I posted something addressing Chris’s post that you got that quote from. (I think the quote was off-point, but the post wasn’t.)

Unfortunately, it seems to have vanished into the flickering void. (I doesn’t show up as in moderation.)

Maybe it will show up eventually. This system is flaky.

You seem to be missing a really major point in this discussion, and running certain things together that I am trying, perhaps not hard enough, to keep separate. (I could be wrong, and if so, I’m sorry, but that’s how it seems to me.)

Please recognize that I’m not trying to convince anybody, here and now, that science and religion are generally incompatible. I am trying to sketch one common and respected position among the relevant scientific experts, and show basically how they see science and religion as incompatible—not just fundamentalism and YEC, but mainstream Eastern and Western religion involving belief in souls, an afterlife, and/or transcendental mystical experiences that bypass rationality and get Deep Wisdom or an experience of the Ultimate Reality from something involving introspection.

The point I’m making is that yes, many scientists really do see science and religion as typically if not always incompatible. Rightly or wrongly, they do see any claim that science and religion “are compatible” or even “can be compatible” as pretty much wrong—they see even very liberal theology as in conflict with the relevant science.

You may not realize it, but in addressing that, I’m addressing stuff that Chris said in the post that you quoted—stuff that is far more interesting and relevant to our argument than the quote you pulled out.

In particular, Chris says that Haught’s theology is unfalsifiable. I do not think that is true; like a lot of experts on the subject, I think that even the current sciences of the mind strongly indicate that Haught’s concepts of mind an the supernatural are just mistaken, and are mistaken for explainable reasons that obviate actually proving them false. It is not unscientific to dismiss a contrived, paranoid theory without, strictly speaking refuting it.

One of Chris’s arguments (AFAICT) is that we can’t “refute” such hypotheses, if they’re sufficiently contrived to make them unfalsifiable, so we should treat the unfalsifiable hypotheses as beyond the reach of science.

But that is not how science works. Chris is using the wrong standard of refutation. Science does not operate by strict logical disproof of hypotheses, and agnosticism toward the ones that can’t be strictly disproved.

For example, we never disproved geocentricism. You can always salvage geocentricism by saying that the sun and planets orbit the earth in just such a way that the results are observationally indinguishable from the earth and planets orbiting the sun. (Mathematically, the resulting theory isn’t even much more complicated—you just toss in a couple of extra axioms to relativize the motions.)

That was actually proposed in Galileo’s time—saving geocentrism while using Galileo’s model for prediction, by tweaking the model.

Galileo didn’t fall for it, and neither should we. We should reject unfalsifiable supernaturalism for the same reason we reject unfalsifiable geocentricism—they are both ad hoc, contrived theories, and ad hoc, contrived theories are typically false.

That’s also the same basic reason we reject Young Earth creationism. You can make that irrefutable in Chris’s sense, too, if you’re willing to throw in enough miracles. So what? It’s still bunk.

I don’t really want to argue about whether we should dismiss unfalsifiable theology like Haught’s as bunk—you can disagree if you want to, and I know many other people will. And that’s okay, for the present discussion.

I’m not trying to convince anybody that it’s true—I’m only trying to explain that many scientists and philosophers of science really, really do think that religion is bunk, scientifically speaking, even if it can’t be “refuted” in the sense of strict logical disproof.

Moreover, they think that any other approach is unscientific. Religion’s supposed alternative “ways of knowing” have been demonstrated to be woefully unreliable, and granting them a special exception that we do not grant to other contrived and unfalsifiable hypotheses is philosophically inconsistent with the basic scientific approach.

Again, I don’t want to argue about that. If you don’t think that consistency on that point is required by the basic scientific outlook, fine—just acknowledge that, rightly or wrongly, many scientists and philosophers do think that.

That is all I need to make my main argument.

My main argument is that organizations like the NAS should not be in the business of implying that science and religion “can be compatible,” much less Chad’s “science and religion are compatible.”

Scientific bodies are not supposed to make pronouncements about live scientific controversies, and it is a live scientific controversy whether religion is compatible with science.

Nobody—NOBODY—doubts that religious people can do science. Nobody doubts that religious people can accept most science.

But many scientists and philosophers do indeed think that science and religion are incompatible in basic ways—at least in the sense that if you

(1) ditch all the stuff that science shows is likely not true, including souls, transcendental experience of The Ultimate, or even just ineffable Deep Wisdom gained by mystical insight, and
(2) adopt the scientific attitude of skepticism toward contrived unfalsifiable hypotheses of all sorts, then

what you’re left with is not clearly religion anymore.

