Science and Religion Can’t Be Reconciled (Why I won’t take money from the Templeton Foundation.)

[LTX]

By Sean Carroll:

. . . I don’t think that science and religion are reconciling or can be reconciled in any meaningful sense, and I believe that it does a great disservice to the world to suggest otherwise.

. . . In brief: I don’t take money directly from the Templeton Foundation. You will never see me thanking them for support in the acknowledgments of one of my papers. But there are plenty of good organizations and causes that feel differently and take the money without qualms, from the World Science Festival to the Foundational Questions Institute. As long as I think that those organizations are worthwhile in their own right, I am willing to work with them. But I will try my best to persuade them they should get money from somewhere else.

. . . Think of it this way. The kinds of questions I think about—origin of the universe, fundamental laws of physics, that kind of thing—for the most part have no direct impact on how ordinary people live their lives. No jet packs are forthcoming, as the saying goes. But there is one exception to this, so obvious that it goes unnoticed: belief in God. Due to the efforts of many smart people over the course of many years, scholars who are experts in the fundamental nature of reality have by a wide majority concluded that God does not exist. We have better explanations for how things work. The shift in perspective from theism to atheism is arguably the single most important bit of progress in fundamental ontology over the last 500 years. And it matters to people … a lot.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/i_won_t_take_money_from_templeton_science_and_religion_can_t_be_reconciled.html

[rug]

1. But he will.

And if anyone is tempted to award me the Templeton Prize, I will totally accept it! And use the funds to loudly evangelize for naturalism and atheism. (After I pay off the mortgage.)

I'm sure his education at Villanova didn't hurt him.

[LTX]

2. I had trouble following his ethical road-map myself. n/t

[okasha]

3. I notice he says he won't take Templeton money directly.

Apparently he will take it indirectly.

[trotsky]

7. Did you read past that?

But there are plenty of good organizations and causes that feel differently and take the money without qualms, from the World Science Festival to the Foundational Questions Institute. As long as I think that those organizations are worthwhile in their own right, I am willing to work with them. But I will try my best to persuade them they should get money from somewhere else.

I'm guessing not, because you wanted to selectively quote out of context to make him look like a hypocrite.

[Jim__]

4. "Understanding the fundamental nature of reality is a necessary starting point ...

... for productive conversations about morality, justice, and meaning."

I believe that statement is just wrong. We do not understand the fundamental nature of reality, yet we can have productive conversations about morality, justice, and meaning.

[trotsky]

6. Key word: "productive"

Without agreement on that fundamental nature (is there a god that dictates morals to us or not?), we end up with stalemates on topics like abortion, for instance.

[LTX]

14. I read his reference to the "fundamental nature of reality" as something

considerably broader than an up or down vote on the existence of god. We do, in fact, understand certain parts of the fundamental nature of reality. But the relevance of say, planck's constant to current questions of morality and justice escapes me. And if we must await a thorough understanding of the fundamental nature of reality before we can have productive discussions about morality and justice, we may as well resign ourselves to an eon of immorality and injustice.

[longship]

5. I really like Sean Carroll.

But it seems that he's trying to thread a needle here. I guess I don't mind that in principle, but I don't see his point other than threading a needle.

He's still a great theoretician and popularizer of science.

PZ Myers liked this essay, though.

R&K

[struggle4progress]

8. He seems to be a competent physicist: if physics is what interests him, and if physics is what

he's good at, then maybe he should devote most of his time to physics

I'm rather inclined to agree with him that science is quite worthwhile and that religion doesn't provide answers to scientific questions

I disagree with his notion that nothing is worthwhile unless it is scientific. This notion probably comes naturally to him: he is very interested in science, and his consuming interest probably contributes to his success in the field; moreover, an essential assumption in scientific work is that the question at hand has a scientific answer: otherwise, one would not seek a scientific answer and hence would not find a scientific answer

A consuming interest in science may therefore tend to produce a belief that all issues are scientific issues, but this is a naive view

For example, despite the enormous utility of some mathematics in scientific work, mathematics itself is not really a branch of science; mathematical results are not established by experiment but by pure reason, and their scientific utility lies in the fact that mathematical results can help us organize our ideas clearly.

