He says that the concept of Non-overlapping Magesteria, which is similar to what I’m proposing, isn’t historically representative of the relationship between science and religion. That may very well be true, in fact I guess based on his examples I know it to be true. I suppose when I think of religion I’m thinking of it as a tool though. Not how that tool has been used, but how it should be used. Again, just trying to think this through and I could well be wrong, but here goes.

Let’s go back, let’s go way back. Religion was a tool that man used historically to explain things going on around them and more than likely they didn’t make a clear cut distinction between the natural and the supernatural. if it rained, a natural phenomenon, they may come up with a supernatural cause. Let me pause here and say that I think all religions (even my own) were sort of manufactured by men. I think that Christians/Jews had the advantage of the basis of their religion, their relationship with God, being true. So, man historically used religion as a tool for everything from examining the natural universe, to making laws, to relating to their god(s).

Along comes science. Science as earlier defined is based on observation and reproducible test results and not on superstition or mythology. I think that gives us better results where the tool is appropriately used. Currently science does have a lot of useful things to tell us about human nature, consciousness, the ultimate nature of reality, origins, endings, and morality. I think religion certainly has things to say about those topics too. So I suppose making a stark contrast between the natural and the supernatural and thus making a stark contrast between science and religion may be a mistake.

It seems that the magesteria do overlap to a degree, whether its simply bumping up against one another or getting thoroughly muddled. It doesn’t surprise me. There’s nothing magical about either “magesteria” after all. They are tools and like any tools they can be misused. If the only tool you have is hammer then everything you encounter may look like a nail. Sometimes, just like physical tools, science and religion can be misused by themselves to answer questions they aren’t best suited for and sometimes they can be used in tandem for a better result.

Stephen Jay Gould, advocate of the NOMA view seems to indicate this in this quote:

[E]ach subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority … This resolution might remain all neat and clean if the nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an extensive no man’s land. But, in fact, the two magisteria bump right up against each other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border. Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts of a full answer—and the sorting of legitimate domains can become quite complex and difficult.

Dan goes on to say that religions’ focus is “on securing and/or maintaining power” and is “concerned with controlling the behavior of beings in the temporal world”. Again I can’t argue that this hasn’t pretty consistently been the case. I would argue that this is not the fault of the tool or in fact its actual purpose. People have used science and philosophy and probably another thing or two lying about for the exact same purposes. That is a people problem.

He closes by saying:

Besides, I daresay that a religion which made no claims about reality, made no demands on its patrons, promised no rewards (temporal, eternal, or existential), and said nothing substantive about human nature would maintain a hold on parishioners for very long. Don’t believe me? Look at the thin attendance of liberal protestant churches compared to moderate and conservative ones.

All religions I’m aware of do all of these things. My original definition said that religion was “to put us in touch with whatever we believe to be true about something that exists outside of the natural realm”. There will be claims about where reality meets god. There will be demands made on how we are to relate to the supernatural and the natural. There will be rewards, though in Christianity most of those rewards are rightly laid up in Heaven and thus supernatural, not all of them are. They do say something about human nature and since there is something of the divine in us it is right for religion to speak to those areas. So religion is not purely supernatural, but it is that which allows us to examine where the supernatural and the natural collide and influence one another, something science can’t do.

If I Had a Hammer is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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During the discussion the question was asked, “Is science diametrically opposed to religion?” Both Zach Ricks and I agreed that that wasn’t the case. He said, “Some people believe that science destroys faith, I don’t agree with that stance at all.” To which I replied, in agreement, the “the two are examining different things.” Writer, philosopher, and all around cool guy J. Daniel Sawyer tagged me on Skype and asked me if I’d like to flesh out and debate that point on our respective blogs. Always ready to cross swords, I agreed. We put it up to age before beauty and since we’re both pretty grizzly looking (in the bear sense) age won out so I get to fire the first volley.

Thanks to Sid I’ve learned that defining my terms is pretty important in these sorts of situations. The definition of science to which I refer is “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method” aka natural science. That is defined as “any of the sciences (as physics, chemistry, or biology) that deal with matter, energy, and their interrelations and transformations or with objectively measurable phenomena”. Science deals with the natural world. It tells us things like how and at what temperature water freezes. It tells us how species adapt to their surroundings and pass that on to their young. It describes the processes of the universe, at least so far as we are currently able to measure and observe them.

Religion on the other hand serves a very different purpose. Again, referring to Webster, religion is “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices”. The purpose of such a system is to put us in touch with whatever we believe to be true about something that exists outside of the natural realm, at least that’s how I see it. There exist things that do not belong to the natural world. God, angels, and demons, belong to this class of things. There may well be other things that are supernatural, but that’s a different topic. The point is that these things are not objectively measurable.

So, when I say that science and religion are not diametrically opposed, by that I mean one can be both scientific and religious when it comes to your world view. Science is used to look at and interact with our physical world and religion is used to look at and interact with the spiritual and supernatural world. In that sense science and religion seem to me to be dramatically different in terms of their purpose. The opposition, the downright animosity, that often exists between representatives of the “two worlds” is one that I frankly don’t get. Too often it looks like people who each believe that their particular way of looking at everything in creation can eventually answer the prevailing questions without any help from the other. That hardly seems necessary or productive.

