Religion Works Too

[ysabetwordsmith]

I read this article in which Stephen Hawking argues against the afterlife.  Okay, he's a smart guy.  I admire him greatly.  But he's a smart science  guy; he doesn't have nearly the same credentials in terms of researching religion.  (Consider that it's a poor idea to take the Pope's advice on science.  I'm not sure it's a better idea to take Hawking's advice on religion, for similar reasons.  It's not his field.)  He argues that science will win against religion "because it works."

Science is a relatively recent human discovery.  Religion seems to go back to the origin of human artifacts that we can interpret, and possibly farther.  Science exists in some but not all human cultures.  Religion exists in all known human cultures, and when people try to stamp it out, it regenerates.  When it comes to decision-making, if there is an apparent conflict between science and religion, considerably more people will decide based on religion even if the practical effects of doing that are negative.  I like science a lot.  But I don't think it's fair to imply that science works and religion doesn't.  Certainly it's possible for religion to malfunction, as anything can in a flawed universe.  But when something has been around for 50,000+ years throughout an entire species, that pretty much has to fit some  definition of "it works."

You can have the most awesome metric toolkit in the world, but it's not going to be a lot of use on standard machinery.  Some tools generalize well across disciplines; others don't.  This is not to say that the tools of science are never useful in religion, or vice verse; but it does mean you need to know your tools and both fields before understanding what will swap and what won't.

Comments

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

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...

[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.

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

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...

[trinker.livejournal.com]

But in 2010, Hawking told Diane Sawyer that "science will win" in a battle with religion "because it works."

"What could define God [is a conception of divinity] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

Hawking's latest book, "The Grand Design," challenged Isaac Newton's theory that the solar system could not have been created without God. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going," he writes.


I see Hawking speaking against the idea of the watchmaker God, and against God-as-made-in-Man's-image, which are very specific, Western conceptions of godhood.

I don't see any fundamental battle against religion going on.

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

Several of us inferred from "Science will win"
that he saw it as something of a battle.
I do have to admit,
that may not have been what he meant to imply.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

In what *context* ?!

As a tool of subjugation of humans, religion (including religion masquerading as science) works better than anything, and I doubt that Hawking would disagree.

As a tool of explanation of physical phenomena, religion works better than science. When religion intrudes into the proper realm of science...

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

My own inference was drawn from the context of the article
"Stephen Hawking says afterlife is a fairy story".

This line in particular:
But in 2010, Hawking told Diane Sawyer that "science will win" in a battle with religion "because it works."

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I don't understand.

Is the *only* function of religion to offer solace of an afterlife? In that case, a whole lot of belief systems thoughout the world *fail*.

Setting science against religion normally happens because for the last hundred years, religious people have been attempting to remove science from the proper realms of science.

Why is this being discussed as if Hawking said, "RELIGION MUST BE ERADICATED" ?!

Surely religion is more to do with the framework one uses for interacting with one's fellow beings, and with the world? Not with explaining the physical workings of the world?

Surely science is more to do with how one explains the physical workings of the world?

Asking a man renowned for his insight into science about metaphysics is setting up an idiotic fight that should not be engaged in, anyway. It's a journalistic "let's you and him fight". Either Hawking says, "afterlife is a fairy story" and it's trumpeted as HAWKING HATES ON RELIGION! or he says "yes, I take comfort in religion", in which case it's EVEN STEVEN HAWKING SAYS YOU SHOULD BELIEVE (in the Christian conception of an afterlife).


For adherents of the majority faith to take this as some sort of talking point is mainly evidence of the enormous amounts of blinding privilege that goes along with being part of the default. So much nuance being erased, and continually so, despite the efforts of anyone else to point out that the premises are flawed from the start.