The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94565 Message #1831499
Posted By: Amos
10-Sep-06 - 07:44 PM
Thread Name: BS: Science without Religion..............
Subject: RE: BS: Science without Religion..............
Kat, I believe you mean "presumptuous" rather than "presumptive" which is applied to evidence or propositions which appear true or reasonable on their face.
Definitions of presumptive on the Web:
having a reasonable basis for belief or acceptance; "the presumptive heir (or heir apparent)"
affording reasonable grounds for belief or acceptance; "presumptive evidence"; "a strong presumptive case is made out"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
As to the article, I think it was a noble effort and not badly written. Since it is an essay in a humanistic proposition, I guess it can be granted some slack if it seems wooly in places. I agree that people like Dawkins would much rather be writing more about evolution and biology (he has written five books on it, I think) than on writing books refuting superstitions about scientific subjects. And therein is the key to the thing.
There is no reason to mix physics and metaphysics, nor to mix any other scientific endeavour with religous issues. It is rational to keep religious beliefs as a private matter between oneself, one's DIvinity (in whatever form) and one's co-religionists.
The minute this boundary is broken by seeking to make religious doctrine or religiously derived moral propositions into a justification for controlling the lives of other people over whom one has no natural authority to dictate, a breach of the social contract has occurred and the doctrine of mutual forebearance has been violated. Thus extremism of the Muslim flavor and extremism of the Christian flavor are both candidates ofr being pilloried because of this violation of boundaries.
In a workable social contract no citizen has or should have the right to impose religous thought on another.
Scientific thought is entirely a different matter. It is not imposed, it is reported and to be valid requires repeatability of observations. It is OPEN to disproveability in its nature and in fact SEEKS it. That's the core difference.
There is no contradiction between being devout as an individual and being scientific as a thinker, and the quote in the article from Carl Sagan offers one view of why.
As to whether the world is profoundly secular or not, I would offger as bet, if ity could be counted up, that the number of secular dialogues (what to eat, how much money, how machines should or do work, employment, organisms, politics health, other species, sciences and their topics) probably outnumbers the religious dialogues of all stripes in any given 24-hour cycle on planet Earth, among humans of all nations and races, by a factor of at least 10 to 1. Probably much more. To put it another way, hundreds of billions of people discuss secular matters from dawn to dusk, while the number who discuss religious issues from dawn to dusk are in the hundred-thousands at best. I would submit this qualifies the world as profoundly secular.
But every one of those people ALSO has some religious thoughts or concerns (even if atheistic). And the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in keeping Congress the hell out of religious practices is well-founded and based on good lessons hard learned from history -- the government of practical affairs among humans should be clearly kept free of religious practices or principles because these topics are too divisive. Therefore they should be strongly encouraged as private practices or the practices of private groups, and strongly discouraged from trying to step across that boundary.
Them's my two bits worth, podnuh.
A