8. analytic thinking erodes religious belief

Rob Brooks:

‘Analytic thinking erodes religious belief

Bertrand Russel on religion

“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Philosopher, Logician, Atheist

Do you agree? Has religion faded? (factual question) Ought it to fade? (value question) Can we be good without God(s) or religion? Factual or value question?! Or both?

• Should science have priority over religion?

• Or should science bow to religion?

• Or are the two compatible?

• Gould’s NOMA thesis

• Non-Overlapping Magesteria

• Science deals with facts; religion with values

• But can the two avoid bumping up against one another on questions like human origins or the origin of the universe? Are science and religion more like tectonic plates than non-overlapping domains/magesteria?

Science and values

• Does science as a way of knowing promote any particular value system, either left or right?

• Science versus faith as ways of knowing. (Is faith a way of knowing or a way of believing?) .

Q: Does a scientific education and career in science make one more liberal and religiously skeptical, or are people who are already more liberal and religiously skeptical more likely to find science attractive? Cause or effect?

Science and politics

• What sort of values does science encourage and do they have moral, religious, or political implications?

• Science’s internal values: Objectivity, CUDOS (Communalism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Organized Skepticism), taking a critical stance towards beliefs and assertions, looking to identify and correct for sources of bias. Implications for external values?

• Some pundits on the right accuse science (and universities generally) of a leftist, secular, bias (“Teaching about climate change and evolution is Godless socialism!”)

• Some academics on the left accuse science of being a biased Eurocentric tool of colonial-capitalist dominance, exploitation, and secularism that we’d be better off without (“Western science is just one way of knowing and we should respect the other ways of knowing—the ones based on faith, tradition, dreams, visions, fortune-telling, magic etc.”)

• But is science—as a way of knowing—biased because it seeks to root out bias and insists on evidence and good logic?

It’s true that science has been used for bad purposes.

• But is science responsible for racism, colonialism, nuclear weapons, environmental problems?

• Is the flashlight to blame or merely some of the people who have held it and those who have applied its findings?

• On the matter of religion and spiritual beliefs about God/gods, souls, heaven, spirits, creation stories etc., should science be respectful and say “Well, these things are also true because they’re important to a lot of people”?

It’s true that science has been used for bad purposes. more information

• Should we believe some things on faith alone or because they are part of our political/religious/cultural tradition or ideology? (Is that Lysenkoism?)

• Should anything be off-limits? Sacred? Beyond criticism?

• Is it arrogant to suggest we should not confuse values for facts?

• These are questions for science and society to work out together. You all can help answer these questions