Science will win because it works (Stephen Hawking interview)

[moobu2]

Stephen Hawking, known for his groundbreaking work in physics, told Diane Sawyer that when it comes to reconciling science and religion, there is only one outcome: "science will win because it works." He also elaborated on his views about God.

"What could define God 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."

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

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More at ABC News

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. I think he might be a little too optimistic there.

Just because something makes more sense, doesn't mean people will choose it.

[stray cat]

2. We don't see that in reality - many progressives believe things about vaccines

and diseases that have been contradicted by science.

[Broke In Jersey]

3. "science will win because it works"

Science once told us the world was flat.
Science once told us that heavier items fall faster than lighter ones.
Science once told us the atom was the smallest element in the universe.
And lets not get started on how ALL the rules of the universe/astronomy are totally rewritten every few decades.

Lets just agree that we know practially nothing in the scheme of things and that when either Science OR Religion tells us about "rules" it can "prove", it really doesn't mean much!!!

[YOY]

4. And science corrected itself. It does that. Religion, not so much.

You seem to imply that Science and Religion are competitors, equal stakeholders, and run using the same rules.

They do not.

[safeinOhio]

6. Science is fluid and

is able to change as new facts and observations are available. On the other hand, religion disregards new facts and observations that don't fit scripture. Those that think the world is 6,000 some years old is a great example to add to your list and being able to change "ALL the rules of the universe/astronomy" is a positive, not a negative for science.

[Broke In Jersey]

7. both are fluid....

and both hate change. and usually need a sledgehammer for a new idea to be "accepted" by the 'elites/leaders' in each group.

All I'll say is that in this very country science told us that certain people weren't as equal as whites to justify slavery. And some of their arguments actually made some sense, especially to people 150 years ago.
There were many religions that taught slaves had a soul and were equal in Gods eyes.

As for me, I will look to BOTH science AND religions views & reasons and make my own informed decision. Neither are pure and both have hid behind their 'science' & their 'religion' to justify horrible ideas in the past.

[qazplm]

9. hmmm...

science adjusted to a sun centered solar system a lot quicker than some religions did.

"science" didn't tell us that some folks weren't equal, some folks used "science" to tell us that some folks weren't equal.
There is a difference. Some folks also used the Bible to justify slavery, since it is present there and even prescribes how slaves should be treated.

Science is pure. Our flawed use of science is not. Flawed humans mess up everything at least a little bit.

[Broke In Jersey]

12. hmmmmm back at ya :)

good points actually!
I dont think science is pure....Pure Science may be pure though....
I would agree that our 'flawed use' of science is the problem....just like our 'flawed use' of religion is the problem.

[Igel]

14. No, you're wrong.

Science did tell us that some folks weren't equal. Scientists carefully measured and correlated and even found purported causal connections.

It took Boas and others who abduced a belief system in which peoples were equal to mount a research agenda--largely belief driven for a number of years, and still partially belief driven--to show otherwise.

They took a very small number of non-random observations and formed the "we're all equal" hypothesis. Likely true, but just as Brown, in identifying Brownian motion, didn't identify Brownian motion at all, so in many cases these researchers enlisted false facts and bad reasoning in the interest of truth. No matter. F --> T is a true inference.

Science is not pure. Science is an abstraction, able to easily be manipulated by carefully picking your controls, your set of data points, constructing your argument. In the case of Galton and others, they merely measured and observed what was in front of their noses. Their evidence was crystal clear. Later researchers had to show that this was not a random data set, and that the controls Galton et al. thought they had were not true controls. (In fact, often finding good controls is still a bloody nuisance.)

The old race/talent classifications based on skull-shape had a long and distinguished history, full of inerringly false yet obviously true facts and valid science based on those facts: Dolichocephalic humans were smarter, gifted, etc; brachycephalic humans weren't. Cephalic indices were taken as genetic inheritances so there was a good reason to suspect that race and 'civilization' or 'intelligence' were strongly correlated and probably had a causal relationship. Of course, it took longitudinal studies by people who believed--and that is the right word--otherwise to show otherwise. The cephalic index patterned better with maternal diet and nutrition than with maternal or paternal cephalic indices. A graveyard in Switzerland showed a population known to be long-term genetically stable went from dolichocephalic to brachycephalic to dolichocephalic, the shift corresponding perfectly with the presence of drought, and therefore malnutrition when the brachycephalic population was in utero.

Of course, this was an accident. If they had chosen a different set of metrics for skull shapes the shift would have been variation within a single skull shape and the hypothesis would have been either more or less falsifiable.

