From Aaron Sloman Mon May 15 18:49:48 BST 2000
To: Stanley Klein
Subject: Science and Religion
Cc: various others

Stan,

Thanks for your explanation:

> Aaron, I have trimmed off many people who I suspect aren't that
> interested. But I kept your name for selfish purposes because I have
> always respected your contributions. I am being selfish because I am
> feeling the need for guidance in my Paris preparations. I have pretty
> much decided that the purpose of my talk is to convince people of
> reason to join in the science/religion dialog rather than simply
> reject the position of people of faith. The reason for my 'mission'
> is the belief that the dialog will introduce some quality control in
> distinguishing helpful from unhelpful memes in the religious
> community.

I thank you for the compliment, but do not really have time for this at
present. I'll make an exception in this message. If I were to continue
after this I'd probably be repeating myself!

Since becoming an atheist at around the age of 11, I have over many
years had myriad discussions with people who either think of religion as
showing up limits of science or who somehow want science to accommodate
religion.

In the latter case they don't simply want science to explain religion as
a phenomenon, like racism, or neurosis, which I do.

Rather they want science somehow to embrace aspects of religion, just as
biologists embraced aspects of Lyn Margulis' theory of symbiotic origins
of modern cells, which at first seemed to contradict Darwinian theory.

However, I see fundamental and irreconcilable conflicts between religion
(as exemplified by Christianity, Judaism, Islam and no doubt many,
though not all others ) and science as a cooperative process
extended over time.

(I put in that last phrase because scientists as individuals do not
always live up to the canons of science as I understand them, even some
who make superb contributions to science. But the social processes of
science counteract that, except maybe among some religious scientists in
the deep south of the USA?)

The essential point is that good science always plants the seeds of
destruction of whatever the current collection of scientific beliefs
happens to be, whereas religion works in the opposite way, trying to
maintain the current beliefs at any cost.

(There are exceptions in the ways individuals approach religion, of
course: I am talking about typical forms of christianity, judaism,
islam, etc.)

So a really good scientist will typically welcome new work that shows
that his favourite theories are *wrong* and can be replaced by something
better, whereas those religions are essentially absolutist and do not
welcome developments that undermine their current credos.

E.g. strong evidence that Christ never was resurrected but that a bunch
of disciples set things up to make it look as if he had been would not
be welcomed by Christians. They wouldn't say: "Good we have now
uncovered an error in our previous thinking and we can avoid it in
future."

(Eventually a subset of them might accept it reluctantly, as some have
accepted that the creation stories are not true.)

I teach my students that my theories are probably incomplete or
inaccurate or both, and that they should try as hard as possible to find
flaws in my theories, and when flaws are discovered they should try as
hard as possible to find better theories to replace mine. I believe many
scientists explicitly or implicitly behave in this way, and certainly
that is how they SHOULD behave as good scientists (or good
philosophers).

Preachers do not go out of their way to teach their flock to challenge
the beliefs they are promulgating. There is no requirement for them to
do that in any of the religions I know of.

Of course, individual scientists, being weak, might object to evidence
against their own theories, but that is part of the process of critical
assessment of new evidence and new arguments.

The scientific community as a whole may resist profound changes of
theory for a while, but when the time comes it accepts them. This has
happened many times: e.g. when new theories were put forward by
Copernicus, Harvey, Newton, Lavoisier, Young, Faraday, Darwin, Einstein,
Bohr, and others.

No doubt there will be many more revolutions. (Henry is trying to
produce one: and good luck to him.)

But when the scientific community accepts a theory, it is always a
*provisional* acceptance: we'll regard this as the best theory so far,
but it could turn out to be false and then we'll replace it. Religions
do not preach that their theories could be false. On the contrary they
generally require faith in the theory even when there is countervailing
evidence.

(That's part of the process by which they corrupt the minds of the
young.)

So you see that I am in strong disagreement with your project of
reconciliation.

However, I am also convinced that it is generally a waste of my time
arguing about this with people who want to reconcile science and
religion.

For instance it turns out that the arguments which I find relevant (as a
philosopher and a scientist) do not engage with the concerns of people
who are attracted towards religious ways of thinking, and likewise the
arguments they find convincing are generally irrelevant to anything I
care about or want to know about.

Religion for them fills a need that has nothing to do with evidence,
rational discussion, or finding deep and powerful explanatory theories,
even if some of them try extremely hard to dress it up in that form.

(If you think religion provides deep and powerful explanatory theories,
we'll need a discussion of what "deep", "powerful", and "explanatory"
mean. Popper nearly got it right, though not quite.)

Another related point is that it is intrinsic to many religions that
there are inherent, permanent, *mysteries* about how things are and why
they are like that.

I see no reason to believe there are such mysteries.

More importantly, many religious people *want* there to be such
mysteries. Such wants are incomprehensible to me, and that attitude
is incompatible with being a good scientist.

A good scientist never *wants* a theory to be true. He or she wants to
find out *whether* it is true, but that's quite different.

Of course one may prefer theories of certain forms: e.g. it's nicer for
a theory to be simple than complex. But that doesn't mean that arguments
and evidence indicating the superiority of a more complex theory should
be ignored.

The arguments religious people put forward with great earnestness do not
have any effect on me.

Except in some cases pity for the individuals, and fear of what they are
doing to the minds of their children.

The shallower arguments are factually incorrect, or logically unsound.

The more subtle ones only engage with ways of thinking and feeling that
are completely alien to my mind.

(No god would have allowed a mind like mine to exist. My mind exists.
Therefore there is no god....)

And then there are all those old chestnuts like the fallacious claim
that science is a kind of religion, etc., and absurd claims such as that
there's a god-shaped hole in every mind (or heart) etc. etc. (More
wishful thinking.)

Even extremely intelligent scientists seem to lose their critical
faculties when they get involved in such debates: I think this is
usually because they *want* certain things to be true instead of wanting
to find out *which* things are true.

As explained in some previous messages, I see religion as being a
manifestation of a rather complex class of software bugs in the design
of human minds (e.g. bugs producing a form of ontological neurosis, and
bugs allowing conceptual confusions to arise and go undetected: there
are plenty of examples.).

However I don't in general wish to try to change people afflicted by
such bugs.

First of all, their problem generally seems to be incurable.

Secondly, in many of those individuals it is a relatively benign
affliction and gives them a way of feeling better about themselves and
life in general than they would otherwise do, and may even have a good
effect on their moral behaviour (e.g. being more tolerant and generous
-- though some religions produce the opposite effect.)

I personally have no need for anything remotely like religion (I have
no ontologic neurosis -- some would call me too arrogant for that).
But I don't see why I should try to reduce the happiness of people who
have (or think they have) such a need -- as long as they don't act like
bigots who try to suppress ideas they disagree with, or do worse things
like shooting people, burning books, or corrupting the minds of the
young.

So if you feel a need to discuss religion and science, please go ahead.

But as far as I am concerned there is no need for it, and I have no time
to get involved (until perhaps we next meet and talk about this over a
drink, which I'll be delighted to do).

I doubt that there are any new arguments to be heard on the issue.

> The project can be summarized as trying to get Aaron and Pat to
> recognize the value of some of the memes that Henry is proposing.

That's a completely separate issue, which has more interest for me,
though I have been too busy to be involved recently.

I'll make some comments on it in my next message.

Aaron
===
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
PAPERS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/