User Comments

1. 

   Catelin Hoover

   On February 24, 2009 at 8:55 pm

   
   

   Hi Teacher
   Can I ask you what do you teach? I think you may not be aware almost every Christian (yes evangelical) school in the States do teach science. Most of these schools are not only accredited by the Christian School accreditation board but also each State’s accreditation board. While public schools are only accredited by State boards. In study after study, teens graduating from a Christian school with a double accreditation are far advanced in their knowledge on every subject including science.

   I find your thinking to be challenging, and your writing to lack serious research and study. Have a good one, my Friend and do try to stay happy, because you will never have joy if you keep traveling on the road you are now traveling.

2. 

   teachersmith

   On February 25, 2009 at 1:07 pm

   
   

   so these teens leave school with the knowledge that creationism is a myth not supported by science do they? no-one disputes that science is taught in schools. the issue is that creationism is taught as fact and evolution as a non-truth and just a theory that carries no weight. did this little article contain anything that is not true catelin? or does seeing your strange beliefs from an objective angle cause you to question their validity? as a christian i felt bound, enslaved, guilty and tainted. now i know freedom and fresh air. i am free to make my own mind up and accept that there is far more to life than sin, death, judgement and subjective experience that can often be explained with more logical and sensible reasoning. the sooner you realise your beliefs are exactly that the sooner you can accept that some of us cannot hold those beliefs and remain honest with ourselves. i find your need to live in blissful ignorance the real sadness.

3. 

   Pupil

   On February 26, 2009 at 6:02 pm

   
   

   Dear Teacher,

   You must be joking!

   * You are using the word Christian as if there is a single, or unique, or universal Christian denomination – which there is not.

   * Millions of people follow the teachings of Christ, without regarding the Bible, as “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.

   * Science and religion are not in conflict. Narrow-minded scientists and narrow-minded religious people are. Science and religion adress different “issues” (for lack of a better word)… it is like art and plumbing if you want, one reaches to the soul, the other helps you manage the world around you… Now that I mention that, did not God tell man in the Bible to “rule” (cannot remember the exact words) over the animals and things on this planet? Isn’t that what good science help you do?

4. 

   Thomas

   On February 27, 2009 at 2:52 am

   
   

   I find you a little self righteous and pretend to be a good Christian but at the last part of this piece you’re saying that if any minister will use this as basis of their sermons should recognize you as the origunal author, which to me,is not a Christian virtue. Fine. you can discourse well with the topic but that is just a dust in God’s sight. God is not concerned on how witty or intelligent you are but He’s more concerned on how you live for Him. Obeying God’s word is not that complex as what you’re trying to say, (you won’t agree with me but that’s how it manifests), it is simply living with it everyday. Good ministers of the gospel don’t need your piece because God gives them wisdom in preparing their sermons.

5. 

   gaby7

   On March 2, 2009 at 6:30 am

   
   

   I think I have always seen the Holly bible from that perspective-science is worldly wisdom whose omniscience is very limited to the beholder-biblical truth is sublime and eternal because it stands the test of time. Ofcourse, like you note in my own article on biblical myths, many of us suffer the literal understanding of the bible-approaching the bible as is, frustrates and almost reduces th

6. 

   Donna (Y/A)

   On March 5, 2009 at 4:51 pm

   
   

   I’m a Bible believer and Christian. I do not claim to know everything there is to know about the Bible- still learning. But I do know that however God chose to create the earth and everything in it was by His design. He might have used the “big bang theory” to make the earth, He doesn’t say HOW He made everything come to be. But He does say HE is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He might have used evolution to keep things going on the earth as far as animals, plants etc. But He also said how He made Adam and Eve. And then instructed them to fill the earth with their kind. I do not believe we came from Apes, Monkeys, or Gorillas! If so, then God would have made a Gorilla out of the dust of the earth, NOT man!

7. 