The facts were the facts, and no more used by some folks to tell us that people weren't equal than used by people later to tell us that people were equal. The difficulty was--and is--knowing exactly what set of facts is free from bias, what control groups aren't also subject to the conditions being investigated, how to account for differences not in genetics and biology but in culture and development. It's all the assumptions, what a good default hypothesis is, etc., etc. that make good science distinct from bad science--but these aren't always clear a priori, and anything post "priori" tends to be suspect. Twin studies are great for this, providing nifty controls. But twin studies are at least two-edged: Used to trumpet environment, they also showed a huge dollop of genetic influence. They're also limited, and mostly done in a few countries so we need to make some assumptions in order to generalize their conclusions.

Of course, now you have True Believers that so insist that we are equal that science showing that we're really not all equal in all ways is lambasted and reviled. You show that a region in Africa has a population with larger or smaller amounts of smooth and striated muscle tissue, making them better long-distance runners because of genetics; you show that African-American blacks are genetically predisposed to retain sodium; you show that European and Middle Eastern populations, because of their longer history with exposure to concentrated sources of starch and sugar, are less inclined to diabetes (because diabetics would have had fewer children over the last 9,000 years) so that we expect Meso-American populations exposed to a Western diet to have higher levels of obesity and diabetes--and you're suspect, not because science has shown equality, but because it's not allowed to show inequality. Any inequality would be fodder for the racists. Unless the genetic or even developmental variation is deemed politically acceptable by advocates on one side or another.

Then, when you show that some genes involved in the human brain show geographic evidence of recent origin--and therefore of limited geographic spread--you have to fall all over yourself to say pre-emptively that they obviously could never, ever have an effect on intelligence. The problem is that this latter isn't science speaking, but belief, because for the time being nobody actually knows what those specific alleles do. What the scientists hasten to deny might be exactly what they do.

Science is an abstraction nowhere writ in lasting stone. The only actual instantiation we have of science is through scientists. Scientists are people. Aye, there's the rub.

And that's why Hawking issued a fully non-falsifiable hypothesis. We usually call those "beliefs."

[qazplm]

15. science is a process

science didn't tell us people weren't equal, folks misused the process, and either put garbage into the system, or spun the results that came out.

Anything can be manipulated. Anything. If the definition of purity is "incapable of being manipulated" then nothing is pure. I don't think that is the definition though.

The process is great. It's beautiful. It's darn near perfect. Humans mess up the process because we are flawed. But even with that, because the process of science is SO good, EVENTUALLY we get the right answer. It just takes time.

Religion isn't a process. It doesn't work the same way every time. It isn't merely manipulated by people with ill or selfish intent, it fundamentally depends upon logical leaps and faith over reason/facts.

Now, that doesn't mean that religion has no value or place. Science can only go so far. Logic can only go so far. At some point, some leaps are necessary. I don't agree with any of the leaps I've been exposed to so far thus why I am agnostic, but I don't think the concept of a God is anymore of an unreasonable leap than the concept of no God. There's a gap, and we don't have and may never have the info necessary to fill that gap, and thus the need for religion and philosophy is born

But for 99% of things in this universe? The process of science is superior in elucidating reality, eventually. Takes time, does it in fits and starts, but eventually, it gets there.

[skepticscott]

17. Says another guy

typing on a computer made possible by science. See my #16 and tell us what a rotten job science does.

[Silent3]

13. Both change, but science matures while religion...

...merely vacillates, changing the way fashions change. One has to live up to predicting the way the natural universe works, and keep improving at how well it does that, while the other merely has to cater to shifting public attitudes.

All I'll say is that in this very country science told us that certain people weren't as equal as whites to justify slavery. And some of their arguments actually made some sense, especially to people 150 years ago.
There were many religions that taught slaves had a soul and were equal in Gods eyes.

Many religions? Many? The dominant religion of Christianity, and the Bible it was based on, did much more to justify slavery than science ever did. Where science has disproved the crap that could be used to justify slavery (like measuring brain capacity by pouring mustard seeds into skulls, in non-double blind experiments where the experimenter could choose how tightly he packed the mustard seeds until the data matched his preconceptions) and learned from its mistakes (both disproving the bad data and improving experimental protocols), the Bible still says all the same pro-slavery stuff. We basically have to rely on people to choosing to ignore the literal words of their Holy Book for there to be progress in Bible-based religions.

Besides, if you want religion to get credit for being against slavery because at least some religions were against it, then science deserves equal credit because certainly not all scientists and the science they promoted were pro-slavery either.

[HereSince1628]

8. Very probably religion will persist because it also seems to work

Not only in a crass money-grabbing snake-oil selling camp-revivalism sort of way that has built extravagent religious institutions on the backs of the poor, but also because across humanity there seems to be a tremendous psychological need to deal with existential fear and the random unfairnesses of existance.

[skepticscott]

16. Says the guy typing on a computer

made possible by science. Wearing clothes made possible by science. Using transportation made possible by science. Eating food made possible by science. Listening to music made possible by science.

