Mutually exclusive domains
March 27, 2005
[...] I have made the general argument in my book Rocks of Ages (Ballantine, 1999), a book that expresses the consensus of a great majority of professional scientists and theologians, not an original formulation from my pen. In briefest summary, no dichotomous opposition can exist in logic because science and religion treat such different (and equally important) aspects of human life—the principle that I have called NOMA as an acronym for the “non-overlapping magisteria,” or teaching authorities, of science and religion. Science tries to record and explain the factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral behavior or spiritual teaching
— Gould, Stephen Jay. The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister’s Pox. New York: Harmony Books, 2003.
Thanks for the strong but civil discourse whenever our paths cross.
…are you saying I’m as smart as Stephen Jay Gould? [grin]
Jay, one thing I’ve learned over the last 6 months is that these type of discussions really don’t work online. It’s so much easier to be face to face and in a conversation to discuss matters of science vs/with religion.
The reason I’m saying that is I think I’ve left you and others with a faulty impression.
I’m not against science at all. In a science vs. religion argument, I often encounter what seems to me to be an anti-religion viewpoint, as if it were already proven to be superstitious mumbo-jumbo and anyone who continues to believe it is an idiot. Being a believer who considers himself reasonably intelligent, I try to argue for religion being a valid way to look at the world and approach society. I probably get too strident in reaction to an opponent’s sneers at my opinion, but that doesn’t mean I’m actually anti-religion.
As I said in the comments of the post you linked, I’m equally as comfortable reading Stephen Hawkings as C.S. Lewis. I could add that I enjoy musing on Quantum Theory just as much as theology. I very nearly dropped my current career to pursue a study of Fuzzy Logic (until I realized I would need to spend nearly a decade catching up on all the science classes I would need just to be able to start working in Fuzzy Logic) because it fit so well with the things I had already assumed about the universe in my own philosophy/theology, i.e., that you can’t boil the entire universe down to binary equations.
I take the religion side in the arguments, particularly against Evolution Theory simply because I hate the close-mindedness I see on that side. But if you dropped me in a conversation of Bible literalists, I would be arguing for science just as vociferously.
The post you linked is pretty much my announcement that I won’t be getting involved in those type of arguments anymore. I guess I could have made it more clear…
I don’t want to seem like I’m lifting my own bench by telling you this, but of all the people I have spoken with online about these kinds of things, I think that I am the one who has understood your perspective the most. You have left me with a very clear impression of where you stand and I do not in any way insinuate that you are “against science.” In fact you are as NOT “against science” as just about every proof atheist I’ve encountered is “against God” (or Fred, as Den Beste and quite a few others I know refer to the generic theos).
The book I cited is wildly entertaining from my standpoint. I’ve been a student of both theology and biology and it’s so much fun (and aggravation) to read blogger after blogger spewing forth nuances built on insufficient knowledge, or those who spend so little time articulating the provenance of their positions that assumptions by readers and demonizers are made with blatant disregard to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, everyone is in varying degrees of wrong.
I guess that’s why I like talking to you about these things. You know when to defer and when to hunker down, and you know when to admit not that you are wrong, but that you do not know enough.
I try not to “argue.” Even in the long-discussed posts at Zomby’s when I first dove into the subject, I made it clear that I am not trying to argue. I want to know what people think. Not what makes them think that they are the winners in a situation.
Jay,
I missed this until recently… but you said at Zomby’s post:
Rob, I don’t believe in miracles, either as a believer in Him nor as a Scientist.
I wish I had caught this earlier…
I have two questions:
(1) Are you a Christian? (I ask in the sense that, by answering yes, you believe, for example, the Biblical claims regarding Jesus Christ are true and you believe that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human…. I assume you answer is “yes”, since you said, “as a believer”.. but I want to make sure I wasn’t somehow misinterpreting what you said)
(2) If so, I was wondering, do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead (bodily)? In other words, if someone invented time travel and went back in time to (the original) Easter morning and videotaped the tomb, would it have taped Jesus’s body floating upwards into the sky? (or some similar miraculous event consistent with the claims found in the New Testament)
HINT: I recommend reading 1 Corintians, Chapter 15 before answering. In fact, take your time… read it repeatedly… check a few different translations, etc.
Finally, how can you be sure that miracles don’t or didn’t occur? This is a VERY different question than asking whether you think or can prove that miracles have happened (since creation). Rather, why do you seem to “rule out” miracles? Is your God (assuming that you are at least a theist here) not powerful enought to work miracles?
