When asked on The Innoculated Mind (Jan 25, 2007) in a conversation about how Science (and more specifically Evolutionary Biology) and Religion might fit together, P.Z. Myers had this to say:

“Well, gee. I believe that you can be a good scientist and you can practice Evolutionary Biology, and be religious, but I think you are doing it by compartmentalizing and setting aside critical thinking in certain aspects of your private life. And that’s perfectly okay. People do that all the time. Umm, but.. . but I think… I think the thing is that Science tends to erode religious belief because once you start seeing the value of the Scientific Method of thinking naturally about things that, uh, what happens is you start applying that to larger and larger chunks of your life, and if you do that you can’t go to church and sit there and listen to the minister without thinking… how do you know that? How did you determine that? And that… that ought to, uhh, completely gut any faith you might have.”

Interesting. Keep in mind these are not the words of some fundamentalist on a witch hunt, rather of a man who is deeply proud of his Atheism.

If you use sync to your Gmail account using IMAP in Mac Mail, you’ve probably noticed the “All mail” folder. It’s basically Goggle’s catch-all archiving system. This folder contains a copy of every eMail you’ve sent or received through Gmail. It’s a great idea, but it can take a long time to sync with Mac Mail, and can eat up harddrive space: I was able to free up about a gigabyte but using Google Labs’ “Advanced Imap Controls.”

Just follow the instructions to activate the controls and un-sync your “All mail” folder. The whole thing takes about 20 seconds, and is well worth it!

God has ordained the State’s power. He has not only ordained its power, but has approved its use of force. How do we know this?

From Romans 13 we know the State has force (it bears the sword) but we also know that it is right for the State to use that force (it does not bear the sword in vain – lit. inconsiderately; without just cause).

According to the passage, the State does bear the Sword unjustly. Who is the arbiter of justice? The Lord. Who has placed the sword into the hands of government? Also the Lord. Therefore, the Lord has deemed it just (thus right) for the State to use the sword. In fact, the State exists for that very purpose.

Now, if one takes “not in vain” to mean “God uses evil for good,” I think one is playing fast and loose with the passage; it is emphatic that what we see here is not the “accidental” will of God, but rather the very specific, foreordained will of God. God is not turning lemons into lemonade. Granted, force wouldn’t be needed if there was no sin, so in a way there will always be an “accidental” quality to justice. This, however, does not mean that God’s will for the State to use force in a fallen economy is itself accidental. The passage has a bias and this bias is toward intentionality. God is not improvising, He’s being intentional regarding the State. Thus, in it’s justice it is justified.

Now, Rom 12 just told us not to take revenge for ourselves, but that revenge is the Lord’s…

“But Apostle Paul, how does the Lord avenge us?”

“Keep reading! It’s in the next chapter!”

Sometimes the Lord is pleased to avenge us through Divine intervention, but He often works through a minister or agent. What is His agent of revenge? Who bears the sword on His behalf? The State! How do we know this? Rom 13 says so! It calls the State a minister of God’s justice – an avenger.

Consider, much of the law, the “10 Commandments” in particular, are directed toward individual conduct. This is why the Israelite army could go and kill yet not be in violation of the Law. God was not being inconsistent in anyway or creating a special “alternate” Law so that He could calling them to war – different rules apply to the State than do to the individual.

Therefore, Paul’s reminder not to avenge ourselves does not necessarily apply to the State. In fact we see that Rom 13 justifies the State in using force (God establishes the State so that it can execute His judgments, and it wields the sword rightly, justly, “unaccidentally”).

Parents use the family credit card – children cannot. I must obey the speed limit – police can be exempt. The judicial system can incarcerate someone for decades – I would be prosecuted for doing the so.

What is true for the individual is not always true for the group, and the apparent tension between Romans 12 and Romans 13 is resolved when we grant this.

Anyway, I’m going to try and write everyday. So to my 3 readers, expect content!

Cheers.

What I’m about to suggest might seem, to some, absolutely outlandish, but I think if you follow the reasoning, you’ll see that there is some merit – that science is inherently self-defeating – inherently unscientific.