On the opposite side, despite the potential importance of some scientific facts in helping us to make ethical decisions, ethics itself is not a branch of science; our ethics is a choice we make about how we think we ought to behave, and while our ethics must take into account actual facts (since otherwise it is a mere fantasy) science cannot tell us what principles we should use when constructing our own ethics -- science can neither "prove" nor "disprove" notions like the Golden Rule. There are interesting questions, for which one could obtain accurate answers by the scientific method, if one were not constrained by ethics: it might be good to know (say) how long a person can live when immersed in water at 45F, and this question can be settled by experimentally timing how long it takes for a large cohort to die when so immersed. Sadly, such experiments have sometimes actually been performed. What generally prevents people from doing such experiments is not inadequate dedication to scientific results but rather a nonscientific conviction that such experiments somehow offend fundamental notions of decency

So not all issues are scientific issues

His belief that all issues are scientific issues leads him to other errors, such as his belief that the only possible object of any "religion" is to provide answers that could nowadays would be better provided by science. But in fact not every "religious answer" is an answer to a scientific question

[2ndAmForComputers]

9. The mantra of the authoritarian.

"Students are protesting? They should just study and shut up!"

"Teachers are protesting? They should just teach and shut up!"

"Artists are protesting? They should just make art and shut up!"

[okasha]

10. Artists let the art speak.

nt

[2ndAmForComputers]

15. Indeed they do. But, every now and then, they give interviews and just talk about stuff.

Prompting the aforementioned authoritarian reaction from the criticized.

First time I saw it applied to a physicist, though. That's new.

[struggle4progress]

11. Nothing I said was pro-authoritarian: in particular, I never urged ANYONE to shut up

as anyone can see by reading the post of mine to which you are responding

Some people, of course, are so easily upset by any views other than their own that they hear all other opinions as demands to sit down and shut up

But when people resort to cheap shots, I often wonder whether they might be too lazy to craft a more thoughtful response or whether they're simply bottom-trawling for some reaction

[goldent]

12. To be fair to him

I think it is often hard for very good physicists to deal in questions of ethics, etc. It has been very clear to me (first hand) that being a good physicist (or chemist, etc) has no bearing on how clever you are in other areas.

[struggle4progress]

13. I'm not criticizing him as a scientist. And it's hard for me to imagine difficult ethical questions

that might actually present themselves in the practice of certain branches of science. What ethical dilemmas, for example, could possibly arise in cosmological studies, whether observation-based or purely theoretical?

The situation is somewhat different when one considers experimenting in ways that might affect living beings here on earth: it might be interesting (say) to wonder about the effects of changing the gross chemistry of the oceans, but I think most people will recoil from any suggestion that we should just try and see, on the grounds that such an experiment is unethical

My point is not that science is unethical but rather that it does not automatically incorporate ethical considerations, except when scientists themselves deliberately choose to include ethical constraints in their practice (as most do): the scientific process itself does not automatically produce and include the ethical constraints

[Zoeisright]

16. And "god of the gaps" keeps getting

smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

[cbayer]

17. I'm not so sure. It often seems that the more we discover, the more apparent

it becomes how little we know.

Cosmologists are having conversations that weren't even possible 50 years ago. Science Friday was great last week and had some focus on what we don't know.

[trotsky]

18. You may find this useful.

http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

[skepticscott]

19. You just love this meme, don't you?

You think that by harping on ignorance, you can drag science, reason and rationality down to the intellectual level of religion. But the fact is, understanding more about what we don't know constitutes an increase in our knowledge, not a decrease. Science has helped us understand more and do more than we could 20, 50, 100, 1000 years ago, NOT less. Religion can make no such claim.