Science and Morality

[Leela]

*Please don’t think this is a concession that morality must be divine. I’m simply saying that science is a process of determining facts and learning about things that exist, it was not meant to be a way to create new things. *

Certainly an agnostic would not concede that morality must be connected with a sense of the divine. Yet in the history of the world it is virtually impossible to find a religion that has not featured morality as a central concern. Even when morality is discussed and admitted by those who have no religion, they do so by using up the moral capital created by the same religions against which they rebel. As religion declines, there is less and less capital, increasingly less foundation for morality other than the moralist with the biggest club.

It’s not so much that morality has a natural a natural place in religion. The fact that religions include talk about morality is no big surprise when you consider that religions at one time had something to say about virtually every aspect of life from how food should be prepared to the how clothing should be worn and what crops should be planted when to what the stars and planets are supposed to be. It’s just that we’ve decided that we don’t want religion to tell us about such things anymore but most people still think that religion has a role in teaching about morality. In other words, morality is about the only thing that remains that religion is still thought to have some authority about. But with the plurality of religions in the world, and the lack of a coherent view of morality from the world’s religions, it is gradually losing even that authority.

You’ve been asking for a position on science and morality. I’ve said that science can’t tell us what we should want, it can only help us get what we want. A great discussion about morality from an intellectual rather than religious point of view can be found here:

thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-in-the-dark/sam-harris-1

I linked ou directly to the talk given by Sam Harris which will be of greatest interest to you.

I forget who discussed Haydt, but he is also part of symposium and debates Harris in a forum. The forum can be found if you scroll down in the link.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

So why then are Christianity and other religions such a problem. You cannot deny Christianity is a way for many to find peace in daily life, instill ethical behavior, and promote love of fellow man. Consider, “if we were to believe it and whether or not it helps us achieve our desired ends.” The ideal of the Catholic faith is not simply to believe but to practice the teachings and life of Christ, in other words the Catholic’s goal is to manifest, “the consequences of (its) beliefs in lived experience” For many, Christianity has made them better people, not perfect, but better. I don’t know what the Pragmatist has in mind for the “desired ends”, but making better people seems to me a good one. If Christianity is no more reflective of “the way things really are” than a hammer, but still serves a valid function, why such antithesis towards it?

What apparently will come as a surprise to you but is obviously to the nonbelievers in this forum is that we don’t think that Christianity is a net positive with regard to morality. Though there may very well be some people who benefit from religion, overall we think it makes the world a worse place. That is why I am here.

 

[Leela]

*There is no way to get any closer to fourteen than to relate it to other things and none of those particular relations is any more the essence of fourteen that was somehow “out there” waiting to be discovered once humans had evolved brains sophisticated enough to discover it. *

There are mathematical laws for the matter and motions of the universe, I’m sure you agree. These laws were discovered by men long after the laws began to exist. That the mind of man can fathom these laws, and that these laws conform to the human intellect, is an argument to prove that mathematics was not invented independent of any correspondence with reality. It’s true that numbers are in the mind of man purely intellectual constructs, but they could not exist in the mind of man if the real world did not give rise to them by evolving into being the very creature who can discover and use these laws of association for matter, motion, time, and energy.

All the planets and stars existed and did their things before humans showed up, but they weren’t following any laws. Laws are human inventions created to try to make predictions about what the stars and planets will do next.

How do you think we discovered that the universe is between 10-20 billions of years old?
Is the age of the universe in that time range, or did we just take a figure out of thin air? Math does correspond to reality, though there is nothing in numbers, as Einstein would say, that is precisely real … such as the number 14.

I disagree. Numbers are as real as rocks and trees.

The really interesting question, as Einstein was fond of pointing out, is that the universe should bother to create a being capable of understanding its own laws. The sneaking suspicion arises, if one allows it to arise, that man was intentionally created by the reasoning Power that created the universe, so that the intelligent design of that creative Being could be shared with and appreciated by one of His own creatures! Otherwise, why did the universe begin to create conditions favorable to life at the very moment of its conception?

