Tag Archives: science and religion

Oct 3 2024

Pretending Expertise

During the Covid pandemic, there were strongly differing opinions about things like social distancing, vaccinations, masks, and so on. Although experts gave recommendations, in most cases with good alignment between them, it was common for people to say that “I did my own research”, and claim a different, generally “better” understanding of any given topic. This phrase was so common that it became a catchphrase that’s still used to highlight people’s tendency to distrust experts.

However, it has also taken on the connotation of bad decision making because experts are generally correct much more often than lay people, and it’s not hard to find examples where someone’s “own research” was wrong. This aspect of the phrase was captured by a popular meme that circulated for a while in which the phrase was on a headstone.

Although this quote was mainly about people investigating Covid-related topics, the principle can be applied elsewhere. And perhaps it illustrates a general tendency for us to approach matters with a level of overconfidence.1

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Aug 14 2024

A Different Definition of Consciousness

Definitions are important, especially when discussing complex topics. For example, the topic of consciousness is so fraught with subtleties that discussions about it really need to start with a clear definition of what it means. Definitions themselves are often the first step in exploring an idea, so creating one can be an act of investigation. In other words, proposing different definitions for a concept may help us explore what is really important or fundamental about it.

Continuing with the topic of consciousness, some define it as just information processing, some define it as the phenomenon of experience. These are very different definitions that generally reflect different metaphysical positions – strict physicalism versus somewhat more open views. I wonder if it would be possible to develop a definition based on something that cuts across these global perspectives.

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Jun 13 2024

Boundaries of Physicalism

A common objection to the idea of any sort of transcendent domain is that, if that domain can affect the physical domain, then it is simply an extension of the physical domain and therefore not transcendent. As such, truly transcendent domains do not exist.

When discussing supernatural claims in particular, this argument is often used to assert that there is no such thing as the supernatural because if it can affect the natural, then it is simply a part of nature. Similarly, this argument is used to disprove mind-brain dualism since, if the mind can affect the world (specifically, the brain), then the mind cannot be immaterial because it is interacting with the material.

This objection makes sense at some level, but also seems to miss the mark when it comes to explaining the phenomena that people refer to when invoking transcendent domains like the supernatural or the mind. Even if the assertion is logically valid, it has no explanatory power and adds no detail to support exploration, model creation, testing, or any other sort of careful thinking.

Even when domains are fundamentally similar in some way, understanding is usually improved by articulating persistent differences and the nature of any boundaries and interactions.

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Apr 19 2024

Threads of Pointers

Throughout history, there have been stories of the supernatural. These stories were often invoked to explain mysteries such as the origin of the world, the forces behind weather, the causes of disease, and the prevalence of coincidences. However, these stories often went beyond simple explanations and were personal accounts of people encountering things beyond natural, everyday experience. The fact that these things could also have explained some mysteries may have been interesting and possibly useful at the time, but was beside the point in many cases.

More recently, and especially over the last few centuries, many other unknowns either have not been explained by science or, like consciousness, have actually become bigger mysteries.1 In addition, mathematics has shown that there are fundamental limits of our understanding in any rational system, and science has discovered what appear to be fundamental limits in our ability to explain physical reality.2

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Mar 2 2024

Hope and Trust

In a previous essay, I introduced the idea of describing our beliefs as “hopes”, reflecting the reality that we cannot be certain about many metaphysical topics. However, a friend suggested that the way I was using the word made the belief seem too weak, and pointed out that I may have been using the word with a meaning that is now archaic.

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Feb 13 2024

Science, Religion, and Uncertainty

The idea that there is a war between science and technology is very common and it’s easy to believe it from some of the very public conflicts that have occurred. Because of this perception, it’s often difficult to have relaxed, interesting conversations about science and religion. Many of us instead just assume that it’s not really that important or even worth talking about. After all, this is the realm of metaphysics, something that doesn’t really impact daily life, right?

However, it turns out that metaphysical considerations are the basis for most people’s ethics, even when we don’t think about that. In other words, our views on things typically considered religious, such as a formal code of ethics, life after death, a moral creator, and so on, really determine our moral views. The fact that most people in the west have ethics based on Judeo-Christian ideals, whether they are Christian or not, is not widely understood.

