P.S. I'm taking the gloves off Nathan.
The God of the Overlap
Posted by Nathan on Wednesday, October 03, 2007
I have a great Statistics teacher. He is well educated, and open to many ideas. I walked with him after class and had a small, but very good discussion about science and faith, and the overlap and differences between the two. He is a self-proclaimed "non-religious" man, and believe it or not he was very accepting of my views, and when we departed with a hand shake i did not explode.
Glad to hear you made it through that encounter okay. Most of the times these "non-religious" types go right for the soul. It's usually through the eyes, but I'm sure you know that seeing as you survived to talk about it.
This conversation did get me thiking about things. Just to begin, non of these are the thoughts of my professor, these are mine alone. We were discussing the basics of science, the idea that in any experiment you test the null hypothesis. That is if you think something (like reading more) affects something else (less anxiety levels) you do not test that idea. Instead you test that there is no relation (or null relation). This makes the whole conversation about faith very different. Scientifically for one to prove that god does exist then one must disprove that god does not exist. This could work the other way around too, but the fact remains that there is no way to do that. god is something outside science, I'm not saying that there can't be things in science that may point to something bigger, but inherently this is a philosophical question not a scientific one.
Well first I want to address the latter part of the paragraph before I go back and look up what the hell a null hypothesis is. You say that science must prove that there is no God. I've read a lot on the subject and the general feeling among atheist is that we do not need to prove this because that is like asking you to prove that you don't have cancer. Well you might say, I'll just go to the doctor and get a check up and I'll show you my clean bill of health! Ha, foiled you Jeph! Well in essence that's what we've done with the universe, we've given it a check up and found no evidence for God, just like hopefully the doctor will find no evidence of cancer in your body. Now I know, we don't know nearly as much about the universe as we do about the body and some might claim that God could still be out there but until that happens its like you getting that clean bill and parading around telling everyone you have cancer soliciting money and sympathy from them for something that doesn't exist, but based on the fact that your doctor didn't quite know everything about your body so he could be wrong therefore you have cancer. What it really boils down to is that atheist and non-religious people are not making any extraordinary claims as Christians are. The idea that my proving to you that nothing exist is somehow more important than you proving to me that a God exist in another dimension called heaven outside the known realm of our knowledge is absurd. If anything its a variation of the old PeeWee Herman gag, "I know you are. But what am I?" You can't shift the responsibility of prove to the side that requires none.
Okay, after wikipedianing Null Hypothesis this is my take.
I don't believe you can apply this to the God debate. It seems that it requires two sets of data sets. Well, there is no data for the hypothesis that God is true. You can assume that both, there is no God and there is a God, are true and then claim that one must be proven wrong in order for the other to be true but how do you prove "there is a God" wrong when you have no data available to do that? I think what this is is just another attempt by Christians to take established science and convientitly ignore parts of it to fit their opinions. Kind of like the second law of thermodynamics debate. Okay onward....
What does not work is the God of the Gaps idea. Science can't be certain, so it works off of what is highly unlikely to be. If something is deemed highely unlikely to be true then science works as if it is not true, until it is shown wrong. Like minott has pointed out, a large game of sudoku. So if god is a philosophical question, then there shouldn't be a God of the Gaps idea. This is putting in the philosophy where it should be science.
First off, the sudoku game idea was mine, so take it back. Second, saying that science works from the assumption that something is true, is not correct. A hypothesis in its simplest form makes no assumption about itself. It does however provide outcomes that are both true and false. The latter being falsifiability, which is a very important part of science. If something cannot have a possible false outcome than it is not scientifically testable. For example "all men are mortal" Well, there is no way to test this because you would have to live forever to test it and even then you wouldn't know when to stop testing. By contrast "all men are immortal" is falsifiable by the presence of one dead person. Wikipedia it for more info, but its important and even has been used as an argument against God, because there is no way of testing it. And I will agree, a lot of times philosophy of God is charaded as science.
But the real debate comes where there is an overlap. Science has its own form of faith( I will call it trust for distiniction's sake). The esssence of science trusts, many things: the other scienctist are telling the truth, that facts will be checked, that what is highly unlikely is truely falst. They are more like assumptions. I'm not science is untrue, do not think that, but there is a trust inherent in it. This can then bridge the gap to faith(in the philosophical sense) as we try to think either back in time, or in universal workings. The string theory for example is appealing, because if you but your trust in it, ther appears these constants that make mathmatical formulas work. This is incredably appealing, and beautiful in the full sense of the word. The things is there is an idea of another demension that leads to these beautiful working of numbers. The presence of this demension is what the trust of the string theory is in. That demension can not be proven or disproven(at least as of yet).
Well here we are again, the whole faith game. I thought I put that baby to rest. But I will stress my points again. The difference between faith in God and trust in science are the reasons you expressed. "Other scientist are telling the truth, the facts are checked". And yes they are assumptions but they are well supported assumptions. Something belief in God cannot claim to have. String theory is an interesting topic to bring up, I've actually noticed you doing it before. Yes it is highly theoretical and impossible to test, in fact that is one large reason most scientist have abandoned it like they've abandoned the idea of God, but it was and is based on sound scientific principals. Through experimentation and calculation we are lead down a path that leads us to many possibilities, one being string theory. That is not faith that is deduction my dear Watson. And really string theory will only remain a vague idea until we gain the ability to test it. I must saying something about this debate though that is kind of insulting. Scientist invest their lives to pursue these answers. Investing so many hours and years to make sure they are finding the truth. And there is a trust between scientist, but there is also a well laid system that all but eliminates most of the trust that is even necessary. If a scientist presents an idea it must be duplicated by other scientist before it is considered fact. So if someone is just making stuff up it will be very obvious. So it is insulting to say that these are just assumptions as if some loaf was sitting around making things up off the top of his head. In fact the people leveling these insults are usually those very people.
So, I guess my point is (after a long winded thought, sorry you had to read this). Is that in the essence of faith and science there is a disconnect, they are different. One can not come at questions of faith in the same manner as science. But there there is this larger sense of science that has a trust(faith) built in that gives an overlap. If anyone says faith is illogical, and that they believe in science, then they don't understand what they are saying. There is a faith in science, and this overlap cause speculative dispute (and this blog).
Okay, well last one I better make it good. The idea that faith and science are different ascribes some kind of category to science. And I don't believe science can be put in a category. It is the tool that allows us to understand categories in the first place. What else on Earth besides "faith" is immune to science? Nothing! It is how we explain things. To say that faith is disconnected from science is just like saying it doesn't exist. And after all how can they be disconnected if they overlap? And if science has a trust/faith thing going on isn't it then just the same trust/faith that is given to belief? No one is saying "faith" is illogical they are saying that it is illogical to have faith without science. This blog after all is a crude scientific attempt to get to the root of the questions of faith. There very idea of this blog is to put faith/belief/god in a scientific point of view. I do believe there is something to the spirit of faith but I don't believe it is completely separate, if it was how would I experience it? How would I know it was even real? I'll stress again, if you say that faith is untestable and unfalsifiable then you are just saying that it isn't true. Or for all intensive purposes might as well not be because we will never know. (Now don't say 'well that's it exactly Jeph, we won't ever know you have to have faith'. Because I will say that if we can't know God by our methods how will he ever reveal himself to us? And remember Christian's claim he does all the time.)
UPDATE: Just so happens that right when I post this over at Tiny Frog they posted a similar argument. All though it is more of a critique of what others have said and he takes a less hardline approach to it. It's interesting however.
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