The Wordsmith&#39;s Forge

*nods* if any of the horses at my barn are abandoned, i shall certainly partake in ensuring their wellbeing. (and me not even an atheist exactly :) i also volunteer at the mspca, and i'm sure we shall not shut our open doors on any abandoned pets.

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puffbird.livejournal.com

I may be a minority in many circles, but I have never seen religion and science as mutually exclusive. There are many needs that religion fills, and there are many basic truths of life that science can explain.

Scientists OFTEN make discoveries that disprove or discount what they formerly held as unchanging Fact -- and they'll keep doing that, as long as they study things and ask questions.

But there is one thing I know -- and Mr. Hawking should know this, too: science cannot prove the nonexistence of anything. It can only prove, through evidence, that something does exist. Therefore, Mr. Hawking should know better than to say something does not exist.

(But otherwise, I think he has a very brilliant mind.)

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I don't see from where you infer my need to google these names, or how that (if true) would refute my points above.

Hawking and anyone else are welcome to their opinion on religion (and politics and every other topic), but the fact that he his a genius in some field(s)doesn't make him an indisputable authorithy on everything and anything.

By the way, it's interesting that he is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the recipient of a Vatican onorificence, it tells something about open-mindness, I guess.

Edited Date: 2011-05-17 08:07 pm (UTC)

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Hear, hear!

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And, of course, both science and religion,
in practice,
fall short of what they ought to be...

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Hmmm...

The question is academic,
and Hawking ~is~ an academic...

What a happy co-incidence!
:)

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Hmmm...

oddly enough,
science hasn't done much to defeat war and racism,
either...

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actually, his awards imply to me that he's spent considerable time talking with the extremely religious.

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I guess it all depends how you define 'extremely religious'.
I don't believe something like the Pontifical Academy of Science could have been born in a restricted and dogmatic milieu, the member list is quite...interesting shall we say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences#Current_ordinary_members

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I'm sorry to be difficult,
but appearance is necessarily a function of perception.

I went to wikipedia for this:
The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."

That would seem to be what Hawking is hawking, so to speak,
and, no, that does not exist in all human cultures,
although it ~is~ pretty widespread now.

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zeeth_kyrah

They do the job of enforcing cultural survival, though.

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ankewehner.livejournal.com

What I meant is that I don't think war and racism should be defended "because they have been around a long time", so using "it has been around a long time" does not work as an argument in favour for religion to me.

Seems to me (never having studied te topic in depth) like both religion AND science have been used to justify racism and further wars.

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zeeth_kyrah

What he's saying is, essentially, the same error every "strong" atheist promulgates: "We can't test it, therefore it doesn't exist, and belief in it should be thoroughly abolished so we can move on to the shining holy light of Scientism." Science as religion, replacing spirituality, because humans are fallible and mathematics (and therefore mathematicians) are not.

Anything which is worshiped as perfect can be easily corrupted over time, because it only takes one mistake to cause schisms and holy war.

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But observing and saying that something works isn't actually an endorsement of it;
only a recognition the fact that it works.

It was once believed that science would eradicate infectious disease,
but the thing is, infectious disease works. As horrible as it will often be,
infectious disease, like religion, is part of our evolution,
and part of what we are.

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But observing and saying that something works
isn't actually an endorsement of it;
only a recognition of the fact that it works.

It was once believed that science would eradicate infectious disease,
but the thing is, infectious disease works. As horrible as it will often be,
infectious disease, like religion, is part of our evolution,
and part of what we are.

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trinker.livejournal.com

*ARGH*

This is one of those Western dichotomies that makes me bananas.

All human cultures have *some* form of "this thing I tried did not work, how can I fix this". Enshrining it as a set of systematic rules does not mean that it was suddenly an invention of the West, nor something which is Western. (Having the attitude that something is not real until it's captured in a series of statements *is* Western.)

All human cultures have some experimentation. There are plenty of things which are not universal. Positing "science" as one of those non-universal things is ... I do not have words to describe that that aren't flamebait.

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Yes, they work...

We may not be happy with how or why they work,
but, still, they work...
and science has pretty well closed ranks with religion
to help them work...

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i quite agree that it's an interesting assemblage! but i still maintain that its members would likely have discussed religious perspectives, as part of their commitment to the academy's quoted goals of examining epistemological issues.

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Well, yes, you're right,
but that's not the science Hawking is talking about,
although he'd probably like us to believe it is.
He might even believe that himself.

His contention is that the formal belief system
characterized as science--his religion, actually--
will do what Islam and Christianity did
even better than Islam and Christianity did it...

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I don't see why not, each from his own perspective.

I do mantain though that one thing is to discuss them from the perspective of an individual believer of whatever faith (or doubter, non-believer or person-in-research)and another is to discuss of theology within its boundaries of a philosophical discipline, with all its implications.

It's not that the first is worthless, far from it it's just that those are two wholly different levels.

We might have just to agree on disagreeing on this.

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trinker.livejournal.com

Citation on what it is Hawking is positing, please, because I cannot find substantiation for your assertion.

I do not understand how there can be a religion vs. science debate on creation, anyway, *except* by being a literalist who only acknowledges the Abrahamic religions and their common conception of deity.

Every time this "debate" recurs, I'm irritated by the contention that religions all have something to say about afterlife and creation, coupled with the assertion that all humans cultures have religion but not all of them science.

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it seems to me that given his membership in this society and its stated goals, he would have been discussing these matters at the highest levels available to all involved, not merely exchanging personal anecdotes.

your interpretive mileage may vary, but i still think your pointer helps make my case. so thanks :)

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'Available to all involved' is the operative sentence, we just happen to differ on what that level actually may be, and no, I wasn't thinking of 'merely exchanging personal anectodes' either.
But I do think the horse is quite dead at this point.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110516/us_yblog_thelookout/stephen-hawking-says-afterlife-is-a-fairy-story

And, of course, it may only be my perception...

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