Getting the point?

And btw, if you think that science is about "proving" anything, then you really don't understand science at all.

[rug]

20. Science did not make food.

Science was unnecessary for humans to eat.

If you think that is wrong, then you really don't understand science at all.

[Cleobulus]

25. No, but science helps us produce more food than we were ever able to...

in the past. It also more than doubled the average human lifespan, decreased infant mortality, and helping us live better and more comfortably than our ancestors ever dreamed of. New problems crop up, as they always do, however science gives us the tools, the methodology for solving them as well.

[rug]

26. It is indeed a tool, working with what was already there.

To claim it is anything more is unsound.

[Cleobulus]

27. To claim that there is anything more is unsound. n/t

[rug]

28. That's a different subject, isn't it?

Switching priests is fruitless in any event.

[Cleobulus]

29. Its not switching priests, indeed you may think of science as a priest...

I find that offensive. The fact is that we are not talking about two worldviews that are equally valid.

[rug]

30. Offense has no place in science.

And your last sentence expresses an opinion, not fact.

[Cleobulus]

31. Really? If both are equally valid, then show me the evidence on how religion...

works in the real world.

[rug]

32. Are you really seeking evidence for a worldview? Let's construct the parameters of the experiment.

You first.

[Cleobulus]

33. Hmm, interesting, let's talk about the material benefits of scientific methodology vs. religious...

belief. Agreed? This would set the ground rules, and we can point out the weaknesses in each others arguments.

[rug]

34. Agreed as to measuring material benefits.

However, the premise is that one of the two worldviews is invalid.

Which of course prompts the question: valid as to what?

I do not think measuring material benefits establishes anything other than efficiency.

What do you propose the measure of validity be?

[Cleobulus]

38. Either something works or it doesn't, we are and should be testing the validity...

of ideas, if you wish to move the goalposts, go ahead, but that isn't proof of anything.

[rug]

42. We're still in the endzone.

If your parameter is that something works or does not work, I suggest the scientific method is invalid, by its own terms, in explaining the beginning and end. If the claim is that there is no beginning or end, that claim is unsupported by evidence, only hypotheses. If the claim is that the scientific method will, in time, either demonstrate that there is no beginning or end or, alternatively, that it will explain how things begin and end, then that claim is based on expectation, prediction, prophecy or hope, which are not valid scientific bases. A religious worldview is equally invalid, or valid as the case may be.

[Cleobulus]

47. Uhm, scientific method has a basis in being able to predict things...

using previous observations, evidence, and experiments. You make an assertion that has no scientific basis, a strawman, and then claim this invalidates the scientific method.

Its not a matter of faith to say using the tools of science to be able to come out with workable theories for things such as the beginning and/or end of the Universe, well, we already have the standard model of cosmology, it has challenges, and is, as scientists will say, not a well developed model, however, its being refined, constantly. So to make an assertion that we will know, through the scientific method, when, how, and under what circumstances the Universe came into being is based on previous models, refined or replaced.

[rug]

50. It has, and it has also been unable to predict ultimate thing or, alternatively, infinite things.

There is no settled hypothesis on whether the universe is finite, infinite, or plural.

To say that "we will know" is to assume, contrary to all the known evidence: that humanity will exist sufficiently long to achieve that; the human intellect will ultimately be able to grasp accurately and adequately how the universe "works", has worked and will work; and, that the scientific method is a competent tool to achieve that.

There's a lot of hope and belief in that and no straw.

[Cleobulus]

58. Don't know much about the standard model, do you?

There are settled consensus on whether the universe is "infinite" or not, and indeed a growing consensus that it isn't the only universe around. This is based on evidence that has been gathered, some of it quite recent, and on theories that provide quite illuminating.

The fact that there isn't a single theory to explain it all yet doesn't mean there won't be, the scientific method is not just a competent tool to use, but the ONLY tool to use. What alternative is there?

[rug]

59. That is a limited response.

[skepticscott]

62. Says the master

of unperceived irony.

[trotsky]

64. ...

:thumbsup:

[Cleobulus]

65. And you seem to be completely ignorant on how science operates. n/t

[rug]

66. And you seem to have ignored the balance of the post.

It's simply three little points.

[Cleobulus]

73. Actually yes I did, you unfortunately, do not know how the scientific method works...

your "points" mean precisely nothing because you fail to realize that those points about so far unanswered questions about the universe may, in the future, be answered, through the tried and true scientific method.

The fact of the matter is that you want easy answers, so you turn to religion, because that's where the answers are, whether they are actually true or not doesn't matter to you. Fine, that's great, but please, stay out of opinions on science, you already demonstrated that you don't know how it works, don't embarrass yourself further.

[rug]

84. Unanswered questions may in the future be answered through the tried and true scientic method.

Sounds like a hope not a datum.

If you in fact understood the scientific method you should be able to answer those questions you ignored and to explain rather than hope.

In the end, your position is best understood by your statement to stay out of discussions on science. Quite a scientific, rational and bold position. So sorry to intrude on your temple.

Time is better spent on discussions where answers are explored and provided rather than avoided. Try it some time.

[skepticscott]

37. Let's do a little thought experiment...

you eliminate everything from your life that would not have been possible except for the results of scientific inquiry, and I'll eliminate everything from my life that would not have been possible except for the results of religious inquiry.

Let me know if you're not sitting naked in an open field eating grass when you're done. Oh wait...you won't be able to, because your computer will be gone, as will the Internet. But I'm sure you'll be able to find a suitable supernatural alternative, right? Have your god relay the message...

[rug]

39. If it involves a thought of you sitting naked in an open field, I'll pass.

[skepticscott]

41. It doesn't

So please proceed. Or join the Duck Dodgers Club.

[rug]

43. Much as I'd like to, I'm still shaken.

[skepticscott]

51. Welcome to the 24th and 1/2 century

[skepticscott]

35. Name me anything you've eaten

in the last year that didn't depend on science.

[rug]

36. An egg.

[skepticscott]

40. If you think the chicken who laid that egg

would be alive without the efforts of science, you're just foolish. And did you go out and collect that egg from under the chicken yourself? I think not. And did you eat it raw? I think not. How did it get to you fresh and how did you cook it?

Thanks for playing, though.

[trotsky]

44. That's just not fair, you know.

Having a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

[rug]

46. Or, as here, a one-armed man.

[trotsky]

48. Your lame one-liners get even lamer...

the more someone is sweeping the floor with you. :rofl:

[rug]

52. The last resort of a half-wit is a smiley.

[trotsky]

53. Aw, so cute when you try to make stuff up!

:) :+ :7 :rofl:

[rug]

55. As cute as you failing to realize when you're described a half-wit.

[trotsky]

57. Half is better than none.

:rofl:

[rug]

60. Make do.

[rug]

45. So, science made the chicken.

And does volcanology make volcanos? Psychology, the mind?

The descriptive, taxonomic, and observational aspects of the scientific method do not make the object that is studied.

Or, I suppose I could assume you've answered the ancient question, it was science, not the hen, that preceded the egg.

[trotsky]

49. It was science that bred the hen who lays large unfertilized eggs frequently.

If we still had chickens the way your god allegedly designed them, you might as well check the robin's nest in the neighbor's tree for your breakfast.

Nice dodge, too, avoiding the questions of how you cooked the egg.

[rug]

54. That makes as much sense as stating that a pornagrapher created sex.

[trotsky]

56. So are you claiming that today's egg-laying hens are identical to their wild ancestors? n/t

[rug]

61. Do you claim that the evolution of dinosaurs to chickens is the result of science?

[trotsky]

63. Nope.

Now answer my question.

[Cleobulus]

69. Don't know much about artificial selection or how modern breeding works, do you? n/t

[rug]

85. I guess that had to be understood before the first egg was consumed.

[trotsky]

87. You gonna answer my question?

Because ignoring it tells me the answer I suspected already.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

18. That is outrageously wrong.

Science is constantly changing because we are constantly learning more about the universe in which we live. It is because of science that we know all those things you said aren't true. The reason why those fallacious things were thought to be true is because they had not been subjected to scientific rigor. Science works by constructing theories that allow us to make predictions. When the predictions come true, we have a valid scientific theory. When they are inaccurate, they provide a framework for constructing a better theory.

[Cleobulus]

21. Most of the things you say science "told" science never told us...

the modern Scientific Method didn't really exist until about 500 years ago.

Not to mention that you state that science "rewrites the rules" every few decades as if that were the wrong way things should happen, indeed, you said below that science "hates change" just like religion, so which is it?

[TZ]

112. science never locked up opponents for "heresy" either

or tried to "teach the controversy" even when there was none. I don't think science ever told us that man was the center of the universe.

[YOY]

5. I doubt it. Fundies breed like rabbits and are more insulated than ever.

n.t.

[Cleobulus]

24. Well, inbreeding will then set in, and natural selection will eventually weed them out.

;)

[markbark]

10. Science. It works, bitches!

XKCD tee shirt:
http://store.xkcd.com/xkcd/#Science

[madrchsod]

11. both have worked side by side for a long, long time

and it will be around until mother earth rids herself of our species.