Dan says that “science and religion can not meaningfully be said to be examining different things.” I’m not sure if we’re using different definitions for the terms or if our respective world views are different. Whatever the case I look forward to what he has to say.

His response.

Science vs. Religion is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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So anyway the first episode I listened to was Texas Snow. It got my blood up just a little so I called to leave a voice mail. Thanks to a restriction on time placed by Google Voice I was cut off in mid thought and had to leave two. Rather than bog down their podcast replying to me point by point Aetherswift replied in a blog post.

I figured I’d drive a little traffic their way, for the conservatively minded among you and for those that just like poking people on the opposite side of the aisle. As such I’ll be replying to her points here and shooting her the link. So go read the blog post and listen to any of the relevant audio and then come back and read my thoughts. Just to make sure we have all the proper context.

1. Maurice Clemmons – I am pretty much universally against the death penalty, though not necessarily for the reasons one might suspect. I haven’t blogged on it that I can find, but suffice to say at this point and probably forever the death penalty process (both assigning it as a penalty and the seemingly endless ability of the criminal to contest it) are so horribly broken that I don’t see any way of using it appropriately. Are there instances where it might be called for? I think so. Perhaps even in the case of Mr. Clemmons, though not on the rape charge as Aetherswift seems to think it should have been. An appeal to the Old Testament in support of the death penalty isn’t going to convince me since we’d have to start killing off a whole bunch of folks if we go down that road. What would convince me is a non-emotional argument on why the death penalty would have been more appropriate in the earlier case against him. And regarding the bail, as I understood it you were comparing posting bail to a punishment. My sole point was that it’s not a punishment. Should bail bondsman be able to help people post bail? I’ll be honest I haven’t given it much thought. It’s a long respected practice (so far as I know) and I’ve never seen an argument against it, other than the occasions where someone posts bail and does something horrible. This isn’t necessarily a reason to stop doing it.
2. God telling us/not telling us everything we need to know in the Bible – I posted about this recently. My point was that you said something akin to the notion that we would find all our answers in the Bible and this is simply not true. Perhaps I misunderstood something you said. I will say that regarding “There are no gray areas in heaven.” I suppose that depends on what you mean. The Bible does indicate that we will receive varying rewards in heaven. So that seems gray in a way. In regards to morality/righteousness though, I would say that yes, there is only one “correct” morality and that no one is righteous. I’ll be posting on that later today/tomorrow.
3. John Stewart – You really should give John a try. He’s consistently funny and picks on both sides pretty mercilessly.
4. Obama Osama – Conflating Obama with Osama is no more funny than calling Bush Hitler. Comparing any president to a terrorist overlord is a cheap shot. Let me take your points one at a time:
   Obama does have a Muslim name. – Hussein is an Arabic name, common both in religious and non-religious circles. That’s a bit like saying Joshua or Paul are Christian names. Barack is an African name and I’ve seen no indication that it’s common to Muslims.
   • He was raised Muslim and attended a Muslim school – My wife attended Catholic school. She’s not Catholic. There’s no proof that he was raised as a practicing Muslim or is currently one.
   • He is constantly defending Muslims and doing everything in his power to release and/or excuse Muslim terrorists. – You’re really going to need to back this one up.
   • He even bowed before the Muslim Saudi king – He bowed before the Japanese Emperor. He’s not Japanese. We can argue whether these were good ideas or not, but it’s not proof of anything.
5. The war in Afghanistan – You said you would give him more than he asked for, were you in Obama’s shoes. If he asked for 50K and you offered him more then where would they come from? I’m not saying that we don’t have the number of troops that the general asked for or that we wouldn’t have the number of hypothetical troops that you’d hypothetically offer, but just because we have them doesn’t mean that deploying them all to Afghanistan is a good idea. Just because the General (all due respect to him) asks for them doesn’t mean he should get everything he wants. I have to assume that Obama didn’t make the decision just to cheese the General off. We can certainly debate the wisdom of a date. I do agree with you actually that it was a move to try and compromise (unfortunately a dirty word). I’m not so sure that a “Damn the torpedoes” approach in today’s military climate works every time. There is a place for both a thoughtful approach to the number of troops we deploy and having a clear (though flexible) exit strategy. There is also a time for throwing everything and the kitchen sink at a problem and vowing to stay in as long as possible. Which approach we use depends on what we’re trying to accomplish.
6. Family Guy – I think what I said was that Family Guy picks on everyone. They may indeed have a liberal slant, but I don’t think it’s ever intended as a “political cartoon”. That was my main point. American Dad fills that niche.
7. Macs and iTunes – Re: Coders and Macs, I’ve been in IT for a long time (10+years) and I’ve known coders who love Macs and code for Macs. I guess you could say that we’re both pointing to circumstantial evidence. I’ll say you’re more likely to run into coders for PCs for the same reason you’re more likely to run into techs like myself who support PCs. There are simply more PCs. Most coders I know actually prefer *nix boxes (and it should be pointed out that the Mac OS is based on a Unix kernel).

So there we go. That covered a wide variety of topics. I hope you guys chip in your $.02 and don’t be afraid to level your guns at me (like you ever are) or at Aetherswift, just keep it kind. And give their podcast a shot.

Lady and the Tramp is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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