For something to be considered a scientifically valid hypothesis, if must meet a few requirements. The hypothesis must be testable and those tests must be repeatable. The results must be observable. The hypothesis must be falsifiable.

Now here is the irony:

The principals of the scientific method can not be applied to themselves to prove their complete validity and dependability, with regards to truth gathering (that is, all truth). However, if the scientific method is the only way of knowing, this dichotomy must not be so. Therefore, science as a hypothesis, is scientifically invalid.

Let’s go deeper. Science purports to, through its methods, offer truth. So the hypothesis is:

the scientific method, when followed, offers truth (and as some would have it, only the scientific method offers reliable and total truth).

Let’s examine some of the categories that make a question “scientific” (and yield others not scientific, therefor to Positivists and many in general, pointless).

Falsifiability

We have Karl Popper (to his credit, he was very much not a positivist, so we do not lump him in with those who this critique largely addresses) to thank for the concept of falsifiability. He was its biggest proponent, and saw it as a necessary answer to the foibles of “inductive reasoning.” His belief was that hypothesis is only scientific if it is falsifiable. Which means, a scientist is more concerned with finding evidence which would refute his claim, rather than prove it (which again, would only ever be induction). The longer he goes without being able to do so, the more “probable” his hypothesis is. So, falsifiability, as a criterion, is being able to at least conceive of an occasion in which you could observe negation. For example, the statement, “All humans are mortal,” is not falsifiable. You would have to observe every human for all of time to be able to falsify the hypothesis – not practical or possible. However the statement “All humans are immortal,” is falsifiable, since you would only need to observe one dead human to falsify the claim, and that is an occasion we can at least conceptualize (this example is from Wikipedia).

Let’s come back to our above stated hypothesis about science (whether science can offer truth, or only science can offer truth). We will see that it is not falsifiable, and certainly isn’t so in any sort of meaningful way which would accord with a scientists expectation. Science is not allowed to be, because, the scientific method has a safe-guard – error correction. Science is allowed to make mistakes and revise hypotheses, which I think is marvelous. Where would we be without the recourse, “back to the drawing board?” Self-correction is necessary, and thankfully, we have its luxury in the scientific method – but this means that the hypothesis can never be falsified, as science is allowed to produce error, and then go in a different direction thus negating our ability to observer and opposite occasion. We cannot conceive of a situation where science can be falsified as the path to all truth as it is allowed not to make conclusions, and can simply modify or develop a hypothesis. So, on this first account, science defeats itself in principal.

Testing and evaluation

Falsifiability is only one criterion and not everyone scientist belongs to the falsifiabilty camp. Of course the other (and really, the only other) viable method is testing and evaluation. You pose a hypothesis (as we have done) you test it, and you evaluate results. This is called induction, and it’s because of the weakness of it that Popper ran to the haven of falsifiability, where a scientist doesn’t have to be right, they just have to avoid being seen as wrong.

Now, let’s think about this new scenario, rationally – one would need to conduct and infinite amount of experiments on an infinite number of phenomena, an infinite number of times, and all ready know the results to be able to fact-check the outcome of those experiments with complete assurance of veracity, in order to determine that the scientific method was indeed thoroughly reliable in fulfillment of the hypothesis. This is the problem of induction – one needs to essentially be omniscient to rely on it, and if one was omniscient, one wouldn’t need to use the method at all.

I can’t see another way to determine its exclusive validity in truth discovery, as truth is complete, and if something – anything – cannot offer entirely infallible results, all results are up for scrutiny and we should not be readily convinced of any answer’s correctness, no matter how pragmatic the insight has been. Our hypothesis fails scientific scrutiny here as well.

Rational thought

I believe in it. You believe in it. Rational thought is not generally a disputive topic. However, science, cannot believe in it. Oh, I’m well aware that scientists use rational thought every day – the scientific process demands its use. It’s a crucial component, and any scientist will tell you so. But this is the dichotomy – rational thought is not a testable, observable, or quantifiable, property. Certainly not through anything the scientific world would have at its disposal to test with. We run into assumptive thinking, rooted in pragmatism.

