Reply #63: Tell that to Galileo [View All]

[Silent3]

What you seem not to understand about the difference between semantic and scientific definitions is this: the semantic definitions are to be judged according to the linguistic coherence of the resulting discourse, whereas the scientific definitions are to be judged according to whether they produce a discourse that accurately describes phenomena. But from a scientific point of view, this is exactly backwards!

So when Galileo started dropping objects from a height and comparing the rate a which they fell, he needed to approach the entire problem completely wordlessly, not daring to consider words like "drop", "fall", "object", "weight", "speed", etc. (or their Italian or Latin equivalents), until after his experiments were done? If he even thought momentarily to himself "I will drop these objects now" he was contaminating his experiment with unwarranted, unscientific preconceptions of the entities under investigation?

I'd say quite a bit of science can be done in the realm of commonplace semantic definitions. That would be the only place you could start when a field of study is brand new, with new scientific words or specialized scientific usages of old words following later to help navigate the ideas and concepts revealed through investigation and experimentation. Now, to try to get this back on track concerning religion...

The idea that religion typically involves "taking things on faith" without evidence (I think I can make a good case that calling "revelation" a type of evidence leads to a flawed, useless concept of evidence), sometimes even contrary to evidence, is not a post-facto definition I personally came up with to match a pre-ordained premise that there's an inherent conflict with science. It's something I've been told by many religious people directly. Even without every religious person saying such things, given the lack of hard proof for things like gods and spirits and souls, all one needs is a semantic argument and the not very-debatable premise that nearly all religions invoke deities or spirits or souls to conclude that religion very typically involves belief in things for which there is no evidence.

Belief in things for which there is no evidence, in and of itself, is a conflict with science, at a procedural and philosophical level. The only exception to that I can think of is the minimal amount of belief-without-proof that it takes to bootstrap oneself into the start of a scientific framework: eschewing solipsism, taking it as a given that you aren't locked into an inescapable illusion or dream or all-encompassing conspiratorially-contrived deception, etc. -- in other words, the minimal parsimonious steps it takes to escape Philosophy 101 existential doubt.

I suppose you could categorize religious conflicts with science into "hard" and "soft" conflicts. What I'd call "hard" conflicts, like believing in Noah's Ark as a literal historical fact rather than accepting evolution, can be avoided, at least in the more liberal and educated versions of religious practice. What I'd call a "soft conflict" is any assertion that lives in the realm, "Well, science can't evaluate/hasn't evaluated this claim yet, so for now you can't prove me wrong, and I'll assert what I like/the validity of my "revelation"/the Truth I See in My Heart so long a evidence doesn't or can't disprove these things."

I've heard people try to say things like, "Science tells us how we got here. Religion tell us why.", as if that somehow lays down a dividing line that sets up clear, non-conflicting domains. I don't think that solves anything, but I won't pursue that tangent unless asked to later. Some people would try to put ethics and morality into the field of religion, but if you take away the supernatural component of religion then you've just got ethics and morality which obviously can exist outside of religion. Further elaboration on that is also a tangent I'll skip for now.

If you'd like to point out specific flaws in what I've written above (rather than vague, generalized claims of failures to follow obscure rules I've never heard of about when I'm allowed to introduce or form definitions of words), or if you'd like to run a definition of "religion" (and perhaps of "science") up the flagpole -- you know, show me by example what good definitions are instead of simply objecting to mine -- and show how all conflict can either disappear or become mere aberration, be my guest.