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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Science as Religion (other objections to Wingate's article)
Message-ID: <770@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 17:12:49 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.770
Posted: Tue Nov  6 17:12:49 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Nov-84 19:15:12 EST
References: <704@umcp-cs.UUCP> <209@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 45

In article <209@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:

> Charlie, your first sentence only demonstrates that Rich may have a
> religion with no gods.  It does not demonstrate that Rich has a religion.

Fair enough.  Let me attempt to distiguish between the use of science and
the practice of science as a religion.  Science assumes that the universe
always follows the same pattern of action, whatever that may be, and attempts
to MODEL that pattern.  To say that there cannot be a God, outside of the
universe, who intervenes and causes the pattern to be disrupted, is
science as a religion.

> If you've really read Bertrand Russell lately, Charlie, you should remember
> that something can be rejected as unlikely, rather than on absolute logical
> proof.  There are objective heuristics for guessing relative likelyhood
> such as Occam's Razor.

Occam's Razor applies to theories; its purpose is to simplify science, not to
make it more "true".  It is a highly subjective weapon.  If I am told by
someone that their brother rose from the dead last night, is not the
simplest theory that he did in fact do so?  The evaluation that one would
normally make would be that the event is "too unlikely"; but how unlikely
IS too unlikely?  One makes a highly subjective evaluation.

I have a copy of _Why I am Not a Christian_, and I don't find it the least
convincing.  Most of his arguments are the same old discredited arguments
we've all heard years before, and he doesn't seem to realize that if God
sticks his hand into the universe and makes a change in the material
universe, that the assumption that is the very foundation of science, that
the universe always operates in the same fashion, is violated.

> Science and religion have historically battled for their respective
> territories.  Where they are concerned with different things it is only
> because one has been able to prevent the other from encroaching or has
> eliminated the other.  One need only look at creationism and sociobiology
> for examples of recent and continuing conflicts.  Science will not be the
> arbiter of religion, but it will continue to claim more territory as more
> is learned.

I will save my complaints about the social sciences for another article.
I don't think that creationism posses much of a problem, being bad religion
as well as bad science.  I do contest the use of "science" to make statements
about God, either for or against; the data simply is not in the proper form.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe