Excellent point
From, of all places, a comment on Slashdot:
Imagine two baskets.
One contains all the things explained by the phrase “god did it”. The other contains all the things explained by “science”.
A long time ago, everything was in the god basket, and nothing at all was in the science basket. The weather? God did it. Pregnancy? God did it. Disease? God did it. Where does stuff come from? God did it.
Then, as humanity learned more stuff, things got taken out of the god basket and put into the science basket. The weather. Pregnancy. Disease. Where stuff comes from, right back until a few billionths of a second before the big bang, getting closer all the time.
So what’s left in the god basket? Good question — but that’s not where I’m going with this, because actually that’s irrelevant.
The point is this: there has never — never ever ever — been a single thing that has been taken out of the science basket and put back in the god basket. Not one. Ever.
The traffic is all one way.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
That is a great point, Derek
Lately I’ve been considering more deeply issues related to human nature: psychology, emotions, cognition, social dynamics, perceptions of power, and “politics” in the larger and more general sense. Where these issues (which govern an awful lot of our lives) are concerned, I’d say there’s a “third basket.”
I’m not sure what to call this basket, but it’s not generally “science” as in “the product of the scientific method.” I think it’s more broadly the assumption that there is a rational explanation that can be discovered and tested — whether scientifically or not.
The “God basket” seems to me to be a surrender to either mystery or willful ignorance, depending on your perspective. Or for atheists, the equivalent could be a surrender to chaos, unpredictability, or nihilism.
Funny to think that whether or not there’s an explanation for any phenomenon may largely depend on whether you assume or believe from the outset that an explanation is possible.
- Amy Gahran
January 6th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Thanks Amy. I think that pretty much everything is explainable via rational inquiry. However, that doesn’t mean we all (or even any of us) can comprehend everything.
For example, we all know that algebra, geometry and more complex fields of mathematics exists, and that they are useful for explaining the world around us and even allowing us to do amazing things like put satellites in orbit.
That said, there is no way you will ever be able to teach your dog to understand algebra. S/he simply has not evolved to have the intellectual capacity of understanding algebra. Likewise, there may be rational, scientific concepts that are simply beyond our intellectual capabilities. These may be the “mysteries of the universe,” but no one ever waxes poetic about the “mystery of algebra” vis a vis canines.
(Note: I like mystery as much as anyone, but only because it’s fun. I also like pizza, a good football game and arguing about the mystery of the Denver Nuggets.)
To the degree that I have “faith” in anything, it is that rational inquiry generally leads to progress for both individuals and society, and that religious belief is generally a crapshoot. (For every “love thy neighbor” there is a “unless he’s gay”). Many try to argue that my faith in science is no better than faith in God. To which I ask, “why didn’t God give us the cure for cholera and smallpox before they killed millions of people, heathens and believers alike?”
January 6th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Well, you may not be able to teach algebra to dogs, but they may already be geniuses at calculus
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/lessons/calculus/dog.html
- Amy Gahran
January 21st, 2008 at 10:47 am
More to this point…(to roughly paraphrase a case made by Sam Harris in “The End of Faith.) People of faith often believe that prayer can work miracles, as in the case of terminal illness. But they only embrace this feature when there is, at least, some slim chance of its edification. For instance, nobody ever prays for an amputee to re-grow a missing limb.
It seems that even the most intense faith can find its limits in unavaoidable, salient, scientific fact.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
This reminds me of something I studied in my days of anthropology. There is a farming community on an island in the Pacific that uses “magicians” to do the farming. All the farming looks like “regular” farming - they till the soil, plant the seeds, water, weed, etc. However, at night, the magician goes and dances in the field, and everyone says that the magician is responsible for the miracle of the crop.
When confronted by anthropologists with “scientific data” about the role of the seeds, the soil, and the water, the farmers laughed. They said that they understood the critical roles played by all those elements. When pressed to articulate the role of the magician, they said, “We know how to get the seeds to sprout and the plants to grow. But why do you think they do that? That is where the magic comes in!”