I said this earlier in section 5:

“We can talk about rational thought. We all know what it means, or have some conception. We can analyse and scrutinize it with great vigour and precision. And yet, it is not quantifiable. There is no objective means by which we can evaluate and assert its existence, let alone its quality. On every account, it is an unscientific, and by definition, must be a non-empirical property. And yet the entirety of science is based on the reality and presence of rational thought.”

Please don’t misread me: I’m a firm believer in the reality of rational thought, but the tools of the scientific method cannot prove it – science cannot qualify or verify it – and yet it is a cornerstone. Without it, science is meaningless.

I simply finding astounding that proponents of the “sola science” doctrine can do so when the very thing it is predicated on is an unscientific property.

If rational thought does exist, but cannot not be vouched for scientifically, there must be other ways of knowing, that – though hitherto undiscussed – even science must be predicated on, but will not confess.

This kind of response reveals an ever present presumption which underpins the hard scientific impetus, and it is one I’ve not yet heard discussed. It is this:

“Truth is only valuable if every one has the potential to agree with it. No one’s demanding that you do agree, but if there is no evidence, if there are no meaningful experiments, you don’t even give dissenters the possibility of being convinced, and you’ll just wind up in a relativistic hubbub.”

This can be nothing else but a presumption, and it lies at the heart of the scientific process. That is, the value or quality of a truth is tied to the potential for every human to embrace it, or, whether it is a candidate for universal agreement. This then means that a truth, even if only subscribed to by one person is inconsequential, regardless of whether it is truth or not. The ultimate distillation of that is that truth is in and of itself, irrelevant.

Why should that be the case? What reasonable basis is there for such an assertion, apart from the “Well, people won’t have any concrete reason to agree with you,” argument.” There is no reasonable basis to make an indictment against a truth itself on account of my or anyone else’s inability to report on it. But again, this is assumed in one of the critical pillars that the scientific method rests on.

Let’s refer back to what I began this series with: the inherent limitation of our ability to intake data and create knowledge, but from a completely different perspective.

We encounter the world. And yes, we can (and do) go on to deduce quite a bit, and can have a certain amount of confidence in our discoveries – and this confidence is not always ill-placed. However, that which is presented to our senses does not offer any sort of narrative or background story or user manual that fits within the scientific model. We find things as they are and can only deduce so much. Is it not reasonable to assume that what we cannot discover, by manner of inherent limitation (physical) or imposed limitation (philosophical) could potentially offer, were it to be known, context and completeness? And, could possibly this “whatever-it-is,” hidden from sensation yet open to other approaches, count for something?

It is an entirely feasible and reasonable hypothesis that there are principals that impinge on the workings of the observable Universe that we cannot from our vantage point observe. It is not a scientific hypothesis, but ultimately, that is irrelevant. Science can not explore what we do not, in some way, have the capacity to sense. Science, again, cannot answer every why.

If we cannot sense something, we can then also not be certain, in scientific terms, of the effect that thing may or may not have on us and the Universe.

We cannot look-in-to consequences when we are unable to even take notice of a catalyst. One can’t stare into the void and discern what does not reach out to him. The point, ultimately, is not that science is useless – it is that science has its uses. It is typically pragmatic, and in its greatest moments of success, give us some information about some phenomenon – maximal probability. There has been no Universal tribunal to declare in a fully objective and omniscient way that the scientific method is all its die-hard proponents claim it to be. In fact, you will see in the next section, how science, as a hypothesis, is actually unscientific.

I’ve just been reading a passage from David Hume’s A treatise of Human Nature*, about how we can come to some level of certainty in our investigations. It makes some good points (which I agree with and have thus far in my investigation, not disagreed with), and at other points falls catastrophically on its face. Let’s go!

[Edit: I have removed the first argument I made about this passage from Hume as I possibly have misunderstood a term he uses – demonstrable sciences – and applied to it meaning which he did not. I have thus replaced the older argument with what I feel to be a much stronger one. Thank you Dan for pointing out my error – I would hate to have continued on in it!]

