Saturday 9 July 2011

Answering RickRussell's questions

I'm guessing RickRussell comes from Texas, and I'd link to his blog, if I knew which one it was. These are his questions and my answers:
When you do science, do you apply epistemological rules like falsifiability, reproducibility, parsimony, logical consistency and an assumption of natural causation?
Sure.
If the answer is yes, do you apply those same rules to spiritual claims? If not, what exempts spiritual claims from such requirements?
In general, I try to apply tools appropriate for the job. So, for example, reproducibility is not a particularly useful criteria for thinking about history, because Julius Caesar isn't going to invade England again today so we can watch him do it. Similarly, it would be wrong to demand "an assumption of natural causation" to questions like whether God exists, or how he acts, because would be blatant begging the question. So, even though I think scientific criteria are great in studying the natural world, I don't necessarily think that they are the best tools for all questions.

If I had to name some criteria for determining if something is a good worldview, I'd say (1) explanatory power, (2) internal coherence, (3) logical consistency, and (4) the degree to which that worldview makes correct predictions about what we will observe, and (5) fits with what we have already observed.

If we expect science to answer whether humans have any inherent value or not , we will both likely to be dead long before it provides an answer (even if it ever could). In the meantime we have to live. Just assuming that only what science has proved is the true, and rejecting everything else, could lead someone to even reject the value of human life. An attitude like that would lead us to reject many things which are in fact true, and potentially even lead to damaging actions.

Would you say that all your beliefs are purely scientific?

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