   Lostash

   On March 5, 2009 at 9:17 pm

   
   

   I find it truly amazing that in this day and age, people still cannot believe the facts about evolution and how life began on this planet. Faith is one thing, ignorance is something else altogether. I say that with total respect to the previous poster. What about the fossil record? The evidence is there for all to see. You mention the ‘Big-Bang’ theory and don’t discount it, despite claiming that it may be a Godly creation in itself, yet refuse to believe that we are closely related to primates?? I think you hit the nail on the head yourself when you said ‘He doesn’t say HOW He made everything come to be’, yet you accept it without really questioning. When scientific evidence is presented to you, it is just denied and ignored.

8. 

   Pupil

   On March 7, 2009 at 4:42 pm

   
   

   Sorry Teacher!

   On the first two points, I should have read more carefully in the first place. After reading it again, and going through the comments I think I understand a bit better where you are coming from.

   I still disagree on the third point. There cannot be a conflict between good science and good religion. To beging explaining this, let me make two extreme statements, that will probably make both scientifically-oriented and religious-oriented people uncomfortable.

   A. Science does not allow you to reach any truth.
   B. Religion is completely irrelevant for understanding the world we live in.

   === ABOUT SCIENCE ===

   Science is a system to develop knowledge based on the scientific method. The scientific method is ACCEPTED as the true means of developing the scientifc knowledge.

   What is the scientific method? Basically, it is a process of making educated guesses (hypothesis) about the workings of the physical universe, testing those guesses against observations (whether by designing experiments or just watching nature), and deciding whether those guesses were correct (becoming a theory) or not (destination oblivion). As you can see, this is a very human and very limited endeavor.

   The scientific theory will be correct (true, if you prefer), only for as long as it takes to get a better explanation… which can be a lot of time or very little. E.g. consider the evolution of ideas from Aristotle, to Galileo, then Newton, then Einstein, and then … someone else … and someone else… and …

   Science give us very useful insights about the workings of the world around us. About the universe that we can see, feel and measure. About nature.

   Say you are a scientist and you want to know how something works. What you do is, you isolate your problem (or build something trying to reproduce it, depending on the scale of your problem, e.g. the LHC), and then you treat it like a black box. You cannot see directly into the box, but you can do things to it, and measure or see what reactions or outputs you get from the black box.

   As you cannot see what is in the box, you create a model that lets you explain what you can experience. Then you build another model, and another model, until you pretty much exhaust the experiments that your technology, imagination, and other scarce resources allow you to do. Then you reach the point when you have to live with the last version of the model, until someone else comes along with better ideas, or better technology, or more resources, making your model reach its expiration date. What sometimes happens between the period when you come up with the model and the time it reaches its expiration date, is that someone will say “the black box is this Model” (I used uppercase for ‘Model’ to denote a specific one). You may notice that the way this someone is talking is a quite familiar one, but it can also be a very misleading one:
   * This someone is ignoring the transient nature of the Model (meaning it will be valid only until someone improves it). Truth cannot be transient (at least not what I would call truth)… so this Model is a bit like a little white lie that has not been uncovered yet.
   * The Model is not the box. The Model is just an intellectual abstraction of the box… we certainly don’t know anything about the box, except that we can use the Model to explain its measureable behaviour (or at least part of it). E.g. the nature of light: we have models that make it simple to explain experiments assuming that light is a wave, and other models can simply explain other phenomena assuming light is a particle. Does that mean that light is a wave, or particle, or that there is a duality? Not at all. Light is light; it is neither wave, nor particle, nor a mix. Waves and particles are mental abstractions we use to understand and model the world around us. They only exist in our minds.

   We can probably compare the relation between a scientific model, and the object being modelled, as the relationship between the map and the territory. It’s clear the map is not the territory (except maybe for the few people out there who believe the Earth is flat). Yet, that does not prevent us from using the map to help us plan the best way to go from A to B, or build something, or just for admiring the great extension of the landscape beyond the horizon we see (or rather, its representation).

   All this is why I said in the beginning that science does not allow you to reach any truth. Science is only a process to continuously improve your models, so to do good science you have to accept that the models you have are not true. In addition to this, science does not allow you to ever know anything about the real nature of what you are studying: you are only improving your mental models.

   That is not to diminish the importance of science. Mental models are extremely important. We humnans rely on our mental models for survival. In comparison to other animals we don’t run too fast, we are not very strong for our size and weight, we don’t have big teeth or claws, we just have average vision and hearing. What allowed us to survive so far has been using our brains to adapt to different environments, and eventually to modify the environments to suit us better. Science is vital.