All of this, however, is off the topic of this thread.

I don’t think of God as a scientist and mathematician. If so, I guess I would think of math and science as trying to read God’s mind as you apparently do. I just think of human beings as tool makers who have been trying to better cope with their world for thousands of years. They have come up with better and better tools including language and scientific laws. I don’t think there was any point in humanity’s tool-making when they stopped trying to cope with reality and started trying to represent it. I don’t see how, say, E=mc^2 can be thought of as a representation of anything.

Recall Einstein:
“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”

How do you compare E=mc^2 to the universe? Einstein can’t even imagine the meaning of such a comparison. I’m hearing the sound of one hand clapping.

Best,
Leela

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.”

All Einstein is agreeing to is the fallibility of science. He is not saying that laws and formulas do not correspond to the real world.

Do you think Einstein is saying that the law of gravitation does not pertain to the real world? Do you think Einstein believes one might jump off the Empire State Building with impunity? Do you think Einstein regarded as a fiction the discovery of mathematical formulas to create nuclear energy? Do you think Einstein’s proposal to FDR to apply those laws to the creation of a new bomb during World War II was a fiction?

Ask the Japanese!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela
*
Numbers are as real as rocks and trees.*

O.K. Show me the number 14 under a microscope.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

:angel1:Leela

Though there may very well be some people who benefit from religion, overall we think it makes the world a worse place.

The first part of that sentence is an interesting concession. The second part offers no proof whatever.

I hope we are not going to get into the old Hitler, Stalin, Mao argument for proving that atheism leads to a better world than religion.

Now tell me how “Love one another,” the central tenet of Christianity, makes the world a worse place. :angel1::bigyikes:

 

[Leela]

Leela
*
Numbers are as real as rocks and trees.*

O.K. Show me the number 14 under a microscope.

Is that supposed to be you rolling around on the floor laughing at me. That Christian charity strikes again.

But anyway, you are taking a very unusual position to suggest that only things that can be seen under a microscope are real…especially for a believer.

 

[Leela]

:angel1:Leela

Though there may very well be some people who benefit from religion, overall we think it makes the world a worse place.

The first part of that sentence is an interesting concession. The second part offers no proof whatever.

I hope we are not going to get into the old Hitler, Stalin, Mao argument for proving that atheism leads to a better world than religion.

I doubt that Thales would have wanted to get into that, but I can always count on you for some reductio as hitlerum…

I was reffering to Christian sexual morality and discrimoination against homosexuals, putting the lives of blastocysts ahead of the suffering of children with spinal chord injuries, preaching against condom use in coumntries that are overpopulated and are plagued by AIDS…things like that. I’m not trying to get into an argument here about any of those things. I’m just trying to answer Thales’s question about why a pragmatist who is not at all concerned with the question of whether the theists or the atheists have it right about “The Way Things Really Are” would be concerned about religion.

:
Now tell me how “Love one another,” the central tenet of Christianity, makes the world a worse place. :angel1::bigyikes:

“Love one another” sounds good to me.

 

[Thales]

I doubt that Thales would have wanted to get into that, but I can always count on you for some reductio as hitlerum…

You’re certainly right about me not wanting to get into all that business. I’ve had enough of
debating about who committed what atrocities in the past. It might be important but there’s got to be a number of other sources which have exhausted the topic.

I was reffering to Christian sexual morality and discrimoination against homosexuals, putting the lives of blastocysts ahead of the suffering of children with spinal chord injuries, preaching against condom use in coumntries that are overpopulated and are plagued by AIDS…things like that.

I would be more intereseted in talking about these things, but I realize this is not the proper thread. However, some of those issues can be related to scientific discovery influencing one’s moral outlook on them. But it all gets back to what the limits of science are and to what degree the amassing of knowledge adds to moral positions.

