Specifically, I have a more limited view of the kind of knowledge achievable through the scientific method.
I doubt it. From the sound of it, we have roughly the same view on that. I think it may just be that you have a much higher opinion of religion than I do =)
There was a thread in nasu_dengaku's journal a couple months ago, where I left a comment saying nearly exactly the same thing you're saying here. I'm too lazy to dig it up, but basically he was arguing that science is the only valid means of answering questions, and that eventually it would be able to answer all meaningful questions. I was arguing the other side--namely, that there are meaningful questions that will either never be answered by science, or can never be answered by science, and at the very least that other means of inquiry (such as philosophy, reason, introspection, etc.) are equally important, and the only way we can make progress on some questions at the moment, even if in some purely theoretical sense we might be able to answer all with science (but of course, never in practice). I brought up some of the same examples you do here like morality and politics. He disagreed on one or both for the long term, I can't remember.
I have no problem saying "as a scientist, my experiment doesn't answer your question". However, I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that religion doesn't answer any questions... or at least, it doesn't answer any questions successfully. In the rare instances where it happens to get things right, it's no different from a broken clock being right twice a day.
Where I do agree religion can be important in people's lives is with ritual, worship, meditation, prayer, practice... etc. The one place it really sucks though is in trying to explain or predict meaningful facts about the world. That's something science does very well, and I don't see why religion constantly tries to pretend it can do a better job (or even an equal job).
Questions of how inorganic life turned into organic life, and how that eventually turned into human life are clearly in the "objective" domain. And religion makes very different predictions about these things than science. Gotta run right now, but it does seem like either our view of religion is different or our understanding of what religion tries to talk about is different. My claim is not that there is no possible religion you could invent that is consistent with evolution... moreover, just that there is no mainstream religion which is consistent with evolution, at least no Abrahamic religion.
Re: religious darwinists
Specifically, I have a more limited view of the kind of knowledge achievable through the scientific method.
I doubt it. From the sound of it, we have roughly the same view on that. I think it may just be that you have a much higher opinion of religion than I do =)
There was a thread in
I have no problem saying "as a scientist, my experiment doesn't answer your question". However, I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that religion doesn't answer any questions... or at least, it doesn't answer any questions successfully. In the rare instances where it happens to get things right, it's no different from a broken clock being right twice a day.
Where I do agree religion can be important in people's lives is with ritual, worship, meditation, prayer, practice... etc. The one place it really sucks though is in trying to explain or predict meaningful facts about the world. That's something science does very well, and I don't see why religion constantly tries to pretend it can do a better job (or even an equal job).
Questions of how inorganic life turned into organic life, and how that eventually turned into human life are clearly in the "objective" domain. And religion makes very different predictions about these things than science. Gotta run right now, but it does seem like either our view of religion is different or our understanding of what religion tries to talk about is different. My claim is not that there is no possible religion you could invent that is consistent with evolution... moreover, just that there is no mainstream religion which is consistent with evolution, at least no Abrahamic religion.