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

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Science exists in some but not all human cultures.

Huh? "Does this work? Let's see if this works..." exists across all human cultures. Laws of physics work across all human cultures. What are you positing as not existing in all human cultures? Encouragement of formalized physical exploration?


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."

Bad evaluation.

Besides which - not all human religions posit the same concepts of afterlife.

Your takedown of Hawking's assessment of the likelihood of an afterlife appears to be flawed.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Agree, Hawking is stating his *opinion* (to which he is, of course, entitled), nothing more. I don't get why some people think that his opinion in a matter he has no special competence about weights more than the average Joe's.

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

Apparently he's never watched Twilight Zone reruns...
The Old Man in the Cave...
Whether God is real or not,
religious beliefs are part of our evolution...

And I must take this opportunity to point out that while Hawking my discount religion,
the Vatican has a history of regard for science.

While protestants in Massachussetts were burning witches,
Galileo was being held under house arrest
until the revealed truth of scripture
and the demonstrated truth of science
could be reconciled.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

there hasn't been anything remotely like consensus on the afterlife across religions, either. particularly not among religious "experts", if you consider being an appointed head (such as the pope) to count for religious expertise. scholars of religion in general have made very few claims about the afterlife for this reason.

that said, popes have certainly attempted to impose their views on matters such as cosmology, which i think they have since ceded to physicists in some public arenas -- though of course there are still all the billboards proclaiming the end times as of saturday the 21st. "religious experts" still attempt to impose their views on other areas such as medicine, women's roles, &c., that one might imagine would be better served by biologists or physicians, or perhaps patients or women.

[raindrops.livejournal.com]

It's highly unlikely that Hawkings' opinion about the non-existence of an afterlife will have an effect on anyone, other than to ruffle the feathers of religionists who believe that he is wrong and to prompt non-believers to say "aha! I must be right!"

Net effect, 0 (beyond of course all the electrons moving around these intarwebz to convey the opinions of both sides).

Sure, you could say he's arguing from authority about a subject in which he may not be acknowledged as an expert, but the very fact that he is not acknowledged as such by those who believe differently means that he's not going to change their minds.

No Pope, no high priestess, no imam, no rabbi is going to suddenly say, "Well, now that you put it like that, Stephen, I can see that you're right. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I can get on with my finite life."

I do think you draw an incorrect contrast between science and religion. The goal of science is (ideally) to understand the world and the universe around us. The goal of religion (in my opinion based upon observation of how it tends to work, and of course my data set is biased toward organized religion because it is the most vocal) seems to be to provide comfort despite a lack of understanding - and in many cases insists that there must be a limit to what we understand (often using violence toward that end).

Where science says, "I don't know, let me try to sort it out," religion says, "have faith, you cannot know, but faith brings conviction, and conviction means you can say that you know what you do not know and that's the truth."

[paka.livejournal.com]

Science exists in some but not all human cultures

I'd disagree, since I'd argue that a need to understand the world and why it's come to be, backed up by field observations, as universal. That statement comes uncomfortably close to Eurocentrism, for me. Is your definition the pretty rigorous, repeatable, modern definition? Because then yeah, I'd agree with you.

I don't like the idea of defining any external authority as the be-all and end-all for what I think about spirituality, including an afterlife. I don't really believe in an afterlife - actually, I'm pretty unsure of what I do believe - but I bristle at the idea of blankly accepting what some external authority says because it's "childish" for me to think differently.

Also, from a spiritual standpoint, I think the whole question is academic anyway. We're here, now. The world needs both justice and love, and if someone is just and compassionate because they're looking for some sort of divine pay-back, then at least it gets the job done.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

possibly worth mentioning that on the evolutionary scale, "it works" means precisely: "it has not yet killed off every creature who does it before breeding age".

[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.)

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The whole thing was rubbing me the wrong way. Smart yes; someone described him as wise, and I don't think that's the case. My issue with the way he and Sagan have sometimes approached religion by downplaying it as fit for children (fairy stories in this case)...they should know better.

[djinni.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone, brilliant scientist or Pope, is any more of an authority or expert on spirituality than any other person. Both of them and everyone should be free to share their beliefs, observations and experiences. We're all sharing this experience of a universe where some things are concrete and provable, some things are subjective and mysterious, and where we will all eventually die. There may well be nothing after that. If there is something afterward, we'll know for sure when we get there, and if there really is nothing... absolutely no one can know for sure and will never know for sure.

But, I think that a society in which people use beliefs which are taken on faith, and by their very definition, unprovable, to limit others' quality of life or to outright cause others harm, could benefit a great deal from learning where to draw the line between personal spiritual paradigm and collectively observable reality. I think it's good that a respected, visible scientist has spoken up publicly about his atheism, not because it makes him any more right, but because I think we as a society need to be able to better accept that some people don't have religious beliefs.

[sdomult.livejournal.com]

I honestly admit that trying to read through every comment to see if this has been addressed became a "TL;DR" moment. However, the Piraha people have no concept of religion, nor do they want any religion, period. The world always has been, animals and people always have been, nothing creates, nothing destroys, nothing controls, nothing commands. They simply live as they are, and they are perfectly happy.

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

My take on all this, and one shared by many of the religious, including the Vatican, is that science is NOT incompatible with spirituality. Very simply, science attempts to explain much of what one experiences in one's objective reality, whilst religion attempts to explain the experiences of subjective reality. Science describes how everything works; religion describes what everything means.