I’m not trying to get into an argument here about any of those things. I’m just trying to answer Thales’s question about why a pragmatist who is not at all concerned with the question of whether the theists or the atheists have it right about “The Way Things Really Are” would be concerned about religion.

I have other questions about pragmatism as well, but again am not sure if this is the proper thread. If you don’t mind, Leela, I will post my specific questions to your R.C. Sproul and Pragmatism thread.

 

[saieditor]

Can there be a science of morality?

Science often makes the claim that scientific knowledge alone is verifiable. Can we verify our knowledge of morality? Can morality be reduced to a scientific discipline? Why? Why not?

And if not, in the long run what is more important, scientific knowledge or moral knowledge?

Both are based on values.

Discern the common values.

Science is the split of love.
Morality is the science of love.

 

[Thales]

Is that supposed to be you rolling around on the floor laughing at me? That Christian charity strikes again.

I hope Charlemagne’s emoticons don’t really bother you, Leela. I’m not saying they shouldn’t, because a representation of someone rolling on the ground laughing at you is kind of insulting, but I hope Charlemagne is doing it out of good spirit. The only reason I’m commenting on this is because, I started posting on another forum where it is predominately atheists and they are not very nice. Name calling and insinuation seem to rule the day.

It’s very nice to have peaceful civil discussion here at CA, and I give Leela, Liquidpele, and other atheist/agnostics that post a lot of credit for being so cordial and kind. Hopefully you have all had relatively good experiences with the Catholics here on CA even though we have differing ideas.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

*O.K. Show me the number 14 under a microscope. *

You don’t see the humor in someone trying to find the number 14 through a microscope?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

If morality is more closely associated with wisdom than with knowledge, what business does science have with it? How on earth could science presume wisdom when it is the scientists who have brought the human race to the verge of extinction by producing an arsenal of nuclear weapons sufficient to finish us all off?

As Einstein himself is reported to have said … after Hiroshima: “… if I had only known!”

Well, he did know:

dannen.com/ae-fdr.html

 

[Leela]

It’s not so much that morality has a natural a natural place in religion. The fact that religions include talk about morality is no big surprise when you consider that religions at one time had something to say about virtually every aspect of life from how food should be prepared to the how clothing should be worn and what crops should be planted when to what the stars and planets are supposed to be. It’s just that we’ve decided that we don’t want religion to tell us about such things anymore but most people still think that religion has a role in teaching about morality. In other words, morality is about the only thing that remains that religion is still thought to have some authority about. But with the plurality of religions in the world, and the lack of a coherent view of morality from the world’s religions, it is gradually losing even that authority.

You’ve been asking for a position on science and morality. I’ve said that science can’t tell us what we should want, it can only help us get what we want. A great discussion about morality from an intellectual rather than religious point of view can be found here:

thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-in-the-dark/sam-harris-1

I linked ou directly to the talk given by Sam Harris which will be of greatest interest to you.

I forget who discussed Haydt, but he is also part of symposium and debates Harris in a forum. The forum can be found if you scroll down in the link.

Best,
Leela

The above link suggests a view of how ethics can become a science. You didn’t comment so perhaps you didn’t watch it. If you’d prefer to read something on the subject:

edge.org/discourse/vote_morality.html#harriss

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

I checked the Harris article but found that it seemed oblivious to the question of God. Naturally so, considering the author. But I don’t see how science can help with morality if it cuts God out of the picture, which it pretty much has to do if it is going to claim to be science (that is certainly the atheist point of view, and science today seems to be dominantly atheist). So as long as the vast majority of people are going to look to religion for their morality, I don’t see how science can be helpful unless it is just going to confirm what has already been revealed to us: “Love one another,” which is the second and primary principle after the first: “Love God with all your mind, heart, and soul.” All the rest of morality will follow these two commandments.

 

[Dameedna]

The symbols we use to describe mathematical truths are human conventions but they refer to facts. Numbers and quantities exist regardless of our system of measurement.

