron/school/science.html
It’s a little sophomoric in places, but hey, It was a long time ago.
Well, language and knowledge don’t mean the same thing. They aren’t the same thing.
That aside, I was an arts student and now I’m a science student, although, admittedly, my “arts” degree was heavily scientific. But I don’t think all literati disparage science. I don’t. In that class, I was more adept at recognizing the literary aspects in the novels we read than the viability of the scientific ones, as I’m not a computer scientist or an engineer. And science does have some aspect of faith, at least for me, because there are things that have been proven that I don’t understand, so I just have to accept even though I’m skeptical of them. Nor do I think science can explain absolutely everything, and that’s fine. I don’t think it’s a religion, but it certainly is a belief system. It’s based on something a lot more solid than religion, but I agree with Aaron: it’s a subclass of a belief system.
Now I’m going to watch Simpsons, which is possibly a belief system within itself. Maybe even a religion.
But again, considering it isomorphic to religion simply because they’re both ways to approach the world is flatly wrong-headed and in this case it’s the result of a culture of relativism that refuses to acknowledge that any particular worldview is better than others with regards to explanatory power.
That is, in essence, the argument that I wanted to present there in class and couldn’t muster the mental energy to unearth. In their attempt to lump science in with religion my classmates demonstrated a desire to bring science down into the gutter, so to speak. The scientific method is as yet the best way that we as a species have come up with to generate reliable explanations for the world in which we live. Religion, textual analysis, deconstruction, and all of their spiritual siblings have not provided explanations on a par with it. In the case of both religion and literature I’ve seen a trend towards trying to ‘cut science down to size’, so to speak, and denigrate it as “just another dialogue, like literature” or “just another belief system, like religion,” and to me that’s the worst kind of intellectual bankruptcy.
I’ve always thought that Science says how and religion says why
“In the case of science vs. religion, I’m issueing a restraining order. Science must stay 500 feet from religion at all times.”