A debate, that I've only skimmed, but it looks interesting.

For me, this wasn't a particularly satisfying debate. Both of the debaters are atheists; one of them is a "militant" atheist.

They're supposed to be dealing with the issue of whether the mainstream scientist should continue to accommodate religious sensibilities, but the scientist who can accept both science and religion goes unrepresented here.

It kind of reminds me of the recent Oxford debate about the existence of Israel. Both debaters took the position that the creation of Israel was a mistake and a travesty, but one believed the state needed to be destroyed immediately, and the other believed it should be destroyed over time.

This was a debate of atheists, by atheists, and for atheists. As someone who tries to reconcile my belief in God with my acceptance of science's explanations of how nature operates (a pursuit I believe to be worthwhile), I found this debate of no consquence to me.

Maybe others of you will find it interesting and inspiring.

I agree with kayawanee about the debate being unsatisfying. My thought as I was reading was "what exactly are they disagreeing on that would cause this to be called a debate?"

For example, Wilson says 'Science is an effort to understand the world as it really is. That's the god of science, to understand "natural reality.",' while Angier says "I think that science is based on evidence and that religion is based on faith. That to me is the fundamental difference." They are not debating, they are simply offering two similar perspectives.

I'll take issue with each of these positions. I completely agree with Wilson that science is an effort to understand "natural reality," meaning an effort to understand natural laws and how they operate. However, he's making a huge leap when we also says this is understanding the world "as it is," with the obvious assumption that that's all it ever is and nothing but what we normally call "natural law" is ever in operation. I love science and I think we do great things with it, but trying to understand the operation of what we call natural law does not require us to discard a priori the possibility that something outside of what we call natural law might sometimes be in operation.

Angier's position makes me make the same complaint I think I made yesterday about somebody's commentary on faith. She says "I think that science is based on evidence and that religion is based on faith. That to me is the fundamental difference." I disagree. If there is eyewitness testimony to something apparently miraculous, that is evidence. People can be mistaken, and people can be fooled, and people can not know everything that is going on. To believe that all reports ever of any kind of miraculous event must be explainable by what we normally call "natural phenomena" requires faith (faith that there must be a "reasonable explanation" meaning a materialistic explanation, even if we will never know that explanation). To believe that some miraculous events reported by witnesses do not have a materialistic explanation requires a different faith. The only position that doesn't require faith between those two is the one that says "I don't believe either way." Believing one way or another about the existence of the universe at all also requires some kind of faith--either you believe that it is purely the result of natural processes, a position about which you will never have sure evidence, or you believe it is the result of something outside of nature. Either position requires faith.

Angier: "When you have faith in something, it requires that you not ask for evidence. It is opposed to the scientific mindset." Again, I disagree. When some women told some of Jesus' followers that the tomb was empty, did they say "great, we'll believe that because we have faith and we don't want to check it out?" No, they ran to the tomb to look for themselves. Yes, other people could have taken the body, but did their faith prevent them from asking for evidence that the tomb was, indeed empty? Does a scientist who believes in God say "I'm not going to try to understand how this natural process works because I want to believe it is miraculous?" No--a scientist who believes in God is quite interested in how natural processes work, and has no fear of following where the evidence leads.

I think the "God vs. Religion" conflict comes into play because a scientist, being interested in the working of "natural law," will start with the assumption that some phenomenon is the result of natural processes, and then try to determine how natural law was operating. In the very best case, the scientist can do experiments which can be repeated by himself or herself and by other people which then demonstrate how natural law is operating in the phenomenon in question. The potential for conflict exists when a Scientist applies this process to something that might, in fact, be miraculous. Reports of miracles such as the virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus or other one-time (or highly irregular) occurrences are often not suitable for scientific study in this way. The origin of life is a particular sticking point partly because it has immediate ramifications--we're all alive and how'd we get that way? The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain the origin of species (not really the initial origin of life) in a naturalistic manner, which is a valid thing to try to do. It's also valid to point out the surprising complexity of life at many levels and question whether evolution really could have achieved what we now observe. Just because science, and the assumption of naturalistic explanations, is a useful tool in many instances doesn't mean the naturalistic assumption is always true. I think interpretation of evidence often varies greatly depending on the beginning assumptions (or perhaps even the faith) of the person interpreting the evidence.

(Side note: it's also possible to take the non-naturalistic assumption and do good science--for example looking at a cell organelle, deciding that it appears to be like a certain machine designed to do a certain job, and then investigating whether it indeed acts like that machine doing that job. The initial assumption is one of design rather than evolution, but the process of investigation then operates along purely naturalistic lines.)

My thinking years ago might have been along the lines of "theistic evolution," thinking that evolution was how species originated and that God might have steered the process. But I have become less convinced of evolution over the years, not more. Yes, it's possible that my faith has skewed my interpretation of the evidence. However, it's also possible that a person believing in pure materialism would have their faith skew their interpretation of the evidence.

Scientific method doesn't address ultimate truth. The opinions of the logical positivists notwithstanding.

Even if you used a Milliard Gargantubrain to form the final hypothesis, the experimental apparatus to prove it is infinitely expensive.

The scientific method addresses physical reality (a.k.a. objective reality). Any other concept of "ultimate truth" is individual specific.

Another way of saying this is one man's spirituality is another man's belly laugh. There is no objective definition of spirituality.

Where the religionist go off the deep end is their confusion between spirituality and objective reality.

These science vs religion debates get tedious because both sides ignore the most obvious reality about this stuff. All beliefs and thought patterns are psychological adaptation mechanism, nothing less, nothing more.

What got me to think this was reading a post (I think on iSteve) about these aboriginal tribes in places like the Amazon and S.E. Asia. These tribes people completely lack time-binding capability. They have no concept of "past" or "future". The more I read about these people, it became clear to me that their mode of cognition was perfectly optimized for their living situation. They are as likely to be as happy as most people in our society.

Likewise, religious beliefs such as christianity are optimized for those who want to live the conventional life-cycle based life (grow-up, get marrage, have and raise kids, grow old and die). Christianity is perfectly optimized for doing this.

People who like openess and freedom, who like to bounce around and try all kinds of different stuff (I lived as expat for 10 years) and who are into stuff like radical life extension and space colonization are attracted to stuff like science rationalism, libertarianism, and tranhumanism. These memes are as optimized for what we want to do with our lives as christianity is for those who want to live the patterned life.

All of these various memes are psychological adaptation mechanisms that optimize peoples' thinking to live whatever lives they want to live.

Both the militant atheists as well as certain christian factions go off the deep end because they are trying to CONVERT each other to their respective positions. Both sides in this debate ignore the obvious reality that christianity is optimized for the psychological needs of those who believe in it and that atheist/transhumanism or whatever you want to call it is optimized for those who are into this as well.

There is no basis for conversion, one way or another. Thus, these debates are utterly pointless.

"All beliefs and thought patterns are psychological adaptation mechanism, nothing less, nothing more."

I don't think you can be sure of that.

"religious beliefs such as christianity are optimized for those who want to live the conventional life-cycle based life (grow-up, get marrage, have and raise kids, grow old and die). Christianity is perfectly optimized for doing this.

People who like openess and freedom, who like to bounce around and try all kinds of different stuff (I lived as expat for 10 years) and who are into stuff like radical life extension and space colonization are attracted to stuff like science rationalism, libertarianism, and tranhumanism."

Hmmm. I seem to be an oddball then. I am a Christian (and grown up, got married, raising kids, growing old although I'd like to stick around for a long time), yet I have interest in space colonization, science, life extension, rationalism, and libertarianism. I'll admit to having an aversion to what most people seem to mean by transhumanism.