To answer #1: I am a theist, not a Christian. And if you gathered a lot about my posts, I find biblical literalism the epitome of spiritual indolence, not the paragon of faith.
Did Jesus rise from the dead bodily? I doubt it. It IS, however, what Catholicism defines as a mystery: Something that human reason can not fathom, much less explain. These are “facts” accepted as they are, “just because.” Just like virgin conceptions, resurrections, corporeal ascensions (at least four of them) and transfigurations.
In scientific parlance we need to define a few terms.
A scientist treats a miracle as an unexplained phenomenon, to be understood as well as one could. Of course, it can lead to an answer of “I don’t know,” and as a scientist it has to end there. It is NOT a scientist’s duty to ascribe a miracle to whatever Fred he believes in. He can ascribe it to Fred if he so chooses, but not as someone finding the facts of nature, but as someone who believes in Fred.
My disbelief in miracles is not a doubt in the “Awesome And Brilliant Power Of The Almighty God.” If you consider miracles to be DIRECT INTERVENTION by God, Fred, or whoever, then I will have to say that I do not believe in them. The God I believe in is powerful enough to get things right the first time and not interfere in the process of what he set forth.
Jay said:
I am a theist, not a Christian
In that case, the question I asked wasn’t applicable. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have asked.
I must have misunderstood you when you said, “as a believer in Him”. I didn’t realize you meant “God” in a general sense.
Jay said:
“The God I believe in is powerful enough to get things right the first time”
I think your intentions are noble… but there are assumptions on your part which are rather arrogant. How can YOU be so sure that it wasn’t God’s intention (from before the initial creation or time) to interact with his creation? And could you be simplifying the whole process somewhat? And, speaking of process, God’s continual intervention may, possibly, be PART of the process as pre-intended from before creation. When someone makes the perfect car, they usually intend to drive it. Also, what brings God the most glory to himself? I think there is a strong argument that God gets the most glory exactly when he dynamically and consciously interacts with his creation.
Furthermore, many theists view God as a “father”… and, as a parent myself, I can see how it would make sense for God to desire to interact with his creation… just as a parent guides and interacts with their children. This especially makes sense in that, if there is a God who started it all… and considering that he created parenthood… maybe this dynamic interaction enjoyed between parent and child is playing out between God and his creation in a millions different ways …many of which we probabaly don’t even know about?
In fact, there is a common theme throughout many theistic religions (not just Christianity) over thousands of years that God does interact with his creation, to varying degrees and amounts. Another common theme is that God intervenes where there is trust and faith and hope and dependence on God… Also that those people whose “eyes are opened” are “allowed” to “see” such because of having such qualities (trust, faith, hope, dependence)… while those who arrogantly put God in their custom-designed box and decide that they don’t need God are blinded to these things.
In other words, God may not be too keen on helping or intervening for those who think they already have it all figured out and think that they don’t need God. Also, again, these are not my ideas… they are common themes of many theistic religions.
Therefore, are you sure that these multiple religions are not onto something and that… maybe… YOU are putting God in a box by imposing your naturalistic philosophy on God???
Also, I can’t and won’t defend the extra-biblical tenants of the Catholic faith. I do think that the core/essential beliefs of Catholics & Protestants are the same… but I’m troubled by some extra-Biblical Catholic beliefs which I find contradictory to various passages in the Bible …but that is a subject for another day. (I bring this up because I’d hate to find that your doubt arose from extra-Biblical catholic beliefs… AND… No, I do NOT think that all catholics are going to Hell!!!)
Nevertheless, therefore, looking strictly at teachings in the Bible, I wonder if you have ever really given the harder-to-believe literal Biblical passages (such as the miracles) a chance. Personally, I find it amazing just how well the Bible stands up to scrutiny. Have you actually read and books by the best defenders of Biblical literalism and compared their arguments and evidence to the detractors of Biblical literalism? If so, which books/writings?
For example, consider this article. There are MANY coincidences there which I don’t believe could have possibly happened by random chance alone. (this is but one tidbit example among many)
Before someone takes my statements about Catholicism out of context, recall that I did say:
“I do think that the core/essential beliefs of Catholics & Protestants are the same”
I’m about to head out for the rest of the week but I want to address one or two points before I go. First, it’s really hard for me to articulat which parts of the Bible are the ones I think should or should not be taken literally.
