dreamer_easy | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

I'm a believer in NOMA - that is, religion in its place, science in its place thank you very much Professor Dawkins. Serious question: if ID proponents are given space in the science classroom to put their views, should "materialist scientists" be given space in the religion classroom (scripture classes, Divinity lectures, Sunday School etc) to put theirs?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ha. I like that idea. If the reason for having ID in science class is to cast doubt on science, then science should be allowed to play Mythbusters with religion class.

My grandmother taught Sunday school when I was little, and she's a geologist... she used seismology to propose possible explanations of certain Biblical miracles.

I think I like your grandmother.

Anglicans have their moments. ^^

she used seismology to propose possible explanations of certain Biblical miracles.

Wouldn't that stop them from being miracles?

That's what I wasn't sure of-- she was a very religious person, and the impression I took away from it was that God still made the earthquakes. It was like natural forces and seismology were God's tools for messing about with humanity.

Well, no. Either they're divided, or they're not. But something else to consider: if you want each in it's place, you have to define those places, to draw a line. One of Dawkins' main arguments is that the supposed line - that science tells us things about the world and that religion tells us things about the spirit - isn't close to reality, since so many religions make claims about the world but science has nothing to say about the spirit.

So where are you drawing that line? And does, or would, either side really respect that line?

Is that in Unweaving the Rainbow, on which I'm just about to get my grubby paws?

It's a theme in many of his books, but most explicitly in some of the essays in A Devil's Chaplain, IIRC. Unweaving the Rainbow might touch on it, but it has more to say about anti-science, pseudoscience and chicanery than religion. It's probably my favourite book of his, though by far and away he's at his best pitching science as the awe machine it is, rather than when he's tearing down the opposition.

Snavelled 'em both! I confess I'm reading him as research for a novel rather than for edification. I agree, his science writing is bloody inspiring, but his attempts at philosophy are smug, ignorant, and wrong.

Well, smug perhaps, and very broad, but I don't know about ignorant or wrong. Not that I take his word as gospel. (Ha!) I'd like to find out, though.

Reading an anti-feminist book to find out what feminists think is like reading a Creationist book to find out what scientists think. (I refer here to What is True?.)

NOMA?

Is that Not On My Altar?

Non-Overlapping MAgisteria.

In other words, you fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle.

Oh, and: can I metaquote you on that? ^^

Oh, and: can I metaquote you on that? ^^

*blushes* Would you? I've never (to my knowledge) been metaquoted.

You are now immortalised in

mobettameta.

"Oh, Pyewackett, you bad puss! Not on my altar!"

Non-Overlapping Magisteria - a way to reconcile science and religion, explained by palaeobiologist Steven Jay Gould in his 1999 book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.

Thanks, I could have been more explanatory and less attemptedly-clever. ^^;

I liked your conciseness, though. :-)

It depends on what classroom.
If its a state school, yes. Discussion of religion should really be about education in the moral and ethical principles by which people live their lives. A discussion of humanism, or other ethical systems compatible with materialism/atheism/agnosticism belongs there.

If its a divinity lecture, no. Its off topic mostly, but to some extent it won't be. Smart theism has to address is critics, but they don't need to do that by inviting their critics in.
Sunday school, no.
Now the difficult question is what about a private school. To what extent should a private school be exposing students to wider community values and to what extent just its own? Its a big debate. Of course, a really good private school will make sure its students understand this stuff, but there are few schools that good. I bet the Jesuits could manage to teach students materialist philosophy and make it sound wrong, though.

My (admittedly limited) experience with Jesuits is that they're perfectly happy with evolution and cosmology and quantum physics and everything, as a system built by God. Just because we're becoming able to read the programming code doesn't mean there is no programer.

Strict materialism would be a problem from that angle-- it's just the same picture but without God.

Private schools: in any country that has signed the UN's Treaty on the Rights of the Child, parents are supposed to have prior right to choose when, where, and how their children are educated. If they want to teach their kids at home and teach them something that government schools don't teach, fine. If they want to pay someone else to do it, which is the essence of a private school, also fine.

I agree about the Jesuits. My point was that the Jesuits would probably be perfectly capable of discussing atheist materialism in religion classes, and presenting it in such a way that it seemed obviously intellectually inferior to their own position. I like it when theists aren't afraid to take on the opposition intellectually.

The issues with private schools do get more complicated quickly, though. They do accept government money, the majority of their funding in most cases, and do have a responsibility to educate to approved standards. Teaching them things government schools don't teach is fine, not teaching them things government schools do is not always fine (and evolution is a case in point).

From which position we get that teaching ID as an alternative to evolution in private schools is probably OK. As long as people do it in their own schools with their own money, not much you can do about it.

I realise now that I just repeated you on the Jesuits. I was hopped up on canned coffee last night.

In their own schools with their own money is what I was referring to. Can the government refuse to fund a private school based on what it teaches? Probably not. If a private school in Kansas wanted to teach an ID-free science curriculum, they shouldn't lose their money because of that.

Never mind that I think public funding of private schools robs from the poor and gives to the rich, but that's another discussion. ^^;

Canned coffee, so good.

Private schools are a v. confusing issue. In fact, it pointed up why my whole "How would you like it if we came over there and did the same thing??" question isn't really relevant - the issue in Kansas and now Pennsylvania is the separation of church and state, and a church inviting over some palaeontologists for a slide show has nothing to do with that.

Yes, absolutely they should. If a belief is not challenged and tested, it becomes weak, and you end up with a lot of glib, superficial divinity students (or Sunday School students for that matter) whose boasted faith may or may not be real. I call this phenomenon "raising hothouse flowers", as it occurs most often and most tragically among kids whose parents sought to protect them from evil, adversity and doubt by sheltering them in a home school or church school environment where they never had to acknowledge, much less defend against, any other influences or philosophies.

Then the kids grow up and go to university, and their parents tearfully wonder why this "faith" they so carefully nurtured in their children collapses into dust, and why their sweet, innocent little Samuel or Sarah is suddenly out partying like it's 2099.

Perhaps this is the religious equivalent of empirical enquiry! (But what if it goes haywire, and the "materialist scientists" convince the kids?)

If they do succeed in convincing the kids, then perhaps the kids' faith wasn't worth the paper it was written on in the first place. Perhaps the kids need some time to think through the issues involved, and either emerge with a stronger, more intelligent faith or none at all. The unexamined life is not worth living, etc.

The unexamined life is not worth living, etc.

Heh... I like that. Faith isn't really faith if it's never had a chance to be shaken. Conversely, it isn't skepticism to just believe in something because it's 'scientific' without having compared it to other ideas and tested them.

John Safran did such a good rant on this - about people who mock Creationists but themselves couldn't explain the Big Bang or macroevolution in a pink fit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only