[Cleobulus]

22. Where has religion "worked"? n/t

[humblebum]

19. Stephen Hawking is brilliant man whom I respect greatly

but science really has no way of conceiving nor perceiving anything other than material existence. Hawking has a brilliant mind that ponders the deepest questions about the universe and existence, but a great irony is that he doesn't have a clue about how to cure ALS. He is far from all-knowing.

[Cleobulus]

23. He doesn't claim to be all-knowing, and yet trusts that the scientific method....

not religion, will eventually be able to cure ALS. He knows he's not a biologist or doctor, he a cosmologist and physicist. Different disciplines, same method is used to help solve problems in both.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

82. What a nasty thing to say.

What possible reason could you have to so viciously attack Hawking? ALS is a terrible disease, and making fun of him for having it is in poor taste. I notice you haven't cured the disease either.

[humblebum]

97. I see no vicious attack, but only a comment. ALS is a terrible disease

and even the most brilliant minds have yet to make any inroads into curing the disease.

[Cleobulus]

103. Your point? I have an idea, the next time you are sick, go to a faith healer...

NOT a doctor, and make sure to follow through, all the way to the end.

[LAGC]

104. But someday we will.

You see, that is the difference. Science is ever-learning (fostering new ideas for life's problems), religion is forever stuck in the past (with only the same old ideas that have to be haphazardly modified to fit with the changing times).

[humblebum]

105. Actually your opinion on both topics is subjective.

You do not know if a cure will be found. I hope you are right. And your opinion of religion is subjective also.

[Cleobulus]

106. Incorrect, based on past experience, we can have full confidence that ALS...

along with other diseases and conditions currently incurable will someday be treatable, even preventable before they become symptomatic. And the reason is because the method used to figure this out has been tested, time and again, and proven itself in finding cures and solving problems encountered in the real world.

What problem has religion solved?

[humblebum]

107. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The "method"

doesn't cure anything. It's what you include in the method that matters.

[Cleobulus]

108. The scientific method is the only reliable way we know to help us understand...

the nature of the universe and how to solve problems within that universe.

Now, why not answer this, what has religion discovered so far? What problem has religion helped solve?

[humblebum]

109. Well i could say poverty, homelessness, crime and a long list of things,

but I am quite aware of the atheist mindset. BTW, atheists are not the only ones who use the Scientific Method. But the SM still does not cure disease nor prevent wars. It is simply a system for problem solving, nothing more.

[Cleobulus]

110. None of those have been solved, or even alleviated greatly by religion...

also, I never claimed that religious people didn't use the scientific method at all, many do, they just don't use it to examine their own religious beliefs.

You claim that the scientific method does not cure disease, and you are right, instead it provides the groundwork and the mental tool needed to come up with cures in the first place, or are you going to say that disease such as smallpox and polio would have been eliminated or reduced WITHOUT using the scientific method.

Hell, you admitted it yourself through your last sentence, its a system for solving problems, its also a system for being able to examine the world as objectively as possible, hence how we are able to solve problems.

As far as preventing wars, hopefully someday we will, but this is about the nature of humans, maybe science can help, maybe not, religion seems to fail in this endeavor, rather obviously.

[DeSwiss]

67. Yes, science will win in the end.....

...let's just hope that the "winnings" isn't a burnt-out cinder left from the last war of righteousness.

- K&R

"The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. Tyranny likes courtiers, flatterers, followers, fawners, and superstition wants believers, disciples, zealots, hypocrites, and subscribers. The church demands worship -- the very thing that man should give to no being, human or divine.

To worship another is to degrade yourself. Worship is awe and dread and vague fear and blind hope. It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one and degrades the many; that builds palaces for robbers, erects monuments to crime, and forges manacles even for its own hands. The spirit of worship is the spirit of tyranny. The worshiper always regrets that he is not the worshiped.

We should all remember that the intellect has no knees, and that whatever the attitude of the body may be, the brave soul is always found erect. Whoever worships, abdicates. Whoever believes at the command of power, tramples his own individuality beneath his feet, and voluntarily robs himself of all that renders man superior to the brute."

Robert G. Ingersoll

[struggle4progress]

68. It rather depends on what Hawking means. Science produces results

when a clearly defined quantitative theory accounts for a variety of reproducible experiments or correctly predicts the outcome of observations. The resulting view of the world is produced by the combination of human theorist with human experimenter/observer, and it presupposes objects upon which reproducible experiments can be performed or which can be observed accurately enough. Its interest lies not only in the intellectual understanding it provides but more importantly in the power it gives us to arrange phenomena to obtain a certain outcome and to predict outcomes

There are, however, realms of human experience in which humans quite definitely should not want to see extensive theories emerge enabling the skilled to produce definite phenomenological outcomes -- namely, the realms in which humans experience freedom. The debate over the nature of human freedom to act, and the degree to which such freedom actually exists or could exist, is complicated by the fact that all of us live constrained in many ways -- by our finitude in time and space, by personal socio-economic histories, by the actual relations we have with other concrete humans in the current cultural context, and so on. Thus, human freedom is always somehow limited, and each of us decides whether to struggle to enlarge the sphere or our freedom, how to struggle to enlarge that freedom, if such a struggle is a struggle for only-my-own-freedom or a struggle for a-larger-community-freedom ...

