The War of Science and Religion

Academics Attack a Historical Myth

Posted by Beast Rabban

One of the persistent accusations made by the enemies of religion is that religion has somehow held back scientific progress. Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is one of the most outspoken advocates of this view today. The idea isn’t unique to him, however. It’s largely the product of three 19^th century figures, Darwin’s bulldog, T.H. Huxley; J.W. Draper, a New York science professor who wrote The History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science in 1875; and A.D. White, the first President of Cornell University, who wrote A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom in 1895. Dawkins is merely the latest, but arguably the most vociferous, advocate of this view.

It is, however, a myth that has been severely criticised by historians in a number of books. Claude Welch, for example, in his chapter in the1996 book, Religion and Science, by W. M. Richardson and W.J. Wildman, calls it ‘the Warfare Myth’, devoting particular criticism to Draper and White. Neither Huxley, Draper nor White were unbiased historians.

The Enemies of Reason

The new documentary (the first episode) by Richard Dawkins has made it to Gore’s internet. Whatever you think of him, it is worth a watch to familiarize yourself with the undisputed champion of contemporary atheism.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

My thoughts? I actually made it through the entire thing in one sitting, which is a personal Richard Dawkins record. The bit about astrology was quite interesting, and seeing Dawkins go after a non-Abrahamic belief system was refreshing.

Watch ‘em and tell us what you think.

The Argument from Reason

My first contribution to this blog will be a short discussion of a personal interest of mine, the so-called Argument from Reason [AR]. Hopefully the short bibliography at the end is enough to cover any explanatory shortcomings I’m sure to have.

In short, the AR attempts to show that there is a difficulty that arises when the following two propositions are held in conjunction:

1) Naturalism is true.
2) The human agent reasons reliably/is capable of rational thought.

Definition of Naturalism

One of the hardest tasks I’ve encountered in philosophy is coming up with a good, concise and accurate definition of what naturalism is. For an example, it is possible, however unlikely, that one could believe in the theistic conception of God yet hold to naturalism. That being the case, we need to distinguish between ontological naturalism [ON] and methodological naturalism [MN].

MN deals with the way we acquire knowledge, while ON deals with what sort of entities knowledge reveals. Both rely heavily on the scientific method, but ON asserts that the only kind of entities that exist are those discoverable, in theory, by the sciences. Furthermore, most naturalists are physicalists, which I will define as holding the following:

Causal Closure Thesis [CCT]: Any physical event that has a cause at time t has a physical cause at t.

Arguably, it follows from the CCT that every real entity is theoretically captured by the hypothetically completed sciences. That is, when scientific discovery is exhausted we will have complete knowledge of everything that exists.

Physicalists usually hold the following to be true as well:

The universe has a fundamentally non-teleological explanation.

There is no original intelligence, no guiding hand, and no transcendental purpose for the various characteristics (especially human characteristics) that the universe may own. So, remembering our original set of two propositions, we may now add a third:

1) Naturalism is true.
2) Naturalistic causes are fundamentally non-rational.
3) The human agent reasons reliably/is capable of rational thought.

Hitchens’ Hubris

Tom Piatik has provided a scathing critique of Christopher Hitchens and it’s attracting a lot of attention.