Yeah, I’ll agree with this

 

[Dameedna]

Dameedna;5289320:

Why usually? Why not always?

Because in all things, there is a possibility of me being wrong. So I won’t say 100% alway’s, because that simply may not be the case.

The nature of all things?

Not understanding your question.

So you believe all

biological behaviour is “okay”?

No I do not. But when we understand something as being biological, it points us in the right direction with regards to determining what may be good or bad for us.

As I indicated in my post, if being Gay is biological, and not a choice, then all that is left is to determine wether or not giving into the urge for a relationship as a gay person is right or wrong. Religious people will often still say it is wrong.

But it does force people to recognize, that a choice was never made and that it has been determined FOR the person not as a result of some inherrant sin. At this point, people will have to think about the nature of their God. Well…some people will. Other’s simply won’t care.

I believe I already explained this however.

Don’t atheists ever have moral dilemmas? So love and morality will ultimately be explained by science?

yes we have moral dilemas and I’m not sure if it will or will not be explaiined by science. We can however already determine which chemicals are released in the brain when feelings of love occur and morality is being studied in terms of our instincts for survival as individuals and as a group.

Who knows. One thing I do know, is if your faith is based currently on what science does not know, then you are falling into the trap of the “god of the gaps”. As soon as science fills that gap, there is no-where else left for God to go. You faith cannot survive if it is based on this and if you are to live a life of intellectual honesty. It needs to be based on something else.

Haven’t you encountered atheists who draw immoral, unethical and unloving conclusions from their lack of belief in God?

I have met all manner of people who in my opionion behave unethically, unlovingly and immorally. This occurs in all people, myself included. However, fortunately for the athiest since their behaviour is not dependent on an unchanging(and possibly immoral) religious code, they are more capable of change when their bad behaviour becomes obvious. God, is simply not an excuse you can use to justify your hate, your bad behaviour or your predjudice. You have to face it and change what you believe.

I have never had to make such a choice and I have never known any Catholic who has.

Well then you need to get out more I think.

Your faith in science is touching but atheist regimes like that of Stalin have already shown us how much misery and suffering they can inflict. What can science teach you about a person’s right to life?

Need I point out christian history? Islamic History? You were doing fine up until this patrionizing statment. I doubt you are very “touched” by my understanding and recognition of the success of science.

I don’t actually think the problem is religion or a lack there-of. It is a problem with ideological fanaticism. It is a human problem, not a scientific one, so not sure why you are comparing science with Stalin.

Please give us specific examples rather than vague assertions.

You are now being rude. Try again if you genuinely want answers to your questions.

 

[geometer]

The above link suggests a view of how ethics can become a science. You didn’t comment so perhaps you didn’t watch it. If you’d prefer to read something on the subject:

edge.org/discourse/vote_morality.html#harriss

What the article suggests is that Harriss is a crackpot. He does not know the Democratic party platform. He doesn’t know science either.

 

[Leela]

What the article suggests is that Harriss is a crackpot. He does not know the Democratic party platform. He doesn’t know science either.

Harris is a neurologist so he must know something about science. Can you be any more specific about what is wring with his vioews on a science of morality?

 

[Leela]

I checked the Harris article but found that it seemed oblivious to the question of God. Naturally so, considering the author. But I don’t see how science can help with morality if it cuts God out of the picture…

If you view moral inquiry in terms of trying to understand God’s will, then science has nothing to say on the matter. But if we can agree that morality is about our concerns for others, then science can help us achieve our ends.

If we agree that we want to reduce infant mortality, increase literacy, reduce crime and incarceration rates, access to education and health care, life expectancy, and fair treatment of women, then we can make scientific claims about what practices make for better societies with regard to these measures.

In short, if there are moral truths to be known, then we can try to know them just as we inquire about other aspects of life. We don’t yet have a scientific paradigm for doing so, but I can’t see why such a paradigm is impossible.

Best,
Leela