It is possible to treat a human as the object of a technical manipulation intending to produce definite behavioral outcomes: this, for example, is crudely what happens when a regime confronts people with the choice of slavery or death. And it is entirely possible for diligent "scientific" experimentation to refine such enslavement processes: one could probably, for example, cook up an experimental regime which reliably conditioned many experimental subjects to kill their mothers on command. But such regimes are assaults on human freedom: they operate effectively by stripping away the human ability to choose between alternatives. A human, as a free being, simply cannot be the object of a technical manipulation intending to produce definite behavioral outcomes: more precisely, a technical manipulation that intends to produce a definite behavioral outcome in a particular human, or in a group of humans, is an effort to limit human freedom. In this sense, to regard a human simply and only as a laboratory subject annihilates the freedom of the person, leaving only the predictable outcomes desired by the theorist and experimenter

In our current culture, we pay some lip-service to the idea that such manipulations of humanity are morally wrong, and we impose restrictions on human experiments to limit the possible effects. Nevertheless, these restrictions do not originate in science: they involve moral ideas, associated with the view that we should respect the subjective experiences and creative abilities of other humans as we respect our own. For this reason, we typically do not set out to verify fundamental moral ideas by experiment: we are not concerned with the subjective experiences and creative abilities of positrons, and assume that such categories of thought do not apply in that context; but to double-check, by experiment, whether certain acts (against humans), that we regard as immoral, are really immoral would require us to set aside the morality that we are testing in order to test it; for example, someone who proposed a series of practical boiling experiments, to test whether it really were morally offensive to boil babies alive, either has not understood what "It is morally offensive to boil babies alive" means or else has already decided to answer negatively the question "Is it really morally offensive to boil babies alive?"

Science can play an important role in increasing human freedom, and so there can be a moral argument for pursuing it. But considered solely as a "method of investigation," science does not automatically increase human freedom: that depends on what topics are investigated and how the results are used

[skepticscott]

70. It's pretty clear what Hawking means

So the relevance of your last four rambling paragraphs to what he actually said seems to be non-existent. Science only tells us what we can do, not what we should do, and doesn't claim otherwise. Religion does claim to be able to do the latter, but it kinda sucks at it, so maybe you should try monologuing on that instead.

[struggle4progress]

71. The point I made can already be seen in Genesis 2:

You will die on the day you taste the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The text does not say Tree of the Knowledge but Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: it makes the point that humans already have a capacity to distinguish good from evil, without needing to "taste" the fruit first -- and that to act as if the matter were otherwise is to "die" by discarding some essential humanity

Whether one is willing to say, Let us do some evil, in hopes good will come of it, is a religious issue. It will remain a religious issue, no matter what Hawkings thinks about religion -- and whether or not he predicts correctly that existing religions will wither in the light of science. The moral issue cannot be clarified in any way by the methods of science

Nor is this a theoretical matter: it actually arises from time to time -- Perhaps we could leave these syphilitic negroes untreated in order to follow the course of the infection? Perhaps we could kill Soviet prisoners in a vacuum chamber to learn about death of airmen at high altitude? There is no scientific answer that can dissuade people who want to do such things: one can justify attempting to stop them only by saying Credo or by uttering the ineffable name revealed to Moses from the burning bush I Am Who I Am

[trotsky]

72. And yet there is no consistent religious answer to those moral questions either.

Or such infamous ones as, is it OK to abort a fetus? Or is it OK to have more than one wife? Or is it OK to murder infidels?

So before you try and criticize science for not having moral answers (which it never claimed to), how about you come up with oh, I dunno, a couple of consistent moral answers from your precious religion? Tell you what, you go and get every god-believer to agree on answers to all our moral questions, and THEN come back and bash science.

I'll wait right here.

[struggle4progress]

76. Noting a limitation is not a "criticism" -- it is just noting a limitation

I do not expect my automobile to converse with me about politics. Any I do not expect anyone, able to converse with me about politics, to get me to the grocery store and back whenever I need to shop. For transport to the grocery store, I will rely on my auto: this fact does not render obsolete and irrelevant someone, able to converse with me about politics

[trotsky]

77. And you win today's red herring award! n/t

[struggle4progress]

80. Have a nice day

:hi:

[trotsky]

81. If that's how you have to bow out, so be it.

:hi:

[skepticscott]

74. So why do you refuse to address the point

of why science is very, very good at doing the things that it claims as its purview (and making moral decisions has never been included in that), while religion fails miserably at most if not all of the things it claims as ITS purview (teaching people to behave morally, for one)?