Given that many scientist and philosophers really really do think that, rightly or wrongly, even saying that “science and religion can be compatible” is controversial. There’s no scientific consensus that it’s false, but there’s nowhere near a scientific consensus that it’s true, either.

It’s controversial because many if not most people—including many scientists and philosophers of science—simply do not interpret the statement “science and religion can be compatible” in the minimal the way Chad says they should, meaning only that “some people manage to be religious and do science.”

They just don’t, and I think that’s pretty obvious by now.

Many if not most people, including many if not most scientists and philosophers, think of science and religion as (real or purported) “ways of knowing.” When they hear claims about whether they’re “compatible” they immediately think about whether these ways of knowing complement each other or contradict each other, and whether the purported knowledge from each is consistent with the purported knowledge from the other.

It’s not just fundamentalists who do that. It’s basically everybody including Chris Mooney. That’s why supposedly irrefutable theology is signficant to him in the first place.

If he didn’t think that consistency of purported “knowledge” was significant, he wouldn’t think that unfalsifiable theology like John Haught’s was the least bit relevant, and wouldn’t drag him into the discussion.

He argues that Haught and other very liberal theologians don’t believe anything inconsistent with scientific knowledge.

Rightly or wrongly, for the reasons I sketched above, many of us really really do think that Chris is right that Haught’s a relevant example, but he’s quite wrong that Haught’s theology is consistent with science.

Chris apparently can’t come up with any examples of religion that is consistent with science, on our view.

He can’t convince us that there’s any theology that’s really consistent with science, so the claim that “science and religion can be compatible” remains controversial.

Since scientific bodies are not supposed to take sides in live scientific controversies, and are only supposed to make pronouncements that reflect an expert scientific consensus, the NAS ought to stop pandering to such views that many scientific experts think are scientifically wrong.

I should probably quote what I consider the worst part of the NAS statement—the concluding paragraph—and why many experts think every sentence is either false or grossly misleading.

That might clarify things, but I’ll save it for another post.

It was certainly not meant to imply that anyone involved in this discussion so far is a YEC. Of course not.

Perhaps I should have spelled that out, but whaddya want, egg in your beer?

Stop reading stuff into my posts that isn’t there. It’s really, really tiresome.

Stop worrying so much about my motives, and pay closer attention to the arguments.

Jeez, Luke, you’re about to strain yourself over the “pretty much”?

Take a stress pill and think this over. You’re losing it again.

I’m not even sure what your problem is with it, and since you didn’t bother to ask me why I put that qualifier in, and started imply something nefarious that I’m not clear on, and demanding proof of something I never asserted…

WTF?

Wanna try again and ask me rather than accusing me?

Or do you want to continue being a paranoid troll?

I now have two (three, including this original – I think cuz of my last word) post in moderation and I lost a long one Let’s kick some …!

I now have two post in moderation and I lost a long one Let’s kick some ass!

No, you missed my point. You left out “pretty much”. Get it? Don’t take yourself so seriously.

Recently Jerry Coyne did a blog title: “Michael Shermer, theologian”. Wherein he labeled Michael and “accomodationist” because he felt Shermer had gone to far in explaining to believer how they can accept science and basically keep the faith. Now, Michael has responded to that already. What’s striking is the labeling and the argumentative style to begin with. Michael has pulled apart religious beliefs by applying neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, natural moral instinct etc. Just last week he repeated his argument regarding Neurobombs. Basically the idea of killing in the name of religion. None of this is new, Michael has been making such arguments for the past 16 years I’ve been reading him (plus a constant parade of articles in Skeptic much like them). But, now he’s an “accomodationist”, now how right does that make Coyne’s or Paul W.’s argument?

That’s partly what I mean that there’s something else at play going on going unnoticed by people like Paul W. They simply don’t give a shit what they say beyond believing their own argument no matter how beyond the facts they go in some cases. Again, to possibly avoid another headache, I’m NOT saying Paul’s arguments are incorrect at a base level, I think I’ve shown that several times. He’s simply lost in argument. Coyne is lost in wanting to appear a certain way. Doesn’t make him wrong always, just partly blind to even his own arguments about “accomodationism” and his view his atheism is scientific only (even though in his own argument he shows that to be not the case).