We are permitted to substitute words for other words which would still manage to convey the initial concept accurately. “Concepts” afford us that luxury. We will apply such a substitution here, in order to make the argument more obvious to the reader:

Hume says these two things in the passage:

By the term infallibility, one means complete correctness or, quite literally, truthfulness.

Furthermore, when Hume says truth is the effect of reason he is essentially saying that it resides in the mind alone – thus it does not reside outside the mind (we can with some certainty know he meant this as he was largely an Idealist).

So the conclusion that Hume’s argument arrives us at is:

I hope, for the sake of my argument, by “demonstrable sciences” he would include the disciplines of Physics and Logic. But he may truly have been referring strictly to mathematics, in which case, the
absurdity of the assertion is still evident.

What Hume is proposing is that, on the one hand, the demonstrable sciences are infallible – truthful. On the other, that truth is merely the residue of thought in the mind – that nothing is objectively true.

How this argument defeats itself, in the first, is that the concept of “infallibility” is utterly meaningless, as truth, apparently, is only in the mind. And so Hume then must not be permitted to use the word to his advantage.

Secondly, granting him use of the term, what is implied is that nothing Hume says at all can be trusted, because, well, truth is only in the mind, and thus, nothing of a standard that can be shared between minds, or asserted in any Universal way.

Thirdly, and more importantly, Hume is saying that in fact mathematics is not, of itself, true. So, 2+2 can equal 5 – it’s no sweat really. A triangle can be made of more than 3 sides – and why not – as the predicate/subject agreement of an a prioi statement can’t hold me! The shortest distance between two points may in fact not be a straight line – I can imagine wormholes and so, they’re truth.

This is sheer lunacy. In fact, it’s a lunacy that Kant was thankful Hume didn’t commit. He was thankful that Hume did not dismiss math as illusory. It would appear though, that it is the inevitability of his reasoning from this passage (and I’m sad for Kant that he missed it).

Now, I think it’s reasonable to propose, that if every human were annihilated, there would, perhaps
in some remote corner of the Universe, hidden away on any icy moon, be a few triangles huddling together to keep warm. Truly, if there be in the Universe nothing more than two, even infinitesimally small points (no matter how far apart they be) that can be connected by a line, Hume is shown to be in error.

Another consequence is this: Hume says we cannot trust our faculties – our subjective sensory experience – and so must apply reason to our discoveries, in order that we might make up for our facultative weakness, and move closer to probable truth (and as he says of our investigations, certainty is only ever a matter of increasing probability), since some of the principals of our reason are in fact based on mathematic, and there for infallible, principals.

Pardon me?

Let’s evaluate the implications, based on what we’ve established so far:

1. our faculties are mind
2. reason is in the mind
3. truth is of the mind

What he is advocating is that we apply our minds to our minds. Since our faculties are faulty, we apply reason, logic, that is infallible principals, to the fallible observations. But, since truth is only in the mind (thus, not real, thus, not truth), what we are in essence doing is applying fallibility to fallibility. Thus what we arrive at, for all our labors, is absolutely nothing but whimsy. We are left with utter meaninglessness.

Now, let’s give David the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was having a rough day. Maybe he was behind on his sleep. Maybe he had a bad piece of cheese and was suffering from a bout of indigestion, and was thus out-of-sorts when he wrote this piece. I suppose, however, since he was
an Idealist, there’s no such thing as indigestion at all, it’s only in the mind (and so too would every disease be Psychosomatic and self-inflicted).

Since triangles exist; since there are points with space between them; since 2+2 does in fact amount to four (and they’re quite happy about the new living arrangement I might add) it is evident that we cannot appeal to Hume in this matter.

This is too bad, as I agree with what his general point is: that we apply reason to observation, in recursive and ongoing way, to refine our knowledge. He says:

“Since therefore all knowledge resolves itself into probability, and becomes at last of the
same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common life, we must now examine this latter species of reasoning, and see on what foundation it stands.

