Atomic Nerds

Some experimental psychologists have done a study that leads to the truly shocking conclusion that a belief in the explanatory powers of science or the explanatory powers of God leads to more negative feelings about whatever the “opposite” explanation is. In other words, psychologists conclude that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible in the psyche. Oh no!

Well, they certainly are in the design of the experiment. Quoth the researcher:

“It seemed to me that both science and religion as systems were very good at explaining a lot, accounting for a lot of the information that we have in our environment,” she said. “But if they are both ultimate explanations, at some point they have to conflict with each another because they can’t possibly both explain everything.”

Science: you’re doin’ it wrong. Science DOESN’T “explain everything”. It’s not designed to. It’s a collection of methodology for the study of natural law, the underlying principles on which the universe runs. Science cannot do ANYTHING that falls outside this mission- science can tell you, to pick an incendiary example, when a fetus has a heartbeat or fingerprints or brain activity, but it can only be silent on when it becomes a person or whether it is wrong or right to kill it. There are certain people that certainly WISH it did, and ACT as though it did, but that does not make it so. You can do your level best to drive in a nail with a screwdriver, but that doesn’t make it a hammer. Likewise, science can never explain what makes one novel great and another trash, how to conduct your love life to the best benefit of yourself and your partner (if you want to take sex advice from science, try the deep-sea squid method and let me know how that works out for you), or what makes a kickass tune. Science can *inform* our understanding of subjects outside its purview- one example being whether sexuality is biologically determined or chosen and actively malleable, as that changes the exact moral landscape- but it can’t, ultimately, explain everything.

Religion can’t generally explain everything either, which is why we have science at all despite the vast majority of humans being religious for the vast majority of our history. There is no religious doctrine or document in the world that is of any sort of remote help in attempting to determine the optimum way to plow a field, construct a building, predict the weather, or generally do anything that requires more knowledge and planning than slopping together a clay pot. (Even then it is generally helpful to have some consistent body of knowledge on temperature control- take up potting for awhile and just see how intuitive it is.) Some anthropologists are even beginning to argue that monotheism was a necessary cultural precondition for science-as-we-know-it; once you have your epistemology narrowed down to ONE God instead of a bickering pack of them (or a nebulous array of spiritual forces), you can then reach the conclusion that this God does things in a certain consistent fashion- and that humans can work it out for themselves based on the world around them that said consistent God presumably created. Polytheist pantheons tend to micromanage- single creators tend to set it up and let it run with only occasional miraculous interventions to the natural order*.

The design of the experiment that inspired this round of carping on the subject was fundamentally this: the researchers would offer an explanation of some event or phenomenon in terms of “science”, or of the exact same thing in terms of “God”, and then measure the subjects’ warm or cool feelings toward words related to “God” or “science”. They found that the two classes of “explanation” were in direct opposition- of course they were, the design of the experiment makes sure of that. Science and religion do conflict when religion makes concrete claims about EXACTLY what happened exactly when, and then rules that the authority of the religious text depends upon this being literally true. (As for whether or not the ridiculously intelligent creator God can use metaphor or simplify things when talking to tribes that haven’t gotten around to metal yet, this is the point of major internal disagreement.) They also conflict when someone using science as a justification for a moral position they’ve taken asserts that science has a moral authority that overrides someone else’s sacred text’s opinion on the subject. However, there is absolutely nothing contradictory about believing God to be the author of natural law and natural law being a discoverable and understandable thing that reliably explains the way the universe works.

Both certain sorts of the religious and certain sorts of the aggressively secular would really like there to be a fundamental war between science and religion, because that implies the possibility that their own side may WIN someday and they’ll never have to deal with the smug assholes and their shit from the other side ever again. The secularists know that they have a massive advantage because their side has a rigorous, correctable, and testable method for understanding reality without any recourse to doctrinaire squabbling (or unchallengeable dogma) necessary. The religious know they have a massive advantage because their side offers a comprehensive structured system for negotiating human life that offers emotional and intellectual satisfaction for all those pressing questions for which science is limited or completely unsuited to address**. The real problem is that they’re both right, but admitting that would require a general restructuring of their entire worldviews- which would involve some very uncomfortable reassessments, like having to have real faith in their beliefs rather than faith that they can eventually PROVE all their beliefs objectively correct.

A few final quotes from the article:

Similarly, those who read the statement suggesting that the scientific theories were weak were extremely slow to identify negative words that appeared after they were primed with the word “God,” Preston said.

“It was like they didn’t want to say no to God,” she said.

Well, no, no they don’t. And as long as those advocating for science and against anti-intellectualism frame the debate as this being a necessary step to fully embracing science, they will always lose- most people believe, most people want to continue believing because it gives them so much structure, comfort, and guidance, and most people will choose that belief over what they imagine to be a chilly universe whose answers to the “big questions” boil down to “irrelevant”.

And, lastly, proving that they DO get it at least up to a point:

The most obvious implication of the research is that “to be compatible, science and religion need to stick to their own territories, their own explanatory space,” Preston said. “However, religion and science have never been able to do that, so to me this suggests that the debate is going to go on. It’s never going to be settled.”

Well, YES. For all the reasons I’ve outlined above. That doesn’t mean it’s remotely helpful to continue to frame the debate in those terms- to either side.

*Yes, I know, I’m generalizing like a madwoman. This is meant to represent the general trend of human myth and religious thought, especially in times that were very much pre-modern and in which science as we understand it now really did not exist. Pagans, Hindus, and Shintos, please don’t kill me.

**You may have noticed at this point that I’m making this point as an atheist. I merely don’t confuse science with philosophy and try to use the one as the other.

Posted Arms races, bullshit, Science: we'll fuck you up, small gods |