   Now, let’s go back to our lab. You can use the black box with pretty much everything you find around… But how do you go about God? You can’t use science to study or make implications about God. If we are talking about God, then it is you and EVERYTHING you can see that is inside of the black box… If you want, it is a bit like the end of the Men In Black movies, except that you cannot iterate into bigger and bigger things any more – although that comparison can be misleading, because we are not talking about something ‘bigger’, we are talking about something of a different nature altogehter.

   God is a concept beyond nature. Nature is the creation, God is the creator. Even if science allows you to reach some day the perfect description of nature, you cannot use the laws of nature to affirm something about anything outside it. Hence, science is not in conflict with believing in God.

   Let me quote Stephen Hawking here. “The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

   === ABOUT RELIGION ===

   Here I would like to make a clear difference before continuing the discussion. Religion and belief (or faith) are different things, although it is common to tend to use the words interchangeably – even I do it, since sometimes you have to communicate with people that do not make such a distinction. Beliefs are things that you ACCEPT to be true, and they are rooted in human nature. Religion is a human creation to manifest those beliefs, and these manifestations depend on the different cultures. E.g. Jews, Christians and Muslims all share the same basic belief that there is only one God (so it has to be the same one, no matter how you name it) – yet they have different religions.

   Now, for the sake of discussion, even if you do not believe in God, let’s admit for a moment that there is such a thing. I will also focus the discussion around the Christian religions, which are the ones I know best.

   Through time, people that have been ‘better tuned’ to the supernatural have tried to explain their experience/understanding/englightenment to the people around them. Now, how do you about explaining something that is outside common experience? You only have language. What is a language? A language is no more than a convention for communicating with others.

   BIG RED LIGHT HERE. Being a convention, language is based on experiences you and other people SHARE. How can you use language, to describe something that you have experienced and other people have not? You will just be limited to using what you have, and try to ‘translate’ your experience to common terms.

   What did the people in biblical times talk about? Most likely about their lives. Growing food, herding their animals, fishing, fighting in times of war, serving their kings… you get the picture. What does the Bible talk about? Kings, which were probably the most glorious and powerful image the people living then could imagine (anyone remember the phrase “the kingdom of God”?). Flocks of sheep (”I am the good shepherd”), and dozens of parables related to farming, fishing and running business at that time. Some religious people will say that Jesus and the ones before him were talking to us, but you obviously cannot think that this has to be taken literally: the language they used indicates they were talking to the people around them. (That is not to say whether their messages are still valid today or not, we are not discussing that.)

   Then, from this point of view, there is nothing that the we could get out of a book written thousands of year ago to better understand the physical world around us. Moreover, that people was not interested in the physical world in the way that we are, they were interested in their lives, and how to live them, and how to be happy: that is what the Bible is about, nothing more. They did not live a life full of riches, nor they lived within a mighty nation, like others of that times, e.g. the Greeks. (This is necessarily innacurate, because we are talking about periods of time that span centuries, and civilizations come and go, but I hope you get the point)

   Yet, I am not satisfied with this. Let’s consider another explanation – with a good dose of imagination. Let’s say thousands of year ago, some guy in the Middle East suddendly got a glimpse of this supernatural thing we call God, and in the process understood how the world came to be, and how the universe works in all its physical details. He does not have the means or physical time before his death to document what would amount to thousands of years of scientific development – which on the other hand could be done by other people in due time. Yet, he has the chance of showing his people something only a handful of people could experience, and that could give them some joy… it would still be difficult to explain, but being a rare piece of knowledge makes it even more valuable. Then this guy decides to explain the supernatural bit of his experience to the people around him, in terms they can understand. He knows it is not the best description, but he cannot write something the people around him would not understand at all. If he did, his message would not be kept alive. If the message were not kept alive, then it would never reach the people who can understand it, that will live beyond his time. Therefore, this poor man carrying the heavy burden of preserving that knowledge, wisely decides three things:
   (1) leave the details of the physical world to the people that can deal with them… how could e.g. the Big Bang theory help a bunch of shepherds and farmers?
   (2) transmit the experience of the supernatural thing
   (3) ensure the survival of his message for future generations, talking to the people around him in their own language

   The guy can see the value of what he has, and he chooses to share it and make sure it will be preserved for his people.

