Samuel Prado, I know you’re a scientist, and I’m trying to work out in my own mind how science and religion should be approached differently. I came across the following ideas below on the internet. Can you comment?
1. “Science is a human endeavor, while revelation is apparently partly human and partly divine. We expect humans to make mistakes, but we do not expect God to make mistakes. There should be some claims of Mormonism that we can rely upon to never be contradicted by evidence, in contrast to scientific claims which are all provisional and all subject to being overturned.”
2. “Apologists can retrospectively designate specific Mormon claims as being human in order to accommodate contradictory evidence. There is no clear method for determining a priori which claims come from humans and which come from God. This makes the claim of divine revelation essentially unfalsifiable. In contrast, falsifiability is a key feature of science.”
3. “Because they are human, scientists have beliefs, but the methodology of science doesn’t require belief. Instead, data must be reproducible. Mormonism, on the other hand, requires a lot of belief, and much of the foundational evidence is not reproducible.”
One Response to “El Santo Gringo, I know you’re a scientist, and I’m…”
Samuel Prado
2013-01-05 11:15:43
Hi friend. Let me address each of the three points this internet commenter brings up.
1. The commenter is trying to separate revelation into a human part and a divine part, but in reality these two parts are entirely integrated. I'm not aware of a single instance where God possessed the body of a human being and used that human as a puppet so that the revelation received would be purely divine. All revelation is given from God but interpreted through the prism of human understanding. As all revelation has a human component, all is subject to possible future contradiction. Of course, when revelation is confirmed by multiple sources (scripture, personal witness, unanimous agreement of the Twelve and the First Presidency), it's obviously a lot more reliable than some stray comment made by some Mormon leader 100 years ago. I'd say the same of scientific principles.
2. While there may be some merit to this second point, the commenter nevertheless demonstrates far too much confidence in science. For example, in science it is also impossible to know a priori which scientific theories will prove true until they are tested and can be evaluated retroactively in light of the latest evidence. I can't even begin to count the number of failed scientific theories that were accepted as certainties when they were first presented. There's also the pesky fact that the statement "All truth is falsifiable" is itself not a falsifiable statement. Even Karl Popper, who made the idea of falsifiability a popular concept in scientific thought, acknowledged that there are truths that are nevertheless not falsifiable. For example, in ancient times the idea that atoms exist was unfalsifiable, but with modern technology, they have been shown to in fact exist.
3. The idea that science does not require belief is very naive. It's the kind of idea a non-scientist or an over-confident scientist (a la Richard Dawkins) might have about science. In fact, all science begins with preconceived notions."Theory" and "hypothesis" are essentially synonymous with "belief." The idea that religious evidence is not reproducible is also simply not true. I've had many spiritual experiences over the years, for example, not just one. Whenever I make an effort to keep the commandments, I consistently perceive that my spirituality increases. This phenomenon is quite reproducible. If religious perceptions are given equal weight as the five physical senses, as the new field of neurotheology might suggest (i.e., both kinds of perception can be reduced to measurable neural input into the cortex, which is our sole tool for perceiving the universe, regardless of the organ used for encoding), than the spiritual impressions I consistently receive when I pray or meditate are as valid perceptions of the universe as a visual or tactile observation. Even if one were to accept the idea that religious experience is not as readily reproducible as scientific experience, the statement "all truth is observable, reproducible, and measurable" is not itself falsifiable or provable.
1. The commenter is trying to separate revelation into a human part and a divine part, but in reality these two parts are entirely integrated. I'm not aware of a single instance where God possessed the body of a human being and used that human as a puppet so that the revelation received would be purely divine. All revelation is given from God but interpreted through the prism of human understanding. As all revelation has a human component, all is subject to possible future contradiction. Of course, when revelation is confirmed by multiple sources (scripture, personal witness, unanimous agreement of the Twelve and the First Presidency), it's obviously a lot more reliable than some stray comment made by some Mormon leader 100 years ago. I'd say the same of scientific principles.
2. While there may be some merit to this second point, the commenter nevertheless demonstrates far too much confidence in science. For example, in science it is also impossible to know a priori which scientific theories will prove true until they are tested and can be evaluated retroactively in light of the latest evidence. I can't even begin to count the number of failed scientific theories that were accepted as certainties when they were first presented. There's also the pesky fact that the statement "All truth is falsifiable" is itself not a falsifiable statement. Even Karl Popper, who made the idea of falsifiability a popular concept in scientific thought, acknowledged that there are truths that are nevertheless not falsifiable. For example, in ancient times the idea that atoms exist was unfalsifiable, but with modern technology, they have been shown to in fact exist.
3. The idea that science does not require belief is very naive. It's the kind of idea a non-scientist or an over-confident scientist (a la Richard Dawkins) might have about science. In fact, all science begins with preconceived notions."Theory" and "hypothesis" are essentially synonymous with "belief." The idea that religious evidence is not reproducible is also simply not true. I've had many spiritual experiences over the years, for example, not just one. Whenever I make an effort to keep the commandments, I consistently perceive that my spirituality increases. This phenomenon is quite reproducible. If religious perceptions are given equal weight as the five physical senses, as the new field of neurotheology might suggest (i.e., both kinds of perception can be reduced to measurable neural input into the cortex, which is our sole tool for perceiving the universe, regardless of the organ used for encoding), than the spiritual impressions I consistently receive when I pray or meditate are as valid perceptions of the universe as a visual or tactile observation. Even if one were to accept the idea that religious experience is not as readily reproducible as scientific experience, the statement "all truth is observable, reproducible, and measurable" is not itself falsifiable or provable.
Hope these answers help.