So if it’s important to have a considered opinion here, how do we deal with the issue of their apparent conflict? Perhaps we can start by looking at where some of the conflicts seem to come up.

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Jan 22 2024

Science and Religion Conversations

Many people believe that there is a conflict between science and religion. This is often exemplified by debates about evolution, the age of the Earth, claims of miracles, and so on. Historically, events like the Galileo affair and the Scopes trial seem to illustrate the existence of a broad conflict. While these disagreements certainly exist, when looked at closer it turns out that they are isolated cases of disagreement based on specific ideas and do not necessarily represent broad conflict.

Most scholars today see the relationship between science and religion as more nuanced and dependent on each individual’s views. One common view is that science and religion deal with different domains entirely, so that as long as each stays in its proper domain, there could be no conflict. Others believe that there is interaction between them, and that resolving apparent disagreements is a way to improve understanding of both domains.

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Dec 29 2023

Exploring Love

The idea of “love” generally means having deep affection for others based on some sort of personal ties. For example, familial ties cause us to love our relations, and sexual attraction can move us toward deep affection. Often, however, we use the term “love” to refer to how we treat other people, such that sometimes it is used to refer to a sort of charitable behavior.

To better understand these subtleties, it’s interesting to look at this behavior from a cosmic standpoint.

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Nov 12 2023

Secular Bias

Religious people are commonly thought to be biased towards believing things that cannot be proven, that must be taken on faith. Often, the idea of faith is taken to mean that there is no evidence at all. When this perspective involves science, the result is sometimes pseudo science – things that sound scientific but are actually implausible or even incorrect.

There is often also an implicit assumption that non-religious people do not have such biases, and that secular reasoning is more rational. However, it’s clear that isn’t always the case, since all people are subject to various biases and some examples from history illustrate this particular case.

It turns out that throughout history, new ideas have been put forth that stretch existing perspectives in ways that sometimes look like religion. It seems like this is more common when the discoveries are at the edge of known science. That makes sense, because ideas that truly extend our understanding are likely to look unusual. So if that unusual characteristic looks supernatural in some way, then it is easily dismissed out of hand by secular thinking.

For example, floods swept across the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age. These are called the Missoula Floods. When they were first proposed, they went against the prevailing perspective that geologic processes were generally uniform over time, not catastrophic. In addition, the catastrophic nature of the proposed floods seemed similar to the Biblical flood narrative, and this association made acceptance of the proposal even harder for some people.

Similarly, when astronomical observations began to indicate that the universe was expanding and scientists realized this implied that it had a beginning, the Big Bang model was developed. However, many did not like that proposal, and instead promoted a steady state expansion. One of the difficulties that some people had with accepting the Big Bang model was that it was too close to the idea of a Biblical creation. In addition, the concept of a beginning to space and time raised the uncomfortable (and almost metaphysical) question about what might exist outside of our spacetime reality.

Even Einstein, when struggling with some of the strange ideas related to quantum physics, referred to them as “spooky action at a distance”, as if even the appearance of something supernatural was reason to suspect it.

In all these cases, the new ideas turned out to be right, but the bias of secular thinking caused some scientists to reject them.

A new area where similarly biased thinking may be happening is with research into the nature of consciousness. This is definitely a topic that is at the edge of known science, so it is very possible that new ideas may be needed. However, because consciousness seems to be immaterial, some of the emerging ideas seem to involve metaphysics even though they have nothing to do with religion or anything supernatural.

For example, some researchers use the term “soul” as a shorthand way of representing this seemingly immaterial aspect of consciousness, even when they are not talking about anything supernatural.

The danger, of course, is that some researchers will dismiss such ideas because of a potential link to religion, just like in the previous examples. However, while those examples took time to have significant societal impact, the need for us to understand consciousness may be coming faster with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The development of AI is beginning to raise a number of questions that would benefit from, maybe even require, a better understanding of consciousness. At some point, we will want to assess whether the things we are creating are conscious, how they relate to humans, whether they should be treated as people, and even how they might affect us as conscious beings ourselves.

Robust understanding of these things could guide the development and deployment of AI, but since we don’t currently have such understanding, AI is progressing in an unguided manner. Whether this turns out to be a problem remains to be seen, but in the race between developing and understanding AI, especially given the serious implications, it seems prudent to leave open all avenues of investigation without slowing things down due to unfounded biases.