   Choosing instead to describe the physical world would be like playing ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ for real money, having certainty that you are going to win, and walking away before getting the big prize.

   To risk the survival of his message would be like a man who amassed a fortune investing in different types of assets and markets, but has a somewhat dumb heir. The rich man wants future generations from his family to also get to enjoy the benefits of his wealth. What does he do? He does not bother trying to teach his son how to invest, but instead tells him to leave the money in the bank, and only withdraw money from the interest paid minus inflation.

   Over time, rituals, prayers, and hymns were built around the beliefs, as they passed from generation to generation. So time has probably enriched the ‘religious construction’ around the beliefs, but the fundamental beliefs never changed. And as I tried to explain, I don’t see any reason why one would expect those beliefs to have anything to do with what we would call today ’scientific knowledge’ about the world. It is in this sense that religion is not useful for understanding the world around us.

   I do believe that religion can give us more understanding about the nature of things, about life (not in the biological sense), and about human nature. I do believe it is worth the effor to try to catch the meaning of the original messages. I do not expect any of this to come served on a silver plate. We come from different cultures and environments, we know the same language can be used differently in different countries, and we use different languages of those originally used in biblical times – how can you expect to be able to take any truth from the Bible, by reading it literally?

   === COMMONALITY WITHOUT CONFLICT ===

   Let me repeat a couple of things I said before:
   * “The scientific method is ACCEPTED as the true means of developing the scientifc knowledge.”
   * “Beliefs are things that you ACCEPT to be true, and they are rooted in human nature.”

   Both science and religion are based on faith, i.e. accepting something as true. You accept a working methodology as valid, and you accept an idea about God as valid.

   Now, having established that both science and religion and based on a belief, you might want to ask yourself: “What do I want to believe?” Really, there is no need for such question, and you don’t need to opt for one or the other as long as you understand that they work in different ‘playing fields’. E.g. it would seem strange if you told someone that you are a big fan of two traditionally oppossed footbal teams; but none would found odd if you are a big fan of a certain football team and a different basketball team.

   Is there any conflict in that? Not one that I can see. Your working methodology allows you to improve your mental models about the world you see. God fills the gap of whatever you will never be able to see – but not becuase of your lacking science or technology, but because his nature is different from the nature of the universe. Yet, being different in nature, the universe exists in Him. How can this be? I like to think about this as in the same way that ideas exist in the mind of a person. We exist only because God ‘thinks’ us… but that’s just me.

   … Now that’s interesting! Note how I am using every day language to describe something beyond our experience. God does not have a brain, and does not ‘think’ (at least in the literal way we would use the word for us), and is not a Him (or a Her, it’s not a biological entity with a need for sexual reproduction). I only wrote a couple of sentences and you can quickly see how inadequate language can be to talk about God.

   Good science allows you to give people a better understanding of the world, and can help to correct religious misconceptions stemming from literal interpretations of the Bible. However, science will never eliminate religion – unless it becomes a religion itself, which I think would be a bit sad.

   As a scientist you could say you are not going to believe into anything that cannot be physically demonstrated. Since you will not see God anywhere in the physical universe, you may say there is no God – is that scientific? The correct scientific approach would be to test your hypothesis – but you cannot test it, you are in the black box! Why does the universe exist? How can science ever describe the origin of physical conditions, when physical conditions did not exist in the first place? When you reach that point, you are not relying on science anymore, you are relying on beliefs. Then, when you say there is no God you are not being scientific, you are really saying you do believe in God – you are just being an atheist trying to steal support for your argument from a different area, and calling your reasoning ’scientific’.

   === FINAL THOUGHTS ===

   People have discussed for centuries whether God exists or not. It is a philosophical question, that people having more intelligence and time than I do, have already addressed in different ways, and continue to do so. Some suck, others are quite interesting.

