(I actually typed this up a few years ago and never posted it for some reason.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I remember my original frame of mind, but I think I still agree with everything I wrote.\u00a0 I edited it a bit and am posting it now, even though I guess it may seem a bit random.\u00a0 I found it today while backing up files in safe mode, fearing a hard-drive failure.\u00a0 But that’s another story.)<\/p>\n
This is a huge philosophical topic that there are probably mountains of books about, probably with much more to say and better writing than I provide below, but here are some of my brief thoughts on the matter.<\/p>\n
I write about this because I recently heard someone who is semi-religious express doubt in their future church-going habits due to the wonders of science.\u00a0 It’s probably a laughable thought to most people, theist or not, but even an atheism’s “faith in science” sometimes confuses me, as if he thinks science naturally trumps religion, or that science is as logical as 2+2=4 (as if math=science).<\/p>\n
That is, sometimes it seems like people talk about “science” without really considering what it is.\u00a0 Science really only explains phenomena as much as we can infer cause-and-effect relationships from repeated experiments.\u00a0 It is still very easy to infer the wrong thing with an incompletely or poorly designed experiment.\u00a0 Scientific knowledge still depends on one making a choice as to whether or not to take certain experimental results as evidence of a certain inferred relationship.\u00a0 Simply put, all cause-and-effect relationships are inferred<\/em>.\u00a0 That is, all scientific explanations are based on inductive reasoning<\/em>.\u00a0 That is, we plan to do something, and we guess what will happen.\u00a0 Then we do it, and observe what happens.\u00a0 Then we change variables, and see what happens.\u00a0 Etc.\u00a0 We keep doing this over and over.\u00a0 We predict, experiment, observe, and attempt to explain these observations based on what we’ve learned to make another prediction.\u00a0 That’s all.<\/p>\n In schools, I think it can be easy to get the wrong notion of science because students spend more time studying the conclusions rather than how those conclusions were decided upon.\u00a0 Science is not just about pulling conclusions out of the air based only on observations, but nor is it as infallible as a math equation; it still depends on human choices and decisions, and, when there are conflicts, faith.\u00a0 Of course, it would be impractical to study the history and processes of all<\/em> experiments, and many things we can intuitively understand anyway, like the effects of gravity and friction.\u00a0 That is, doing labs every week to learn simple physics equations is a huge waste of time, which is probably why my high school AP Physics teacher, who thought differently, isn’t teaching anymore.\u00a0 (On another side note, to include creationism in a lesson on evolution is illogical; I’m surprised that certain humans are so dumb as to consider it necessary even to appease certain others.\u00a0 That said, I’m also annoyed that so many humans don’t even seem to understand what theories of evolution actually state, as if “God didn’t create humans” is one of their principles.)<\/p>\n There are many things we can’t conduct experiments on.\u00a0 For example, our planet’s temperature.\u00a0 We can’t make observations about whether or not it’s mostly humans that are causing global warming (if that warming is even considered significant) because we only have one globe and very little data about how temperature fluctuated on the planet before we could measure it.\u00a0 Or even the question of what will determine whether or not a photon will pass through or be reflected by a beam splitter, or all the other things quantum physicists end up having to use probability for.\u00a0 We don’t know of (perhaps because we can’t detect or measure) any physical variables that predictably change the outcomes of these quantum experiments.<\/p>\n There are moral statements like: “murder is wrong.”\u00a0 How do you do an experiment to determine whether or not murder is wrong?\u00a0 And, just because you can’t do an experiment to answer the question, does that mean you can’t know?\u00a0 Or what about: “an experiment we don’t know how to do will work.”\u00a0 The only way to know is to do that experiment.\u00a0 Or even: “science is right.”\u00a0 You can’t do an experiment for that.\u00a0 Science itself can’t even be right or wrong in the first place; science provides the system for which we can draw conclusions that can be right or wrong.\u00a0 Science, in and of itself, doesn’t do<\/em> anything.<\/p>\n So, in a way, science and religion are certainly two different things; one is about explaining what will happen when we do certain things, which we use to learn how to do things we want to do (like make a TV); the other is about explaining how and why we are alive and conscious in the first place, and what we should mentally and physically do or not do (like not murdering each other).\u00a0 If anything, religion, when regarded as a search for and consideration of truth in general, incorporates<\/em> everything else, including science.\u00a0 That’s not to say that they can’t be at odds with each other.\u00a0 They can’t be in general (they need a specific context), but they can be when a human is wrong about one or the other (and it’s much easier to be noticeably wrong about religion, which is why science has the better reputation).\u00a0 To reject religion in general because certain scientific experiments have allowed us to accurately predict how certain physical phenomena will happen when we do certain things (like make a TV) is illogical.<\/p>\n You can say that religion and science are compatible, but I think that makes the relationship seem too divided, as if they’re mutually exclusive entities, as if they’re friends holding hands.\u00a0 Rather, I think they’re compatible like a car (religion) is compatible with an air conditioning system.\u00a0 You don’t really need<\/em> an air conditioning system, but it certainly feels better to have one, and it will be in your human nature to want one.\u00a0 But without the rest of the car, you’re not really going anywhere.\u00a0 (Well, maybe Hell.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (I actually typed this up a few years ago and never posted it for some reason.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I remember my original frame of mind, but I think I still agree with everything I wrote.\u00a0 I edited it a bit and am posting it now, even though I guess […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-hH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}