[struggle4progress]

78. Your relative efficacy argument is incoherent: it's rather like saying

"my refrigerator is better at keeping food from spoiling than my state's criminal justice laws are at keeping people from murdering each other"

[skepticscott]

83. In other words

you are completely unable to address the point, and are ducking it instead. And ignoring the point that not only does religion fail miserably at what it claims to be its special purview, but it has failed even more miserably at trying to explain the physical universe (at which it has been competing with science virtually since its inception).

[struggle4progress]

86. Comparing the effectiveness of two different approaches to two completely

different classes of problems makes no sense

In my post #68, I carefully explained why there are certain intellectual territories that one might reasonably want excluded from scientific investigation, on the grounds that the investigation could only be humanizing. At issue in such cases are values that cannot be discovered by science: these values will actually motivate some science but will necessarily prescribe other science

The notion that all intellectual territory must and should be ceded to science marching triumphantly forward is simply naive

I see no evidence that you understand what I said and very little evidence that you tried to understand what I said: in response, you want to compare whether approach A is more effective at solving problem Aa than approach B is at solving problem Bb, but you do not realize that such comparisons are nonsensical, and that there is no possible metric for the comparison

[trotsky]

88. You mean like you did in post #71?

Oh, sure.

[struggle4progress]

90. I certainly do appreciate your efforts at rational discussion

As a general rule, the pay-off is proportional to the effort

[trotsky]

93. Can't wait for you to put forth that effort, then. n/t

[skepticscott]

89. Your last statement simply defies all experience

and common sense. There is nothing nonsensical about saying that A is better at doing what it does than B is at doing what it does. Everyone makes those types of judgments all the time, you included. Watch a dog show some time if you want an obvious example (one of many).

And who has said that "all intellectual territory must and should be ceded to science marching triumphantly forward"? As I've said right in this thread, science is not equipped to make intellectual inquiries into questions of morality and ethics, so why do you keep trying to beat up such an idiotic straw man? Is it that you resent the success of science, and want to do anything you can to diminish it, even to the point of criticizing it for not doing things it never claimed to be able to do?

[Cleobulus]

75. Actually, a funny thing about that, God lied, which I always thought puzzling. n/t

[struggle4progress]

79. Could be. Or perhaps "on that day" is a turn-of-phrase in an ancient language

meaning something different than suggested by an attempt at literal translation into modern English

After all, if I say something like, "Yesterday's science is not today's science," I am probably not literally talking about the changes in our scientific knowledge over the last 24 hours

[moobu2]

91. But your comment that taken literally might mean something else

doesn't form the basis for several world religions, religions based on texts that billions of people say they believe are the words of God.

[Silent3]

92. Unless one uses a very broad definition of "religion"...

...which overlaps with more to-the-point words like "morality" and "ethics", I don't see where any necessity for religion arises out of the kinds of questions you asked about human medical experimentation.

That those questions can't be answered in a purely scientific fashion doesn't automatically put the answers to those questions in the purview of religion. We need non-rational (as opposed to irrational) value systems in order to evaluate moral dilemmas, but there's no reason those value systems have to be religious. We have to choose what we value in life, in a way similar to choosing the postulates for a mathematical system, and see where that leads us.

It troubles many people, I realize, to look at moral systems as "mere" personal choices. A desire for moral certainty and clarity doesn't obligate the universe to provide for that desire, however. That science can't achieve the desired certainty does not mean religion can or will do so, or that religion is even a valid approach to try.

What science can do is study how our moral standards, and all-too-common failings at living up to those standards, arise from our biology. I think evolutionary biology, understanding what behaviors benefit social creatures, and primate studies can shed a lot of light on that. Seeing how certain standards of behavior will benefit our species doesn't, however, absolutely compel any particular individual to have to care about the good of the species, other individual human beings, other living things, or even the particular individual him/herself.

I simply accept the uncertainty that arises from this lack of a firm, unquestionable place to anchor our morality. Even if religion could in theory provide that anchor -- and I don't agree that even in theory that it does -- in practice religion is clearly of little or no use at all in that respect.