In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment, derived from the nature of the
object, by another judgment, derived from the nature of the understanding.”

We continually evaluate and interrogate our first judgment, until we have, at last (which never comes because he says it must take place in infinitum), been exacting enough to render a “probability,” more
probable. Thus, we can only really arrive at “maximal probability.”

In this series of my thoughts of philosophy in science, that is where I am headed: let us understand that our “scientific conclusions” are only “maximal probabilities” given the knowledge we have up to this point accumulated, but are not definitive and are open to revision – though I cannot in good conscience stop there.

Support for my point, from Hume’s own mouth:

“we ought always to correct the first judgment, derived from the nature of the object, by another judgment, derived from the nature of the understanding.”

So, we are encouraged to bring further judgments to bear on the first, to maximize our possibility of correctness – that’s all I’m advocating, but at a paradigmatic level. It does not serve us to simply limit self-correction to our understanding of objects and not our very methods of evaluation. We are permitted to subjugate an entire methodology to refining judgments, so that we might better establish its role and its correctness.

* thanks again to Dan for recommending this article, and for his refining questions.

Now the scientist (or at least, the cynical one) would say, “Well if something exists that doesn’t interact with the 4 fundamental forces, can’t be observed, tested, or even proven to exists, then its irrelevant to us and has no impact on us – how can it? Science deals with those things and so is is equipped to answer every why that is relevant to human existence. Anything else is just guess work, and who’s to say your conclusion is more valid than mine?”

This is the expression of an entrenched philosophy (positivism), and I believe is actually the absence of any sort of mature philosophy or serious thinking the matter through.

Since we can’t verify this scientifically, we will have to do so rationally. There are only three possibilities for what the scientific process is capable of answering:

1. no whys
2. all whys
3. some whys

I think it would be rather foolish to think that science couldn’t answer any why. Common sense tells us that, so let’s just cross choice #1 off the list.

We’re left choice 2 and 3. All that is needed is to show one example of how something can be known apart from scientific investigation, to establish the exclusivity of choice #3.

To establish that choice 2 is false, one need not look further than an a priori analytic judgement (thanks Kant). The statement, “Triangles have three sides,” is not something that requires scientific study to conclusively prove – it is just inherently true, and is true completely apart from empirical investigation.

But this really isn’t sufficient when it comes to matters of any importance. A priori propositions are typically self-evident, and don’t hold any real ontological potency. Even though we’ve just seen that choice #2 is false, the question lingers, apart from seemingly dodging the question, is there anything important that can be known apart from science? I believe yes.

In fact, let’s take a scientist. Take the most ardent, fastidious scientist, who apparently lives and dies and by his principles.

One day, the scientist’s son comes home from school. He has a black eye, and tells his father that he was hit by a fellow student. This child has never lied before. Has never been dishonest. The scientist calls a meeting with his son’s teacher, and the parent of the abusive child. This other parent is wearing work clothes. Smells of alcohol, wears a few scars, and has a rough demeanour. He protests, saying that it was in fact the scientist’s child who hit his son. He claims some of his son’s friends can corroborate the story.

Would some questionable eye witnesses, and a contradictory story from an equally questionable source cause the scientist to scrutinize his abused son? Would the scientist take a week off from the lab to analyze data, run simulations, refine a hypothesis, set up a control study, all to determine whether his son was telling the truth? Absolutely not! The scientist knows that his son is telling him the truth and knows that the drama unfolded as it was relayed to him.

I cannot imagine a parent, no matter how grounded in the absolute authority and skepticism of the scientific method who would require complete empirical satisfaction before being able to say with all conviction, “I know.” The living of life requires that we proceed as though we know certain things and there is no good reason to dismiss these truths as illusory or manufactured. It is a contrivance that proof of a certain kind must be a prerequisite to establish the certainty of a truth.

Why have we the opinion that empirical (that is sensory) perceptions are more reliable than emotional ones? Than rational ones? Than heaven forbid, spiritual ones? We have nothing justifiable on which to base this assertion than a presumption.

