Why science is way better than religion
While both science and religion can be called "world views," science is as different from religion as day is from night. I just posted over on Singularity & Futurism an article called "Memristors - The pathway to artificial intelligence?" that reminded me of one of the most important differences between the two.
Science actually discovers truth about the universe in which we live. This truth, when discovered and applied, is demonstrably accurate, as all truth should be, as evidenced by how it works in the real world. Science is real. It works in the real world, and the undiscovered country of things science does not yet know continues to grow smaller.
Certainly the religious adherent may say at this point that religion does the same. But I ask you: What has religion ever discovered? What has religion ever revealed about how our world works?
Religion, at least in its non-supernatural aspects, describes the human condition and what humans have learned about themselves by long, sometimes painful, experience. All well and good, but in doing so it is no different or better than philosophy.
Religion tends to be about coveting the past, while science tends to be about reaching for the future. Listening to Dr. Vernon McGee on one of his Bible broadcasts, I was struck by the irony of his deriding "all this newfangled technology," whilst making excellent use of it to promote his worldview. I daresay no religious individual would want to do without the advantages of technological progress (even the Amish use the wheel), while millions do without religion quite nicely.
What say you?
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July 9, 2009 at 1:57 PM
It seems to me that neither science nor religion can be called a worldview by itself. Science is merely a method, and does not ground itself. Religion is a set of practices and beliefs that can be understood multiple ways.
A worldview--a coherent one anyway--is a philosophical outlook that has to go from the ground up. Any viable modern worldview has to account for the amazing epistemic success of science, but I would still argue that science is only one epistemic route suited to a particular set of phenomena. Science is not a particularly good way of expressing or examining truths about relationships within those relationships (even if it can describe and to some extent explain the physical processes that make up those relationships).
Most religions that persist today do not explicitly contain whole worldviews. There are many Christian worldviews, many Jewish worldviews, etc. Adherents have to do some intellectual work to explain their religion and everything else in coherent terms that add up to a comprehensive way of seeing the world.
On the other hand, I do think religious worldviews (which is not to say 'religions') make much better sense of science than scientistic worldviews can make sense of the breadth of human experience. Science cannot answer why truth, survival, love, or anything else is worth pursuing. Science can't ground ethics without radically altering what is meant by ethical claims.
This is in my opinion pretty clear philosophically. Major anti-religious philosophers have admitted as much; they simply say "to heck with what most people mean by ethical claims!" That is perfectly fine and logically consistent; I simply find that I perceive a certain kind of meaning in moral claims so strongly and clearly that I can't go with this move.
Now, to ask for discoveries on the same order as science from something that is not science is to poison the well. Religion *does* reveal plenty of truth (of a different kind) in the lives of individuals, as any religious person will tell you. Religion has also fueled most of the major moral developments in the world--much more so than "philosophy" has in cases where philosophy has been seen as distinct from theology (which is quite a recent development).
(And yes, religion has led people in wrong directions just as scientists have had incorrect theories, but this does not detract from my point).