Here are a few things that I find telling about the lack of spiritual and intellectual dilligence among literalists:
*Believing that the world was literally created in seven literally human days (24 hours). No points granted for self-styled literalists who claim that a “day” in God’s terms is longer.
*Believing that the Earth is flat and the center of the Universe, especially because God couldn’t possibly love a group of people unless they were placed in the literal center of things.
*Believing that Women are the defilers of Men for Eve’s legacy.
We can go on in that track of the convo for days, so let’s stop that subject here.
Let’s take Moses’ Ten Plagues, for example. Did frogs inundate Egypt? Most likely. Who did it? As a matter of historical record, “God did it” doesn’t exactly count as an explanation.
The whole point of the post I put up, and the quote that I copied from the book cited is that there are Mutually Exclusive Domains between the sciences (naturalistic fact finding) and religions (moral reactions to ever-growing bodies of knowledge based on the theological epistemology of a respective religion).
I want to know what you want to know from your questions. My understanding of God/Fred/Winds Willing is all my own; I do not impose this upon anyone and I need to make this clear if I haven’t yet, that when I interchange “God” with “Fred” with “god” with whoever it is I refer to, I am talking about the God/Fred that I believe in. Not the Christian God.
If you want to talk Catholic Christian Theology, fine. But please don’t try to pick apart my own understanding of Fred because it doesn’t fit with your understanding—or acceptance—of your God.
(I’ll talk about your miracles and divine intervention later on.)
Jay,
The asterisked examples you give just pathetic. They are analogous to a Democrat saying that Republicans want to starve poor people to death …or a Republican saying that all Democrats want Soviet-style communism.
The only one of these that holds a little water is the 24-hour creation timetable… but even this is greatly open to debate and disagreement among fundamentalist Christians who respect each other as being true biblical literalists and who mutually agree that life (not necessarily the Universe) was created happen 4-20K years ago (not evolution). (remember, origin of the universe is not the same as origin of life… that is where it gets rather tricky..)… but where these guys don’t agree with each other on either the age of the Universe or on whether creation occurred in strict six 24-hour days. If I were to get specific, this would be way too long and detailed. But, simply put, your assumption that all biblical literalists believe in a strict six 24-hour days creation timetable is either juvenile or out of touch.
…and, like I said, all of your other examples are way out there in la-la land.
Finally, your logic is circular. According to you, because a miracle cannot be explained scientifically, it, therefore, didn’t happen? Is that how you demonstrate “intellectual diligence“?
It is true that a miracle, by definition, cannot be understood scientifically (especially since miracles typically break the laws of nature). However, it is also true that there are often physical evidence or artifacts or other evidence left behind by a miracle which can be scientifically investigated. (for example, see the link that I provided earlier.
Rob, you’re starting to really see past me on this. First of all I want to know what you want to know. Ok?
That you call the examples I cited pathetic means that you know which parts of the bible should and shouldn’t be taken literally. There ARE people who still think the very things that I cited there, in fact that everything in the Bible is to be taken literally. I’m not ascribing that behavior to ALL Christians, I am citing that there are literalists who think like that.
Now I am not engaging in circular logic either, and I take offense to that accusation. We’re comparing apples and oranges here. A miracle is one that can not be currently explained according to what one knows. That a scientist accepts that a miracle can not be explained merely means a concession to an inability to know, NOT DENIAL of the fact that such a miracle happened. (We’re talking about “miracles” that have happened in recent history. Dancing Sun over Fatima, that kind of thing.) Intellectual dilligence and honesty entails knowing when one can admit to “I don’t know.” A factfinder is free, however, to claim it as an “act of God,” but not as a factfinder but as a believer in God. (The discourse changes from scietific to metaphysical.) I hope you can see the very thrust of my point here.
I read briefly the article that you mentioned. Coincidences, even a preponderance of then, do not prove anything. Those chariot wheels from the WND article don’t mean anything in terms of scientific factfinding aside from the fact that they are there.
Verily, I’ll accept that the story of the Pharaoh’s forces drowning in the Sea of Reeds surely happened, but it didn’t happen by the way it was depicted in, say, The Ten Commandments. Even if it did, I want proof. Chariot wheels under the sea doesn’t constitute proof.
One fair warning. Don’t put assumptions into my mouth by reading between the comments of my lines. I try to be as clear as possible when I write.