Now, near the beginning of this section I said:

“…since we can’t verify this scientifically, we will have to do so rationally.”

This offers up another interesting example: even rationale, a quality most humans recognize and rely on – a quality on which “science” itself depends as a basis for its success – is a scientifically untestable quality. How interesting that science rests on a categorically unscientific property. Really consider the implications of this.

We can talk about rational thought. We all know what it means, or have some conception. We can analyze and scrutinize it with great vigour and precision, and yet, it is not quantifiable. There is no objective means by which we can evaluate and assert its existence, let alone its quality. On every account, it is an unscientific, and by definition, must be a non-empirical property. And yet the entirety of science is based on the reality and presence of rational thought. It is predicated on testing and verification and falsifability as being valid criteria, which have themselves been established through rational thought, which in turn cannot be subjugated to these proposed criteria, and thus the method that claims Universality in reliable truth discovery. How this irony can go unchecked, I do not know.

Forthwith, my arguments have primarily to do with a particular persuasion, and a particular mode of thinking. This position has become the prevalent one within the scientific discipline, and in my estimation is the joining together of two separate philosophies:

Empiricism: experience and the senses are to be emphasized in truth discovery.

Positivism: the only truth that can be discovered is through strict scientific method.

For many people, positivism would simply be seen as the natural result of “empiricism,” in that empiricism (as a method) involves the process of testing a hypothesis, and establishing (or trying to establish) objectivity through evidence.

I, however, see the need list them separately so we can consider the whole equation:

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “We’ll let’s just read Critique of Pure Reason and call it a day.” But, I find it necessary to address the specific condition of our current day, and what science has gone on to hold up as an exclusive method for knowing.

If something like Critique was sufficient, we wouldn’t be where we are today, would we?

Now, as we saw in previous sections, because we are working from a point of limitation, we are bound to ask certain questions, and are also bound to accept certain answers. We can only look for, find, and test certain kinds of information empirically. We can in turn only extrapolate certain knowledge. I believe we grossly overestimate the confidence we can place in our conclusions, especially considering that we are always evaluating from a fixed point in space, time, and consciousness.

So the crucial question we need to answer is, can the scientific method answer every why? Does every big question need to be a scientific one in order to be valid? Is science the only way of knowing? Can truth be found by other means? Does the retort, “Well, that’s not a scientific question,” have any place when trying to determine the route to take in the pursuit of what is? Many people believe so, absolutely.

I believe the only intellectually defensible position is that science is but one way knowing.

Consider this example: most physicists theorize that dark matter and dark energy exist. Yet, the “dark force” does not interact with the electromagnetic force – they are essentially invisible to each other. But, the dark force does supposedly interact with gravity. So, scientists believe we are able to infer its existence based gravity interactions with particles we can observe.

Fine. Makes sense. But let the implication really sink in: the reality of dark matter and dark energy are widely accepted by notable and brilliant physicists (and in fact, the leading theory is that they make up the majority of the Universe’s contents), but the phenomenon is something we cannot observe directly, only secondarily, and that through theoretical mathematical calculations.

Is it not reasonable then to propose that there may be other components of our Universe that do not interact at all with the forces we can observe and yet are vital to the continuance of the Universe? There would be no test or method we could use to explore such a phenomenon let alone discover that it exists at all in order that we might even postulate and bat it around in our minds.

The scientist fires back, “Well, that’s not a scientific hypothesis since we can’t test it,” to which I reply, “Thank you, that’s my ultimate point.”

What I’m advocating is a broadening of what we consider viable avenues for truth discovery. Whether science can enter the game at every turn or not is irrelevant. Entirely irrelevant. Its participation is not a governing principal of the Universe, and has no good reason to be a governing force in all matters of knowledge accumulation – we have simply said so because it is has been pragmatic (and this we have in turn done by way of induction). Science can only speak to what scientists are able to observe empirically, and what scientists are able to observe is limited and will very well remain forever limited, even in ways we are unable to discover or account for. Necessarily this means science cannot answer every “why.”

Some whys are invisible to science.