   Many people have tried to ‘free’ the man from religion. Possibly Karl Marx was the most famous among them, and if not, he was certainly the one who had the biggest impact on the history of the 20th century. Did he succeed? No. He created a model of how societies work and evolve, and people took that model and tried to put it into practice. In the process of doing that, these people turned Marx’s ideas into a doctrine, making those ideas loose their best quality: being critical. The rest is history.

   A Spanish philosopher named Ortega y Gasset thought that there are two realities: the reality of ideas, and the reality of beliefs. The reality of ideas, is the domain of reason. The reality of beliefs, is given by your circumstances, by your life. If we accept that reason is objective (and reason in the logical / mathematical / scientific sense should be), then what makes a man what he is, is not his ideas, but his beliefs. Human beings are beliefs. Be careful about where do you put your beliefs.

   “There are two kinds of people in the world: the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.” – Gilbert Keith Chesterton

9. 

   Pupil

   On March 7, 2009 at 5:20 pm

   
   

   … hmmm… My apologies for a couple of typos there. Should have typed it in Word.

   Is there something like the Guinnes world record for a long comment?

10. 

    teachersmith

    On March 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    
    

    i agree with some of your conclusions but not others. i fail to see what benefit beliefs in god bring to human beings and how these are in any way helpful. belief in science may lead to dogmatism but belief in god leads to orthodoxy and heterodoxy which in itself leads to militance, torture and the attempt to force everyone else to succumb to these rigid beliefs. although you suggest choosing your beliefs may not be needed it is a fact that the more people abandon religious beliefs the less likely the human race will be in a position to kill each other for reasons of orthodox theism. sam harris makes the point that there will never be a cold war between the west and islam. be careful where you put your beliefs is bang on the money. being careful not to believe in dangerous dogma may be equally as important. scientists will admit their idead are theories based on the best information we currently have. they will also willingly amend their theories if a new discovery is found. some beliefs are worth rejecting.

11. 

    Pupil

    On March 10, 2009 at 5:28 pm

    
    

    Hi Teacher!

    As you may have guessed, I’m usually making questions, and I have to thank you because in this case it is your questions and comments that serve to catalyze my ideas. Your last comment has made me consider different further lines of thought… I was not too happy about my defense of religious belief either, because it is not as strong as my defense for science and because it could be taken to imply that atheists are ‘bad’ – which is not something I would consider correct.

    Your last comment touches on different points, and I’m not sure I’ll have time during this week to address them, as it looks my school agenda will be packed. Still, I’ll list a number of things for me to review from your comments, and maybe you will also want to think about them.

    * I would say more generally that dogmatism (o better, unconscious dogmatism) is not a useful/constructive human attitude, that does not allow us to fulfill our potential – in any area: science, religion, politics, economy, …
    * I asked myself when I read your comment: is anywhere anything like an statistic of people killed in conflicts due to religion as people killed in other kinds of conflict (i.e. due to economical, political or other motivation)? … it’s not like it actually means much, from my perspective body counts are not like the score in a video game. Everytime a human being kills another human being, the human kind loses. Still I think the statistics would be useful to put your comment in context, as it would seem to me that your perspective could be biased due to a bit of ‘recency effect’ and ongoing world events.
    * I didn’t know who Sam Harris was! Just looked him up in Wikipedia (if you can trust it). It seems I have similar positions to him in many areas, but I disagree on others… looks like I could have written a book if I had been born earlier. I thought mentioning the example of buddhism in my reply to you, but now that I read the wikipedia entry for this guy I feel like I’ll be stealing from him if I do – damn! I will have to read more carefully the entry later and / or research a bit more.
    * I do feel there is some component of ‘fear’ (although to different things) in what you, me and this Harris guy have written… but genuine concern could easily be mistaken with fear, or the other way around, couldn’t it?

12. 

    wolfbane1394

    On March 19, 2009 at 9:28 am

    
    

    i agree with all of the above points.

13. 

    Mama Heartfilled

    On May 9, 2009 at 2:52 am

    
    

    Pupil you are a very smart person! I have never found conflicts between science and faith myself. I believe in God and I believe that science is a tool for us to learn about the world around us, which I believe God created. Therefore science should eventually lead us to our Creator.

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