[struggle4progress]

94. If you can give a good account, other than the following, then I am

interested to hear it

But I say that confronted (say) with the proposal Let us put these people into a decompression chamber, and evacuate the air until they die, so that we can collect data useful for the study of deaths of pilots at high altitude, one ought simply to respond with an absolutist No, that is wrong -- and that one is not really obliged to provide a better explanation. It is true that, if faced with such circumstances, one might hope a logical argument could dissuade the would-be experimenter, but if such a logical effort failed, this is not the sort of question where agreeing-to-disagree would be appropriate. Even if one has non religious affliliation, even if one has no sympathy for any religious traditions or institutions, one should be thundering NO! with the dogmatic conviction of a religious fanatic in such circumstances: the objection to the proposal is non-negotiable, because what is involved is what being human means; there are fundamental existential issues at state, and one ought to be willing to defend what being human means with religious fervor, even if one prefers not to call oneself "religious"

[Silent3]

96. Religious fervor and religion aren't the same thing

Just because I see no absolute rationally derivable place to anchor a moral code, and just because I don't concede anything to religion about providing better answers, doesn't mean I don't have emotional intensity about the things I consider right and wrong. I'd be insistent against cruel medical experimentation on involuntary subjects as much as you, but since I can't and won't claim Holy Righteousness as my authority, I'd have to say that this is a place I'd simply exert my will, as best I as I could, over the would-be experimenter to make things come out my way -- preventing such experiments -- over the wishes of the experimenter.

I don't even know, however, if the hypothetical evil doctor or I have free will, or if my sense of free will is merely an illusion. Whether such experiments end up occurring or not could well be inevitable, or if not inevitable, merely a random outcome, all deviations from a fixed path boiling down to Brownian motion and quantum noise, my protestation and attempted interventions nothing more than empty theatrics.

Where does the emotional intensity surrounding such moral choices comes from? A combination of social conditioning and my inheritance as a social animal, I would guess.

[struggle4progress]

98. But I am not discussing "emotional intensity." I mean that

one always chooses moment by moment some particular stance with regard to the world-as-it-is, defining who-I-am in relation to the world-as-it-is and to the other people here: one decides, at every instant and in a fundamental way, who-I-am; that decision IS the decision what-my-religion-is

Of course, our freedom to act creatively in the world is always constrained: our choices always are choices in the context of the world-as-it-is, which means our creative options are finite. But when one takes the view that "free will is merely an illusion" and that whatever happens is "inevitable," one is deciding "I am insane and incapable." One is deciding "I am insane" because the fundamental notion my-ability-to-act-freely-and-creatively-in-the world is being regarded as a delusion; one is deciding "I am incapable" because one is saying "I have no ability to act-in-the world"

And from the point of view of anyone who is dissatisfied with the world-as-it-is and who wants to act-creatively-to-change-the-world, the claim "your free will is an illusion" must be regarded as the most reactionary claim imaginable: it is a claim supporting only the status quo, which often enough in history has set out to demoralize its opponents by convincing them "you are powerless to change anything"

[Silent3]

100. I just said that I don't know for sure...

...that there is such a thing as "free will". I still live as if I have free will, I don't know how to do otherwise. If free will is illusory, it's a difficult illusion to escape. I certainly feel like I'm choosing the words I type right now, not mechanically transcribing them -- the feeling of choice is powerful, even if it turns out to be nothing more than a feeling.

Although I live my life as if I have free will, however, I still have to take the uncertainty of its existence into account when I consider whatever theoretical degree of freedom I might have. Free will is something that makes less sense the closer I examine it, like zooming in on a picture and seeing nothing but a few dots or blocky pixels.

At any rate, I don't see how anything you've said yet leads to the necessity of religion in solving moral dilemmas, unless you're going to call provisional acceptance of free will a "religion".

[struggle4progress]

101. Yes, and I just pointed out what denying free will means

[Silent3]

102. Having pointed that out...

...is there supposed to be some necessity for religion to solve moral issues that follows?

[Odin2005]

95. The "science is equivalent to religion" idiots in this thread are SOO predictable.

[laconicsax]

99. You think? n/t

[DeadEyeDyck]

111. The problem with atheism is that all you are left with is the self...

An atheist lives in a Cartesian void since you can only be sure of your own existence. If I am an existentialist, I cannot be sure that anyone exists to read this or that I am making up the universe in my mind. A serious, pondering atheist always encounters existentialist poop-out.

[onager]

113. Stay away from the brown acid.

n/t

[and-justice-for-all]

116. What a half cocked statement...

Atheism is the acknowledgment of reality.

religion lies in the realm of fantasy and wishful thinking; religion is a fairytale of delusion.

[dorkulon]

114. This has always been my response to the "science is just another religion" canard.

Well, if science really is a religion, it must be the one true religion, because it has been demonstrated to work. Of all other "religions", only science can do things that would appear to be magical to an uneducated observer. We can fly, walk on the moon, breathe underwater, cure plagues--all thanks to science! What does any other religion have to offer that can compare to that?

[and-justice-for-all]

115. I completey agree with Hawking...

religion, we can hope, we fall to the road side.

if we want any chance of surviving well into the future, then religion and our tribalism have to end. Religion, is in fact what divides people.